Mike Newton is a markets consultant. He previously worked for the Bank of England and in the financial markets.
A couple of weeks ago, I took my final exams to become a Mountain Leaderat the National Outdoor Centre, Plas y Brenin.
The Brenin is west of Betws-y-Coed, tucked under the Snowdon massif. A hotel until 1955, it was acquired using trust money from King George VI, with a mission to develop mountain leadership and skills. It is now funded by Sport England through the DCMS budget.
The atmosphere is a hard-to-define blend of 1980s youth hostel, Oxbridge common room, elite sport and special forces. The walls have historical photographs of frightening-looking climbs, tough expeditions, and even tougher-looking wardens. Backward travels one’s gaze when to accept the challenge of exploration was to embrace existential risk, not Instagram.
The Brenin’s ethos is of self-reliance, best summarized as “We give you the skills – then you work it out.” This cultural DNA sits uneasily with our modern age.
The instructors have the easy confidence of those at the top of their profession. Its graduates, who will go on to lead groups in mountain activities, will not pass out unless they can demonstrate an ability to make consistent good decisions under maximum stress.
The Mountain Leader finals (known as Assessment) involves five days of tramping over Northern Snowdonia carrying around 10kg, in all weathers and hours of the day, always navigating, and under deliberately continuous mental and physical pressure. Grading is constant. It has been compared to doing P Company and A Levels simultaneously, such is the physical and mental load.
An instructor called Will was Course Director: a remarkably able, thoughtful man capable of managing multiple complex problems. Meanwhile Rich, energetic and innovative, oversaw the final exercise that pushed everyone to their limit, and some beyond.
Half the course did not pass. I scraped through, but if not, I could have had no beef about the stringent fairness of the assessment.
Nor could I have moaned about my time being wasted by being asked to do stuff lacking practical application. There was none of the performative box ticking that is an almost compulsory feature of modern corporate and institutional life.
During that exam, I read Emma Duncan’s recent piece on economic policy, advocating strongly for the primacy of top-down leadership in policymaking. I like her writing, and the article offered some useful discussion points. But the more I read, the more unsettled I became.
For I think this country is long past the point of where policy tinkering is sufficient. What’s needed is a massive reboot of its human capital. It is no use trying clever new policy ideas with the wrong bricks being used.
Rebuilding our human capital is a huge ask, and would require action on many fronts. It involves mental and physical reset; it may mean that some personal freedoms are lost, and others greatly expanded.
But I do not believe we can go on as we are. The era of cheap money, which has allowed us to avoid facing up to these issues, is over. Productivity has collapsed, mental health issues are rampant, and social exclusion feels greater than ever. The issues Sir Keith Joseph raised in his 1972 ‘Cycle of Deprivation’ speech are growing, not shrinking.
Meanwhile, divergence between booming minority communities and those stuck as clients of the state threatens social cohesion.
I go to a superb Punjabi barbers at Tipton, typical of the huge number of South Asian owned SMEs that pervade the West Midlands. Real wealth is being created here. Yet for those stuck on welfare, or working in low-productivity jobs (particularly for the state), opportunities to build a future and create a legacy for the children are lacking.
It is also vital that generational tensions are eased – before asset confiscation becomes a serious policy option for younger voters shut out of capital acquisition and home ownership.
We must deliver more for young adults beyond transfer payments and well-meaning platitudes. They are trapped in their own cycle of infantilisation that does little to prepare them either for the ups and down of life, with all its responsibilities and opportunities.
A key part of this human capital rebuild has to be the development of personal resilience, decision-making, and risk-taking. For those in education, this can sit comfortably alongside Rishi Sunak’s commitment to maths and science. Indeed, it may be essential to making that work.
Child resiliency collapsed post-Covid. Many are developmentally delayed; 50 per cent of secondary students are obese. Decision-making capability in young adults has imploded: senior staff at Plas y Brenin are very disturbed that many people are lacking basic skills, even in their late twenties. (This predates the pandemic, too.)
There is an opportunity to teach a generation leadership and participation, allowing them to take back some control over their own lives. And, alongside other initiatives, the mountains can play a substantive role. The policy ask is modest:
- Greater official recognition of the value of mountain leadership. This will energize the voluntary sector, and improve morale in the professional, which has seen significant resignations in recent years and is estimated to be 20 per cent short of qualified mountain leaders;
- The establishment of a five-year programme to train increased numbers of new mountain leaders, funded jointly by DfE and DCMS. Sport England is allocating substantial new resources to glamourous competitive indoor climbing at the expense of leadership and skills courses – this needs to be reconsidered;
- Introduction of a school age qualification offering a T, GCSE, or AS level in mountain leadership.
There are many other potential tweaks. But what no one is asking for is a huge resource transfer, which is unrealistic and will only lead to waste.
Give our best policymakers better human capital, and we can move toward a more participatory society, and break the cycle of deprivation which squanders so much potential.
I am grateful to Dr John Welshman for his thoughts on the issues discussed in this article.
Mike Newton is a markets consultant. He previously worked for the Bank of England and in the financial markets.
A couple of weeks ago, I took my final exams to become a Mountain Leaderat the National Outdoor Centre, Plas y Brenin.
The Brenin is west of Betws-y-Coed, tucked under the Snowdon massif. A hotel until 1955, it was acquired using trust money from King George VI, with a mission to develop mountain leadership and skills. It is now funded by Sport England through the DCMS budget.
The atmosphere is a hard-to-define blend of 1980s youth hostel, Oxbridge common room, elite sport and special forces. The walls have historical photographs of frightening-looking climbs, tough expeditions, and even tougher-looking wardens. Backward travels one’s gaze when to accept the challenge of exploration was to embrace existential risk, not Instagram.
The Brenin’s ethos is of self-reliance, best summarized as “We give you the skills – then you work it out.” This cultural DNA sits uneasily with our modern age.
The instructors have the easy confidence of those at the top of their profession. Its graduates, who will go on to lead groups in mountain activities, will not pass out unless they can demonstrate an ability to make consistent good decisions under maximum stress.
The Mountain Leader finals (known as Assessment) involves five days of tramping over Northern Snowdonia carrying around 10kg, in all weathers and hours of the day, always navigating, and under deliberately continuous mental and physical pressure. Grading is constant. It has been compared to doing P Company and A Levels simultaneously, such is the physical and mental load.
An instructor called Will was Course Director: a remarkably able, thoughtful man capable of managing multiple complex problems. Meanwhile Rich, energetic and innovative, oversaw the final exercise that pushed everyone to their limit, and some beyond.
Half the course did not pass. I scraped through, but if not, I could have had no beef about the stringent fairness of the assessment.
Nor could I have moaned about my time being wasted by being asked to do stuff lacking practical application. There was none of the performative box ticking that is an almost compulsory feature of modern corporate and institutional life.
During that exam, I read Emma Duncan’s recent piece on economic policy, advocating strongly for the primacy of top-down leadership in policymaking. I like her writing, and the article offered some useful discussion points. But the more I read, the more unsettled I became.
For I think this country is long past the point of where policy tinkering is sufficient. What’s needed is a massive reboot of its human capital. It is no use trying clever new policy ideas with the wrong bricks being used.
Rebuilding our human capital is a huge ask, and would require action on many fronts. It involves mental and physical reset; it may mean that some personal freedoms are lost, and others greatly expanded.
But I do not believe we can go on as we are. The era of cheap money, which has allowed us to avoid facing up to these issues, is over. Productivity has collapsed, mental health issues are rampant, and social exclusion feels greater than ever. The issues Sir Keith Joseph raised in his 1972 ‘Cycle of Deprivation’ speech are growing, not shrinking.
Meanwhile, divergence between booming minority communities and those stuck as clients of the state threatens social cohesion.
I go to a superb Punjabi barbers at Tipton, typical of the huge number of South Asian owned SMEs that pervade the West Midlands. Real wealth is being created here. Yet for those stuck on welfare, or working in low-productivity jobs (particularly for the state), opportunities to build a future and create a legacy for the children are lacking.
It is also vital that generational tensions are eased – before asset confiscation becomes a serious policy option for younger voters shut out of capital acquisition and home ownership.
We must deliver more for young adults beyond transfer payments and well-meaning platitudes. They are trapped in their own cycle of infantilisation that does little to prepare them either for the ups and down of life, with all its responsibilities and opportunities.
A key part of this human capital rebuild has to be the development of personal resilience, decision-making, and risk-taking. For those in education, this can sit comfortably alongside Rishi Sunak’s commitment to maths and science. Indeed, it may be essential to making that work.
Child resiliency collapsed post-Covid. Many are developmentally delayed; 50 per cent of secondary students are obese. Decision-making capability in young adults has imploded: senior staff at Plas y Brenin are very disturbed that many people are lacking basic skills, even in their late twenties. (This predates the pandemic, too.)
There is an opportunity to teach a generation leadership and participation, allowing them to take back some control over their own lives. And, alongside other initiatives, the mountains can play a substantive role. The policy ask is modest:
There are many other potential tweaks. But what no one is asking for is a huge resource transfer, which is unrealistic and will only lead to waste.
Give our best policymakers better human capital, and we can move toward a more participatory society, and break the cycle of deprivation which squanders so much potential.
I am grateful to Dr John Welshman for his thoughts on the issues discussed in this article.