A friend recently quoted a former boss as saying that ‘any problem is straightforward provided you find the right level of abstraction’, in other words, to get out of the doodoo you need to think laterally and view things differently.
Given that we have all been exhorted to come up with ideas for reducing the budget deficit I thought I would ‘abstract’ on the theme of public sector cuts and the ‘go green’ agenda. I will not address extra taxes on the private sector since beleaguered small businesses have suffered enough already and tax rises are not at all an abstract solution. My starting point will be the difficult choices required to maintain a sensible level of investment in emerging green technologies while meeting spending targets - think here of the debate around cuts to the Carbon Trust in order to help fund the proposed Green Investment Bank.
The recent announcement of cuts to support for low carbon and renewable energy technologies has received media attention, however, what about the spending on media and advertising to raise awareness of government initiatives? While the Carbon Trust is no stranger to full page adverts in quality periodicals, other parts of Government have traditionally funded large scale public information campaigns about issues such as healthy eating, healthy living or going green. Such campaigns are given life in order to convey a sense of Government purpose, however, will they survive the current economic malaise and will anyone notice?
If we accept reduced budgets for public information campaigns, rather than spend money doing the same thing in the same old way, here is the abstraction. Let’s say for example we have a smaller budget for a healthy eating campaign, why not divide it up and give it as grant aid to a selection of key food companies for them to market their own produce in their own way. By promoting their own products, the companies win, by spreading the policy message for less, the government wins and by spreading the creative work, the agencies win. Assuming that this could be done in a way that meets state aid rules, we end up with a win, win, win situation. The relevant Minister can still claim the credit, organise a photo-call and send out a rousing press release. Admittedly, because the money is distributed amongst a group of different companies, the results will vary, but the overall impact would be positive.
Consumer facing eco-campaigns are another case in point. Rather than put out generic ‘go green’ messages to the wider populace, targeted action on problems such as food waste backed up by the provision of the necessary collection infrastructure is surely more sensible. The delivery mechanism is Zero Waste Scotland working in conjunction with local authorities and private contractors.
The Climate Challenge Fund, for which local communities bid to initiate carbon reduction projects, is an interesting abstraction. This takes its lead from the people in villages, towns and cities throughout Scotland who have devised their own ways of reducing environmental impacts. A good example is the project from SPOKES, the Lothian cycling campaign, which aims to devise solutions to the storage of bicycles in Edinburgh tenements. On a related note, a Scottish village has recently employed a full time energy manager to advise residents on the optimum mix of energy efficiency and micro-renewable technologies. Abstracting this concept, perhaps 100 energy managers could be chosen and/or trained and assigned two villages each from the 200 that make the best case for it. Leaving aside the massive challenge of changing the way we generate electricity, getting 200 villages in Scotland to reduce energy demand would go a long way to helping the country meet its carbon policy targets. It could be enacted within a tighter budget regime, could employ some re-assigned civil servants and provide work for private sector energy efficiency and micro-generation providers.
This abstraction game is fascinating, although there is a danger that it creates opportunities for the management class to organise workshops and strategy sessions. Indeed, I was once accused of not having a plan by someone working in a large organisation, unlike them, who admitted to spending most of their working day discussing strategy. There must be a happy medium, so I call on policy makers, and indeed private sector strategists, to ditch their Powerpoint slides and get all Mark Rothko and Eduardo Paolozzi. If the body politic can think in the abstract it can meet its revised budget targets while improving governance and the lot of the governed. As long as we don’t end up with a load of Jackson Pollocks.
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