LET NOTHING YOU DISMAY

This refrain from that hearty carol “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is all very well but there’s plenty to dismay us right now. An epidemic of strikes by those who never go on strike like nurses. Ambulance workers saying they’ll only attend heart attack and stroke incident emergencies where there’s a “time issue”….I  don’t like the sound of that one little bit.

These are disputatious times, quite unlike the festively, riotous prelude to Christmas I’m used to. Not least it’s very cold. I recall that magical poem of T.S. Eliot “The Journey of the Magi” the story of an endless freezing journey to confront the paradox of the Christian Story – of birth and death - with  that sense of discomfort and cold – surely no wise man would do this:

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.”

I love that “very dead of winter” as I watch the winter-flowering Salvia in our garden giving up the ghost and withering in the face of the very dead of winter. Eliot’s poem is the much needed antidote to the vision of these jolly Kings on their sprightly camels (Eliot’s are “galled, sore-footed, refractory.”) Christmas can be horrible – just ask yonder peasant, gathering winter fuel three miles from home – he probably won’t make it back through this cruel frost.

 

Yet there are things which signal the essence of Christmas. A few days ago as the wind howled and the icicles formed I lit the first log fire of the year. It crackled and burst into glorious flame (“Get a peasant to gather more fuel” I shouted before apologising to my wife, not amused at this in the current cost of living crisis.) The sound of Carols – great tunes like Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, Adam Lay Ybounden and the Sussex Carol “On Christmas Night All Christians Sing”. If they did the census in December there’d be new headlines in the press about the shock revival of Christianity in the UK. Somehow the sound, smell and mystery of Christmas binds us all together in a traditional Christmas culture.

 

Our houses are festooned with garlands, wreaths, crackers and that special smell of Christmas food. The aroma of ginger and orange peel and the constant appeal of TV chefs advising us on perfect Christmas food because “let’s face it, this is the season of indulgence.” Who otherwise would we eat something like Stollen except now? But sadly this will not be a season of indulgence for quite a lot of people this year. Maybe, unlike many calls to our sense of charity, this Christmas will make more people reflect on things that really matter.

  

A few days ago I saw a thrush feathers pluffed up against the cold. Not a timid bird, no peasant bird, a bruiser, the sort from whom a cat would retreat muttering in feline “Sorry, something to attend to at home.” Like that doughty bird we need to pluff up our feathers and do our best to enjoy and bring joy. King Wenceslas is a good place to start. Or St. Rocco who was the Franciscan sainted for helping plague sufferers, refugees and travellers in Venice in the 14th century. 

In these current years of Covid, pandemics and of refugees I think we should look to see how they both got it so right back then.

 

Have a happy Christmas and, in 2023, a New Year to enjoy.

 

Richard and Kate Hall

LIKE PATIENCE ON A MONUMENT

This describes the misery of Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I‘m not miserable just mildly frustrated that we seem unable nowadays to be patient and wait to see how “things play out.” In a world of instant opinion and overcrowded media, waiting, watching and thinking is seldom the way we behave. It’s a world of yes and no not maybe, yet “maybe” is the seldom used but most useful state to be in when not all the information needed to make a decision is available.

Truth is not an absolute. My truth and your truth will be different. This is what makes it tricky trying to understand where, for instance, the war in the Ukraine will end.

But what we can do is mentally assemble the chess pieces and try to see the likely way they’ll move. I’m wondering how the 34 million of Russians 15 -35 years old  are feeling and whether the reported migration of youth from the country represents a real trend.

As we’ve recently just seen in Iran and China youth can help change politics, even in these most autocratic regimes. I suspect how this plays out may be the most significant factor in the removal of and selection of a successor to Putin. I had a conversation with a wise man I’ve known for many years saying I thought this would play out sooner if the Russian military failure deepened. He delved back into history and foresaw a five-year struggle. Rather than fight over who’s right we’re both thinking about it. 

My thinking is that increasingly the young will influence the world and push things in specific directions, helping them “play out” favourably in creating a world in which they’ll be more comfortable. A greener world. A fairer world. A less aggressive world. A world where constant travel and sharing of ideas in a norm. A world of creativity and innovation.

This is not always going to be world I readily and constantly understand but it was ever thus. As a friend said to me recently “you were opinionated and radical once too.” I belonged to a coal-mining world where supermarkets and new restaurants were a novelty. A world where the cold war was the norm and every -ism you can imagine existed and was tolerated. 

This world today is a much better one and the abolition of obscenities like capital and corporal punishment are things we drove away with influential musicals like “Hang down your head and die” and “Oh what a lovely War” -  the products of young minds. Just as the world today is being steadily shaped by new generations.

Social media has taken a bashing recently but not wholly deservedly. Ideas, events and jokes are widely and quickly shared. Big players like Facebook and Snapchat are declining and being usurped by TikTok and We Chat and  new unheard of platforms. Innovation, novelty and surprise are increasingly the currencies that score. 

Qatar is a famous place now despite many misgivings, but I wonder if the rulers there quite understand what trends could play out there going forward now the toothpaste has left the tube...and other metaphors like this which should be banned...sorry.

But social media has made many of us impatient. We live in a world of trending news. But how we deal with that is up to us. Too much choice doesn’t mean we have to choose everything.

In a world of quite surprisingly violent change  we need patiently to watch and think how things may play out. This is history unfolding, it’s not a race.

WHERE DO YOU REALLY COME FROM?

 Where do you really come from?

This isn’t all about the unfortunate Lady Susan Hussey. She seemed to behave like an upper class Jeremy Paxman, the interviewer who demolished Michael Howard then Home Secretary, by asking him the same question twelve times. But that was in 2005. In 2022 you can’t behave like that. Least of all to Ngosi Fulani CEO of Sistah Space born in Britain and a British citizen. All was well at Buck House at a 300 person soirée until she claims she felt like a black gate-crasher when being repeatedly asked  where she came from by 83 year old Susan, daughter of an Earl and Lady in Waiting to the late Queen. No longer Waiting. She has gone. Retired hurt. Accused of racism.

I mention her age because the spotlight shifted from racism to agism as, the day after the event, people asked why someone that old was allowed out and was in no position to understand the “real world”. Silly Susan and old Jo Biden. What a couple, the media laughed. But the problem wasn’t and isn’t age. It seems just rather surprising bad manners on her part. 

Enough. The big issue for me is refugees. It’s been a subject lurking in my mind which ignited recently when I watched the film The Swimmers. It’s the true story of two Syrian sisters who flee war-torn Syria.

They journey across Turkey, swim across the Aegean to Greece and then walk dangerously through Hungary to Germany. It concludes after their being coached as swimmers and qualifying for the Rio Olympics. 

Some reviews described it as dull. 

What idiots! That’s exactly what got to me. The hiding from police dogs, razor wire, crooked helpers stealing their cash, the squalor, the interminable waiting around, the bureaucracy, the ignominy of the question “where are you really from?” and the hideous sense of being displaced.

I began to empathise more vividly with refugees, with just what they must feel like. Nearly half of all refugees are women and children with nearly 1 in 10 being unaccompanied children. Crikey chaps, blockade the borders those kids are out to get us.

Before anyone starts getting cross about the unique immigrant problem in the UK ponder these numbers:

Applications for asylum in 2021:

UK                37,600

Germany   190,500

France       120,700

Which shows it’s less a problem for the UK than its neighbours if indeed it is a problem. We seem to be screaming political blue-murder over an immigration figure of less than half a percentage of our population. And we are short of skilled and unskilled labour from doctors to fruit pickers.

I like immigration. It enriches countries that encourage it. In the 16th century Venice’s population nearly doubled, its population became more diverse than anywhere else in the world and it became astoundingly rich in consequence. America’s population growth has been driven by its being seen as a land believed to be abounding in opportunities to succeed. 

I’m beginning to make this sound like it’s all about money. Economic wealth is a side benefit to the moral issue.1% of the world’s been forced to flee from their homes in the past year. That’s bigger than the whole UK population.

It’s a pity it took a film to sharpen my vision. 

We need to open our hearts, wallets,  borders if we’re going to be a greater country. A history of immigration from the Romans, Vikings, French, Dutch and Germans  show none of us can be British true-bloods (sic) but all of us can be humane.

Where do we really come from? One world. 

Humanity. 

THE LOST ART OF FORGIVENESS

Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism wrote:

“To err is human to forgive divine”

I knew a manager who quoted this to subordinates who’d made a mistake adding:

“You have erred. I forgive you.” 

I enjoyed the silliness of this but there’s an underlying issue about whether we aren’t losing that divine quality.

We live in hostile times – not just in the Ukraine, Burkina Faso , Afghanistan and other places but closer to home too.

We’ve become increasingly intolerant although it was heartening to hear that Keir Starmer had actually kissed a Tory in the past and numbered several conservatives as friends.

It’s the screeching contempt for anyone who thinks differently from themselves like Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP for Kemp Town that concerns me. When all conservatives are called “Tory Scum” it’s difficult for an appropriate term of criticism to be found for those who are indeed egregious. You can’t get scummier than scum. 

But the point is also this. Lloyd may perfectly well be an agreeable chap whom I’ve taken against because he got very cross about something that happened and I can only see him through the prism of his exaggerated rage.

A good friend of mine in Scotland, successful, thoughtful and kind, and most of all effective, is finding the increasing intolerance of many SNP members so extreme and potentially violent as to make him think of moving somewhere “civilised” like Cambridge , Canterbury or Chichester – cathedral or university towns.

Remember that childhood game we played where we demanded to know whether someone was “friend or foe” before we let them play with us? It’s got like that. But if we cooled down we might at least hear the argument of the other party and whilst disagreeing with much of it acknowledge that there was something in what they felt and forgiving them.

I recently talked to a friend in America whose balanced and thoughtful views I’ve always admired. I remember thinking what a great and sensible Supreme Court Judge he’d have made. I asked him how I should understand Ron DeSantis who’d shot to global prominence following Storm Nigel in Florida, his state.

He reddened and spluttered “he’s a racist monster”.

When contempt and anger divide us like this we are in trouble even if, as I suspect, he might be right. 

Ron certainly has shifty eyes.

But Ronald Reagan, who with the perspective of history seems an increasingly genial figure, might have said on hearing me say this, as he did to Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Presidential debates…”there you go again”. This was one of the greatest put-downs of all time. (I guess over 40 years later we’d call it “passive aggressive.”) 

OK. I’m trying to call time on tin-eared intolerance. Those at the extremes of all political parties are beyond the redemption of accepting that they might not be entirely right or even that they might be slightly wrong. But the majority want rapprochement, accord and peace.

Which brings me to achieving peace and the possibility of unity in many fields. 

First, trivially, we’ve just watched the “forgiveness” of Matt Hancock during his good natured ordeals in “I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here”. 

Then as the World Cup develops, the good natured wash of football  is beginning to dilute the grumpiness many feel about Qatar. And when Putin leaves, as he will,  there may be a surprisingly productive peace with Russia.

Forgiveness is the most important way we can become more civilised and make the world a rather better place. So let’s start practising. 

MAKING THE BEST OF IT

I’ve always been fascinated by presentations. I even wrote a book on the subject. I never believed, as some seem to, that how you delivered the message was all that mattered (content is king) but presenting persuasively is no bad thing.

So I watched Jeremy Hunt’s “Autumn Statement” keenly. Jeremy’s a spare, bony chap with tiny, shifty eyes who reminds me of Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar of whom Caesar said:

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

In a little over an hour he made the best of a wonky story. And did so sotto voce. Quentin Letts, the Times Political Sketch writer described the scene perfectly:

“Jeremy Hunt delivered his Autumn statement in a soothing murmur. Dentists go pretty quiet too when about to lance like maniacs.”

Like a dentist he injected anaesthetic to ease the pain so I actually dozed off at one point. This was a masterclass of political hypnosis leading a leader writer to conclude it was a “sober and sensible budget”. I compared this assessment to my own demeanour for my wife to snort “you sober and sensible? That’ll be the day.” She’s right. I’m ebullient and theatrical and no Cassius either. 

In contrast to Jeremy, Donald Trump’s announcement he was going to stand as presidential candidate in 2024 was a thing of tense drama…no snoozing here… as a speaker he uses no punctuation…ideas float from his lips as he thinks aloud, musing about his cause with phrases like “in order to make America great and glorious again…. it’s a beautiful thing…there’s love in this room…our campaign not my campaign…our country is being destroyed before our very eyes …. the massive corruption we’re up against.”

He mostly talks in iambic phrases and the whole effect is curiously poetic. He’s a latter day Mark Antony…”Friends, Romans and Countrymen lend me your ears.” In meditative mood, in the company of supporters, he’s hypnotic but rather still odd. 

But, says Rick Wilson, a from the Lincoln Project designed to oust Trump and Trump followers from the Republican Party, himself a life long Republic pre-Trump, the Donald is “feral who’ll eat chubby Ron De Santis and others for breakfast.”  So not just a poet but a master of the put-down.

But here is the presentation “masterpiece” of…well what I’ve ever seen.

BEFORE

Just before the Autumn statement on live TV the Tory MP for Chelmsford – Vicky Ford –a one-time Minister of State for Development albeit in the Truss cabinet – claimed the UK’s growth record had been better than any country in the G7. It was a barefaced lie. A whopper. And delivered with a swagger. The TV presenter instantly stopped her and said she was wrong and to prove it showed a chart where the UK was shown not only bottom but the only country showing negative growth in the period since Covid. 

My advice to a presenter in this fix is to fake a heart attack or run down the corridor screaming “they have guns and knives”. The strategy is distract, bemuse and make the viewer forget what you’ve said. But not Vicky. Without a blush or a blink she switched to  saying the IMF showed her figures for growth were spot-on looking forward and it was time to stop being negative.

 

AFTER

 

Donald Trump would have been proud of her. In fact he should hire her. Please. Just so long as she leaves Britain soon.

 

I’ve seldom seen such egregious manipulation, audience hypnosis and sheer indifference to reality.

 

Unbelievable and almost comic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE GROWTH MYTH

This is not going to be about the folly that occurred in the UK with Ms Truss last month or at least not much about that. 

Instead it’s a reflection on the thinking that has driven business and the management of money over my lifetime. Increasingly in a world currently talking now about recession, growth seems rather irrelevant.  Yet I know few people in business, consultancy or finance who don’t still talk passionately about growth plans.

Last Tuesday the founder and owner of FTX, the high-growth crypto currency platform, Sam Bankman-Fried (hang on - read that name again. Who’s teasing whom?) sent out this message:

“I’m sorry. I fucked up”

From a valuation of over $36 billion earlier this year to nothing today. Can I spell out that value in numbers? $36,000,000,000. Wow. That was impressive growth for a business founded in just May 2019.

At least Sam is honest in his admission but he represents in his quest for growth the underlying horrors that can accompany it. Here’s what he said in an interview:  

“Sometimes the only thing standing between what is and what could be is the will to get there, whatever it requires”

I agree with the thought that determination and ambition are necessary qualities for success in business but, hang on, “whatever it requires” absolutely terrifies the hell out of me.

The “growth thing”, as I’m inclined to call it, is strongly present in the USA. Over half a century ago J.F. Kennedy said: 

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

But I’m beginning to wonder now whether it isn’t growth that’s the enemy, whether the determination to get bigger, to scale your business isn’t a kind of madness. Whether those seeking double digit growth or, in Sam’s case much more than that, haven’t created a nightmare of personal burn out and concomitant catastrophes socially, environmentally and politically.

Recently I was in a restaurant called Wild Flor with perhaps 36 covers. It started in 2019 and now it’s food gets better every time I’ve been there. It’s gradually moving from tasty to dreamily delicious.  But how should they grow? Wrong question. How could they improve? How do they gain even better reputation and become the best? Sam (poor Sam) said “Better is bigger”. No it’s not – not when I’m eating my lunch. 

 Growth is a new form of aggression thus the founder of the martial art Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba (1883 -1969) once said:

“If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.”

Like many great quotes it’s flawed and just plain wrong. If we merely seek to grow we’re doomed to disappoint ourselves and others because, sunshine, there’s much more to life than growth.

 

I may sometimes be rather unkind about Business Schools and MBAs. This has mainly been because of their use of historic and often misleading case studies like one called “Royal Bank of Scotland, The: Masters of Integration” by: Nitin Nohria and James Weber of Harvard.

As tech stocks dive and growth is hard to achieve maybe it’s time now to replan the gardens which represent our lives, dig up the failed plants, replenish nutrients in the earth and adopt a strategy of better not bigger. In 2022 things have moved on and that “growth thing” with it. The adulation  of the unicorn (billion dollar businesses are called this) seems yesterday’s fad. Time now to maximise customer contentment, product quality and producer skills not growth.

 

Growth will come when it’s good and ready not because we seek it for its own sake.