The ragged-trousered optimists

For the third time in as many days, someone took umbrage at my policy pessimism. ‘It will get you nowhere, that kind of thinking’.  Of course they are (sort of) correct.  No point in whingeing on, talking things down, ‘not looking on the bright side’.  It’s a personality trait I suppose, maybe I’m a ‘glass half empty’ kinda guy?  Nevertheless, is this optimism deflecting us from the gravity of the situation? Could it damage the quest for real policy prescriptions?

These sunny people are the ‘ragged-trousered optimists’.  Like the workers in Robert Tressel’s book The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, who threw themselves into back-breaking work for poverty wages in order to generate profit for their masters, these optimists are throwing themselves into seeing the good in policy which offers only meagre solutions.

Take the unemployment situation. This is an unprecedented national crisis.   I am optimistic about what we could do -national action, mobilising job creation, job guarantees and new access to further education.  But, I am pessimistic about what we have got. To say we are not as bad off as Spain or Greece is factually correct, but of little solace to the hoards who are unemployed.  It’s not even true for some local areas, where the situation is much worse than the national picture.

This is a crisis of  huge significance which is costing the government (and us all) a fortune in welfare payments and it’s a drag on the economy now.  Growth may return and we could be optimistic, but even if we hit the positive predictions for UK growth, this is and will still be a long running catastrophe and is stoking up future economic problems, especially in the young, where the problems of entrenchment and social scarring are greatest.

Also look at our town centres.  They are a test case, the frontline symptom of a wider malaise in our economic paradigm which needs a systemic rethink – there is an environmental time bomb, huge growth in internet shopping, a reduction in spending power and a huge changing demography.

Recognising this and the inevitable shift away from shopping, we could launch a renaissance, which signals a new era in which they become dense functioning social, public and commercial hearts of our towns and cities, where social, cultural and environmental growth sits as equals alongside economic growth.  We could make them more resilient to ongoing economic, social and environmental change in perpetuity.

However, I am pessimistic about their futures if all we can offer is the Mary Portas review.  This review, which seemed to prompt some of the most recent over the top gushiness, was narrowly focussed on the high street and was standard place-making fare, which has been around for years.  The government has accepted almost all of her recommendations and introduced a range of new funds above that previously announced as Portas Pilots.  Also there are over 300 hundred fantastic videos as part of the Portas Pilot bids.

These are as Mary Portas has said ‘a catalogue of our times’.  However, before we start opening the champagne, they don’t fully address our time.  Let’s not forget that the most important recommendation, which the government did NOT accept was, an ‘exceptional sign off’ and a requirement for all large new developments to have an affordable shops quota.  Also, the ‘high street’ review, is floating free from wider systemic economic, and housing issues.  In this, I feel obliged to be add a dose of pessimism.

There are also other issues which the ragged-trousered optimists have not cast their sunny gaze onto yet – perhaps leaving the environmental crisis or the growing inequality and hardship for another time.  However I don’t want to get too low.  Let’s look on the bright side and hope there is a fair wind to the ragged-trousered optimists.   I hope your pessimism blows away my cloudy days.

However, if your optimism is partly unfulfilled, I hope you get out of the way quick, so we can look deeper, more universally and more systemically at the issues and adopt deep solutions, because for some the world of pain may only have just begun.