Figure 1: Welsh Government’s proposed long-term goals to be included in the Future Generations Bill (working title)

I am somewhat baffled by the ‘goals’. Are they ‘goals’? Isn’t a goal something that can be measured? I tried imagining a football match where one of the teams declared that their goal was to ‘play well’. What would that mean? Would it be enough?

I had a think around the draft goals proposed for the future generations and some of those musings are captured below.

Wales is prosperous and innovative

There’s an element of déjà vu here. Wasn’t the A55 labelled ‘the route to prosperity once’? Perhaps not quite; the 1989 UK government programme was called ‘The roads for prosperity’ – and, if material wealth is the only measure,  twenty years and millions of pounds of European Regional funds later, at this end of that particular road still more of an aspiration than reality. What’ll be different this time?

• Wales is a more equal nation

I wonder that they mean by this? Will the rich become poorer or the poor richer? Even as I write this I’m mulling over what exactly are we valuing? In what way does the government view current inequality – is it purely materialistic? This has huge implications in terms of the next ‘goal’ given that closing the gap in the way the politicians intend means moving people towards an increasingly unsustainable lifestyle and consumption levels

• Wales uses a fair share of natural resources

Now this is interesting, especially given our ambition to be more equal. I didn’t raise  it earlier, but isn’t there a suspicion that ‘being equal’ will really mean having more and disregarding the uncomfortable thought that perhaps there aren’t  enough resources to go round everyone in the world? There was a point in the Welsh Government’s short history when ‘One Planet Living’ was a goal – and that was actually a goal as we could quantify progress. Has that explicit goal become more woolly?

• People in Wales are healthier

Another great aspiration that needs to be more explicit.  Are we meant to live longer lives or enjoy shorter healthier lives? Are we to be healthier than we are now but still at the bottom of many league tables or are we planning to be healthier than any other country in the EU/world?

•  Communities across Wales are safer, cohesive and resilient

The next edition of the crime statistics for England and Wales is not out until April, but the current figures report decreases across most of the main categories of police recorded crime. The headline reads “Crime falls 10% in England and Wales” so we’re well on our way there. What about cohesive? What about resilient? Resilient to what? When will we be able to announce that we are now truly ‘resilient’?

• People in Wales participate in our shared culture, with a thriving Welsh language

After mulling over the notion of ‘shared culture’ for a while, I started to laugh. The best I could manage was fungal infection, so I googled for a more helpful solution. I am non-the-wiser. Do we mean National culture i.e. the beliefs, learned behaviour patterns, values and institutions shared by the citizens of Wales? Or is it shared international culture which turns up by diffusion, migration, colonialism and globalization? Or shared sub-cultures?  Will we all don a red shirt, brandish leeks, sing Calon Lân and sob as Wales gets thrashed?

I was so pleased to see ‘a thriving Welsh language’ being promoted but once again it fell foul of the ‘goal’ test. How will we know when we achieve this particular Nirvana? It is particularly ironic that meetings to promote the Future Generations Bill are often held in English only!

A quick comment on the national conversation on ‘the Wales we want’. 

Haven’t we already had this conversation? Back in May 2009 over 90 responses were received to the WG’s consultation on the draft Scheme for Sustainable Development. In addition, people also provided detailed comments at the consultation events held in Swansea, Llandudno and Aberystwyth. The said participants were thanked for their responses and told that their comments ‘have strongly influenced the final Scheme.”

It was noted that there was particular strong support for

• Our new vision of a sustainable Wales based on using only our fair share of the earth’s resources, and becoming a fairer and more just nation;
• Sustainable development [not future generations] as the overarching strategic aim of all our policies and programmes across all Ministerial portfolios [logically sitting in the PM’s portfolio not in the Department for Communities and Tackling Poverty]
• Sustainable development as the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government and of the public sector in Wales

That seems quite clear to me – so  my question is, do we need yet more ‘conversation’ unless they are about challenging issues which we really need to address under the topic of ‘sustainable development,’ identified strongly when the people made their voice heard the first time around?

As I am on the way to buy some local grass reared lamb, how about spoiling the weekend with the random topic of intensive ‘battery farmed livestock’ to start the ball rolling on what issues we might want to discuss in the Wales we want? You’ll have to wait until another day for related horror stories. If you can’t wait google ‘France in Court over Water Pollution’.