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Bridget Phillipson

Two jobs here we've got the Secretary of State for Education and the Minister for Women and Equality.

These are both topics I'm heavily invested in, starting with Education, this is a role that requires understanding not only what is required by teachers but also what is required by industry as a whole, and what would be a well-rounded baseline of education for all people who grow up in the UK. While not entirely necessary a parental perspective on education would be a bonus.

For Women and Equality, I'm looking for a feminist and someone who's actively engaged with all the aspects of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. I would like to see someone who understands intersectionality and can bring to the table relevant experience with many issues including but not limited to GSRM issues, Disability, Race and Religious variance, and so much more. I'd like to see someone who's hot on the newest movements within these groups and is able to quickly and inoffensively address them.

Looking at the range of relevant experience I think it'd be hard for anyone to adequately display all the skills I'd be looking for in the range of research I've been doing for these little write-ups.

Phillipson's education at university was in French as MFL which shows a willingness to engage with and learn about other cultures. This is fantastic at showing the depth to which she is willing to go to understand other perspectives. French isn't necessarily the most different perspective to examine, it's note worthy but it's not the most important thing.

She worked within local government with their women in need group and I'm sure this role too had a huge impact on the range of experiences that Phillipson can draw upon for her role as Minister for Women. I would imagine it led her to join the APPG on Domestic and Sexual Violence and taking the Secretary role.

I think she has quite the breadth of experience for the Women and Equalities role. There are obviously sections of experience I've not been able to find and I'll be keeping my eyes open on that front.

For the Education role, I'm a little less sure, she has children and she campaigned for the rebuilding of a local school which are both good things, but I didn't see any experience with teaching or with the educational expectations of people entering into the job market. That isn't to say it doesn't exist I just haven't seen it in my cursory research.

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We have a housing problem what problems do you forsee and what solutions would you suggest for the upcoming projects?

Hi Anon, Thanks for the question

One of the big problems we will face with getting the number of houses built that this government has targetted is the requirement for parking spaces for those houses. We can no longer build streets of terrace houses because each house is supposed to have room for 2 cars. This is why new build blocks of flats come with carparks and new build houses usually come with front parking spaces or garages.

I'd like to use tech to solve the problem there are underground parking garages that would fit in almost any community but they come with the risk that a breakdown would cause a neighbourhood to be without access to their cars. I've seen examples of this on Tom Scott's YouTube here which can include electric car charging and are much more secure than on-street parking.

Storing cars off the street like this makes them a hassle to access, which means that you need to build the area around that limitation. While discouraging driving you have to provide all the things a community might need. Every 100 or so houses should have a shop or commercial space, every 250 houses should have a park. This makes the area walkable and enjoyable for families.

Every 1000 houses should have some form of community resource which might be a community centre, doctor's office, library, school or faith building. The community resource should be the last thing that's built, there should be space earmarked for it and when residents have started to buy up the finished properties and move in they should get an opportunity to decide what they think they would use most.

These should often be built in conjunction with one another, if there's the opportunity for 5000 houses to be built near one another. We could end up with a village that has 2 primary schools, a doctor's office, a library/community centre, and a church for the community buildings, while in the commercial spaces there could be 5 corner shops, 5 charity shops, a salon, a barber shop, a bank, a local supermarket, 5 pubs or takeaways, 5 other faith buildings, a telecom exchange, 6 electric substations, a retirees centre, several spaces for small local businesses/offices, and to fulfil the green space requirements there'd be 10 small parks/playgrounds and 1 larger park with 10x the space maybe with basket ball/tennis courts, lawn bowls, some football posts on a field and a set of toilets. This would end up being a somewhat balanced community with room for many different sorts of people to move in and become a community through their shared access to these spaces.

Social housing should be an integral part of every community, 1/10 homes being one that should be sold to a social landlord or council, these should be picked at random so it's impossible to tell which streets or which properties in a given street are social landlords vs owned by the person living in them vs private rented. They absolutely should not be the cheapest houses the building company can provide that meets the social housing specification while other houses in the same area are bigger or have more things built into their fabric.

Making a village like this walkable and limiting the parking to the parking structures means you can forgo streets and use many of the road spaces as green spaces with walking paths, trees and so on.

If I were designing this I'd have concentric circular roads connected by spokes on T junctions where the 4th road goes into a parking structure and the spoke roads may be on every 3rd or 4th 'street'. the result should be no one is more than a few minutes walk from one parking structure or another, and each structure could have storage for 50 to 100 cars, which would probably mean people would end up meeting at the structures around rush hours adding more opportunities to build the community.

I understand that this wouldn't be workable in all areas but I think that if 5-10% of the projects looked like this they'd be able to provide a higher density of housing with an improved local environment over the concrete jungle with tarmac driveways and tiny gardens model which has come to dominate in many new build locations.

Even though I think this is a good solution, I understand that it could only be done with planning directed by the government because this shift in the layout and structure of new communities is rather radical. I see that it would face huge amounts of resistance from commercial ventures thinking that it's not viable, installing the technologies is going to take skills and extra money we don't currently have easily available relatively speaking, even if I believe there would ultimately be an appetite for this sort of community and people would easily adapt to living in these sorts of villages because it's so different it might take time to be accepted.

Yet another Complicated answer for a complicated world and this isn't the only solution out there. I'd like to hear from other people what they think of this idea and if they could see themselves living in a place like this.

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The Costs of Trans Health Care for Children

Going privately the cost for puberty blockers is less than £100 per month.

Puberty blockers allow Teens to learn about themselves and the world. To take the time to make a reasoned and rational decision.

Half a century of use suggests that they are safe and entirely reversible.

They are seldom the first option for people questioning their gender, they're something that remarkably few take.

Teens who take puberty blockers have regret rates that are less than almost every surgery. The same statistic holds for most Gender Affirming Care

Typically a teen will be on them for 2-3 years representing a cost of £6000 in total.

A teen without access to them, when they believe they're important, will cost an order of magnitude more than this.

The cost of educating someone costs the UK government £19k

The cost of the environmental impact for one person growing up in the UK is approximately £30k

Every episode of self-harm costs the NHS a minimum of £800

The list of things goes on and on...

And these are just the things that the government has to pay for, it doesn't include the costs shouldered by family and friends.

The Samaritans estimate the cost to the economy of each suicide in the UK is around £1.5M

If giving 250 trans kids medication saves even 1 life that's a genuinely cost-effective measure. There were fewer than 100, but taking the option away has sent many teens for whom this wasn't an option (yet) into a spiral of concern.

So for those who don't believe like I do that it's a moral imperative to do everything possible to avoid preventable deaths, there's your economic reason. The treatment prevents the waste of government funding and thwarts the economic impacts, being a good person is the most cost-effective solution.

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An Ethical Framework

I realised that we kind of need an ethics code for all industries law. So I outlined this in a discussion with a friend

Any industry or job title where any individual receives pay in excess of twice the median income is required to have a public ethics code to which all people with that job title or role are contractually bound.

Those ethics standards must include at least the following items

To not commit crimes as part of your job

To report up the chain, to the OfEWP and relevant law enforcement when crimes are committed

Looking out for the well-being of subordinates

Ensuring the actions taken are in the long-term interest of the organisation

etc etc (I am sure there are hundreds of suggestions that could be made please comment your own)

And may include additional items depending on the job role, responsibilities and public perception.

We are creating the Office for Ethical Working Practices OfEWP, who will be responsible for providing the guidance and moderation for the various codes of ethics proposed by industries and taking public feedback on both the practicality and reasonable expectations of the various Ethical Codes that may be produced by industry bodies, unions or other organisations empowered to produce an ethical framework.

Where some job title or job role exists that doesn't have a professional body to help with the production of an ethical framework the OfEWP will be able to maintain and provide on request the currently agreed ethical standards.

Example roles at the time of publication include:

CEO

COO

CFO

Director

Executive

Senior Manager

Board Member

This is not an extensive list

Where creative naming of job titles is used to avoid a particular ethical framework the OfEWP is empowered to determine all the appropriate Ethical Frameworks based on a list of job responsibilities, where more than one is necessary to cover all responsibilities the person would be bound by law to all those frameworks.

Where Ethics codes are violated we give the courts power to enforce earnings restrictions and job role restrictions for those who use unethical practices, violations of these restrictions will incur fines starting at the total earned above the restrictions and jail time.

Where the OfEWP and an industry body cannot agree on an ethical framework the OfEWP can require the withholding/garnishment of 10% of salary for each person with that job role, this money is to be retained by the government/OfEWP until the ethical framework is agreed, sanctioned money will be returned after no more than 12 months without any accrued interest and only after the resolution of the ethical framework dispute.

However I feel I'd need to dress it up in legalese and address some of the gaping omissions in how it's written above

This idea is roughly in line with Wylie's suggestion about industry ethics law in the Cambridge Analytica book I read not too long ago

Twice the median income seems like a reasonable cut-off at ~£70k currently in the UK. I'd imagine most industries with anyone over £50k would come together, establish an industry body and agree an ethical framework aspirationally

I think that having an 'independent' body responsible for the maintenance of ethical standards is necessary or you face easy corruption through parliament. The development of ethical frameworks is kind of beyond the scope of parliament anyway.

I think the sanctions need to be real not simply a vanishingly small fine.

If someone was limited to "a median salary equivalent annual income" by the courts and they lie and get paid millions then they should be fined all the money they should never have been able to earn.

If someone is limited from certain job roles or jobs that require certain ethical requirements for 5-10 years that would also be reasonable as a way of discouraging unethical behaviour individually.

There might need to be costs for companies that have unethical employees too.

The withholding of pay forces in some ways the industry to come together and actually produce a reasonable ethics code and/or provide reasonable assurances as to why a particular ethical practice should be excluded from their code.

Anyone subject to these sanctions would have a year of sanctions returned on resolution (if it dragged out)

After a set up period, the interest on withheld funds might pay for the OfEWP's work without additional cost to the treasury, long term that might not hold true because industries would want to create and abide by the ethical standards.

Any expired sanctioned funds should get added to the treasury to make a dent in the national debt, as it cannot be a reliable income stream by definition I think this is the best use of those funds rather than earmarking them for other parts of the budget.

Lastly, if an industry wants to be unethical it technically could by effectively increasing the tax rate of people with that job by a flat 10% (no matter their tax bracket) and they get shamed as an industry that can't produce or agree to an ethical framework. That would be an option within law if an industry wanted to do that.

I think as written right now this needs a lot of work and polish, but I think it provides an interesting baseline to consider going forward

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Affordable Housing Bubble

I'm worried about the processes by which the government are going to try to meet their campaign promises, I've already seen a few occasions where the Labour party, Rayner and Starmer have come under fire for falling behind on their affordable housing goal for this parliament, the opposition have pressed it a few times and the media have mentioned it.

1000 new homes per day

At the time of writing, we're 50 days into the government, that's 50,000 additional homes they've promised and I'm betting construction hasn't started on these.

There will be plenty of opportunities for private firms to buy land and secure the ability to build on it, build some homes. But private firms have a vested interest in producing fewer bigger more expensive homes, fewer homes available means less supply and higher demand increasing the prices.

With so many new affordable homes the intent of the government may be to pop the housing market, make houses more affordable by driving down both the price of new houses as well as existing ones.

This, if not done carefully, is going to saddle a lot of people with negative equity on their mortgages which may have economic knock on effects.

So Private companies are either going to be less inclined to take on this challenge as it bumps their risk while reducing their return on investment. Meaning the government are going to have to turn the screws to make this happen through other methods.

So we turn our attention to local authority housing and social housing providers to do this.

There are still some local authorities with housing stock that may be able to incorporate this into their systems, but if the housing stock was previously sold off developing a whole system to go along with the modern responsibilities of a social landlord is not something they can attempt

Leaving Social Housing providers as those in the best position to shoulder the responsibility of delivering this promise. Social Landlords are very similar in some ways to charities, they're not-for-profit organisations on which a lot of people depend. Having them take a huge risk of building more and faster than ever before could cause them to collapse, fail to provide services to residents and need to be bailed out or brought out in some form or another.

Bailouts will cost Billions, the housing sector is huge, even a moderate provider with 2000 properties may be worth more than a hundred million pounds in just brick and mortar.

While Buyouts won't necessarily be feasible for other social landlords, if the sector is being pushed to the brink of collapse in order to provide the homes promised by the government unless there's a huge hidden rainy day fund they're holding back every provider will be in a similar situation. And so I'd be worried about the private sector buying up homes with considerable rent control in order to evict vulnerable residents to attempt to get higher rents.

I agree that we need more homes, but I want to see a plan that doesn't put risks on the people with the most to lose, those who're still paying off their only mortgage and could end up owing more than the value of their house to the bank. As well as those who have little choice about where they can live and as such have ended up as social housing residents.

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Picking a Direction

I've been told that if I get into parliament I need to specialise and really I should pick those specialties right now and just focus on them and let other people worry about other things.

I have some specialties I can bring to the table there are definitely things for which I'm passionate about, I understand well and I can bring that expertise with me.

Social Housing and the Benefits system, I have experience working with my Social Housing provider and I've done Work Experience with the Job Center, I've been though homelessness and I've been though the benefits system and even been on the receiving end of glitches and errors.

Mental Health and the NHS, I've struggled with my health for most of my life, I was the fat kid at school, I've had undiagnosed or untreated conditions, I've dealt with physical disability, been treated and mistreated by the NHS but I see how most people within the NHS are genuinely caring and want to help. I applied for nurse training during the pandemic and want to see the NHS thrive.

Computers and Technology, my first passion as an adult was computers and computing, I studied Computer Science, AI and Mathematics at Aberystwyth University at 18. I know the things to look out for and the questions to ask. I understand the research process and I have experience reading technical papers. I understand the skill it takes to make things seem effortless and the limitations computers have. I want to see technologies that make the world a better place and see people with good ideas get funding for their projects, ideas may fail or reveal themselves to be infeasible but that's a cost of research, but failure is often just as important to science as the successes.

I have a whole range of issues like these that I have intimate and detailed personal knowledge of and I will want to pursue all of them. I will not be an expert on all the issues, I cannot know everything.

I know that saying "I don't know anything about X" is going to be seen or used as a weakness.

I don't think it is, I think that acknowledging there are things I don't know is a strength, it shows that I'm willing to learn and listen, and that I'm not going to jump to conclusions and give answers to things based on limited information.

However, I want to have some answers for most of the issues that I might encounter. I know it means there's a lot of work to do but I feel like the vast majority of the questions I'd need to have answers for are those that relate to the labour government and their implemented policies, I feel like those are going to be more at the forefront of people's minds in the next election than anything presented by the last government. Especially if the Labour government proves that they can deliver any amount of improvement.

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Part 2, but not really

Yesterday, I received my first hate comment and I had one reply but there are other aspects, some I've addressed before, and some I haven't (I will add policing to my list of future posts). For this post though it's more about my philosophy.

While I may or may not align with various aspects of people and parties. I believe that most people are trying their best from their perspective in a complicated world.

Most MPs have to balance out their personal opinions with the things that will get them attacked by the press or their competition on local and national stages, within their party and those candidates who might stand against them. They have to work with and for other people. They have to project confidence that they know what they're doing and have confidence instilled in them that others believe they can do the jobs required of them.

I might not agree with any person about some single policy decision or even a collection of policy decisions but I'm not going to attack them personally for those decisions. Especially when I cannot fully understand why they're making those decisions.

I can be critical about the decisions being made because I have different perspectives or information and I can do that without needing to villainise anyone for the decisions they have made.

If I want to work in parliament, casting all people who I may have to work with as being corrupt and evil is going to make them wary of me and it's going to make me unable to truly work with them. I don't know about you but if I say something untrue often enough I start to believe it and I can't risk falling into that trap.

If I end up working in parliament I'm going to be working on my own in many cases and I'll need to do a lot of different jobs for myself because I'll be doing it without the support of a party structure. I'll have to talk with lots of people and need to work with them.

I'll fight the good fight where I can, as much as I can, for as long as I can. But, I find it's often easier to get people to come over and help you if you aren't attacking them in your request for help.

That may cast me as a bootlicker.

I call it being responsible with my time, energy and other resources.

No one is perfect, no government or leader or representative will make only the decisions that you or I would like in all situations, which leaves an infinite number of opportunities for me to cast each and every member of parliament as a villain, and that would then extend in reverse if I ever got elected.

So I choose to believe most people are trying their best from their perspective in a complicated world.

And when they show me who they are, where their self-interest lies, I believe them

The best way to work with them is to understand why they have those perspectives and expose them to the information, thoughts and ideas that brought me to my conclusions.

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How would I address the NHS?

The NHS is currently under massive mismanagement, too much money that is in the NHS budget is earmarked for private firms to provide care on behalf of the NHS. These private services are often not fit for purpose and whether they're used or not cost more than the NHS employing the staff to provide the actual required services in-house.

I only consider things that the NHS has control over to be within the NHS's budget. If the money must be paid to a company dictated by law or the Department for Health, rather than managed by people who work for the NHS and are paid from the NHS budget then the money isn't really NHS money and never was. By this metric, I think that the NHS has had severe funding cuts for at least 15 years, even beyond the fact that the NHS funding hasn't increased in line with inflation.

I think true free universal healthcare is an economic boon, people being unworried about their health and the costs associated with it improves their ability to handle other life stresses. It makes them more likely to be working and paying into the system.

I think there are a number of treatments that should be able to bypass GPs for adults, where Addiction and Public Health concerns are not an issue it should be possible to simply talk to a pharmacist to get access to certain medications. Self-diagnosis is entirely valid for many things and if those treatments were free and easy to access for anyone it could do an immense amount of good.

A list of drugs would include HRT, painkillers, side effect management, mood stabilisers, and SSRIs. At least at the lowest dosages and for some perhaps for a limited number of dispenses between physician visits. But other treatments might include mobility aids, physical therapy, counselling and so on. Making them accessible without GP time frees them to take more time with patients who need more help or don't know the right path to take.

Recreational drugs should also be available through pharmacies cheaply, making recreational drugs safer, directing people to less addictive alternatives, restricting dispenses to a single-day dosage and offering regular health monitoring improves the lives of users keeping them safer and reducing costs associated with overdosing or poisons. Removing the drug industry from criminal enterprises could make a significant dent in the associated crime, no longer would users be required to steal to pay for the most addictive drugs and long-term users are less likely to be pushed into taking the most dangerous recreational chemicals, and recreational drugs can be taxed too.

Destigmatising drug use is also a benefit, in many cases drug use is no worse than alcohol, and in some situations is safer for both the individual and society as a whole, but by letting people take the drugs they want to or need to without stigma allows them to hold down jobs more easily.

If it's health-related it should be possible to get it freely, easily and with minimal barriers. This is true for sickness, mental health services, optometry, and dentistry. I might even suggest rolling in alternative medicines where the practitioners understand that the service they're providing is in effect hypnosis or a very effective placebo and is not a replacement for actual medicines but can supplement other treatments.

For gatekept services like antibiotics, antivirals, antiparasitics, more intensive treatments and treatments that require ongoing monitoring this is the ideal realm of GPs, they're there to make sure the right drugs are being used, the right dosages are being suggested, that the usage doesn't create drug-resistant strains of common illnesses and that the overall health of patients is considered including the managing of side effects or signposting of other services when someone is seeking a treatment path that could benefit from specialists.

The only reason to deny a patient treatment should be public health or patient-related, the financial impact of prescriptions, services and recommendations must not be made to be the concern of the people deciding on what the best treatments are.

While I do believe it's in the best interest of everyone that the NHS be entirely free at the point of use, I'm not against some access to the NHS being costed either, where treatments are costly, risky or unnecessary like recreational drugs or elective surgeries then charges may be applicable to fast track through waiting lists or to get access. And rather than duplicating services with private healthcare for people wishing to bypass public waiting lists if you have the money and are willing to pay for your own treatment and costs associated with bumping others down the list you can jump to the head of the queue.

The nationalisation of private medical firms and bringing their staff under the NHS umbrella would start to address the staffing issues present within UK healthcare. The market value for NHS staff payments as well as working conditions should be enough to attract people to work here from other countries. And by hiring or training world-class practitioners we can ethically accept paying patients who travel to the UK for treatments too.

Any and all of these payments for services should be split between the NHS's savings and a bonus pot for practitioners who provide exceptional service. The NHS's bank account should be 'hidden' from the decisions regarding budgetary funding. In this way any accumulated savings can be used for things outside of the normal procedures like Pandemic responses, developing experimental treatments, maintaining services during economic contractions or upgrading facilities ahead of their normal life span. In 'ordinary' times though I believe the NHS's savings should be in the black and increase year on year.

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Burning up not burnt out

for my regular followers you may have missed a week or so of my ramblings but I've been sick for the second time this year with pneumonia, I'm on the mend enough to give y'all an update but it's going to be a while before I can put my full energy into this again, I'm going to repost some older posts to tide me over

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A chance encounter and a new book

During the process of so many meetings I happened to see a couple of books on a bookshelf that caught my eye, I'm in the process of reading the books of Shami Chakarabati as a result and they seem to talk in similar terms to Mindf*ck by Christopher Wylie, I'd like the opportunity to sit down and talk to her about it all but alas that's not a likely opportunity.

Shami is a Labour Baroness but she appears to be exceptionally busy.

While I could attempt to read every book by every politician there's limits on both my time and funds to manage that.

And the task seems sisyphean, 1000 parliamentarians, writing a book every year or two is still more than a book a week, and that's without all the memoirs and biographies of those who are either temporary or permanently out of UK politics but who's books would be hugely influencial.

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Children on the internet

The internet is not a place for kids, it's hard to regulate and it's really hard to keep safe, you wouldn't give a kid a magical portal to go in any shop and almost any business without supervision in person where the controls are the spin of a roulette wheel.

But that's the internet.

The perfectly legal stuff can still be traumatic and the illegal stuff is just as easy to stumble upon.

Yes the internet needs regulation but it needs active and engaged parents more

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So many meetings

It's getting hard to keep track of all the things I've done over the last few weeks, I know what meetings I've been to but the brain can struggle to deal with so much information. I'm going to be taking a well deserved break soon, I'm starting to understand why Parliament goes on so many breaks

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Putting on a show

There are times when putting on a bit of a show is important, today I was reminded of just how important showing people they're worth time effort and celebration gets the most out of people. It might take some money and cost a little time but you can improve moral significantly with a nice meal and a few speeches. This is as true in politics as any other business.

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What does working in Parliament mean?

For me it's a lot of reading, running around and talking to people and it seems that most other people are doing the same, a few people spend a lot of time writing too and I find the time now and then.

I don't actually get paid for my work but that's the nature of the beast sometimes, I'm doing it mostly for the experience and I'm slowly getting to know some stuff and meet some people, making huge amounts of progress. But it'd be nice if it came with a paycheque too.

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Technology Standards

I have been grossly uninformed about how standards like USB, WiFi, Bluetooth and so on work.

I thought that a bunch of companies got together opened up their patents and agreed on a standard, and then they got a fee for each chip or connector that implements that standard with a prearranged split

Nope. It turns out that the big tech companies who created the standards don't have a pre-arranged split. They get nothing from companies that create components that meet the specifications. Smaller companies have to work out who owns which aspect of the spec with no help and licence each aspect separately or risk being hit with huge fines and/or cease and desist.

I understand these things have a huge value in R&D but the practice vexes me.

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They still do things for themselves

As surprising as it might be to many most of the members of parliament and the house of lords actually do things for themselves they don't rely on other people.

Just today I've seen an MP feeding a baby

A Lord crawling under a desk to plug something in

A Lady on the phone to tech support

A Lord eating a fish finger sandwich

An MP queuing for a taxi

These are little examples of things that they do that aren't to different from you in many cases. There are a few who are out of touch but they would be out of touch even if they weren't politicians.