Former UK Government Minister Ed Vaizey on ‘The Future Of Work, Media, Culture’

Mike Tobin OBE and Nat Schooler were joined by Ed Vaizey, former UK government minister. Ed Vaizey was culture and digital minister from 2010-16. Ed stood down from parliament during the December elections.

Ed shares his insight around avoiding Zoom fatigue, managing working from home and more which is outlined below.

We also discussed the situation with the statues and cultural protests that have been happening and more.

Zoom best practices

Deciding which meetings we should attend and whether we should go to them in person or do them on Zoom is a permanent change in society and something that I think gives us more control over our lives.

But we must make sure we allow sufficient times in between meetings.

What he is doing now after leaving parliament last year and many other current topics, listed below.

Ed is very interested in the nexus between business and public policy.

As an MP you have an automatic platform and I would be tempted to be back in government. It must be overwhelming right now for the ministers and the amount of messages they receive.

Culture is something that is a very tough place to work right now, culture is suffering itself and covering culture in public policy terms.

Frankly very little is being done to open up opportunities for black and ethnic minority people to have their stories heard.

The culture issues we have right now are part of a bigger debate and us being part of a modern thinking country.

He thinks making public art more modern, getting people to agree as to what statues should go up is a difficult matter to say the least.

He thinks that we should rethink our outsides spaces and use other interesting displays, using paintings in outside spaces for one example. Displaying them inside glass cubes and that we should rethink public places.

We discussed fake chanting over the football and we could all be in the pub with a live stream into the stadium and how that goes into the stadium to encourage the players.

We discussed working from home, the changes and analytical skills that are needed for people’s jobs and how jobs will evolve for younger generations.

The future of the economy, tech businesses and new technology could help with this.

The future of working and employee training

In the future companies will train their staff to keep up with the ever-changing future of work. Companies will be providing more online training courses for their employees and especially now that people move jobs more.

Lots more companies will be told by employees that they want to learn more useful skills to move into other roles.

We discussed facial recognition and its usefulness of it, the allowance of it is certainly in need of debate and regulation.

Tech needs regulating, especially facial recognition

We talked about locking down children’s technology and educating them so they are protected and the fact that big technology as a whole needs regulating, I agree with Ed’s thoughts around this.

Despite all that is going on here in the UK with Covid 19 we have received 5 Billion in investment into our technology industries.

What do you think of getting people’s skills to match the needs of the future of work?

Mike Tobin, Ed Vaizey and I share a special interest in information technology and know there is a skills gap.

Lots of work is being done by highly qualified people (who are working for half the price) in Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland, India, Indonesia etc, what do you think we should be doing about that?

What are your thoughts of how the public are viewing mainstream media and how it effects their lives and mentality especially in these times of lockdown?

If you want more information on Ed Vaizey visit his website here: – https://www.vaizey.com/