A short letter to my MP

Yesterday the prime minister called MPs who are not convinced by his proposal to bomb Syria "terrorist sympathisers".  In so doing he has applied the same label to millions of people in the UK who are also unconvinced.  I ask you to request that he withdraw this slur on the character of a large part of the British people.

Letter to my MP, trying not to be just angry

I share the concern voiced in many quarters that proposed reductions in tax credits are unfair and will have serious negative effects on a large number of working people.  When even the Sun raises its voice in opposition the government surely cannot ignore the many objections raised.

When Gordon Brown introduced tax credits it was against a background of punishingly low wages.  (I knew a security guard who worked a 72-hour continuously on-duty weekend shift to be not a very rich man at all.)  And, so that employers did not simply leave it to the government to pay their workforce, the minimum wage came in alongside.

Over the years since then the appalling administration of tax credits has improved, and real time information has made it far more workable, but the amount paid out under this heading has increased significantly, as ministers of your government never tire of reminding us.  Partly it was government policy to increase coverage, but much of the difference may be due to changes in the way the British economy works, with employers increasingly relying on the state to keep their workers alive despite the original intentions.

I therefore agree that a rebalancing is desirable, with employers becoming responsible for a greater proportion of wages paid.  Apart from anything else it would bring a greater degree of honesty to the world of employment.

The chancellor's declared intention to raise the minimum wage significantly over the next five years is therefore welcome, though his decision to restrict this rate to workers of 25 and above is unreasonable.  Such a series of pay rises could sensibly be matched by reductions in tax credits, so that workers in a particular low-paid position in 2020 would be in effectively the same position as those in 2015, but with employers taking a greater responsibility for their earnings.

The chancellor's decision to label this increased minimum wage a "national living wage" is unfortunate and misleading since, as you will know, the Living Wage Foundation's 2015 pay rate is much higher than the proposed "national living wage" for April 2016 and their 2015 London rate is already around the level that Mr Osborne has indicated for his country-wide hourly rate in 2020.

Most disturbing, however, is that the plan is not to withdraw tax credit payments in parallel with this healthy upward nudge in minimum pay rates.  Instead, the entire reduction is to be done in one go, and in year 1.  Many people, including obviously select committee chairs, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation (now headed by Lord Willetts, who knows the insides of a Conservative-led government) have pointed out the significant reductions in income that these cuts represent for millions of working people at the lower end of the earning range.  

How these developments will fit in with other government policies will be interesting to observe.  The ongoing (under-25) minimum wage, for example, is now the basis for a continuously rising income tax personal allowance.  Also, with public sector pay intended to be held to minimal increases over coming years what effect will the "national living wage" have on those at the bottom of government-controlled pay scales?

The Living Wage Foundation is expected to announce its updated Living Wage within the next few weeks, with further announcements in subsequent years.  Since the calculation takes account of tax credits, it can be expected to jump significantly above the current figures.  I have seen several ministers over the last year or so, proudly announcing that their department pays no member of staff less than the current Living Wage.  Will we be seeing a succession of ministers proclaiming their determination to continue to keep up with the real Living Wage, or will things go quiet?

I hope that you will consider my letter and, no doubt, many others and use your good offices to help convince the chancellor that it is not too late to revise his policy so as to avoid the widespread suffering which at present seems unavoidable.

My memory may be unreliable, but that's not because it exists

Michio Kaku was on the radio this morning with that old chestnut, the idea of storing our memories electronically and recalling them at a later time.  He talked about being able to converse with a person long dead, and looked forward to maintaining a Library of Souls.

Now, I have no doubt at all that we can look forward to wonderful advances in observation and analysis of brain function (some but not all of which, Professor Kaku, could be called "thinking"), and that certain structures of brain impulses might be reconstructable from stored representations.  But I'm not convinced that something called "my memory" actually exists.

Michio Kaku has serious credentials in theoretical physics and can be very stimulating when he applies his mind to other areas.  He's a populariser of science but he tends towards the sensational and has been accused of weird mysticism.

I have a memory. It goes something like this.

I'm in a bus, an express bus, from London to somewhere in the north - probably Chorley or Preston, maybe Wigan.  I'm with my girlfriend, but I don't know which one.  And I'm sitting towards the back, on the left of the aisle.

There's nothing visual, except what I can fill in generally about what sitting in a bus is like - no colours, no movement inside, no scenery outside.  It was probably pretty full.

A woman is on the back seat, on the right hand side, with two children, probably both between her and the side window.  One is little - two? three? - and the other is older, a boy (I think) of sevenish.  I think I register them because there's more audible talking in that corner - trying to keep them under control and maybe interested on a long journey.

There's a squeaking of brakes.  It must come from our bus because it happens more than once.  Then there's a squeal from the younger child, and another.  The woman tries to hush him/her but fails.  The squealing continues, then the older one picks it up and starts squealing back.  The woman isn't happy, but eventually (I have no idea how or when) it stops.

The main part of the memory is my thinking and emotions at the time.  I realise that the small child is responding to the brakes, being at an age when sound input is of huge importance and the mind is working to make sense of it and produce answers (I am, or recently have been, a linguistics student at the time).  The older child is certainly responding to the younger, and might possibly have worked out what's going on and that they share a new way to annoy mother.

I'm pleased with myself for identifying these connections, and probably tell my girlfriend.

Also attached to the memory is a doubt, a worry that I've got the wrong end of the stick, that I'm making up the whole analysis out of nothing.

I've told this at some length, because I want to consider what this "memory" is.  The episode has no meaning to me without my pride in a small intellectual achievement.  Without that the bus ride would probably have faded completely, along with hundreds and thousands of others.  On the other hand, if someone said "Remember when you went to X?", other parts of the journey might suddenly come back, with or without the knowledge that those two children were travelling with me.

****

We don't store everything that comes into our eyes, ears etc.  We don't retain every fleeting emotion.  We couldn't, or we'd be full up and useless well before school age.

We select what to see (as is demonstrated beautifully by the Monkey Business Illusion) and we select what we remember (otherwise I'd be able to recall the sound of every keystroke I've used to type this short piece - I'd go mad).  Above all, we reconstruct memories when we retrieve them.  It's not just a matter of pressing Play and giving over body and mind to reliving a certain number of seconds from the past.

My bus memory is a single thing, not a period of time replayed.  I don't remember it as five minutes of nothing much, punctured by a few sounds and a flash of inspiration.

Of course we don't always retain what might be useful in later life, and we also sometimes store more than we ever realise (if somebody gives you the right prompt, you might be able to spout large amounts of what you learned at school, or remember an old friend who hasn't come to mind for decades).

And whether and how we remember something depends on our state at the time.  Am I stressed or relaxed?  Am I with somebody who prompts a memory or someone who should never hear what is suddenly clamouring to be let out?

"Remembering" is a process of construction. The story doesn't always come out the same, and sometimes the process of telling a memory might change what is associated with it, so that it's different next time you tell it (see my feeling of doubt above, which was probably added some years after the day itself).  And sometimes we remember things that didn't happen that way (consider newsman Brian Williams' recent bout of false memory).

How then, Professor Kaku, do you propose to upload, store and reproduce "my memory"?  And how might you converse with something which contains lots of information (or at least data) but has no current sensory and intellectual state and no reason to construct memories for your satisfaction?