An Open Letter to Russell Brand after your Newsnight Interview

What you can do to change the world

Mr Brand,

I recently saw your interview with Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman, and thoroughly enjoyed both your blend of impassioned argument and touching irreverence. I also, like you, enjoyed Paxman’s beard.

I was struck by the fact that Paxman didn’t press too hard on how exactly your new system would work. You did clearly articulate though that this isn’t the entire point — one doesn’t necessarily have to have a specific alternative to know that the status quo is not right.

I believe I can offer you two things on which you could campaign that would have clearly demonstrable benefits regardless of the prevailing system, ideology or governmental framework. Sounds good, right?

Campaign One: Power Requires Responsibility and (more importantly) Openness

All government information should be in the public domain by default. The current “Freedom of Information” process is the opposite of this — it presupposes that the government holds all the information and the responsibility lies with people to ask for information to be made available.

I suggest that the opposite should be true. We have the technology to make recordings of all national and local government meetings publicly available, and this should be the default position. Responsibility should lie with the government to apply for special rights to keep information secret, for example in the case of security matters.

I am not the first person to suggest this. Heather Brooke, the journalist who did much of the investigative work which exposed the MPs expenses scandal, said in her 2012 TED Talk on exposing government corruption that as well as having an “Official Secrets Act” that we should have an “Official Disclosure Act.” Such an act would make it a criminal offence for a public official, or anyone acting on behalf of the public,to suppress information which was found to be in the public interest. Again, this flips the current situation on its head — the presumption is that everything done for the public should be known to the public.

As well as Brooke’s Official Disclosure Act, we can implement specific procedures to ensure that information is public by default.

How do we make everything open?

If you have ever used a so-called “cloud-based” documents system, possibly the most well known being Google Docs, you will know that it’s pretty straightforward to have documents, spreadsheets, and slideshow presentations be editable and shareable publicly.

The government should use such a system for all its documentation, with appropriate means of securing data in national security interests — although dispensation to do this should require some formal application process on the government’s part.

The cost of such a system is essentially comparable to current provision of hardware and software, appropriate security, etc. I would also suggest that at the very least the minutes of all meetings by every government official, employee and contractor be made public.

Campaign Two: We Don’t Know, But We Can Make People Who Do

You and I don’t have the answers as to how we might have a fairer society. Possibly nobody does, and yet we still want to change things. So let’s help the next generation be in a better position to know what to do.

Our best bet is helping young people feel engaged with the process of organising society as a whole. Regardless of the prevailing system (and whether it’s good or bad or whatever) there are always levers one can pull in order to effect change — lobbying your local council and the national government, campaigning in the media for public support, creating employee unions and so on.

There are also many things that most people either have to do, or would at least do very well to understand: bookkeeping and economic planning for a small business, how to manage a team of people, how to do market research — essentially how to create, run and understand a business, campaign or group of people with a specific aim.

These two branches — public engagement and what amounts to private enterprise — are key skills for essentially everybody no matter what they do with their lives. They are also true regardless of the current system of government. As important as their tangible benefits are the less obvious but somewhat deterministic fact that someone who can manipulate a system probably will.

I don’t think this last point can be overstated. You asked, “Why would engage in a system that is so apathetic towards me?” My answer is that no system is perfect, and if you, and your whole generation, had been brought up knowing how to pull levers and damn well pulling them all the time, maybe the government would be scared rather than apathetic. A much better position for most governments.

Creating movers and shakers

Growing up I had some experience of education beyond the UK, and I can tell you that while it may be bad in blighty it can be plenty worse elsewhere. We’ve actually gone a long way toward removing the need to learn things purely by rote, and personally I think that’s an excellent step.

I would go further than this though. Existing weak Civics classes, or as it was called in my school General Studies, are useless. Possibly even worse than useless in that they are so boring students are less engaged after the classes than they were before. Apathy strikes again … well, not strikes, which is too active. Gives a surly shrug anyway.

We could drastically improve this with a much more practical and real world approach. We should be encouraging children to think about things that matter to them — and to change them. Do you want a skate park? Is the hospital your brother needs being closed down? Campaign about it. We should help students find things that matter to them and guide them through the means at their disposal to change things: lobbying government, public campaigning, getting private enterprise involvement, even outright protesting.

This might sound overly radical, but I think that had the youth of London and elsewhere known how you can change things, we wouldn’t have seen anything like the same kind of rioting and problems that we did in 2011, and maybe we would have a better country as a result.

The business side of things relates a lot to this, since trying to get a bunch of people to decide what they want to achieve and who’s going to work on what part’s is about 99% of all management. I’d go further with this though, and give students the time, space and potential to actually start their own businesses. Help them out by giving them school facilities (space, tools, etc) either for free or cheaply, and let them do whatever they want: hairdressers (that came fist since I figured you either need one or go all the time ;), gardening, data entry, translation, running a shop, whatever.

The most important aspect is that this shouldn’t be a playground exercise — the students should be allowed to keep whatever money they earn. They should be forced to compete, and be allowed to fail. The idea is not to instil rampant greed, but to help them understand that they can create something from nothing, that sometimes it goes wrong, and that you’ll still be alive afterwards — and that you can change your situation by supplying the needs of other people.

So there you have it. Make the government open by default, so that everything that doesn’t directly and immediately affect national security is in the public domain. At the same time, give every new adult as many tools as we can so that they can bend the system to their will, make a living, and understand how to organise.

These two things would, I hope you would agree, help aim us toward a better society, and are distinct from any particular political or economic ideology. They would be just as effective if we decided to be more socialist, engage in hyper capitalism, or vote Monster Raving Looney’s, or whatever.

I haven’t campaigned for anything outside of my social or professional circles in my life, but I honestly believe that these two changes would make the world a better place and I would love to help promote them. If you’re in, give me a shout (I’m not hard to find because of the weird name … I bet you never claimed to be called Mr Smith when booking a table) and we can talk more.

Pete Otaqui.