Matt Adam Williams

"Stop Stealing Dreams" - an alternative approach to education

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 17:20:20 +0100

"Stop Stealing Dreams" - an alternative approach to education:

I’ve been reading through Seth Godin’s ebook on why we need to change the way we educate children. He argues that we need to move away from an education system designed during the industrial revolution and built to support it by producing good workers who can follow instructions and don’t take risks. The new economy of experimentation and artists needs a different approach to education driven by love not fear.

"The developed world might have to invest hundreds of billions of dollars every year for many decades..."

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 08:35:25 +0100

““The developed world might have to invest hundreds of billions of dollars every year for many decades , both at home and in financial and technical assistance to developing nations, to achieve a stabilized and sustainable world. It is easy to be pessimistic about the prospects for an international initiative of this scale, but not long ago a massive disengagement of NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe also seemed inconceivable. Disengagement now seems to me to be possible, even likely. Perhaps the resources such an agreement would free and the model of international cooperation it would provide could open the way to a world in which the greenhouse century exists only in the microchips of a supercomputer.”

- I have a copy of a Scientific American from September 1989, that was a special issue called Managing Planet Earth. This quote is from the article on climate change.

Great White Egrets breeding dans le UK

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 08:27:00 +0100

Great White Egrets breeding dans le UK:

In 2010, it was little bitterns breeding for the second ever time in the UK. Now, great white egrets breed for the first ever time, down in Somerset.

Europe’s farmland birds have declined by 50% in the last...

Sun, 27 May 2012 08:22:00 +0100

Europe’s farmland birds have declined by 50% in the last 30 years, due to bad farming policy. We need to reform CAP to incentivise wildlife-friendly farming, before it’s too late. FInd out more in this Guardian article.

Graduation in Oxford with friends and family, May 2012 (for MA...

Sat, 26 May 2012 21:27:56 +0100

Graduation in Oxford with friends and family, May 2012 (for MA Hons English and French, completed in 2009).

Wildlife from the Norfolk coast and Suffolk Brecks.

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:32:00 +0100

Temminck's Stint

Temminck's Stint

Little Ringed Plover

Roe Deer

Roe Deer (a-leapin')

Cuckoo

Roe Deer

Hare

Roe Deer

Wildlife from the Norfolk coast and Suffolk Brecks.

Protecting the one phea-cent: why buzzard capture and power capture are rife in Defra

Fri, 25 May 2012 07:27:00 +0100

Yet another example of the confused priorities of this coalition government:

Defra has announced plans to capture wild buzzards and to destroy nests following lobbying from the hunting and game community. This is absolutely insane since birds of prey (all birds of prey, not just buzzards) are estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 1-2% of pheasant chicks released each year. Compared to other causes of death this is negligible.

What’s more, Defra’s purpose is to look out for the UK’s natural environment. Its second main priority is to ‘help to enhance the environment and biodiversity to improve quality of life’. I have no clue as to how capturing native buzzards, to protect pheasants released for sport, amounts to protecting the natural environment.

As rightly pointed out by others, spending £400,000 of taxpayers’ money on this scheme is crazy. The hen harrier, for example, is on the brink of extinction as a breeding species in the UK, thanks in part to persecution. Why is Defra placing the interests of the shooting community above those of British wildlife and wildlife-lovers? This looks very much like another case of a minority group capturing power within government.

Here’s a petition to have this decision reversed.

There’s more information on the reasons why this is such a bad decision, and why it’s completely contradicted by the science, elsewhere:

Here’s an RSPB press release responding to the news, and a blog by RSPB Director of Conservation, Martin Harper. Here’ an excellent George Monbiot piece on the subject, and a blog by Mark Avery, former Director of Conservation at the RSPB.

Finding Frames for Development - a summary

Tue, 01 May 2012 21:03:00 +0100

Today Martin Kirk, head of campaigns at Oxfam UK, came and gave a talk to my Development Studies course on the ‘Finding Frames for Development’ report. This blog is a rough outline of what he spoke about.

This report, funded by DfID (Department for International Development), focuses on the reasons why UK public engagement with the issue of poverty and development has declined since a peak around the Make Poverty History campaign. It builds on the values and frames work behind the Common Cause project.

Martin argued that over the past couple of decades we’ve been exposed to a model of communication around aid, development and poverty which focuses on the giving of money. When asked why Make Poverty History failed, the UK public responded in overwhelming numbers that it was because it failed to raise any money. However, Make Poverty History wasn’t even set up as a fundraising campaign. But because of the persistent ways the UK public engages with development, this was their interpretation.

Further research involved language and discourse analysis on the way the UK public see ‘the poor’ in the developing world. The poor are characterised as a single group, lacking agency and whose only available choice is to have children – and when they do, it’s a negative choice because they have lots of them.

Martin then delved into some of the theory behind this research. This comes from two bodies of work – the values research of Shalom Schwartz and the frames research of cognitive linguists such as George Lakoff.

The values research basically says that every person holds a wide set of values, shown in the image below. Every person holds all these values at individual moments, and over longer durations of time. For different people, different groups of values are more active, and values that are closer to each other on the diagram are more likely to be held simultaneously, while distant values will be suppressed. Certain values might be considered more helpful for achieving social change and global justice, perhaps those in the top right corner might be considered the most helpful for these wider goals.

Frames, are the way that we think about the world. A frame contains all the assumptions and knowledge we have about something. An example of a frame is the word ‘restaurant’ – this word has certain associations – that a menu is followed by a choice of food, followed by a meal followed by a bill.

A more political frame is ‘tax relief’. This frame implies that tax is a burden and that anyone who cuts taxes is a reliever, someone who makes people feel better. This frame is very effectively deployed by the Republicans in the US.

Frames are based on language, and therefore they trigger different values. As campaigners, in the long run, we would hope to be triggering the values in the top right corner of the diagram, since we might suspect that they lead to longer-term, more sustainable social change.

In the development sector, Martin proposed, based on the research in the paper, that there are certain surface frames, and certain deep frames, that trigger the wrong kinds of values. In fact, the words ‘aid’, ‘development’ ‘charity’ and ‘campaign’ all, was Martin’s proposition, trigger the less helpful values around status, hierarchy and power. This is because they are all reflections of a deep frame – the moral order frame. This frame asserts that there is a natural order to the world, that the poor are poor because of some sort of moral hierarchy and that we in the developed world are somehow, inherently better than they are. While this can be used in messaging that generates short term financial support, it does not create long-term sustainable change that modifies the relationship of publics in the developer world with people in the developing world.

For Martin, the role that these publics have is vital to changing the priorities and approaches that both developed and developing country governments have to these issues.

This blog is by no means comprehensive, and a short video of a similar presentation given by Martin can be found here. Follow the hyperlinks in this blog to find relevant papers and sources of information.

Today I’m really proud that my father and his colleagues...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:05:00 +0100

Today I’m really proud that my father and his colleagues have launched their brand new local, real ale brewery. Friday Beer is situated at the heart of the Malvern Hills where I grew up and brings the scientific expertise of my father and his friends, and a passion for the local area to four fantastic varieties of beer. Having been lucky enough to sample them over Christmas I’m excited to see them start to hit the shelves.

Real ale stands for so much, including fresh local ingredients, balanced flavours and good times with close friends and family. These beers are over a year in the making and soon you’ll be able to sample them for yourselves. I strongly encourage you to try them.

I’m also proud to be working as the company’s social media consultant. So please keep an eye on the Friday Beer facebook page, tumblr blog and twitter account.

Van Jones - take complicated things and make them simple; make...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:53:00 +0100

Van Jones - take complicated things and make them simple; make the choices that give you more choices.

Birds are totally NINJA!!! I’m talking like Crouching...

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 10:31:00 +0100

waiting

sparring

poised

floating

leaping

going in for the kill

slow-mo

showing off

defying gravity

Birds are totally NINJA!!!

I’m talking like Crouching Tiger-Matrix style.

In nature, I find solitude, solace and surprise. I’ve...

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 08:29:00 +0100

In nature, I find solitude, solace and surprise. I’ve taken someone’s advice recently and spent more time outside with my binoculars and camera. Here are the results, including a grass snake I found across the footpath in Snape, Suffolk, and a short eared owl that is being seen regularly at Rutland Water, Leicestershire.

Photo

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:51:46 +0100

The nature of Darwin - an ongoing portfolio of the wildlife and...

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:06:00 +0100

The nature of Darwin - an ongoing portfolio of the wildlife and nature in and around Darwin college Cambridge.

Discovered a piece of software called Inkscape today. I feel...

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 20:36:56 +0000

Discovered a piece of software called Inkscape today. I feel many future hours slipping away from me already…

I can thoroughly recommend going to see this moving film which I...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:19:00 +0000

I can thoroughly recommend going to see this moving film which I watched at its premiere in London last night. It looks at one man’s struggle to save an entire country and culture from going underwater. Most telling of all are his beliefs that a sound democratic framework in the Maldives is essential to tackling climate change and that the developing world and emerging economies needs to stop using action on climate change as a political bargaining chip and just get on with it. The President has recently been ousted by a military coup in his country, and you can find out more about the latest developments through Friends of Maldives.

Bloom and burst.

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:48:00 +0000

Bloom and burst.

I love birds because no one can ever stop them flying wherever...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:44:00 +0000

I love birds because no one can ever stop them flying wherever they want, whenever they want. This is the reason I’ve loved them since I can remember. I guess what I’m saying is that, the reason I love birds so much is that they’re the ultimate anarchists. No amount of government regulation or coercion can change when or where an individual bird flies. Photo by flickr.com/mattadamwilliams

History in the making

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:50:00 +0000

Most days at the moment I have a strong sense of history being written around me. People are, as I perceive it, increasingly reading, writing and narrating the issues of today in the framework of changes that came about in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The idea of a great cultural divide that occurred in this short period is increasingly important in the stories we tell and are told about why things are the way that they are.

The Reagan-Thatcher era changes and the Washington Consensus are by no means new rhetorical or academic tropes, but right now I feel like they are the currency we use to explain why our societies and economies are the way they are. From the financial crisis, to the disinheritance of young people, to revolutions and uprisings, we are being slapped round the face with these problems and we are seeking explanations. I am not saying this is wrong or right, but it is a fascinating time to wake up every day and be alive.

I want to be part of seeing where these new narratives can take us.

Sustainable Capitalism, or, 'From seal-fucking super-organisms to geo-engineering'

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:53:00 +0000

I’ve just been to the best talk I’ve ever heard on climate change. Jonathon Porritt, of the Forum for the Future (and many other prolific achievements) was speaking at Cambridge University Department of Engineering on the subject of Sustainable Capitalism.

His entire talk can be summed up in the central paradox that he identified:

That the capitalist system we currently have results in horrendous inequality as power becomes concentrated in the hands of an inaccessible, estranged elite; but that we need this system and big companies to be the midwives who deliver the technological energy revolution we need to tackle climate change.

Porritt argued that while we change the hardware (a revolution in our energy system) we must also change the software - the wider economic system which that change happens within.

Within five years, Chinese companies will be able to provide solar energy at the same market price as fossil fuels, and by 2020 well below that price. Porritt sees this as a hidden, forthcoming revolution.

However, he believes that this change must take place within wider cultural change that addresses the underlying problems associated with capitalism.

He made the case for a well-regulated capitalism in which markets play an important role in solving the problems of climate change.

A round of applause rippled round the room when the question of the certainty of climate change was raised, and Porritt said he never wanted to have to discuss climate science again.

The talk closed with questions on the human race as a super-organism that won’t stop until it has fucked the last seal, and the role that geo-engineering can play.

Porritt was witty, angry and passionate throughout, and this was without doubt the best climate change talk I’ve ever heard, in terms of both content and delivery.