Category: Society

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Degree apprenticeships in Plymouth

Penny Hele – Inspiring Futures project officer at Plymouth University – writes on LinkedIn that Plymouth University now offers ‘degree apprenticeships’. The courses they have at present are a Chartered Manager programme run by the Business School and a four year degree in Digital & Technology Solutions.
http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/apprenticeships.

The idea of a Degree Apprenticeship is that:

  • businesses collaborate with universities and colleges in order to offer vocational degree courses which combine academic study with practical experience and wider employment skills;
  • apprentices split their time between university study and the workplace and are employed throughout;
  • they gain a full bachelor’s or master’s degree from a university while earning a wage and getting real on-the-job experience in their chosen profession;
  • the cost of course fees is shared between government and employers, meaning that the apprentice can obtain a full bachelors or even masters degree without paying any fees.

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Paul Saffo on ‘the creator economy’

http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/mar/31/creator-economy/

“Mass participation became the new normal. Stuff is cheap; status comes from creation. Value is created by engagement.”

“Saffo advised recalling four warnings for revolutionaries. 1) There are winners and losers. 2) Don’t confuse early results with long-term outcomes. 3) Successful insurgents become over-powerful incumbents. 4) Technologies of freedom become technologies of control …. If we want privacy now, we have to pay extra for it. As with our smart phones, we will subscribe to self-driving cars, not own them. With our every move tracked, we are like radio-collared bears. Our jobs are being atomized, with ever more parts taken over by robots. We trade freedom for convenience.

Over the 30 or so years remaining in the Creator Economy, Saffo figures that we will redefine freedom in terms of interdependence, and he closed with Richard Brautigan’s poem about a ‘cybernetic ecology’ where we are all watched over by machines of loving grace.”

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Plymouth Energy Community

Plymouth Energy Community (PEC) is a community benefit society, therefore regulated by the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014. Goals are: to reduce energy bills; to improve energy efficiency; and to generate a green energy supply in the city. Projects including at the Life Centre and schools have been funded by loans from Plymouth City Council and ‘solar share offers’ in 2014 and 2015. This year’s share offer seeks funding to replace the short-term construction loan that was used to build Ernesettle community solar.

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Post-referendum politics

My member of parliament emailed me today with words to the effect that, now the people have spoken, he will set aside his personal judgement and work to achieve Brexit. I think he is profoundly wrong, for the reasons set out below, and have emailed him to say so.

The United Kingdom is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy; it is for Parliament to decide our future direction. In deciding that direction members of parliament must take the result of the referendum into account; but the result is advisory not binding and their role as our elected representatives requires members of parliament also to take other considerations into account. These include:

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Professor Michael Dougan analyses the EU referendum debate

This is a sobering presentation, delivered before the referendum. One of the UK’s leading EU law experts criticises the referendum debate’s “dishonesty on an industrial scale”, as he considers the claims and counter claims from each side. He also gave evidence-based opinion about the parameters that would apply after an exit vote.

https://www.facebook.com/UniversityofLiverpool/videos/vb.130437690316977/1293361974024537/?type=2&theater

 

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Community projects funded from the Community Infrastructure Levy

Developers in Plymouth pay a Community Infrastructure Levy which is held in the City Change Fund. The criteria for that fund require the money to be used for “the provision, improvement, replacement, operation, or maintenance of infrastructure or anything else that is concerned with addressing the demands that development places on an area (Regulation 59C of the CIL regulations 2013).”

The City Council committed £60,000 of the City Change Fund to the Crowdfund Plymouth campaign. That money can be pledged on projects that “help improve the city and make it a better place to live, work and play“. Suitable projects are eligible for matched funding from Plymouth Council of up to 50 per cent of the project cost, up to a maximum of £5,000.

See the guidance on how to apply for this funding.

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The economics of value and localism

In a posting on the economics of value and localism Professor John Seddon argues that centralisation of services, rather than reducing cost, generates failure demand that pushes cost up.

“…. managers assume that standardising work cuts costs, yet when they study their services they find that standardised processes prevent the system from absorbing variety. In simple terms, it makes it hard for customers to get what they want, and the organisation consumes more resources as a consequence. It is a hard lesson. But studying the work obliges managers to confront the evidence of their own eyes: while specialisation and standardisation of work lower transaction costs, overall costs of service go up because the factory design creates more handovers, fragmentation, duplication and errors and hence re-work, and generates massive failure demand. Studying the work, they understand a paradox – managing costs creates costs.”

There are useful insights from the comments on his article.