Posts tagged Tim Harford

In an act of last-minute desperation, the prime minister decides to replace his chancellor George Osborne with a figure judged to have broader political appeal: Santa Claus. (The decision was approved by a committee of Liberal Democrats.) The FT can now present a transcript of the conversation the night before the chancellor’s autumn statement.

“Adapt” is both entertaining and inspiring in its call for new thinking in how we tackle social and environmental problems. Indeed, it is a must-read for anyone who wants to make the world a better place. We hope that it will both inspire more foundations to learn to love failing and give the critics of measurement cause to reconsider.

Our own modest proposal in this campaign for failure in philanthropy is that we should be doing more to celebrate when bold projects don’t work out. To that end, we would love to see a donor step up to fund a ‘Heroic Failure’ prize. That’s right, a prize for the biggest, boldest failure in philanthropy to reward those who have failed by giving them a chance to try again, to make failure something that philanthropists talk about, and (perhaps most importantly) so that we can all learn from what doesn’t work and thus stop repeating the same mistakes.

Mr Osborne claims some credit for this international confidence and is right to do so, since he looks determined to adjust government spending to suit the UK’s detumescent economy. The Lib Dems also appear willing to take a bullet in defence of the austerity plans.

Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, claims that such austerity is a macroeconomic disaster, and the government should stimulate the economy by keeping spending up. Politically, Mr Balls sounds plausible: his plan to halve the deficit within four years seems responsible to the ordinary voter. But since we would expect the deficit to be approximately halved simply by the process of gradual economic recovery, the implication is that if Mr Balls had his way, the government would spend an entire parliament doing almost nothing to restrain spending. Even recognising a case for stimulus spending this year, this is recklessness.