Psychological Resilience in Birmingham

It’s not often I blog about events I go to, but occasionally one sparks some thoughts that I think are worth committing to virtual paper.  Today I attended a seminar as part of an ESRC-funded series on behaviour change and psychological governance.  This session had a focus on ‘resilience’.  There was a range of speakers, including a practitioner from Action for Happiness.  As often happens with these sort of events, I came away feeling like a bit of a dilettante when confronted with the ridiculous levels of scholarship of some the people in the room – yet with an ambivalence about the worth of the sort of analysis being presented (it’s interesting and impressive, but does it have any real potential application to change the things that are being critiqued?).  Happily, Will Leggett put my discomfort into more coherent and polite form, and got something approaching an answer from some of the academics present.

I don’t want to offer a blow-by-blow account of the day, and you won’t get a full understanding of what the speakers said from this post.  What I’d like to do instead is just note some points that made me think, in the hope that they’re also interesting to other people.  If you want something approaching a running commentary, Mark Whitehead’s Twitter feed would be invaluable.

Jan de Vos had some interesting, critical points to make about neuroscience and its popular understanding – one of which was that the idea of the ‘self’ has now taken a back seat in favour of the idea that we are subject to various processes of mind/brain.  According to this view of the world, the brain isn’t a ‘mirror’ of the self, with neuroscience enabling us to ‘see’ things like happiness.  Rather, it’s a ‘medium’ that forms humans.  This means that the old adage ‘be yourself’ no longer really applies – it would be a better reflection of understandings to say ‘be your brain’ – or rather, you have to be your brain.  In presenting this analysis, there were all sorts of references that go beyond my understanding, with detail on Lacan, Baudrillard and many more.

Erica Burman offered a fascinating critique of the recent report of the APPG on Social Mobility entitled ‘Character and Resilience Manifesto’, in conjunction with Centre Forum and Character Counts (and with material from Richard Reeves of Demos).  I found her critique persuasive, but this was the point when I wondered how it would change or add to current policy.  This doesn’t mean that critique isn’t necessary, but it did make me feel that if practitioners were in the room they might be wondering why we were bothering with this sort of thing.

One interesting point made by Erica was that the importance of emotional awareness and work has been acknowledged by the Coalition, but reframed from previous understandings to be discussed in terms of ‘skills’ and ‘learning’.  In her words, ‘New Labour emotional talk has acquired austerity hardness’ – and there’s something masculinising about this formerly feminised field.

Mark Duffield made an interesting point from the floor, noting how resilience is asymmetrical between aid workers and those receiving aid: the workers are increasingly separated from local communities, retreating to what Mark called ‘bunkers’, where they can perform ‘care for the self’ (to use a phrase from Foucault, to keep the idea academic).  That means that those who live in these communities require a higher level of resilience than the aid workers.  He wondered aloud whether the same could apply to the implementation of such policies (or rhetoric) in the UK: those who are advocating resilience are precisely those who need it least, because they are insulated in their ‘bunkers’.

This chimed well with John Cromby’s critique of an academic article that took similar themes to resilience to suggest that people with particular personality traits were more likely to report wellbeing.  Although he successfully attacked much of the methodology underpinning the article, the point that caught my eye was the way in which the findings were divided by socio-demographics.  The relationship between personality and wellbeing was only evident amongst those from deprived areas; those from more affluent areas didn’t show any such pattern.  That is, resilience as a strategy is only really relevant to those facing structural hardship.  This need to be aware of structures and environments around people is crucial – and highlights a possible tension between resilience and nudging.

This brings me onto the thought from Kathryn Ecclestone’s talk that got me thinking the most.  She contrasted the idea that individual citizens should do work to make themselves resilient at an individual cognitive level – suggesting that we can individually think and make ourselves happier – and the prominence of ‘nudge’ approaches, which are sold on the basis that it’s possible to change behaviour without changing minds.  Resilience is all about changing minds.

Of course it could be that there’s horses for courses, and policymakers should have a range of techniques at their disposal, but it certainly highlights the ongoing tensions in policymaking frameworks.

And that brings me back to my scepticism about some of these analyses (though, revealingly, prompted by one of them).  It’s sometimes too easy to see policymakers as a monolith, or when analysing policy to look for a coherent underlying philosophy (such as neoliberalism, perhaps).  The reality (and this is no new insight) is disappointingly messy and ramshackle.  And, as Will Leggett pointed out, if we wanted to change policymaking we might need to think about these references to Foucault, Lacan and the like are translated into language to persuade politicians and civil servants resulting in practical policy programmes.

Sometimes we should stop analysing, and think about alternatives.  I was asked at lunch what I thought the regulatory system for drugs should be, and I was reminded of Virginia Berridge’s comment in Demons that she was asked this once and wasn’t sure how to reply.*  I should spend my time thinking what good alcohol and drug policy would look like if I’m going to criticise the current government approach.  And maybe I will – though for the moment I’m going to bask in the consolation that I’ll be taking decisions about local substance misuse treatment policy when I’m back in the office on Tuesday.

(I haven’t covered all the speakers here, but that’s no slight on those I’ve missed.  It’s more about trying to keep some kind of coherence in my thoughts.  Will Davies, for example, gave a presentation full of interesting thoughts – but in my interpretation more relevant to my thinking on neoliberalism, so I’d bunch it with that.  He noted how pre-20^th Century thinkers such as Bentham and Jevons saw money as a potentially useful way for people to quantify and prioritise their preferences.  Indeed, this is the foundation of classical economics (I think).  However, in neoliberal economics, Davies suggested, price moves beyond a way of quantifying something of the pleasure associated with consumption to being the only thing of interest, in and of itself.  An interesting though – and quite possibly one I’ve misrepresented and oversimplified.  All will no doubt be made clear in his forthcoming book…)

*I had that terrible realisation afterwards that I’d told John Cromby that I’d been told this by someone recently.  No, Will, you just read a popular, brilliant book. 

Does Total Consumption matter?

It’s always nice when I get an opportunity to write about something on this blog that actually fits with my original aspirations for it: to discuss clarity of thinking around policy.  On the negative side, as usual I’m writing about something inspired by Chris Snowdon and/or James Nicholls rather than writing on my own initiative.

In this case, it’s a response to an exchange between the two of them, where they discussed the Total Consumption Model and alcohol policy.  I felt there was a lack of clarity in the exchange (though I wasn’t able to listen to the original LBC audio).  James accused the original IEA report that prompted the debate as being misleading in characterising the Total Consumption Model as being the ‘cornerstone’ of government alcohol policy.  I don’t want to go into the rights and wrongs of this debate here – there’s plenty of that on Twitter and Chris’ blog.

More than this, though, Chris seemed to be inconsistent in terms of considering problems and solutions.  There isn’t any necessary link between the Total Consumption Model and whole population approaches to alcohol policy.  There are all sorts of reasons for identifying a whole population solution even if you know the problems are caused by individuals.

Sometimes this might be about the ease of administering a policy.  For example, we place fixed age limits on alcohol consumption, even though potential drinkers mature physically and mentally at different rates, and won’t all be equally well prepared to deal with alcohol at the same age.

Sometimes this might be about equality.  There’s something attractive about the idea that all units of alcohol should be treated (and taxed) in the same way, rather than differentiating on the basis that more problems are associated with a particular drink.

Finally, support for a whole population approach might be political (or perhaps more accurately moral).  Kettil Bruun supported a population-wide approach partly because he felt it might avoid stigmatising dependent drinkers.

That is, population-level approaches needn’t have the Total Consumption Model as their cornerstone.  More importantly, though, population-wide policies aren’t the ‘cornerstone’ of the Total Consumption Model, as Chris also seems to suggest on his blog.  The TCM might prop those policies up, but it would be back-to-front thinking to have the solutions explaining a problem.

This is all a bit reminiscent of the industry objections to MUP dressed up as concerns regarding its effectiveness.  Chris’ problem with the Total Consumption Model is that it (apparently) supports population-wide policies, which he says are likely to be ineffective, but we haven’t even agreed on how that potential efficacy might be judged.  I’m sticking my neck out here, because this isn’t quite the reasoning he offers on the blog, but I have a suspicion that the reason he doesn’t like population-wide policies is because they might affect people whose drinking impinges on no-one but themselves.  However, as I’ve noted, there are lots of other arguments in favour of population-wide policies other than the TCM.

Moreover, MUP may affect the majority of drinkers, but it wouldn’t ‘target’ them (as Chris put it on his blog).  All drinkers might all be somewhat affected by MUP, but there’s no doubt that people wouldn’t be equally affected by the policy.  One good way of seeing this is to watch Nick Sheron’s presentation about the drinking habits of the people he sees with serious liver conditions: they drink a disproportionate amount of cheap alcohol, and would be disproportionately affected by MUP – whether that would reduce their consumption or simply lead to a financial hit.

There’s also something misleading in Chris’ discussion of risk and health in the context of population-wide policies.  It’s perfectly correct to point out that an individual won’t be much affected by a small reduction in their consumption, particularly if they’re not at the top end of the consumption spectrum.  However, this is to misunderstand how population-level policies work: they don’t aim to make everyone necessarily live longer by a day or so; they aim to make an average population live longer, and affect some individuals significantly.  The nature of the prevention paradox is that an individual won’t be noticeably affected by the small reduction in risk their change in consumption habits produces.  These small reductions in risk, though, when aggregated across a whole population, can produce a notable reduction in overall mortality.

Of course it can perfectly reasonably be argued that pushing (not quite nudging) people towards certain choices is no business of the state – and that’s fundamentally where the disagreement here lies.  The IEA isn’t an expert in the effectiveness of health interventions; it’s a bit more clued up on political philosophy.

The real policy debate should be a clear discussion of what the problem is, and what an appropriate solution might be – which may not necessarily be the most effective solution, as that might not be acceptable for practical or moral reasons.

Whole population policies might or might not be a sensible approach to alcohol, but it’s misleading to focus on the idea that ‘The 'cornerstone policies' of the Total Consumption Model involve raising taxes, restricting advertising and limiting availability’, since these policies can be justified in a number of other ways.

If this is a debate about liberty and fairness, let’s have it.

A healthy education

I wasn’t planning on blogging again so soon, as I’m extremely busy at the moment with one thing and another, but I couldn’t resist the way that my previous and current professional interests (education and public health policy) combined on Wednesday.

The BMJ published what I thought was a reasonable, clear editorial about the role of public health in education.  I have to confess I hadn’t been hoping for much – as regular readers will know, I’m quietly sceptical of public health’s tendency towards empire building.  In fact, I was pleasantly surprised.

A very strong response was then posted on the Red Head Full of Steam (RHFOS) blog, which I came across via Chris Snowdon’s Twitter feed.  Having read the original article, this post struck me as pretty odd, and links to Gerard Hastings’ (admittedly strange) presentation at Southampton University were a bit out place.

The main suggestion of the editorial was that education shouldn’t be too narrowly defined to focus exclusively on academic attainment – and it crucially pointed out that broader work can be helpful not just to health and happiness, but also to academic attainment itself.  So this needn’t be seen as a zero sum game whereby time spent on ‘health’-related work detracts from ‘academic’-related work.  In fact, there are initiatives that build things like ‘resilience’ and team-working (though I dislike both those terms) that are simply based not on the content being taught, but the ways in which it is taught.

The response on RHFOS focused on how strange it was to suggest that schools should do anything more than seek to maximise academic attainment, with Chris summing the editorial up as Public Health complaining that schools focus on education.  There was also the point made by RHFOS that if we’re concerned about people drifting off into what are often labelled ‘risky’ behaviours (drinking, smoking, drug-taking, truancy etc) then a focus on academic attainment might actually be a good idea because we know this is correlated with income later in life, and low-income is associated with all these issues – not just for the individual concerned, but also those around them including their children.

To a certain extent this misses the point: interventions like the Good Behaviour Game improve both ‘resilience’ or health and academic attainment.

However, there’s something more fundamental going on here.  The reason RHFOS and Chris are sceptical about the place of interventions to improve public health in education is that they hold of particular view of what education is, or should be.

When I suggested to Chris that he was thinking of education a bit narrowly, he countered that a narrower view would be a good idea: focusing on reading and writing.

In such a statement there’s already an understanding of what education should be, but it’s still an open question about what it’s for.  Why reading and writing specifically?  Are these skills to be used in a particular way, and to what end, or is there something inherent in having the skills that is good?

I have absolutely no time for the facile phrase ‘education for education’s sake’.  It’s meaningless, and the kind of woolly thinking that underlies it even gets to people as high up the academic tree as Stefan Collini (don’t whatever you do waste any time reading his book What are Universities For?).  Education means a leading out – and thus implies leaving something behind and moving towards something.  If you’re leading someone, you’re taking them somewhere, whether deliberately or not, so having some idea of where you’re aiming for seems to be a good idea.

Of course, the objection to interventions related to public health isn’t necessarily based on ‘education for education’s sake’.  There’s simply an assumption that academic achievement should take primacy – maybe that’s what children are being led to.  But actually academic achievement – however measured – isn’t an end in itself.  The achievement or knowledge isn’t useful or helpful in itself.  Either it’s a means to self-sufficiency or prosperity in some economic sense, or it’s about something approaching the ‘good’, or fulfilment.  (In fact, choosing the former says something about your views on the latter.)

The argument on RHFOS seems to suggest that academic achievement is a good basis for economic stability later in life.  But there’s considerable evidence that academic attainment isn’t itself what leads to that prosperity; it’s just as likely a signal of an individual’s broader attributes – perhaps that they are hardworking and disciplined, since they’ve managed to achieve so much at school or university.

To place emphasis on the signal, rather than the underlying skills, seems an odd way to go about things, and it can’t really resolve any of the issues relating to inequality or poverty that are hinted at by RHFOS if the underlying structures that produce the differences in outcome aren’t addressed.  If you improve everyone’s academic attainment without that affecting the underlying economic structure then all you get is inflation of qualifications, which is precisely the situation Britain finds itself in today, when more and more professions require postgraduate qualifications simply to distinguish the hordes of applicants from each other.

This idea of a signalling function and qualification inflation, though, mostly relates to the later stages of education, and most of the interventions the BMJ editorial is (implicitly) referring to could equally apply in primary schools.  It seems that most of the economic returns to a society from education come from the earlier years – and in fact these years make a disproportionate contribution to an individual’s success in later life.  (Just one reason why it’s strange we ratchet up spend per pupil as they get older.)  So perhaps that makes the need to focus on academic attainment in those years even more important.

This idea of an emphasis on early years and basic skills might support Chris’ point about focusing on reading and writing – so what am I complaining about?  Well, education, I would suggest, should be about something more.  Or rather, it is about something more, whether we like it or not.  Literacy and numeracy are not the only knowledge and skills one might want in life, and so if we simply select these as being the appropriate elements of schooling we are making a choice that says something about our particular priorities as a society.  Without wishing to sound like Matthew Arnold, with his idea of ‘sweetness and light’, I think this sort of selection suggests a narrow, somewhat instrumental view of a child’s future.  In any case, such a choice would reflect a specific understanding of ‘the good’, and it might be one most people can agree on – but it is in no way neutral, and to pretend it is would be to obscure some fundamental moral and cultural beliefs.

Education, if it is anything, is to prepare people for life; nothing more, and nothing less.  Whether we like it or not, any education system will betray some underlying values, so we’d better be clear and open about what those are, and debate them.

Moreover, I have a feeling that the ‘narrow measures of attainment’ Adam Fletcher talks about in the Independent article RHFOS quotes are league table metrics by which schools are judged, not pupils.  Those are misleading and, like most targets, spawn perverse incentives: to focus on those on the C/D boundary at GCSE, rather than those at either end of the spectrum.

I’d suggest you read the editorial.  It’s really rather good.

Class and minimum unit pricing

I want to preface this post with a caveat that I hope implicitly precedes every post here: I consider the reasoning and conclusions a work in progress, and I may be wrong not just in my views or opinions, but in facts or the logic of interpretation.  Please tell me by comments, email or Twitter if you think that’s the case here.

I’ve been prompted to write this week by the print version of a Sheffield article on MUP coming out in the Lancet.  (The article was originally published online in February.)  This article looks at how MUP might affect drinkers from different income brackets, and concludes that the more you drink the more you are affected, regardless of income bracket – that is, a high-income harmful drinker will be affected more than a low-income moderate drinker.

However, consumption being equal (or, rather, consumption group being equal), it’s estimated that poorer drinkers will be hit harder by MUP than more affluent ones.  (I say hit harder, but some might say ‘benefit’; that’s where the argument really needs to be played out, as I’ve said before.)  Obviously, the lower your income, the richer you are, the less likely you are to buy cheap alcohol.  So a policy that is modelled as affecting only low-priced alcohol will inevitably affect the poor more than the rich.  (There’s a separate question about whether only prices below the threshold will actually be affected, but that’s something for another day, when I’ve done more reading and thinking.)

A key reason for introducing any tax or price control is that otherwise there would be externalities or other market failures.  The stated aim of MUP is to change patterns of drinking because under current conditions we are understood to consume more alcohol than is good for us – and possibly others around us.

If the aim is to make alcohol consumption more ‘rational’ then the fact that MUP would apparently be a targeted intervention implies that particular groups are more irrational than others, in the sense that their behaviour needs more of a correction.  Or maybe they’re just easier targets.

An argument can certainly be made that current structures and environments offer different prompts and incentives to different socio-economic groups, and I’ve written before about how substance use treatment services can justifiably be targeted at particular groups or types of people.  However, the rationale for that targeting is to level the playing field.  Specialist treatment addresses the fact that ‘recovery capital’ (assets such as a strong supportive social network, financial capital, stable housing etc) is not distributed evenly.  Social policy could reasonably aim (as far as is deemed reasonably possible) to even out opportunities and incentives.

Taking such an approach to alcohol consumption would suggest that those from lower socio-economic backgrounds would be more affected if they were consuming more to start with.

[This is a slight shift to thinking about what might be called an outcome (drinking level) rather than levelling a playing field, but this is what nudging and alcohol policy of almost any kind often assumes: there is a single right mode and level of consumption (there’s plenty of commentary on that in my academic work).]

Those from lower-income groups do consume more lower priced alcohol, but they don’t particularly consume more alcohol overall than other groups – as you can see from the charts below.  Looking only at ‘harmful’ drinkers, because those are the ones the policy is supposedly concerned with, we can see that MUP has the biggest effect on the consumption of the lowest income quintile, which isn’t actually the highest consuming quintile overall.

I should note that the estimates suggest the policy would be successful in pulling people’s consumption closer together – which is exactly the sort of outcome I can imagine being welcomed by some commentators.  However, it doesn’t pull down the consumption of middle-income consumers – who are the biggest consumers overall – by anything like the lowest quintile.

This isn’t particularly a criticism of the policy in general, and certainly not of the analysis.  It is, however, a reminder of how this policy would target on the basis of price, not simply alcohol content or personal level of consumption.

The thought that occurs to me, then, since my mind is filled with ideas of liberalism and nudging, is whether such a policy suggests that low-income consumers are more irrational than middle-income drinkers – and we’re only talking about harmful drinkers here, remember; those who from a health perspective should be advised to cut down their consumption.

I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with that sort of policy, which also seems to view cheap alcohol as bad in itself (culturally and morally).

If you’re interested in some of these dynamics around MUP and targeting groups of people, I’ve written various academic articles about this, some of which are in the pipeline and at least one of which is already available: http://staffprofiles.bournemouth.ac.uk/display/whaydock#publications)

David Beckham and Public Health

Yesterday, a story about alcohol got a fair bit of attention – David Beckham (and his manager Simon Fuller) are to promote a new whisky made by Diageo (when it’s actually launched later in the year).

Alcohol Concern were so agitated they put out a press release, and other groups like ‘It’s the drink talking’ complained about it on Twitter.

Initially, I was at a loss as to why this was an issue of concern – celebrity endorses alcoholic drink is hardly news (just look on http://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/).  My tweets on the issue were even favourited by Mark Baird from Diageo, though many people reading this won’t consider that an endorsement worth having.

But then John Holmes pointed out that this is about the association between alcohol and social and sporting success.  That sort of objection would make sense, as it’s against the ASA code.

So why was I initially annoyed?  Well, the actual objections I saw didn’t talk about sport or social success: they actually referred to David Beckham being healthy and appealing to children.

I don’t have the relevant marketing data, but the idea of David Beckham being used to market alcohol to children seems unlikely, given that he was at the height of his powers more than ten years ago – as the Diageo press release observes, he won the Champions’ League in 1999 and was runner-up for the FIFA player of the year award in 1999 and 2001.  Most ‘children’ won’t have any real memories of those seasons.

As for health promotion, this gets to the heart of the objection: there’s a belief that you can’t be healthy and drink, or that promotion of alcohol is necessarily incompatible with health objectives – which trump all else.

This is where the campaigners are on difficult ground.  Regardless of the ‘sick quitter’ hypothesis, it’s not generally felt that low levels of alcohol consumption make much difference to an individual’s health one way or the other (though they might have noticeable effects at a population level).

I’m also not convinced that David Beckham’s going to be fronting some campaign that promotes specifically high levels of alcohol consumption that would be incompatible with ‘a healthy lifestyle’, to use an awful phrase.  It’s more likely that the campaign will play on the sorts of themes his others have gone for in recent years: the impression of style, fashion and sophistication.

Of course we can argue about whether any campaign that makes alcohol seem sophisticated and respectable is a good thing, and whether the industry is sincerely promoting moderate consumption.

And that’s where the debate should be.  The objections aren’t to David Beckham promoting alcohol; they’re to alcohol being promoted.

This is why I was frustrated.  There’s nothing wrong with Alcohol Concern and other organisations objecting to alcohol advertising, particularly as alcohol is ‘no ordinary commodity’, and therefore needs special regulation.  My objection is that there’s nothing specifically wrong with David Beckham promoting alcohol.  I struggle to see even how he’s associated with sporting success at the moment.  He’ll be shown drinking the whisky a year after retiring, and more than 15 years after winning the Champions’ League; no-one watching is going to be thinking he’ll be up the next day winning the World Cup.

The point is that we should be having the argument that actually matters: should alcohol advertising be allowed, and if so, with what restrictions?  Then we can clearly ‘think to some purpose’ about the actual issue in hand.  Let’s not get distracted into thinking this is about whether David Beckham should be advertising whisky.  Knee-jerk responses just aren’t helpful in having a sensible debate.

Flirting with diversity and being open-minded

As an (occasional) academic, it’s good to be reminded that, amongst the pressures to have a clear argument that distinguishes my work from other people’s, I am able to change my mind and think again about certain issues.  On Wednesday, talking to the fascinating Rob Hazell from Flirt café bar in Bournemouth, I started to think afresh about alcohol and the night-time economy in Bournemouth.

When asked about my PhD, I’ve sometimes described it as an attempt to rehabilitate ‘binge’ drinking.

That’s not quite true, but one of the key arguments is that the ‘night-time high street’ is hugely varied, particularly when you focus on different people out drinking think about their own and others’ behaviour.

The idea of a monolithic ‘binge’ drinking culture is attractive to certain parts of the media, because it allows them to run stories that paint people’s behaviour as some sort of crisis.

However, it’s not just the media that paint this picture; academics do it too.  The work of lots of them identifies a ‘culture of intoxication’ and places this in the context of a liberalisation of alcohol regulation in the UK, and the dominance of a few big companies who, in some of the more extreme versions of this interpretation, are seen as having ‘seduced’ young people into drinking excessively.

My argument has always been that people are much more intelligent than this, and are able to create their own meanings for different practices and people within this apparently ‘homogenised’ landscape of night-time drinking.

The ‘industry’ certainly knows there’s a desire for (perceived) variety and diversity – but some academics have been quick to describe this as only the illusion of heterogeneity.

In my PhD, I argued that actually the apparently superficial distinctions within this homogeneity are crucial for understanding alcohol use in Britain – whatever your perspective or aim.  If you want to change their behaviour, it’s no good dismissing (young) drinkers as a homogeneous group, because they won’t all respond to the same messages.  (Of course, the interpretation that sees young drinkers largely as pawns in a corporately-controlled world doesn’t think there’s any point in talking to those possessed by false consciousness.)

Because of the way ideas like ‘diversity’ and ‘balance’ and a ‘mixed’ night-time economy have been used, I’ve been very sceptical of them.  Bev Skeggs has a great concept of the ‘cosmopolitan limit’ – a lot of categories, or types of ‘diversity’ are considered desirable, but some categories (or types of people) are excluded from this.  I found this very clearly in my research, where ‘chavs’ were excluded from a specific venue that was lauded for having a ‘mix’ of ‘different’ customers.

Similarly, when local officials talk about encouraging a better ‘mix’ or ‘balance’ of venue types, they’re often really looking for a different drinking style to dominate – ‘balance’ doesn’t mean a range of venues, it means moderation and balance in one’s approach to drinking.  Something completely at odds with what might be called ‘binge’ drinking (but I would call the ‘carnivalesque’.)

That is, the idea of ‘diversity’ can be exclusionary.

So when venues trumpet the ‘diversity’ of their clientele, I’m naturally suspicious of who might be excluded from that group.

So I was pleasantly surprised on Wednesday afternoon, when Rob Hazell won me over.  He talked about the diversity of Flirt’s clientele, and how the bar is considered a safe space for a whole range of people within the town.  Now, it might not have absolutely every type of person in the town, but it does have a variety, and actually I believed it was more than a business to Rob and co-founder Peter.  The place had evolved from genuine values and vision.

Now contrast this with 60 Million Postcards.  I had chosen these two venues to talk to, because they were picked out as examples of good practice in a 2012 report called ‘Bournemouth by Night’ produced by Feria Urbanism for Bournemouth Council.

The manager from 60 Million told me that he wasn’t allowed to participate in an interview that might lead to a publication, and that I should get in touch with head office.  To be fair, I only sent them an email a few days ago, but I haven’t had a reply – whereas Rob was keen, prompt and communicative when he realised he might be late for our time slot.

As you can tell from my description of some of the academic work on the night-time economy, I’m not terribly fond of the interpretation that emphasises the corporate ownership behind the options available to young people – because these analyses tend to suggest people are cultural dupes.

However, I started to think again about this in another moment of open-mindedness in December, when I saw Rob Hollands (the external examiner for my PhD, incidentally, though he wasn’t effusive about it!) at the Drinking Dilemmas conference run by the BSA Alcohol Study Group.  I’m not hugely keen on Rob’s vision of the ideal night-time economy, and it is just that: a personal preference.  He was talking favourably about squats and free raves, or alternatively a (formerly) working-class pub in Newcastle near his house, which has philosophy nights and such, and counts amongst its clientele social workers, teachers, academics and so on.

Personally, I find these venues and nights out cringeworthy; I’m perfectly happy in my Palmer’s or even Marston’s pub that hasn’t been gentrified (sadly, most of the Hall and Wodehouse ones around me seem to be being gentrified), and for someone reason I find ‘philosophy in the pub’ or ‘café scientifique’ nights somehow a bit awkward and embarrassing.  I don’t generally like the idea of cultural expertise, or connoisseurship, or intellectualism in that sense – and I enjoy getting drunk*, and have a suspicion that a lot of this is artifice hiding the fact that other people like that too.

However, on this occasion, I genuinely thought again about Rob’s vision of the ideal night-time economy.  The key point that made me think again was the issue with corporate ownership: although the night-time economy is seen as being good for local prosperity, most of the money spent in these venues will leave the area, and not be spent in other local businesses.  Head office won’t be in the local area, and the managers will often be brought in from a central pool, rather than being local residents, and so on.

When I looked at the Mitchells and Butlers website, to get the details for how to contact head office to see if I could talk to the manager at 60 Million, I saw the huge range (and variety) of venue brands they own.  As well as Toby and Crown Carveries, O’Neill’s and All Bar One (to name just a few) they also run the Castle brand of pubs, described as ‘pubs with true individuality’, and the ‘Village Pub and Kitchen’ chain – ‘a small group of pubs with an independent […er…] spirit’.  That is, they’re aiming to attract precisely those people who try to distinguish themselves from the ‘mainstream’ of the night-time economy (arguably symbolised by venues such as O’Neill’s and All Bar One).

Somehow, this form of ownership feeds perfectly into my discomfort with the idea of ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’: it’s really just another way to distinguish people from one another.  And that’s not what Flirt and Rob mean by diversity.  Maybe ownership does have something to do with it after all.

*I wrote a specific section in my PhD on how my background might affect my views on the subject.  P.153 here.

The limits of a local alcohol policy

So, another day, another event, another blog post.  This time, I don’t feel like a voyeur, because I actually plucked up the courage and got the opportunity to ask a question.

On Tuesday, I attended a Westminster Social Policy Forum event on alcohol policy.  It raised a huge number of issues for me, but I’m going to try to focus on just a couple here.  My main concern underlying the whole event, though, was simply the question of ‘what’s the point of this?’  As I understand it, these events should provide a forum (as in the organiser’s name) for policymakers to hear the arguments of both industry and public health.  I’ve written before about how this binary isn’t helpful – and I wouldn’t suggest that someone like Chris Snowdon, who presented what might be seen as an industry-friendly position, is really ‘the industry’.  However, there is something in the binary, because it was drawn on by a number of speakers, who obviously felt they were being cast in a certain role.

At the same time, the reality was one of a divided retail sector at least, as Paul Kelly from ASDA sought to pin the blame for alcohol harm on (a) convenience stores (who facilitate street drinking, selling more strong beer/cider than large supermarkets) and (b) the on-trade, which he feels has been let off in debates around binge drinking (!!!).  I know that journalists were rubbing their hands (or rather, frantically scribbling away) at his comments – and you can see why when you look at the sheer number of stories in the sector papers about ASDA’s current woes.

Chris has (oh so flatteringly) described me as ‘the lukewarm water between fire and ice’ on alcohol policy, and I’ve written before about how ‘the industry’ has a legitimate role in alcohol policymaking, so I’d like to think I’m not known for being on a particular ‘side’ of the debate.  However, my question on this occasion, and the issue that has been preoccupying me since, is sceptical of the statements from the industry.

Eric Appleby from Alcohol Concern made a plea for localism to mean genuinely local decision-making.  He noted that local areas had a good deal of choice, in whether or not to introduce EMROs and Late Night Levies, and so forth, but the industry was able to draw on national resources and influence to reduce the chances of these being accepted.

However, this idea of localism ran through the conference.  Speaker after speaker rose to say how they too believed solutions should be local, and sought to present this as being the consensus of everyone involved: that alcohol issues can only be dealt with locally.

My problem with this is that there simply isn’t this consensus, and saying doesn’t make it so – though if there had been one at this event it might have seemed like it to a policymaker.

It’s hard to argue against the argument that we need solutions that are tailored to local need and circumstances, and as a commissioner of local services I know the value of that principle, but it’s important to get behind the claim to understand what it means.

It means that national solutions, or those at a broader level, are unavailable.  But at the same time, we know that national policy shapes behaviour.

Crucially, this rules out serious price controls.  Bournemouth (and more recently other areas including Newcastle) have talked about – or even tried – local price controls, but they are fraught with danger around competition law and the voluntary nature of such arrangements raises the spectre of not-so-tacit collusion.

Ruling out MUP by talking about local solutions might be seen as convenient for the industry, but this isn’t just about the old MUP debate.  It could also be argued to be about education – one of industry representatives’ favourite causes.  There have been campaigns for effective PSHE to be embedded into the national curriculum – and the opportunity to do anything constructive in this vein at a local level is continuously eroding as more and more schools opt out of local authority control by becoming academies, meaning that a local authority can commission an education programme and then a huge proportion of schools can decline to take them up on it.

Even what Eric Appleby was envisaging could be local decisions – the introduction of an EMRO, for example – depend on national legal/regulatory frameworks.

Henry Ashworth, replying to my question (or rather, in classic conference style, comment), explained that he wasn’t saying there should be no national action, just that local action should come to the fore and be tailored to local circumstances.  That’s slightly missing the point though.  To illustrate how we need ‘localism’, he presented a map showing areas of the country coloured by the density of alcohol-related health harm.  But this doesn’t illustrate anything in itself.  We know that a considerable element of that variation is explained by independent factors such as deprivation, urban/rural settings, ethnic mix of local areas, and so on.  In fact, the variation isn’t so surprising when you take these things into account, and we can see national – even international – patterns in alcohol-related harm.  We know that alcohol consumption and behaviour are affected by factors not circumscribed by local authority or regional boundaries.

Localism, therefore, as I unwisely said to a journalist from The Grocer, feels a bit like a convenient argument, a cop-out when we should be having a serious debate about to genuinely get to grips with the issues that surround alcohol.

Henry Ashworth and the others on the panel know exactly what they’re doing with this narrative, and for the first time in a long time, I felt angered by ‘the industry’ in the way they were presenting themselves.  Miles Beale (as well as Mark Baird) again peddled the bizarre idea that statistical modelling isn’t ‘evidence’, when in fact he’d make use of these techniques all the time – in terms of judging brand recognition, making sales predictions and even, as he did in his own presentation, in presenting alcohol consumption figures.  And I felt Paul Kelly was being disingenuous throughout, with his comments about convenience stores and the on-trade, and his claim that Diageo would recoup any additional profits resulting from MUP.  It was all about conscious, contrived presentation – but dressed up as honest, constructive debate.

Next to them, Daniel Kleinberg from the Public Health division of the Scottish Government seemed a paragon of openness and neutrality, not criticising the SWA for taking legal action and (at least) delaying the introduction of MUP in Scotland – he said that he saw the delay as the result of court procedures, which might be unfortunate, but the challenge itself was a necessary, or at least reasonable, part of the process.  How I’d like to see that sort of helpful engagement from both ‘sides’ of this issue – and what a great reminder that Public Health officials can be constructive without being adversarial too.