Not sure the evidence suggests that grammar school are the best model even on your own terms. But I doubt most people believe that the most important aim of the education system is to maximise the capability of a small elite who hold all of the power in our society.
I'm sure there's a healthy dose of standard the-youth-of-today prejudice mixed into the debate. But there's also plenty of quite rational concern that comes from first-hand experience, so I don't think it can be dismissed as just the latest moral panic.
When I worry about my kids being on social media it is because I am on social media and I can see that it has risks and downsides that I struggle to manage for myself, and I am at least technically a fully grown adult.
I get why people compare worries about kids on social media with previous moral panics but I think an important difference is that when previous generations worried about computer games or rock music they were worrying about things kids did that their parents didn't understand.
Exhibit #6392 of how no one ever changes their mind, I guess. Even areas of science sometimes need to wait for the old guard to retire and a new generation to come in before failed ideas can be dropped in favour of new thinking. Labour will also need to change people to change ideas.
That's why the US's state-building record is so atrocious. It's also why top-down reorganisations recommended by management consultants so rarely make things any better. Power can be exercised to break existing structures, but it can't sustainably manage complexity.
Similarly, a chief executive can tear up the management structures of a large organisation. It's a lot harder to wield that power to make the system work well and sustainably. That is long, hard and boring work - and it's very hard to do from the outside.
Not the most important point right now I know, but you can see the US track record on regime change as an example of a widely applicable rule in managing complex systems. It's easy for someone with power to destablise the system. The US military can kill the leaders of smaller countries.
In another ten years, of course, we will both have delegated this argument to AI agents so we can spend more time doing whatever it is humans still do.
Entirely incredible and entirely inconsequential, just like so many other applications of AI.
I gave it another try and the images are slightly less nonsensical. That'll do for another decade I think.
I am not entirely comfortable with the situation and feel a deep sense of loss as that pencil has been with me for... is it a decade now? But as long as people don't start messaging me asking why there is a cog wearing a crown then I will get over it.
Against my better judgement, I have at least temporarily retired the pencil. But only because this further cements the quite excellent name.
A potential new avatar for the Policy Sketchbook blog created by Google's AI image generator, Nano Banana 2.
To be fair, Google's Nano Banana 2 has done pretty well here.
It's a valiant effort, but somewhat over-engineered. Lacks the elegant simplicity of the classic and much-loved pencil design.
I was accused of having a terrible blog name, a crappy avatar, and of not making any jokes. And that was just by @t0nyyates.bsky.social. Thank god I'm now on Bluesky and entirely safe from any such treatment.
So there's a sort of surface-level insanity and unpredictability that masks an underlying normality? But given, as you say, our worse electoral system, we could still end up with an extreme government despite the more boring fundamentals.
It might depends what he means by "politics"... political preferences and results are fairly standard, but the media environment is pretty insane and the turnover in the personalities filling those standard roles has been wild in recent years.
To his credit, at least he didn't claim any benefits that he wasn't strictly entitled to.
BBC New headline: Andrew charged taxpayers for massage when envoy, claim ex-civil servants
A man can rape an underage girl and walk around free, but god forbid he misuse a small amount of public money.
That's why the first job of any leader is not to destabilise the system that they are responsible for. A large proportion fail at this first hurdle because they don't understand the above point. After that they can start the hard and slow work of building a system that has a chance of working.
This is absolutely true for any complex system, whether that's a large organisation, a state or the world. It is impossible for someone at the top to intervene and make it all work well - there's just way too much complexity - but it's a hell of a lot easier for them to personally mess things up.
In the same way, there is a reason why the nicest fruit from e.g. Spain makes it to Paris but generally not across the channel, and it's not spite against the English. It's just that it costs more and we want to pay less and have worse fruit.
The Parisian commitment to standing in line for half an hour for the privilege of paying significantly more than you would in the supermarket (in return for nicer food and that local experience) is just unimaginable in the UK.
Yeah, without being an IT professional, I can say that the limited skills that allowed me to briefly sell my services as a website designer 20 years ago have been obsolete for around 18 years.
I'm not sure how unprecedented that was, but it was certainly a shift for senior civil servants who cut their teeth under Gus O'Donnell, who was largely held in pretty high regard.
Civil servants I spoke to at the time, while remaining quite professional and understated, made it clear that Case would not usually be considered qualified for the job but had been chosen personally by Boris Johnson for his political alignment.
It takes years to build trust in and norms around the institution of Cabinet Secretary and minutes to tear it down etc.
It think this is downstream of the appointment of Simon Case, which many in the SCS will (rightly) see as an inappropriate and politically-motivated appointment. I wonder if this has led to a shift in how the Cabinet Secretary post is seen, so it's now politically fair game?
Without meaning to comment on the whole piece, which I have not read, is that extract specifically not complaining about a business model (leveraged buyouts) that you cover somewhat critically in your latest book?
