The 10th EBU General Assembly
The Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow, London
October 26-28 2015
Kevin Carey, Chair, RNIB
Keynote Speech, Making Sense of a Turbulent World:
Politics and Inclusion in the 21st Century
When we met four years ago in Fredericia, the writing was surely on the
wall but perhaps the paint wasn't quite dry. It is now. You have just heard
about the problem areas which confront us as we seek to make sense of
a turbulent world. Let me, by way of reminder, list the major factors:
First, an increase in the incidence of childhood blindness through better
birth survival and an increase in poverty through poverty exacerbated by
welfare cuts and immigration.
Secondly, a paradigm shift in the jobs market from the public sector and
large corporates to the private sector and the SME.
Thirdly, increased automation, digital self-service and the emergence of
a global market in skills such as physiotherapy.
Fourthly, an increase in the number of older blind people because of an
extended trend of longevity.
And, finally, a decrease almost everywhere in the level of public sector
expenditure.
Before I look at some possible solutions to these problems, I want to
start with six guiding principles; we must:
 Arrive at a rational like-for-like cost of all the goods and services
we provide.
 Rank reach over elite services.
 Rank simplicity over complexity.
 Rank customer preference over producer preference.
 Compare the cost of advocacy with the cost and benefits of
problem solving.
 Advocate expenditure on blind and partially sighted people which
puts them on a par with their sighted peers.
If we adopt these six principles it is immediately obvious how much we
will have to change.
Most European organisations of and for the blind were established to
provide education for what has turned out to be a blind intellectual elite
receiving highly specialised, high unit cost services such as special
residential schools, personal braille transcription and intensive career
development and job placement. Given the disadvantage we all feel in
being blind or partially sighted I still think it is fair to say that the 'baby
boomer' generation - people like me - have lived in an age of privilege.
The demographics which I have briefly mentioned mean that if we are to
be just to all people with severe sight impairment we must change our
spending priorities.
But how can we do this if we do not know how much things cost? Unless
we are able to compare the costs of supplying competing goods and
services we will never be in a proper position to establish rational
priorities. It is important to say that I am not advocating that all
organisations should always opt for supplying the goods and services
with the lowest unit cost, but I am saying that if organisations choose to
fund goods and services which are high unit cost, then they should do
this in the full knowledge of what they are doing.
Let me now turn to possible solutions to our problems, referring to these
six principles. I will adopt a chronological approach:
Education. Although the education of blind and partially sighted children
is the primary concern of ICEVI, I think I should make two comments:
first, although mainstreaming should be the default for education, most
countries have not come to terms with how we handle this strategy.
Secondly, the lack of early vocational education puts unrealistic pressure
on transition services, particularly in respect of teenagers with multiple
disabilities.
Employment. I now turn to the central problem of employment; and the
first thing that we must acknowledge is that our strategy of employment
placement was relatively unsuccessful even during periods of economic
boom. There are exceptions, particularly in countries with very high tax
rates and intensive professional services but, by and large, job
placement has been a relative failure; and now the ground is being cut
from under our feet:
First, in almost all the countries of Europe, whether they are former
Eastern Bloc command economies or Western democratic states, the
size of the public sector is falling and will continue to fall. The zenith of
the public sector coincided with industrialisation conflicts in Western
Europe culminating in the two great wars, a period roughly dating from
the fall of the Bastille in 1789 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and
the great surprise is that its decline after the Second World War was so
slow; but the inevitable was accelerated by the financial crisis of 2008
and is likely to continue, prompted in part by a general public cynicism
about politicians which is actually a proxy for recognising their increasing
impotence in the face of globalisation. The financial stress of maintaining
growing state expenditure simultaneously with a static tax base was
great enough in the early years of this Century but as health and pension
costs have continued to rise, most governments have had to resort to
borrowing. And if we did not know this at the beginning of this Century,
we know it now: the capacity to borrow is rapidly running out.
Secondly, at the same time, the planet is witnessing an increase in the
power of global corporations but they are not going to be based in
Europe because of our comparatively over-regulated labour market and
our comparatively heavily regulated financial sector. If nothing changes,
Europe is destined to be the home of sales offices for American,
Chinese, Indian, South Korean and Japanese major corporates. The
reason why the United States can maintain its global position in spite of
the tightest financial regulation in the capitalist sphere, is that it has the
most liberal immigration policy and can sweep up the world's talent. For
as far ahead as we can see, America will be the first mover with China,
India, South Korea and Japan as secondary movers in mass
manufacture; but innovation will still command the highest return on
investment. Europe simply lacks a credible economic strategy, impaired
by inflexible labour markets and equivocation over immigration and skills
development. The ad hoc alternative now growing up is a labour market
increasingly dependent on SMEs which are always going to be wary of
employing people with impairments not only because of a natural caution
but also because SMEs require much more job flexibility than major
corporates where the division of labour is more viable.
Thirdly, in spite of an increasing number of low paid jobs at the 'bottom'
of the market in retail and catering, automation is removing millions of
jobs through digital systems and the online purchasing of goods and
services.
Finally, at the same time, there is an increasingly global market for
labour in spite of defensive immigration policies: as we have already
noted, there is global competition at the 'bottom' of the market but this
also occurs at the top; it is much cheaper, for example, for Europe to
import South Asian medical personnel than pay for their indigenous
training. And here we have to be careful to get our analysis right: just
because immigrants - asylum seekers, refugees or those seeking a
better life - look wretched when they arrive, this does not mean that they
are unskilled; just the opposite. It's bright people who try to improve their
lot and these people will permeate our market, no matter how high the
fences.
It is immediately obvious, therefore, that relying on quotas and job
placement are no longer as effective as they were and we will have to
consider other strategies. Referring to my six principles it would be
helpful, for example, to compare the cost of a job placement with the cost
of providing a job seeker with enough capital to invest in an SME, or the
comparative cost of an employment placement service with the cost of
establishing SMEs with a majority of blind and partially sighted workers.
The critical criterion here is to select tasks which are relatively repetitive
but not capable of automation. My proposal that blind people should be
trained to be wine and whiskey tasters is not a joke!
Another broad area of concern is the increasing tendency to create
portfolio employment with a number of part-time occupations which
evolve over time. Many of these rely upon self-publishing, creative
design and the development of the skills to provide personal services. As
many of these occupations rely upon minor variations on given themes
they fulfil the criterion above of being relatively repetitive but not capable
of automation but our education and rehabilitation services are just not
equipped for this fluid employment ecology. We are still obsessed with
data access and processing rather than publishing. We rarely teach our
children how to touch objects, let alone how to appreciate good design.
And our tendency to want to control the education process in the name
of 'protecting' the child means that we shut off the often serendipitous
route to creativity. And because we rank academic over social skills we
disadvantage those who might become involved in supplying personal
services.
To sum up, then. We cannot continue to design our transitional,
rehabilitation and employment services in isolation from the evolving jobs
market. We may need to use our funding to solve problems instead of
lobbying others to solve them; and we will certainly need to be less rigid
in our approach.
I now turn to social services where the most obvious factor is
demographic. Longevity is the major factor in the massively increasing
number of blind and partially sighted people in the population and the
numbers are either so great or are set to be so great that the only
possible solution, given the public sector expenditure profile, is
volunteering. Some newly blinded older people may need professional
counselling or other intensive support services but the vast majority
suffer from loneliness and require a large number of small services which
can be provided by friends, neighbours and volunteers. Only a few
organisations in Europe will be able to match the increased number of
blind people with professional welfare services. Related to this, I should
just mention in passing the costs of multiple cultures and multiple
languages in a national context because plurality increases unit costs.
But that is only the beginning. Although the crisis has been brewing for
some time, this year will be remembered most in Europe as the year
when the migration of people far exceeded our political, if not our
economic, capacity for dealing with it. Which, of course, begs the deeper
question of whether it can be "dealt with" in a conventional way. In
history mass movements of people have been frequent and inexorable.
In my view, this situation simply illustrates that we can't have the benefits
of globalisation without the costs. And this illustrates a further point.
There has to come a time when we accept that people should exercise
power over organisations which exist for them rather than confining
themselves to the power dynamic of the benefactor and the beneficiary.
Which leads me naturally to organisation and governance. Unless we are
prepared to adopt a rational approach to the demographics of blindness
we will continue to maintain organisations run by the blindness elite for
the blindness elite. We all need to examine who we work with and how
we work with them. Do we think of the people we work with as clients,
service users or beneficiaries where we operate a power dynamic which
gives the producer the power over the consumer, or do we think of a
customer relationship where the consumer has leverage over the
producer? Do we think that it is enough to organise ourselves so that the
resources devoted to blindness are allocated by relatively rich, white, late
middle aged males to their own kind?
Finally - and relating to the intriguing title for this conference - we need to
develop the capacity to deal with turbulence without abandoning
business as usual; indeed, the proper approach here is to regard
turbulence not as an occasional diversion from a plan but as normative.
The price we pay for the benefits of globalisation is chronic turbulence. If
national sovereignty was not a myth fifty years ago - and I think it was,
even then - it is certainly a myth now. But, conversely, the reaction to
globalisation by many countries has been irrational particularism. Never
has there been more need to regional and global co-operation; never has
there been a time in the history of the EBU when it has been most
needed; but if we are to succeed we must be honest, rational and
forensic. The question we must answer in the next three days is whether
we are, or are capable, of living up to the challenge.