Lopa Patel's Blog

Women on Boards: It’s Time for Quotas!

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 10:53:00 +0000

Following his visit to the Northern Future Summit (8^th- 9^th February 2012), UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he is considering bringing in quotas for the number of women appointed to corporate boards. It seems to me a universally acknowledged truth that those against quotas are usually the ones least likely to be benefit from them. In the case of combating gender apartheid in the corporate arena (C-Suite), a lot of women executives, surprisingly, are also against quotas. So it is worth considering why this might be and then doing it anyway. Quite apart from governance issues; allowing a meritocracy to exist, management of corporate risk factors, supporting business with less “red tape” …blah, blah, blah…the one fact that gets forgotten in the quotas debate is that it is morally the RIGHT thing to do. Allowing a known inequality to persist when you could do something about it shows a lack of leadership in dealing with discrimination.

‘Gender apartheid’, ‘inequality’ and ‘discrimination’ might be strong words to use to describe a scenario that not everyone will aspire to, but, research from the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) shows that at current rates “it will take another 70 years to achieve an equal number of women directors in the FTSE 100” (‘Sex & Power’ Report 2011). In simple terms that means a baby girl born in the UK today is unlikely to become a Chair of a FTSE company in her working lifetime in spite of having the best education, skills, knowledge and network!

The voluntary target of 25% female board members in FTSE 100 by 2015 advocated by the Lord Davies review falls far short of the ideal 50% and looks like a target that will not be achieved anyway given that the figure is currently 14.9%. FTSE 250 (currently at 9.2%) and FTSE 350 figures for gender parity are even lower at present. The Davies review has helped highlight some of the worrisome issues: the “pipeline” problem (not enough qualified, skilled women apparently); executive recruiters signing up to a code of conduct and raising the issue with boards; governance issues faced by “inexperienced” (women) executives etc. What it has also shown is the amount of time companies will waste in “defending the indefensible” rather than proactively building their own pipeline, fast-tracking potential candidates and generally behaving as if they know “how to right this historic wrong”.

Mark Littlewood, Director General at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “proposals to force companies to increase the number of women on boards are extremely ill-advised. Imposing a mandatory quota would be yet another irritant to UK firms. Burdensome overregulation of this kind is not a driver of economic growth. In a free market, people progress because of their skills and qualifications, not because of their race or gender. Forcing more women into boardrooms will not boost productivity, it is a distraction from the actual question of how to get the economy to grow.” (11^th February 2012) However, many would dispute that we operate wholly in a “free market” when it comes to regulation in the form of taxation, health and safety legislation, levies on imports, subsidies for certain sectors, quality assurance requirements, public sector procurement and other state control mechanisms on business. Indeed, “burdensome regulation” would not be required if industry was managing to achieve a healthy gender balance by itself. The reality however is very different.

For decades women have shown themselves to be capable for working just as hard as men; putting in the hours, of making sacrifices like foregoing having children, of behaving as expected, of doing their duty, of helping others and putting the needs of shareholders, customers and suppliers ahead of their own needs. So why should a hidden barrier prevent them from attaining a seat on the board? The US-based think tank Center for Work Life Policy (CWLP) research shows that women executives who find a “sponsor” (a mentor) are more likely to attain a boardroom place. So why not make it part of a board member’s job description that they have to mentor a young, female middle management executive? Thankfully, many companies already do. And women are watching. Many will research companies and organisations that are “female friendly” in the hope that this will give then a boost up the career ladder.

India Gary-Martin, Managing Director Technology and Operations at JP Morgan and President of City Women’s Network recently tweeted “Quotas are a mechanism just like the old boys’ network – it’s not the quotas that would keep a talented woman on a board - just a mechanism for them to get there. Women would still need to be judged upon their skills, talents and qualifications. Who cares how you get there as long as you are capable of doing the job.” Detractors of quotas claim that forcing companies to recruit women will lead to the appointment of “trophy directors” (presumably without the necessary skills) but Ms Gary-Martin goes on to cite her own example “Quotas are the only reason women and ethnic minorities are more prevalent in business in the US. I'm the product of quotas and so what?” Norway, where a 40% quota was enforced in 2003, has not seen a collapse in its economic infrastructure. Indeed many of the recently collapsed companies like Enron and Lehman brothers had heavily male-only boards. Lehman Brothers’ collapse even led Harriet Harman MP to claim that had there been more women on boards of many of banks, the banking crisis may have been averted.

Prior to enforcing a quota, Norway’s corporate boards only had only 6% women. Ansgar Gabrielsen, the Norwegian minister for Trade and industry, who forced through the quota said in an interview to The Times newspaper (19^th January 2012) “I noticed that there was an economical value in having diversity because mixed boardrooms created more business. I also saw that, unless you force it by law, companies will not voluntarily increase the number of women on their boards”. And therein lies the truth. Although all the ‘voluntary’ initiatives advocated by the Davies Review will, in time, have effect – on their own, they are not enough. To achieve a sustained and credible shift we need something more than piecemeal projects and calls for a “gentleman’s agreement” on a cultural change in the boardroom - we need quotas, now!

It is depressing that Prime Minister David Cameron sought to link the Women on Boards issue with that of the entrepreneurship. “If women’s entrepreneurship reached the same level as the US, there would be an extra 600,000 extra women-owned businesses, contributing an extra £42 billion to the economy,” he said on 9^th February 2012. In many ways, the two are issues are wholly disparate. Encouraging more women to set up in business would help improve economic growth, but is unlikely to change the status quo in corporate boardrooms. Many FTSE companies are loathe to even appoint outside the normal recruitment remit: women working in public sector organisations of the same size, for example, or even from third sector bodies like charities and NGOs. Entrepreneurial women are probably least favoured in the pecking order for appointment to corporate boards!

There is a vast body of research ‘for’ and ‘against’ quotas. In 2007, management consultants McKinsey & Company found that firms with three or more women in senior management roles in large corporations tended to score more highly on nine key measures for corporate success, including leadership, motivation, innovation and accountability. This research added to the growing arsenal of evidence on the value of boardroom diversity has led Viviane Reding, European Justice Minister, to launch an EU-wide consultation on increasing women’s participation at senior levels in companies. She said at the launch of the consultation, “Personally, I am not a great fan of quotas. However, I like the results they bring”!

The arguments for and against are summarized below:

The Arguments ‘For’ Quotas for Women Board Members

Quotas are morally the RIGHT thing to do to end discrimination
Quotas work
Women board members bring a diverse point of view
The dynamics of a board will change (given the “ivory towerism” of recent years this may not be a bad thing)
Women board members often attract other women (expand the pipeline)
A balanced, diverse board is likely to require more engagement from individual board members, this may lead to slower (but also lower risk) decision making
Boards may become more transparent and open as a result

The Arguments ‘Against’ Quotas for Women Board Members

Quotas are deeming to women, most of whom want to get to the C-Suite on merit
Quotas will encourage tokenistic appointments (trophy directors) i.e. recruitment by non-meritorious methods to fill artificially set targets
Norway has had a quota for 40% of corporate executives to be women and this has made no difference to their board effectiveness.
Quotas may lead to younger and less experiences boards leading to detrimental performance and lowering of the share price.
Quotas have no impact on the gender parity at management level in companies.

References:

C4 Fact Check: is sexism bad for the economy?

McKinsey & Co: ‘Women Matter: Gender Diversity, acorporate performance driver’

University of Michigan report by AmyDittmar & Kenneth Aherne ‘TheChanging of Boards’

Norman BroadbentBoard Index says Lord Davies targets will miss deadline

Commission weighs options to break the ‛glass ceiling’ forwomen boards

Women on Boards - 6 month Monitoring Report, October 2011(Cranfield University)

World's Worst Mentors

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:32:00 +0000

As a follow-up to my last blog post about the mentoring mistakes I’ve made, I thought I would write about the World’s Worst Mentors. Sadly, I have reverted to fictional characters in film roles to explain why they are such bad mentors, getting the “inside scoop” on real-life mentors was just too difficult. Still, the shared ideal between all my terrible mentors is their belief in themselves. They are not typical villains, but, anti-heroes who felt they were doing what was necessary to serve themselves; their families, their businesses, their friends and in one case, the empire. How wrong they were! So, my top five of the ‘World’s Worst Mentors’ are:

1.Gordon Gekko – Wall Street [1987] & Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps [2010]

Master of the memorable line “Greed is Good”, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) has to take the No 1 spot in the list of the ‘World’s Worst Mentors’. In Wall Street he corrupts rookie trader Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) into dealing in inside information; selling commercially confidential information about his father’s airline company, lying and cheating - all for the sake of making money for Gekko, the corporate raider! In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Gekko has served his prison sentence and is released: he corrupts his daughter’s idealistic stock broker boyfriend Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) into sneakily signing over access to his daughter’ Swiss trust fund account so that Gekko can deal himself back into business. “It's not about the money. It's about the game between people” he says, before adding that “money is a bitch that never sleeps!”

Gekko has to be the world’s worst mentor, not because of his manipulation of his two mentees (Bud Fox and Jake Moore), but, for the sheer influence he has on real life brokers and traders! Oliver Stone, the director of Wall Street and the sequel was appalled that so many of them looked to model themselves on the character of Gordon Gekko. Sadder still is that many of the characters in Wall Street are modeled on real life traders like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, involved in the insider trading scandals in the 1980’s. Truth certainly is stranger than fiction.

2. John Milton – The Devil’s Advocate [1997]

No 2 on the list is John Milton (Al Pacino) who corrupts young hotshot lawyer Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves). The film thematically raises the preposition that 'is winning everything’ in culture dominated by making money. As Kevin is transplanted into the fast paced New York City and showered with gifts, he finds himself adrift from his own moral compass. It is only once his wife is committed to mental institution for seeing devilish apparitions that Kevin realises that his boss (Al Pacino) is Lucifer himself!

“Who, in their right mind Kevin, could possibly deny the twentieth century was entirely mine”, John tells his protégé “Underestimated from day one. You'd never think I was a master of the universe, now would ya?”! No, we certainly wouldn’t, but for sheer perseverance in pandering to the seven deadly sins, vanity is his favourite vice apparently, John Milton snags the No 2 spot on the ‘World’s Worst Mentors’ list

3. Vito Corleone– The Godfather (1972), The Godfather II (1974)

Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is the epitome of the world’s worst mentor and steals the number 3 slot on the ‘World’s Worst Mentors’ list. The star of Francis Ford Coppola’s first two Godfather films; Vito nurtures his younger son, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) with advice like “I make him an offer he don' refuse. Don' worry” and “there are people in this world who go about demanding to be killed. You must have noticed them. They quarrel in gambling games. They jump out of their automobiles in a rage. They humiliate and bully people whose capabilities they do not know. These are people who wander through the world shouting, "kill me". And there's always someone ready to oblige to them!”

However, Don Corleone is included in this list not only for obliging people by killing them, but also for the decapitated head of a horse scene in The Godfather film. The “Capo di Tutti Capi” ("boss of all bosses") indeed!

4. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine – Star Wars Episode II - VI

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), also known by his Sith name Darth Sidious, is the central villain of the Star Wars saga. He is the one who connives to turn Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen ) into his Sith apprentice by preying on his fears of loss. Palpatine convinces Anakin to kill Count Dooku. He spends the next several days grooming Anakin, convincing him that turning to the “Dark Side” will allow him to save his wife from death in childbirth, and that having a Sith Lord in charge of the galaxy will bring stability.

Anakin resists at first, but later relents, and ends up helping Palpatine kill Mace Windu. In the fight, Palpatine is permanently disfigured but accepts Anakin as his apprentice and renames him Darth Vader. He sends Vader to kill all the separatists, and at the next session of the Senate, declares himself Emperor. However, Vader is seriously injured in a duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi so Palpatine has him encased on a robotic body and suit!

In Star Wards Episode VI Return of the Jedi, Palpatine looks to turn Vader’s son Luke Skywalker to the “Dark Side” encouraging a light sabre dual between father and son with unexpected consequences.

For sheer villainy and looking to stretch his influence across two generations, Palpatine takes the No 4 slot in this list of the ‘World’s Worst Mentors’.

5. Katharine Parker – Working Girl [1988]

The only woman on the list of the ‘World’s Worst Mentors’, Katherine Parker (Sigourney Weaver) in the 1988 film ‘Working Girl’ is certainly the finest example of the species. Boss to the hapless Tess McGill (Melanie Griffiths), Katherine shows the subtlety of female mentors over male ones. She asks Tess to forward business ideas to her, deleting Tess’s name and re-branding them as her own before forwarding them to her boyfriend Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford). Injured in a skiing accident, Katherine asks Tess to run errands, pick up her dry cleaning, vacuum her apartment whilst also advising Tess “Never burn bridges. Today's junior *prick*, tomorrow's senior partner”.

Katherine contrives to get a marriage proposal from Jack Trainer with “We're in the same city now, I've indicated that I'm receptive to an offer, I've cleared the month of June... and I am, after all, me.” Priceless!

Sadly, the film then disintegrates into a mushy romantic comedy with the witty Ms Parker booted out on her “bony ass”! Shame, as she really did get some of the best mad mentor lines.

Mentoring Mistakes – I've made a few!

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:41:00 +0000

Having mentored young people for several years now, I thought I’d reflect on all the mistakes I’ve made along the way. It started more as an aide memoire but then I thought I’d share so that I could learn from other people’s mistakes too – please do pitch in with your thoughts and ideas. So, my friends if you can dim the lights and imagine Frank Sinatra singing “I'll say it clear; I'll state my case of which I'm certain” from ‘My Way’, then I’ll begin with my catalogue of mentoring mistakes.

1. Mentoring those who don’t want to be mentored.

It is important to mentor those who actually want to be “mentored” rather those who just want to network/befriend/find a date/consult a therapist. Young people specifically have a view that asking someone to mentor them will somehow help them land the Dream Job/University place of their choice/Music Recording Contract/New Business Venture or Get-out-of-jail free card (* delete as applicable). Mentoring those who want to be mentored is vital. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But attaining this clarity of purpose takes a great deal of maturity on the part of the mentee (the person being mentored is typically called a protégé or apprentice, but I prefer the term mentee).

I often ask a basic question at the very start of a relationship, which is “if you only ever get suggestions from me, will this be enough for you?” If they answer No, then it is a good sign that the mentee has defined the scope of their expectations. If they say Yes, this is a sign that a lot more conversation needs to take place before you proceed with the relationship.

A lot of young people already have unofficial mentors in their lives but may not recognise them for what they are. Given that media coverage has given rise to a generation wanting X-Factor judge Simon Cowell as their mentor (!), I advise some gentle probing about who they look-up to or talk to on a regular basis is always a good start.

And remember, learning to say ‘No’ to a mentoring request is also a mentoring skill.

2. Listening is the mentor’s greatest skill, practice it.

Being able to listen is to my mind the greatest skill that a mentor can have, particularly when advising young entrepreneurs who are unlikely to hear messages unless these correlate directly with their own thought processes. So to avoid “your pearls of wisdom falling on deaf ears” (with apologies for the mixed metaphor), it is more important to ‘ummh’ and ‘ahhh’ and ask open-ended questions to allow the mentee to talk round and round their subject matter until they, themselves, identify a possible path to follow. And it is equally important to allow mentees to reach their “eureka!” moment themselves even if you spotted it some hours earlier.

“The art of listening” for people like me, for whom the phrase “talking nineteen to a dozen” was invented, is difficult. The only solution is to practice “the art of listening” intently, as if your very life depended on it. I will often write down 3 words/phrases that I must hear from a mentoring session so I actively listen during a conversation.

3. Never leap from being a talker to being a doer!

This one is obvious, but a rule I’ve broken many times. As a mentor you should be able to leave a session with no actions to follow up. The moment you have to take some action, it means you’ve leapt over the line from being a guide and mentor to being part of the team. Yes, you can probably do the task better, faster and more cost effectively than your mentee, but that’s not the point. Remember the cardinal rule of leaving mentoring sessions with no actions.

4. Hang onto your Intellectual Property and sanity!

Just as you would advise your mentee to protect their intellectual property, for the sake of your sanity make sure you protect your IP. Things can go awry fairly quickly particularly if you have used your professional skills set to help your mentee prepare a project or business plan. They’ll want to share all your lovely infographics, charts, data and methodology with everyone. One cheeky individual even asked me for a copy of the software (in fact, several cheeky individuals asked me for the software) when the reality is that it is your knowledge and skills set combined with the software. [NB. Whenever anyone asks me about any software I use, it usually means that they want me to do their project or homework for them!].

Another issue is that if you mentor using presentations, retain the IP of these and distribute only hard copies unless you like your work being shared readily under other people’s name! Mentees rarely have a good grasp of copyright.

5. Set some boundaries

You do need to set boundaries to the mentor/mentee relationship. Mentees will always push for a more “let's be friends” type of arrangement, but as a mentor, you should seek to adopt one that better suits you. Mentoring is not the same as friendship and you will struggle to balance family relationships with mentoring if you do not set boundaries at the outset. So, for example, you should always agree to meet in neutral territory rather than at your home and ensure you always meet during the week rather than the weekend.

How much you network with your mentees is entirely up to you. As “opening doors” (networking) will be one of the aspects expected of you as the mentor, it is important to introduce your mentee formally and informally. So using online networking tools like LinkedIn may be fine. However, you may wish to keep your Facebook page for displaying holiday snaps, so ponder the levels of depth you want to the mentor/mentee relationship. Once you have defined what this is for you, stick to it.

6. Get organised and outline the parameters

You will need a brief profile of your mentee. You may get encyclopedic volumes about their entire life history since being an embryo, but a short “who, what, why, when, where” type of profile is much more valuable and you will need a single line introduction to your mentee, regardless. Ask the mentee to prepare this and perhaps you can help hone it a little. Also set your review dates. A quarterly update will help you judge progress of the relationship and whether your advice is helping or hindering! I prefer a formal paper-based review, but if you don’t like being so formal, make some notes in your diary about the meeting.

It “creeps out” young people when I am able to recall their achievements, activities or problems from the past month. However, given that modern technology allows you to Google someone, follow their twitter feed or keep-up with their BBM status; mentees need to understand that keeping you, the mentor, informed is a vital part of the relationship. Telepathy is not a skill that most mentors have or can develop.

7. Setting aside enough time

Mentees will always underestimate the amount of mentoring they need, usually by a factor of 5. So the best solution is to agree a schedule of mentoring, say a meeting once a month and than factor in five times as much in your personal calendar to allow for all the email, Facebook and SMS questions, not to mention the phone calls at midnight as they desperately try to complete some project, pitch or plan at the last minute!

A good mentoring relationship can spill over into life and you may also find yourself advising on everything from where to go on holiday to personal relationships!

8. Keep advice in reserve

The second most common mistake I make is over-loading the mentee with advice far too early. Whether this is in the form of presentations, a workshop or review of their work, this approach never works! So hold your best stuff in reserve and leave them wanting more from each mentoring session. Prepare them for what you want to tell them; then tell them when you are going to tell them; tell them and then remind them about what you’ve already told them! Obviously, use fewer repetitive words! This may sound like a crazy way of mentoring, but, it helps to contextualize your advice to their specific issues. This drip-feed method always works, because with a little luck you’ll also get the timing right with the right advice at the right time.

9. Mentoring is a two-way relationship

Over the years, I have written over a hundred personal references and update reports and yet, I can count the number of recommendations I’ve had in return on the fingers of one hand! A less thick-skinned person might consider this a sign of not being a good mentor, but, I prefer to rationalise this with a view that many mentees don’t like to admit that they’ve had some help along the way.

Ironically, on BBC TV show ‘Dragon’s Den’, many of the contestants are often desperate to sign up ‘dragons’ as mentors rather than investors. Contestants understand the commercial value of contacts, networks, approach and investor help they are likely to get. But when it comes to away from the TV cameras mentoring, the reality is the mentees often like to say “they did it their way”.

There is no easy solution to this. Asking for formal feedback only generates banality, so I guess the only answer is to bask in the success of the individual mentees as they make their way in life. If they are happy to report back after 10 years or more, this is a sign that you succeeded.

10. Agree an “end date” to the mentoring

It is also advisable to have an “end date” for mentoring an individual. This is best agreed when a particular plan or project is launched or delivered at which point you, as the mentor, can say how delighted you are with their progress and the fact “they can spread their wings and fly solo from now on” (with more eloquent or business like phrases as you see fit). You can agree to keep in touch once in a while, but, work hard to extricate yourself from more regular contact. Mentees find it hard to let go of their mentors!

Yes! Yes! Yes! To AV

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 22:25:00 +0000

Well OK. You only need to say one “yes” to the Alternative Vote, but the ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ does explain the simplicity of the system. You choose your favourite candidates for election and ignore the rest. If no individual achieves 50% of the ‘1^st’ place candidate votes, those with fewest votes are eliminated successively and their votes added to the more favoured ones until one of them reaches the 50% of the vote. Of course, you can rank them in order of preference which creates a little more work for the pollsters in dealing with the 2nds and 3rds, but, why the doomsters in the ‘No to AV’ campaign insist on explaining it in more technically complex terms is beyond me.

The ‘First Past The Post’ (FPTP) system, which is what we have now, is inherently unfair and archaic. Firstly because MPs need only get more votes than their competitors to be elected (in some seats 7 out of every 10 voters wanted other candidates, but their views are ignored). And secondly it has given rise to concepts like “safe seats” which really should be an anathema to a modern democracy. I want a plurality of voices; a diversity of representation, more choice and greater flexibility for candidates. It may give rise to more “coalition” style government and councils, but, since this helps to pull politics to the centre, eliminating extreme right-wing and left-wing views, that is no bad thing. Suddenly, independent candidates will have the same chance of being elected as those from the governing party or parties. It will depend on the quality of campaigning and the issues of greatest importance to the local electorate.

No doubt, even with the Alternative Vote system, “horse-trading” between candidates will continue and vested interests will undoubtedly try and tell us how to rank our No 1, 2, 3, candidates. However, think how much harder MPs will have to work for your vote? And until the ballot paper becomes a lottery ticket, I think most people will just nod along sagely and choose exactly whom they want on polling day, flummoxing pollsters, spin doctors and campaign managers alike.

Of course, the Alternative Vote (AV) system is a botch. It is not proportional representation which is the system I would have liked (in an ideal world), but, given that even a referendum on that is wholly unlikely if AV fails, I am prepared to accept a “lesser of two evils” choice. After all, FPTP is also a botch, probably devised at the same time as the Doomsday book (were serfs even allowed to vote then?) and it has not changed much since. Witness our white, male, upper class Cabinet – you could transport them back 200 years, change their clothes and they’d fit right in. Is this what 21^st Century Britain really needs?

Don’t waste your vote because you “don’t know"!

Don’t waste your vote because you don’t know what to do. Choose ‘Yes to AV’.

If AV is approved, doomsters say that voters will not know how to vote in a general election - some seats will change from being Conservative to Liberal Democrat or vice versa. They further add that this is a bad thing. Really? AV is about more than the politicians we have at the moment. Changing the system is about the politicians we have in the future. You can reject AV on the basis that you don’t like Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and his U-Turn on student fees. But, this is totally irrelevant to the discussion about how we vote.

For the first time in my living memory we have a chance to say something about our political system. If I recall, this is the same system that has been trying to reform The House of Lords for decades now and that hasn’t exactly been going to plan either, has it? If we (the voting public) do not say something now, perhaps we should not have the chance to vote at all? Perhaps living ostrich-like in a country where a favoured few make all the important decisions about your life is OK with you. It isn’t with me.

In the future, MPs will have to try much harder to appeal to a broader base of voters – they will not have the luxury of ignoring minority votes (as they do at the moment). Every 2^nd ranking and 3^rd ranking vote is going to count.

So if you are from an ethnic minority group; young or old, gay, lesbian or trans-gender; female or male, or have a disability this is your chance to be heard. Vote ‘Yes to AV’.

Visit http://www.yestofairervotes.org for further information.

Silent killers of women

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:09:00 +0000

Yippee! I actually passed my cholesterol and blood pressure exams today and quite frankly these have been the hardest exams I have ever had to take. Some five weeks ago, I had a small health scare. My doctor said that both my cholesterol and blood pressure were too high and she was threatening to put me on medication to control both ailments. For someone who thinks they are reasonably healthy, the immediate question was “how can I be so unhealthy when I feel perfectly fine”? The reason is that both high cholesterol and high blood pressure are silent killers of women (and men too!). So, obviously my first thoughts were incoherent blind panic. Second thoughts were to do a bit of research.

My immediate questions were:

Question 1: What is high cholesterol and how does one get this on a “reasonably” healthy diet?

Summary of answer from Netdoctor.co.uk

There are two types of cholesterol: HDL (good as it protects from narrowing of arteries) and LDL (bad as it causes heart disease). Our bodies use cholesterol for cell generation and energy. The cholesterol we intake is metabolised by the liver and the chances of having high cholesterol levels is based on: diet (the amount of fat we eat) and genetic inheritance (familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH)). The ideal cholesterol level in the blood is less than 5mmol/l.

HDL content can be controlled by exercise and LDL can be controlled by a low-fat diet or medication.

[HDL is short for high density lipoprotein and LDL is low density lipoprotein]

Question 2: Does high cholesterol cause high blood pressure?

Blood pressure depends on a combination of two factors:

how forcefully the heart pumps blood around the body
how narrowed or relaxed your arteries are.

High Blood Pressure (hypertension) is caused when blood is forced through the arteries at an increased pressure. High levels of LDL can cause a narrowing of vessels contributing to high blood pressure. Other factors are: a tendency in the family to suffer hypertension, obesity, smoking, diabetes, kidney diseases, high alcohol intake, excessive salt intake, lack of exercise and certain medicines such as steroids.

Blood pressure is measured in two readings: systolic (heart contracts) & diastolic (heart relaxes). For people who don't have diabetes, the treatment goals for blood pressure for are: Systolic pressure of less than 140mmHg and Diastolic pressure of less than 85mmHg.

Question 3: Is my diet reasonably healthy?

This is a difficult one to answer without keeping a food diary and accurately reading food labeling. I also discovered that just because you cook your own food, does not necessarily mean that you have a healthy diet. Cooking your own food is indeed better than buying convenience food or eating takeaways, but it is important to measure the fat content in your ingredients and take command of portion control, i.e. how much you serve to each person.

The information provided on recommended daily amounts (RDA) for men and women varies quite a lot. The best chart I found indicated a recommended daily calorie count of 2500 for men and 2000 for women – it also breaks this down by carbohydrates (300g for women), fats (70g for women of which only 20g should be saturated), protein (45g for women) and salt (5g for women with only 2g of sodium). Click for a copy of the chart.

I also discovered that a lot of Indian food has very poor food labeling, wildly inaccurate figures and there are no good calories counters for prepared Indian foods. The Indian food industry had better watch out, my next project is to change all that!

Question 4: Is a change of diet enough or is more exercise important in reducing high blood pressure?

A change of diet on its own is not enough. A change in lifestyle is needed, including stopping smoking, losing weight, exercising regularly, cutting down on alcohol, eating a varied diet and reducing stress by trying different relaxation techniques, or by avoiding stressful situations.

These changes will lower blood pressure - to reduce your risk of developing the condition in the first place or to treat hypertension.

Question 5: Do cholesterol-reducing foods actually work?

Answer, courtesy of Netdoctor.

“Research has demonstrated that margarines like Benecol work. They contain natural substances that reduce the absorption of cholesterol from the gut and therefore lower cholesterol levels in the blood. A 2g average daily portion of these substances added to margarine can reduce the average LDL cholesterol level by between 0.3 and 0.5 mmol/L, depending on your age.

This reduces the risk of heart disease by as much as 25 per cent, so it seems a worthwhile investment at that dose, particularly if you are at greater-than-average risk of developing coronary heart disease.

Stick to a healthy diet, low in saturated fat, and use Benecol if you're happy to buy it. Keep fit with regular cardiovascular exercise (the sort that gets you short of breath).”

Question 6: What about fats?

Answer courtesy of the NHS website.

Saturated fat is found in foods such as pies, meat products, sausages, cheese, butter, cakes and biscuits. It can raise your blood cholesterol level and increase your risk of heart disease. Most people in the UK eat too much saturated fat, which puts us at risk of health problems.

Unsaturated fats, on the other hand, can help to lower cholesterol and provide us with the essential fatty acids needed to help us stay healthy. Oily fish, nuts and seeds, avocados, olive oils and vegetable oils are sources of unsaturated fat.

Question 7: So what did I decide to do?

Obviously everyone’s choice will be different, but with a lot of helpful advice from friends I:

(a) Switched my style of cooking from Indian to a simpler (Mediterranean) style. No use of ghee and a measured use of oil (e.g. maximum 2 tablespoons for a ‘shaak’ curry). This didn’t suit my family so I reverted to cooking my own food separately, replacing a home-made soup to their curry.

(b) Switched to making chapattis with no oil. Again, this didn’t suit the family so have reverted back but eat plain chapattis with no ghee.

(c) Switched from semi-skimmed milk to skimmed milk

(d) Switched to Flora pro-activ margarine which has plant sterols to help reduce cholesterol.

(e) Switched from red meat to fish and chicken and ate no more than 2-3 eggs per week

(f) Switched from cheddar cheese to cottage cheese. Hard cheese has so much fat! Also watch out for fat content in mozzarella, parmesan and feta cheese as it gives the fat measurement per 100g and the pack is usually 250g or 500g.

(g) Cut out crisps, sesame slims, roasted cashew nuts, biscuits, cakes, chevdo (Bombay mix), sev and anything fried and replaced with Dole fruit pots, fresh fruit, Danone low fat yoghurt and low-fat custard. Cornflakes are not just for breakfast – they make a great mid afternoon snack.

(h) Ensured I got my five-a-day of fruit and vegetables although this is not hard to do on a restricted diet like this.

(i) Cut out all Indian mithai (sweets), boiled sweets, chewing gum and chocolate. [NB. I have not eaten chocolate for a number of years as this is one of the triggers for migraine anyway.]

(j) Stopped drinking wine and switched to gin & tonic or champagne (as it is a pain to fix a G&T and too expensive to drink champagne, this meant my alcohol consumption has plummeted, which is a good thing!)

(k) Allowed myself bread, a weekly allocation of two croissants and as much pasta as I liked with a nod to reasonable portion control.

(l) Switched from virgin olive oil dressing to a low fat oil dressing. Although olive oils are better for you than other oils, I think I was taking Jamie Oliver’s recommendation for a “glug” of olive oil on my salad too literally.

(m) Allowed myself as much tea, water and fresh juices as I liked. Drinking a lot of water before a meal ensures you eat less. Discovered I quite like pomegranate and cranberry juice together when they are diluted correctly.

(n) Allowed myself treats like eating sensibly if invited to dinner or when going out. After all, you don’t want to be a party bore!

(o) Took up short 10-min pilates workout sessions at home. Also did some yoga and breathing/meditation exercise, but will need to work on the latter for good long term improvement.

Question 8: So what were the results?

Again your results will be specific to you as factors such as gender, age, height, weight, medical and family history all need to be taken into account. The results for me were:

Blood Pressure: My blood pressure went from 155/99 to 134/91 - the diastolic pressure (lower number) should be below 90 and ideally around 85, but the reduction over a five week period without medication is good.

Cholesterol: My cholesterol went from 5.8mmol/l to 5.2mmol/l. Ideally it should be 5mmol/l or less. Triglycerides went from 1.9 to 1.4 – not sure what this means, will need to check.

Weight: Reduced by 3kg. This was a pleasant side effect.

[NB. This is not meant to be a health fact sheet, it is just a personal story of what I did - please consult your own doctor or health professional for advice].

References:

High cholesterol level (hypercholesterolaemia)
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/diseases/facts/hypercholesterolaemia.htm

Recommended Daily Amounts: Easy to Use Table
http://www.npt.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=3360

Reading Food Labels
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/Pages/readingfoodlabels.aspx

Indian Calorie Chart
http://www.hindustanlink.com/recepiet/indian_calorie_chart.htm

Nutrition data of homemade Indian Food
http://www.fatfreekitchen.com/nutrition/indian-foods.html

Are women their own worst enemy?

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:16:00 +0000

Are women their own worst enemy when it comes to gender equality? It seems to be so. Today, a Belgian consumers' organisation, one that is led ironically by a woman, has struck victory for “boy racers” throughout the UK by winning a lawsuit that sees young women having to pay the same as young men for car insurance. The EU has advised insurers that charging a differential rate is discrimination and the ruling is being held up as a victory for equality? Well, while the European Court of Justice is ruling, can I ask for (a) equal pay for women of all ages (b) equal retirement pension & benefits and (c) equal access to the boardrooms of corporate Britain?

It seems we are eons behind on these while quick at giving equality to a sector which is driven largely by reams of motoring data. Little surprise that the car insurance industry only weakly defended its position – one that gave young (lower risk) women drivers an advantage over their young male (higher risk) counterparts. The cynic in me believes the financial services industry more than capable of using this ruling to hike up premiums over and above any correction factor based on gender.

In last week’s ‘Women on Boards’ report by Lord Davies of Abersoch, he argued that only 11% of women who responded to his consultation on the subject wanted quotas, many arguing that this form of affirmative action would somehow be “demeaning” to women as most wanted to “make it on merit”. I was at one these consultations where similar sentiments were spoken, by women who clearly had not “made it” given that there are only 12.5% of women on FTSE boards; 18 FTSE 100 companies have no female directors at all and nearly half of all FTSE 250 companies do not have a woman in the boardroom. Even outside the FTSE, nine out of ten of our top business leaders are men, there are currently only four women in the Government Cabinet of 23, while in Parliament men outnumber women four to one. It is easy to forget that women are more than half the population of the UK. Perhaps it is time women stopped being their own worst enemy and put their gender before themselves?

References

Lord Davies "disses" ethnic minority women
Lord Davies Review – Women on Boards report
Fawcett Society: Breaking the Mould for Women Leaders report
Institute of Leadership & Management: Ambition & Gender at Work
HCUK Public Appointments Strategy 2009-2012

Stop trying to 'fix' education with technology.

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:17:00 +0000

By Lopa Patel, 12^th January 2011.

My head is swirling after two days at the ‘Learning Without Frontiers’ 2011 event in London. Based on the ethos of “rebooting education” the 3-day event dubbed itself a festival, comprising the former Hand-Held Learning and Games-Based Learning conferences under the ‘Learning Without Frontiers’ banner. There were very few “suits” here, even the speakers were smart-casual in their jeans and jackets.

But despite the sartorial laissez-faire, the event clearly means to change paradigms in education globally and the word “disrupt” was widely used by the plethora of high profile speakers who ranged from Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia to graffiti artist Evan Roth; from Lord David Puttnam to controversial teacher Katherine Birbalsingh alongside a healthy dose of games, apps and educational software developers and visionaries. The one fact I am left with, though, is that we haven’t really achieved a new paradigm in education with the use of technology in British schools. The real question is “do we need to”?

The UK primary and secondary school sector – driven largely by a state-funded mechanism – comprises some 7.9 million pupils aged 4 to 18 years, approximately 25,000 schools and 445,000 teachers. The outcomes achieved over the past generation have been about attaining a greater number of qualifications like GCSE and A-Levels and rising standards in the grades achieved. The state has traditionally sought to improve standards by using a “carrot & stick” method, pumping ever greater sums of money into infrastructure and teaching (the carrot) with the compensatory imposition of league tables and Ofsted audits (the stick). On average, the mechanism can be deemed to have worked – most students now have a greater number of qualifications than their parents or grand-parents.

Everyone complains about education

But employers complain about the lack of basic numeracy and literacy skills among school-leavers and critics claim that schools are “fudging” the choice of subjects to attain a better league table ranking and that the exams themselves are becoming easier. Parents complain about lack of access to good local schools, teaching unions complain about the stress modern-day teachers face, head teachers complain about the lack of autonomy, education ICT suppliers complain about the lack of productivity gains from the software they have developed and the cumbersome “red tape” of supplying into schools in the first place. Pupils themselves complain that lessons are boring and that they can’t take exams any earlier no matter how quickly individuals progress through the curriculum and Government worries that it needs a creative economy yet its pupils don’t seem to be able to gain the right skills to create one. Nobody seems to be happy.

But, if one considers the educational system as a whole. First, it is “fair”: in this country both girls and boys have, on average, the same access to the curriculum (hurrah!); let’s recall that a hundred years ago this was not the case and that in some parts of the world, education of girls lags way behind that of boys. Secondly, the education system is about more than the qualifications you gain, it is a “civic society” in a microcosm – learning the ability to live and learn alongside each other is an important lesson in life. Thirdly, the education system is about trying and failing and learning in a style that suits you: for some that means learning by rote, others can deduce and learn logically, some act-out and learn by teaching others (note the importance of drama in the teaching of English literature for example) and increasing numbers learn by playing video games. The latter was obviously a key issue at the LWF event with a number of video games exhibitors displaying their wares for children from the age of three. It could be argued that playing games is not that different from the combination of learning by rote (e.g. memorising facts for trivial pursuit) and the repeated ‘try and fail’ method represented by the increasing levels of difficulty incorporated in each game. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’ he asserts that to excel in a particular field an individual needs to practice – the “10,000 Hours” golden rule was born. In essence this is exactly what gamers do, they practice over and over again.

The gaming industry wants schools to open up teaching methodologies: allow handheld devices like iPads to be used during class and an increase in the use of tools like interactive whiteboards as more than just blackboards. They cite many examples of success stories like young children being able to draw with iPads and create their own video animation sequences. Nobody denies the value of technology for those with disabilities – Assistive Learning Technologies have proven revolutionary in opening new means of communication and creativity for those with particular disabilities. But when you introduce wholesale technology into the education curriculum, it can indeed be a disruptive influence. Teachers already use a combination of audio, video, role-play, interaction, modelling, talking and homework to make their subjects interesting, so adding more technology may not necessarily make things better. Indeed it may make things worse.

I recall that I always paid attention during school trips because we usually had to answer a set of questions and would not have enough time in the gift shop if we failed to finish. Paying attention at the right time paid dividends in more free leisure time. Today, if you could take a virtual tour while taking a real tour and crib all the answers from Google or Wikipedia, I am not sure how much retained information you would be left with at the end of the trip. I am not harking back to the days of gas-lit classrooms and squeaky chalk on blackboards, merely the fact we should stop trying ‘fix’ education with technology.

Allowing teachers the freedom to teach is one of the greatest assets a school possesses: some may choose to use technology and gizmos; others may choose to lecture in a monotone and ask penetrating questions to dozy students afterwards! The most important issue is the attention that the teacher gives to the student. I speak with a small amount of experience: as an ambassador for STEMNet, I have spoken to secondary school pupils on issues about technology, business, career development and skills. Those that responded well were the ones who felt they got the most attention; either in the form of praise and encouragement or just by me noticing them. The human interaction between teacher and pupil is paramount in how the pupil learns and consequently, what they learn.

The one thing I learnt at the ‘Learning Without Frontiers’ 2011 festival is that digital creativity is alive and well in Britain. Let’s stop trying to define it into a deliverable teaching module for the educational establishment. Creativity exists because it is disruptive, because it needs the counterfoil of uniformity and boredom and because people need a moment of pause to derive a single, original thought.

About Learning Without Frontiers

The brainchild of original ‘disruptive’ thinker Graham Brown-Martin, ‘Learning Without Frontiers’ is a festival that provides a global platform for disruptive thinkers and practitioners from the education, digital media, technology and entertainment sectors to come together to explore how new disruptive technologies can drive radical efficiencies and improvements in learning.

Learning Without Frontiers takes place in London, UK (9-11 January 2011), Accra, Ghana (June 2011) and Boston, USA (November 2011). Visit www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com for further information.

e-skills ‘Girls in IT’ networking event

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:38:00 +0000

On 7^th December 2010, e-skills UK, the skills council for business and information technology, hosted a networking event at their offices in London for over fifty female IT professionals from companies such as Google, Goldman Sachs, Cisco, Centrica, Infosys and Logica. Apart from sharing skills, the event highlighted the work of companies such as Infosys and Goldman Sachs in persuading girls to consider a career in IT. Effective solutions to the problem of attracting girls into technology subjects ranged from hands-on programming workshops to video presentations, applications (apps) development for mobile devices, female IT roles models and a mentoring network. The event represented a renewal of emphasis on the ‘Girls in IT’ campaign becuase “for almost half the population to shun a career in IT represents a major threat to the UK’s future prosperity”, said Karen Price CEO of e-skills UK.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Geek Girls just wanna have fun!

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:25:00 +0000

Congratulations to all the A-Level and GCSE students who received their results in the last fortnight. If you got the results you wanted, great! If you didn’t get the results you wanted, don’t worry – there are a legion of the “good & the great” happy to tell you that there is much more fun to be had in the “University of Life”. Sadly, this is not entirely true. For girls, the option of whether to study further i.e. a degree, will determine not only your future pay packet, but the subject you choose will determine the “pay gap” between you and your male colleague. So choosing wisely at this stage is crucial. Little wonder that the Universities and Science Minister David Willetts spoke only the truth when he said that state schools frequently advised children wrongly about exams.

Choose the “soft” option if you wish, but here’s what I observed from the league tables:

- Firstly, the A-level results showed that girls had edged past boys to secure more A grades.
- At GCSE girls outperformed boys in EVERY subject except Maths & Economics.
- At GCSE, the top 31 state schools in the country are all former ‘Grammar’ schools, with the first Comprehensive appearing at No 32. So much for the “free” schools – this is evidence of the existing chasm in the state sector, never mind the widening gap between the independent and state sectors.
- There was a decrease in men and women taking computing A-level, with less than ten per cent of A-level computing entrants being female.

Employers are warning of a major shortage of people with skills in engineering and IT, according to the latest labour market outlook survey by KPMG and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) released on 26th August 2010.

Combine this information with the scramble for University places and I find it hard to fathom why more girls are not choosing Science and IT degrees.

Microsoft reveals top three degrees for career in technology

The answer became obvious when I read that Microsoft had revealed (25th August 2010) the top three degree subject areas for a successful career in IT. The company suggested courses in the field of Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing, which will help to sift through mountains of information on the cloud. Secondly, Business or Competitive Intelligence which provide graduates with the skills to "make sense of data to a business audience", and finally, they suggested a degree in Web Analytics and Statistics, which are traditional mathematics degrees that apply to an online world.

Sigh, now I know why so few girls choose an IT career path!

It reminded me of the last careers conference I attended where a sixth former interested in studying Computer Science asked me who IBM were. Hope she believed me when I told her.

References:
www.standard.co.uk/examresults
www.thetimes.co.uk/education
www.womenintechnology.co.uk

Britain’s Education Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:57:00 +0000

“I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils”, the famous lines from William Wordsworth’s poem have been haunting me lately, although in the context of an education ‘cloud’ rather than the literal one. As we move into a decade of computing independent of devices – computers, handhelds, ipads, mobiles – where our relationship with the internet, data and communications moves from being about ownership and licensing, to one of rental, collaboration and remoteness, the case for a British Education Cloud has never been greater.

‘Cloud’ services have been around since the 1960s. ‘Cloud’ computing, i.e. the selling of excess computer power really became established in 2006 when Amazon Web Services started offering excess from its stacks to businesses at a spot rate. Google & IBM started offering the same in 2007 and Microsoft joined them in 2008. Within the last two decades we have shifted from mainframe computers accessible from ‘dumb’ terminals (no network); to server & PC based computing (with a local area network, LAN) to a Cloud & Browser scenario (essentially a wide area network,WAN).

Cloud Plus

Even my own needs have changed. My web servers are rented, my back-up is done remotely. Why pay for a big hard disk and back-up when I can rent capacity from Flickr (Yahoo-owned) and Picasaweb (Google-owned) for storage of pictures and video? I can use services like Plaxo as a web-based contact database. I can use Google products for spreadsheets and documents. The iPhone (Apple-owned) has an app to help me locate places, my phone has a voice messaging and my netbook allows me an email-to-SMS service to let my host know if I am running late for a meeting. Location based services let me find the nearest coffee place, bus or train station and friendly face if need be. And, of course, I can shop for anything online and frequently do. All this is way beyond the basics of cloud computing. This is ‘Cloud’ Plus, and them some!

The one area that the freedom of device-independent computing has not penetrated is Britain’s primary and secondary schools. Too many still have computers in specific computer labs, electronic whiteboards which are used only as blackboard and Management Information Systems (MIS) that the management don’t know how to use. The array of products and services available to Head Teachers, IT purchasers and Teachers is so bewildering that a chasm is opening up between those that understand technology, embrace it and use it to make their lives easier….and those that don’t.

Interestingly, children adapt to this new environment quite readily. They are comfortable being able to do homework, chat online and play a computer game all from the same Nintendo, or games console. They may not appreciate the complexity of the services they are using but they like the convenience.

This raises the question of how Britain should develop its educational curriculum, services and teaching given that the methods for learning have changed. Of course, there are already several suppliers offering ‘cloud’- like services: either IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) or SaaS (Software as a Service). Virtual Learning Environments (like Moodle) are increasingly becoming popular and higher-learning organisations like The Open University have been keen to embrace them.

Cradle to grave ICT

Is the concept of ‘Cradle to Grave’ ICT coming every closer? For Britain’s 7 million primary and secondary school pupils and its 500,000 teachers and teaching assistants, the concept of “cradle to grave” ICT in a cloud that they don’t have to specify or take care off would be a real boost.

Children and young adults would love the concept of a personalised online space in which they can upload and download work; get appraisals from teachers, collaborate on projects with their friends; an account that could build and grow with them as they move between schools and into higher education. Parents already value the ability to have online assessments of their children’s work, without the worry of having to monitor and track activities of their kids on a daily basis. At present the under 18 generation on average have greater skills than their parents anyway. If all this is sounding like a “Facebook for schools” then I have failed to explain that this type of personalised space currently does not exist. It could very easily come into being, by ensuring that different providers collaborated on a single canvas - Britain’s Education Cloud – that is owned by UK Plc.

A May 2009 DataMonitor report for the USA market compared the commercial customer relationship management (CRM) software offered by Salesforce.com to the use of learning management solutions (LMS) in higher education. Salesforce services are understood in the commercial arena and the company’s turnover recently topped $1Billion from its 55,400 customers. In higher education, LMS and student information systems are virtually a no-go area for vendors, until now. A recession, rapidly changing technology and new products and services are making everyone look at these ‘on-demand’ delivery models.

The business landscape has already embraced the benefits of cloud computing, namely:

- a rental model requiring low capital investment,
- low cost per user
- management expertise retained
- low maintenance costs
- low upgrade costs
- no specification required (built-in standards) for proprietary software.

Cloud services are scalable, robust, modularised. There a broad range of platforms & applications available so it is very suited to both to both Open Source & proprietary software. There are relatively low barriers to entry for new and innovative products and the process generally has a lower risk than developing in-house products and services.

However, for Britain’s Education sector, alas, all this is very much “pie in the sky” (or should that be a fluffy cloud in the sky?). The new UK coalition Government wants to free schools and head teachers to buy what they like, from whomever they want without any intervention (or more importantly, funding) from central Government. While this is commendable, it relies on users actually knowing what they need (most surveys indicate the sector doesn’t really understand today’s technology, let alone tomorrow’s) and flies counter to the need for openness and sharing, while at the same time being secure and long-lasting. Schools are often “locked in” with the services provider that they choose, so most opt for the lowest-risk option rather than the best one.

In “cloud land”, what is currently happening is the development of a series of mini clouds being offered by big US companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft who are all fighting for the largest slice of the marketplace. In the long run this will stifle innovation (open source relies very much on developers sharing their intellectual property), lead to increased commercial use of data on children and create barriers to entry for smaller companies and new products. Ultimately it will also result in a bigger bill in a decade’s time.

Suggesting centralisation like developing a canvas for Britain’s Education Cloud is currently an anathema to politicians. But is playing into the hands of big (often foreign) commercial concerns really the best answer? No “host of golden daffodils” for the right answer, alas.

Asian Women shatter Glass Ceilings in UK Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:53:00 +0000

I must be the only one in Britain who is extremely pleased with the UK General Election 2010 results. The uneasy coalition between the Conservative party and Liberal Democrats may not work but I am mightly pleased about how quietly the glass ceiling in politics has been shattered by Asian Women, with no less than five Asian women being elected with stonking great majorities in their constituencies.

Priti Patel MP for Witham is the first Asian Woman MP for the Conservative Party. Rushanara Ali MP for Bethnal Green & Bow is the first Bangladeshi MP. She along with Yasmin Qureshi MP (Bolton South East) and Shabana Mahmood MP (Birmingham Ladywood) represent the first three Muslim Women MPs in Britain. And Keith Vaz’s sister Valerie Vaz MP (Walsall South) shows that ‘sisters’ really can ‘do it for themselves’ too by winning the seat of Walsall.

It has taken 118 years since the first Asian MP – Dadabhai Naoroji was elected in 1892 – and now, with so decisive a win, Asian women can look forward to brighter future in British Politics and perhaps even a cabinet seat in the near future.

An Asian Woman for PM? Hopefully it won’t take 118 years to achieve that!

Historic win for Asian Women in the UK General Election 2010.
First Three Muslim Women MPs elected in Britain.
Rushanara Ali becomes the first Bangladeshi MP elected in Britain.
Priti Patel becomes the first Conservative Asian Woman MP in Britain

Diary of a Floating Voter: Decision Time

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Thu, 06 May 2010 18:30:00 +0000

So here it is, after nearly a month of campaigning, TV debates, mud-slinging and all manner of shenanigans – it is UK General Election Day. Unmoved by so many national newspapers coming out in support of the Conservative Party, I voted as planned - for the Liberal Democrats. I don’t expect miracles, I won’t be miserable if it is a hung parliament and I won’t be surprised if nothing much happens in the short term. I just hope that the 44 million British people who registered to vote, exercised this right.

I am in a sombre mood, much like the rest of Britain. I can’t decide whether to risk my savings to book a week’s holiday abroad this summer, keep it in the bank earning pathetic rates of interest, or plough it into some long-term savings/pension plan which may not pay out at all. Tomorrow I have to encourage young girls into future careers that may not come to pass considering how many high-achieving graduates are now out of the job in the UK. They can try entrepreneurship, but given that so many bright, dynamic, hard working, skilled business folk are finding it hard to get a bank loan or even seed capital….is it really prudent to recommend this path to 15 year olds with little or no business experience?

And I have been mulling about the invisibility of women from this year’s election campaign. Apart from the initial play for the ‘Mumsnet’ vote, the parties have largely ignored women – except for photographing the three glamorous wives of the party leaders. It is hard to believe that women make up more than half the population and now slightly more than half the workforce. I am grateful to The Labour Party for forcing through the Equality Act at the eleventh hour although no-one even bothered to mention if they would be supporting it, enforcing it or consigning it to oblivion thereafter. Repealing the Equality Act would certainly cause riots and perhaps give rise to a 21st Century women’s suffrage movement.

Women first got the right to vote in Britain in 1918, although you had to be over 30 years of age, a householder, married or armed with a University degree! The UK might have considered itself advanced on women’s suffrage but it was behind New Zealand which allowed women to vote in 1893, Australia (1902), Finland (1906), Norway (1913), Denmark (1915), Iceland (1915), Canada (1917) and Russia (1917). However, we can pride ourselves on being in time with Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Kyrgystan, Latvia, and Lithuania who all allowed women to vote in 1918. Shame then, that it then took us another 10 years until 1928 before we lowered the vote age to 18 and allowed the unmarried equal share of voice.

Among ‘desis’, there is a view that in Britain you are never “one of them”: you can be born here, live here all your life, start a business, raise a family, give back your all….and still you will always be an ‘outsider’. I’ve always held that view as ridiculous. But, with the interminable slow pace of change, the lethargic 100 year history of women’s suffrage, the invisibility of ordinary ethnic minorities (rather than the self-serving, self-promoting, self-interested ones we have at present) in the public arena….the promise of freedom and democracy, but the reality of moribund, archaic electoral systems …well, I must admit to being a little sad today.

Can I really expect ‘change that works for me’ as Nick Clegg promises? Well, I certainly hope so and more importantly, I hope that it can be during my lifetime.

Diary of a Floating Voter: I am so bored!

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:48:00 +0000

I am now so bored of the run up to the UK Election, that I am wishing it was 7^th May already. The last ten days have shown us what a shabby process we have for selecting who leads the country under an archaic, arthritic electoral system whereby the losing party can still potentially end up with the greatest number of seats (MPs). How is that fair, exactly?

I am unsurprised by the ‘bigotgate’ or ‘Duffygate’ faux pas of Gordon Brown – his ill humour and bad temper are well known (wasn’t he accused of lobbing telephones at aides at one point, or was that Naomi Campbell?). I even have some sympathy for David Cameron, cornered by a dad about school choices for special needs children. Mr Cameron managed to hold his cool and repeatedly state that his party’s manifesto was all about offering parents a choice rather than restricting anyone. Nick Clegg has been embroiled in some saga over monies paid into his personal account by party donors. To his credit, Clegg immediately published his bank statements to show that the money was used to pay for researchers and aides. Kudos to the man for publishing his bank statements - personally I can barely bear to look at mine, let alone publishing them for the world to see.

This election has been a grubby affair: protests outside venues where TV debates were being held, relentless media attention on wives, partners and endless commentary from pundits, gurus and nobodies on just about everything. Am I “any the wiser”? No! The situation is so grim that I’ve forgotten the parties that politicians represent, candidates are all blurring into a singular, uniform mass of oneness.

Still, it could be worse! A recent debate in the Ukraine Parliament about a treaty with Russia on the latter’s ships in the Black Sea resulted in a hail of raw eggs, smoke bombs and a right royal punch-up leaving one parliamentarian nursing a bloodied nose. Shocking!

8 days to the election

So, I am still rooting for change. And I’m going to be voting for the one person who, for me, represents an agent for change and that’s Nick Clegg. [Note to self: look up who my local LibDem candidate is and pray that he doesn’t wear socks with sandals!]

Diary of a Floating Voter: Proportional Representation.

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:41:00 +0000

Shock! Horror! This weekend’s poll by YouGov for the ‘Sun’ newspaper puts the Liberal Democrats ahead for the first time since polling began! City AM newspaper writes “This has the potential to turn into a cataclysmic event and change politics for ever. There would be a hung Parliament, a Labour-Liberal coalition with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister with Nick Clegg’s support, in return for a full proportional representation parliamentary system”.

Proportional representation (PR) - yes, that’s exactly what I want. PR is described in Wikipedia as “a type of voting system aimed at securing a close match between the percentage of votes that groups of candidates obtain in elections, and the percentage of seats they receive” rather than the “first past the post” system we currently have. Critics of proportional representation argue that it is administratively cumbersome, unconstitutional and complicated – thus confusing voters: it can be expensive and leads to legislative gridlock and unstable coalitions thus reducing the power of government and lengthening the process of passing new legislation. Interestingly, critics also say that PR encourages political extremism as smaller parties get the same share of ‘voice’ as larger parties.

As an ethnic, female immigrant all I can say is “proportional representation – bring it on”. I want a coalition government that spends more time discussing and cogitating before passing bills – at the moment commercial ‘lobbying’ means that richer parties are having undue sway on both the House of Parliament and the House of Lords - the Digital Economy Act is a good example of that. If it takes longer to pass bills, that is good too. Britain is already a “nanny state” burdening us all with seemingly endless bureaucracy. If, in the future, it takes ten times as long to put this bureaucracy in place…that’s a good thing, in my opinion.

Finally, I want PR so that my voice is heard and is represented. Women, ethnic minorities, the disabled are all badly served by major political parties. Little has been done to encourage change on these issues. The current nightmare of PPC selection means the chances of being selected are remote and the chances of actually winning are nigh on impossible – this is why Britain currently does not have a single Asian woman MP. If PR allows smaller parties and independents to have a greater share of ‘voice, then this will encourage many into Government in the future. As for encouraging extremism – surely extremism is created when there is no reasoned or informed debate, no middle ground?

18 days to the election

If I were voting today, it would still be the Liberal Democrats. I want proportional representation and I am willing to vote for any party that is going to make that happen.

One brownie point to The Liberal Democrats party for sending me an excerpt of their manifesto on 'Liberal Democrat Policies for Racial Equality' - music to my ears!

Diary of a Floating Voter: Clegg for PM?

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:19:00 +0000

I was enervated by the 90-minute live TV Election Debate tonight – it is the first time my interest in the UK General Election has been raised to this level. And the reason? Well, leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg gave a blistering performance: friendly, knowledgeable, straight-talking and warm in comparison to the slight over-rehearsed wooden performance of David Cameron and the frankly dithering tone of Gordon Brown. I finally caught sight of what three-party politics could look like. And I think it might actually work.

The debate was all a little bit Harry Potter with Ron (Brown) and Hermione (Cameron) bickering about who had the better magic manifesto while the audience was busy listening to Harry’s (Clegg) dream of a better future after he’d seen off Voldemort (Budget Deficit) by scrapping Trident. Well, OK, the analogy is a little contrived….but…you get the idea.

Even though the other two parties had the thicker manifestos, Clegg managed to bury some great ideas in mind. He lamented the ‘conveyor belt’ of crime and described prisons as ‘over-crowded colleges of crime’. He talking about ‘regionalising immigration’ to where its most needed rather than introducing a blanket cap and he was the only one to mention the need for creativity and freedom in education. It got so bad, that at one point Brown and Cameron were both agreeing with Nick Clegg to such a degree that he retorted “The more they (Brown & Cameron) attack each other, the more they sound the same”! Great Stuff!

Cameron had the better physical position (being in the middle) which he squandered taking cheap shots at the Department of Children, Schools and Families calling it the ‘Department of Curtains and Soft Furnishings’ and talking about their prayer and massage rooms, bleating on about how Labour has had thirteen years to fix things and proposing reform and less bureaucracy at every turn. Cameron’s only real strength was the suggestion of a Fundamental Defence Review when it came to the funding of our Armed Forces and the war in Afghanistan.

I am suddenly looking forward to the next two televised debates!

22 days to the election

If I were voting today, it would still definitely be the Liberal Democrats – Ace performance by their Leader tonight. History has already been made as we are now talking about three real leaders in the context of the UK General Election.

Diary of a Floating Voter: Too far right?

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:47:00 +0000

The Conservative Party launched its political manifesto yesterday (13 April 2010) - a hard-back book bound in a sombre blue - amidst much fanfare at the former Battersea Power Station in London. Tory leader David Cameron issued an “Invitation To Join The Government of Britain” to the public. Yeah, right!

The manifesto hopes to return power to ordinary individuals allowing them to set-up their own schools, elect their own police chiefs and sack their local MP is necessary. Whilst, laudable, I can’t help thinking that this is expecting a lot from the hard-working public – do we really have time to do all this? And aren’t we paying and electing leaders to do just that for us? It seems we already have several layers of Government: European MEPs, Peers, MPs and Local Councillors. On top of that we have devolved government in Wales and Scotland and a raft of agencies (like Regional Delivery Authorities) to rollout initiatives. I thought the Conservative Party was all about reducing all this bureaucracy?

The Conservative Manifesto does however tackle the issue of reducing the debt crisis – so one brownie point to them.

23 days to the election

If I were voting today, it would still be the Liberal Democrats. Coalition government might bring greater scrutiny to public spending and ideologically move politics to the centre. The LibDems also issued their embargoed manifesto last night – the official launch is today, so perhaps my opinion might have changed by tomorrow?

Diary of a Floating Voter: Too far left?

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:12:00 +0000

By Lopa Patel, 13th April 2010 -

Labour launched its political manifesto yesterday with Gordon Brown promising a lot more of the same with a lot less money (so how does that work then?). Education, Health and Public Sector reform were the headlines. Personally I am a little nonplussed. We’ve poured billions of pounds into Education, the NHS and Public Sector – have we had the best return-on-investment? I think not. Perhaps what is needed is less money and less meddling…allowing creative ideas to emerge.

If all the billions that have been invested in education, health and the public sector had been invested in manufacturing instead, we certainly would not be in the mess we’re in now. And if the billions spent on propping up banks had been invested in the newly-emerging digital economy, perhaps the UK would have become epicenter of the digital world. Nirvana!

24 days to the election

If I were voting today, it would still be the Liberal Democrats. Coalition government might bring greater scrutiny to public spending and ideologically move politics to the centre.

Diary of a Floating Voter: Jane Austen to decide!

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:13:00 +0000

In her classic novel ‘Pride & Prejudice’, Jane Austen says of her two leading male protagonists (Mr Darcy & Mr Wickham) “There is but such a quantity of merit between them: just enough to make one good sort of man. One has all the goodness and the other all the appearance of it!” I can’t help thinking that Austen could be speaking of our two main political leaders: Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Of course, Austen has a third character, the slightly ridiculous Mr Collins who has the good fortune to marry the eminently sensible Charlotte Lucas and so ensure his elevation to become a peace-broker in the future. Sounds a little like the leading characters in the UK General Election 2010, doesn’t it? So I’ve decided to let an Austen-like approach decide how I’m going to vote on 6^th May 2010.

Firstly, let me declare that I am one of the “floating voters” out there. Partially engaged (as I often have to write about policies) and partially disengaged (well…its all so boring, isn’t it?). One thing is clear. I will exercise my right to vote. As an immigrant I value this right the most - many Britons forget this very fundamental right to freedom, the democratic right to vote. You have to register by 20^th April 2010 to vote so this leaves you about a week to get your act together.

25 days to the election

If I were voting today, I’d vote for the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg – genuine person, straight talking and friendly has the added advantage of a very sensible wife who has decided to focus on earning a crust rather than adding to his PR campaign – great stuff! Vince Cable would also make a great chancellor – well certainly better than Alistair Darling (current incumbent) and George Osborne (Shadow Chancellor). In the event of a hung parliament, Clegg may look to install Vince Cable as the Chancellor, although I’m not really sure how well this would work in practice.

LATWF 2010 – Ten Random Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:44:00 +0000

Having had the privilege to attend the Learning & Technology World Forum 2010 (11-13 January 2010) – one of largest gatherings of education and skills ministers in the world – I'm listing here my ten random thoughts about the event. Firstly, I do feel it is privilege to attend seeing as I am not an educator or a minister for any government! I chose to attend the ministerial strand in order to understand what plans countries have for imbedding technology at the heart of their country’s education system.

So, what I learn?

Of the 80 countries attending, every delegation had a good idea of where they were in terms of ICT for Education. On a scale of 1 to 100, Hungary is at about 77%, Yemen is at about 25% and Namibia at less than 5% (in their own "rough" estimation). Perhaps a Global Indicator of the subject would be useful for all? At least you can gauge where you started, where you are and where you can get to with the budget you have.

Most countries are rightfully proud of their achievements on technology and, more importantly, see it as the primary wealth generator for the future. Nobody is going to be left behind – technology and what you can do with it is for EVERYONE.

ICT in education is a global race and most developed countries are willing to invest a high proportion of GDP into the area. Could education overtake healthcare, transport and infrastructure as the single biggest investment?

The lesser developed countries have greater basic challenges in adopting ICT for education like lack of electricity, books and teachers, but also the BIG ADVANTAGE of being able to "leap frog" ahead of those of still stuck with slow dial-up connectivity and heavy desktop machines. Speaker Dr Laurence Johnson of the New Media Consortium, in his presentation, showed a photo of a mobile phone mast on a trailer – many countries without hard-wire infrastructure are using just such tools to create instant Wifi connectivity in their country.

Everyone knows that kids learn faster with ICT than without it. Dan Lea, an award-winning UK school teacher had let his primary-age students loose with a video camera and they’d made a film for LATWF attendees.

ICT initiates, encourages and builds creativity. The 'Be Very afraid' exhibition allowed secondary school kids to show just how creative they were.

The future is NOW. In the twentieth century one might have considered the future to be some 15-25 years hence, in the early twenty-first century the future was some 5-10 years hence, nowadays the future is 1-3 years hence!

The ‘Beyond Current Horizons’ presentation to help attendees ‘Prepare for the future in school age education’ was one of the most fascinating. Suggestions like ‘open’, ‘flexible’, ‘unstructured’, ‘networked’, ‘collaborative’, ‘personalised learning’ and ‘interactive’ were being directed at a group of people, who by the nature of their work, inhabit the orderly, structured, controlled and less flexible world of government!

The future is mobile: handheld yes, but also the ability of humans to interact with machines will be mobile – the rise of touch screens has already seen greater interaction at bus stations, train stations, information kiosks etc Wearable technology, direct implantation of chips into the brain and other technological advancements will see the creation of new jobs for the future generation.

London is the best place for International Ministerial conferences, apart from having great venues, a fantastic transport network and all the grandeur of Britain’s finest builds like Lancaster House, Royal Horse Guards and of course, the House of Commons, House of Lords and the former London County Hall, interspersed with attractions like Westminster Abbey, The London Eye, Buckingham Palace and the Thames. To come to London for the very first time and get the chance to visit all these places, as one Minister’s aide did, that is truly awesome. Perhaps London is as inspiring as ICT?!

ICT – Information Communications & Technology
GDP – Gross Domestic Product

Female Power: We Did It!.... Really?

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:54:00 +0000

The ‘Economist’ magazine (Jan 2nd – 8th, 2010) features an excellent article on ‘Female Power’ and what happens when women are over half the workforce, as will be the case in the USA shortly. As expected, the ‘Economist’ article was well-balanced, giving an overview of the situation in the USA, Europe and Asia. Although it concluded that there was a case for optimism with women “taking a sledgehammer to the remaining glass ceilings”, I couldn’t help thinking that we need more ‘last step’ initiatives to help propel women into the boardroom.

The Good News

Women made up 49.9% of the workforce in the USA (October 2009)
Women make up the majority of professional workers (51% in the USA)
Women attain more than 60% of University degrees in the USA and Europe.
The shift from manufacturing to service-led economies means there is a growing demand for women’s labour (“war for talent”).
Increasing women’s participation in the Labour market boosts the GDP (Goldman Sachs).
Home-working and flexible-working are increasingly fashionable in the labour market.
Entrepreneurial women now employ more people than the largest 500 American companies combined.
Low cost state intervention in terms of school opening hours and after-school clubs is effective.

The Bad News

Educationally, women lag behind men in subjects like engineering and computer science.
Women are paid significantly less than men on average
Women are still forced to choose between motherhood and careers.
High cost of childcare arrangements means children are paying the price.
State intervention (like in Norway & Sweden) can be counter productive with more women ending up working in the public sector than the private sector. (75% of Swedish women work in the public sector).
Women are severely under-represented at the top of organisations:
Only 2% of bosses of America’s Fortune 500 are women
Only 5 of bosses of the UK’s FTSE 100 companies are women
Fewer than 13% of America’s Board members are women

So what would I like to see?

I would ask for the state intervention where it is low-cost and offers everyone, regardless of their profession and income status, the same chance – e.g. extending school opening hours, lessening the lengthy summer breaks and offering more supervised after-school places for every child.
I would ask for more state-supported childcare places and tax breaks for child carers.
Improvement in standards and regulation of the child care industry.
Greater encouragement of women to take-up STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) careers
Highlighting and show-casing of flexible working patterns and tax incentives for greater business take-up of such practices
Greater emphasis on female entrepreneurship by industry bodies and development agencies (e.g. women-only seed funds, more women bank managers, female mentors, women only training and business coaching services etc)
Statutory affirmative action for greater female representation for the public sector and larger companies, i.e. those most likely to afford such measures, in the next 10-20 year period
More outsourcing of public sector contracts to control the growth of the public sector and encourage entrepreneurship.
More funding of ‘last step’ initiatives to help propel women into the boardroom.
Mentoring and coaching of senior women so they can create a legacy framework for women who come after them.

I am pleased to say that 2010 will see a lot of these initiatives being launched, so hopefully my 2011 list will be a little shorter.

References:

We did it! The rich world’s quiet revolution: women are gradually taking over the workplace

At a time when the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15174489

Female power: Across the rich world more women are working than ever before. Coping with this change will be one of the great challenges of the coming decades

The economic empowerment of women across the rich world is one of the most remarkable revolutions of the past 50 years. It is remarkable because of the extent of the change: millions of people who were once dependent on men have taken control of their own economic fates.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15174418

Womenomics: Feminist management theorists are flirting with some dangerous arguments

The late Paul Samuelson once quipped that “women are just men with less money”. As a father of six, he might have added something about women’s role in the reproduction of the species. But his aphorism is about as good a one-sentence summary of classical feminism as you can get.

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15172746

Loving the Evian 'Roller Babies' Ad

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:51:00 +0000

I absolutely love the ‘roller babies’ advert for Evian spring water which features babies on roller skates dancing hip-hop grooves to the ‘Rapper’s Delight’. The advert first aired in the UK in July, but I’ve only managed to catch it now (January 2010). The advert was created by BETC Euro RSCG who played upon the earlier water babies campaign and used a shed-load of animation trickery to bring us these break-dancing, roller blading bundles of fun.

Evian also created a special website where you can catch backstage interviews with the cast (i.e. the babies!) and grainy, home-cam casting videos. Brilliant!

Evian Roller Babies Advert:

Evian Roller Babies Backstage Interview:

Visit www.evianliveyoung.com for further details of this campaign.

International Year of Biodiversity – My Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:30:00 +0000

I am really bad at sticking to New Year Resolutions - particularly any that involve losing weight, taking more exercise or drinking less - so this year, as 2010 has been designated the International Year of Biodiversity, I have decided to explore the subject in my own way.

I plan to:

Identify all the green vegetables in the “Indian shop”.
Learn to cook and eat at least 3 “new” vegetable dishes.
Create 2010 Desktop wallpapers with my pictures of plants.
Create eGreetings cards with the rest of my plant pictures.
Volunteer my time to do some biodiversity work.

And, of course, the plan is to share my lessons with you all. Suggestions for which three new vegetable dishes you’d like me to learn to cook are welcome – the list currently stands at (apologies I don’t know the English words for these vegetables yet): Turia, Karela, Papdi Oondhiu, Suran and Kankoda.

PS. The picture above left is of fresh methi (fenugreek leaves).

2010 - International Year of Biodiversity

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:54:00 +0000

The United National General Assembly has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity. Events across the world will highlight the loss of biodiversity, which is estimated to be as high as 100 times the natural rate as a result of human activities, and expected to rise further as a result of the impacts of climate change.

Key issues that will be under discussion during the International Year of Biodiversity include:

why is biodiversity so crucial to life on earth for food, wealth and wellbeing
what the consequences will be to vital natural services such as providing clean water& soil
celebrating the sung, and unsung, heroes and heroines saving biodiversity
how world leaders will respond to the challenge when they meet in October 2010 inNagoya?
how to get involved and help protect biodiversity

22nd May 2010 has been designated as International Biodiversity Day and October 2010 will see the fifth meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Nagoya, Japan where governments will set new targets and steps needed to address biodiversity loss. It has been widely acknowledged that the original targets set after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 have not yet been met.

Further Information can be found at www.biodiversityislife.net

Becta - the answer to UK entrepreneurship crisis?

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:29:00 +0000

As we celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week (16-22 November 2009) - amid the hyperbole of how if just one in ten aspiring entrepreneurs in the UK set up their own business, 647,000 businesses would be created, potentially employing 1.1 million people* - one minor question that has been overlooked is just “who are these future entrepreneurs”? Clearly, IT and the digital sector are going to account for a major proportion of the new ventures given the pervasive nature of technology in business. And yet British presence in the technology game is lamentable and many cite a UK “entrepreneurship crisis” in the digital sector. Perhaps the only ray of hope is Becta, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, our one key advantage in the trillion dollar technological global marketplace.

I have to declare an interest here – I am a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Becta – but given the fact that I do not receive remuneration for my role, I feel perfectly reconciled to defending it. I only took on the role because I fervently believe that Britain needs to “raise its game” in the IT sector and that it needs to start with school-age children. As a nation, we are great at using technology, now we need to start innovating with it so that we can claim our rightful share of the IT marketplace that is driven by the USA and more recently by the tiger economies of China and India. IT is a young industry filled with young people who are at this very moment “in the right place at the right time” and it is our 11-years olds that are most likely to succeed for us in the next few decades.

Tech Entrepreneurs need 10,000 hours to perfect their skills

In his book ‘Outliers: The Secret of Success’ Malcolm Gladwell assesses that factors needed to ensure success. Can we create the environment needed to ensure that the stars of the future find themselves to be in “the right place at the right time”, Gladwell asks. His profiles of Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and Bill Joy, Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems, are illuminating. Essentially both men are brilliant, but according to Gladwell, genius isn’t enough. Both had unrivalled access to technology at a time when computer programming was costly and indecipherable: Gates had a mothers club that bought a computer for his school in 1968 and Joy found a backdoor to free computer time at the University of Michigan in 1971. The result was that Gates and Joy both had unfettered access to technology and spent the golden ‘10,000’ hours perfecting their craft - long before they set up Microsoft (turnover $58 billion in 2009) and Sun Microsystems (turnover $11.4 billion in 2009).

So where is the unfettered computer access for British children? Where are the British equivalents of Bill Gates and Bill Joy?

The answer is that we need to nurture them. We need to provide good quality ICT infrastructure in schools, set standards for support and delivery, showcase the best examples of work for other children to emulate; we need to train the teachers in ICT use, inspire and engage parents, applaud those achieving high standards, share and export our best practices and we need to give unfettered access to children via free laptops for those who are unlikely to be able afford their own whilst also keeping all kids safe online.

And who is doing all this? The answer is Becta.

It’s successes are that:

- Becta has created a ‘Self-Review Framework’ (a survey) that each school can use to work out what stage its at and what it needs to do to become an ICT-excellence school. Currently 16,372 schools (77%) have used this free tool and 25% are deemed to be using technology really well.

- 90% of local authorities use Becta frameworks when purchasing technology for schools. - Becta has created the ICT mark to recognise and applaud those that can achieve its standards.

- Becta works with suppliers (corporate, independents, SaaS and open source developers) to ensure that effective ICT tools are being used.

- Becta evaluates and sets standards for ICT equipment and services supplied to schools, colleges and FE bodies. It’s ICT procurement program saves the UK £250 million a year.

- An estimated £1 billion has been saved in teachers’ time in three years from 2005 - 2008 in efficiency gains from using technology for everything from online attendance records to lesson planning.

- Becta’s ‘Home Access’ program is set to roll out in 2010 and will offer a free laptop to children where the household is unlikely to be able to afford one. 10,000 have already taken up the pilot offer and 270,000 families will benefit by next year.

- Becta’s annual Learning and Technology World Forum shares best practice on IT in the education sector with the world and it showcases Britain’s lead in this arena.

- Becta does all the “boring bits” like setting interoperability standards, undertaking research and providing guidance documents to stop the education sector having to “reinvent the wheel” on ICT issues. Many of Becta’s guidance documents have become the definitive standard-bearer in a complex industry.

Even as business gurus bemoan the lack of availability of funding, or lack of skills and experience among would-be entrepreneurs who themselves moan about lack of support, role models and mentoring, we must not lose sight of the “pipeline” of young entrepreneurs for the future.

Post credit-crunch, it is easy to give in to economic pressures in the current scrutiny on public spending, but we need to bear in mind that revenue generation for the future will come for the new creative industries like IT, video gaming and digital media. Where are the future British equivalents of Bill Gates (Microsoft), Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Robin Li & Eric Xu (Baidu), Narayana Murthy (Infosys), Azim Premji (Wipro) and S Ramadorai (Tata Consulting Services) going to come from – Britain or abroad?

* Figures released 17 November 2009 by Enterprise UK.

Stilettos at work – what’s all the fuss about?

noreply@blogger.com (Lopa Patel) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:53:00 +0000

Last week the TUC Congress passed a resolutions that read “Congress believes that high heels may look glamorous on the Hollywood catwalks but are completely inappropriate for the day-to-day working environment”. The motion was tabled by the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists who are concerned about the £10million a year cost to the NHS for bunion correction! This little snippet has raised hysterical headlines in many of the major newspapers in the country and polarised commentators (see below).

Lorraine Jones from the Society of the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists, said it was 'discriminatory' that women shop workers, cabin crew and other employees had to wear high heels as part of a dress code, but not men. Ms Jones, a practising podiatrist said: "This is not a trivial problem. Two million working days are lost every year through lower limb and foot-related problems. Two million working days equates to £300 million contribution to the economy”

“We are not trying to ban high heels - they are good for glamming up but they are not good for the workplace. Women should have a choice of wearing healthier, more comfortable shoes” she added.

The TUC motion was passed unanimously - shame that the same could not be done for equal pay issues.

Stilettos - what is all the fuss about?

Yes, most women know that high heels are murder on the feet and they’ll probably regret wearing them in their old age, but is this really a workplace issue worthy of a resolution at a Union congress? Consider, for example the fact that sedentary lifestyles created in workplaces like offices and call centres may be a major cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. And isn’t Britain currently experiencing the highest levels of obesity in generations? I’m pretty sure some of these people are office workers.

Then there is the lack of training in using dangerous equipment like an office kettle, electronic staplers, document printers the size of houses, guillotines and, of course, the ubiquitous computer. Sitting in front of one for eight hours a day doesn’t do much for one’s eyesight and back. Isn’t chronic back pain one of the most common reasons for employee illness?

Of course, there is always work-related stress, high blood pressure and alcoholism. Stress can also lead to excessive smoking, drug taking, depression and a host of other illnesses. In short, there are plenty of health issues that the TUC could be considering - 6-inch stiletto heels are really the least of their worries.

Admittedly if you work in construction or as a window cleaner you might not want to wear your Manolos to work and many employers have had to include a clause in employee contracts preventing staff from high heels….but this is because of the specialist equipment and warehouse conditions at work premises. I am not sure if such a clause is even legal, but it does concentrate the mind of ‘newbies’ on how quickly they can trip up on loose strapping tape and perforated grills, and, more importantly, what damage it would do to their shoes! But in and office surely there would be no issues about high heels. Most offices are carpeted and the sum total of movement is usually between a carpeted office to carpeted meeting room.

Is this equality gone completely mad?

Women’s groups and feminists have grasped the issue as one of sexism. The TUC and Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists as one of health and safety and the rest of us…perhaps we just chalk it up to the “silly season”.

Those who don’t wear high heels clearly don’t know the immediate feeling of empowerment you get; the change in your gait as you sashay along the corridor of power, not to mention the added inches to one’s height and ego. And finally, let’s not forget that high heels are all about being sexy. Just as Carrie (in ‘Sex and City’) gushes over the latest Jimmy Choos (cockney rhyming slang for shoes?) and begs a mugger not to take her Manolo Blahniks, women’s psyches are very much wrapped up with footwear. Many women I know, who are rational, successful, and ‘normal’ often start by thinking of which shoes they want to wear and then work up to the outfit that’ll match!

Work Life is hard enough – people telling us what to wear and what not to wear, what we can and can’t do, what we can earn and what we can’t, whether we can progress up the career ladder or not, whether we should just give it all up if pregnant and whether we’ll ever make to the top or not – I say, just leave us alone to decide about the stilettos issue for ourselves.

Newspaper stories on the TUC 'Stilettos' issues:
Daggers drawn over stilettos [The Independent, 16 September 2009]
Unions rally to defend workers against the common foe: killer heels [The Times, 16 September 2009]
High heel ban plan shock [The Sun, 16 September 2009]
Women defend right to wear heels as 'kill joy' union bosses condemn stilettos in the workplace[The Daily Mail, 16 September 2009]
Banning heels is the height of stupidity [London Evening Standard, 17 September 2009]