Showing posts with label Balliol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Balliol. Show all posts

Monday, 25 February 2013

WHY THE BBC MUST NOT XXXXXXXXXXXXX



Has the BBC taken leave of its senses in their redactions of the Pollard Report?

I was at Balliol with Lord Patten. Chris (as we knew him) was seen many times ccc vvvv xxxx nnnn cccccc nn bb yet we never thought this ,,,,mmmmmmmm despite his obvious propensity for  bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb discreetly.

It was David Cameron in his relationship with ccccccc nnnnnnn who raised more xxxxxxxxxx. He was discovered one vvvv,,, with his finger bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb laughing in mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and in discomfort.

Ed Balls or Balls up as his friends described him was well known for vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv            vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv with evident relish.

And he thought this picture said it all:


SssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssSssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssSssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss disgusting.d d disgusting.

As all the above shows the practice of redaction makes innocents subject to unjustified speculation because redaction feeds the wit of Merton and Hislop on “Have I Got News For You?” and the fertile imaginations of the rest of us. No wonder Jeremy Paxman’s so frustrated.


It’s hard enough running anything.  People just make it worse. The tensions between indulging creative talent, human ambitions and the tendency that human beings have to cut off their noses to spite their faces makes being a leader one of the most complex tasks that exists.

How does one reconcile the frailties of leaders like Steve Jobs, Ron Dennis, Frank Lowe with the fact that each in their respective fields have been leaders of utterly brilliant business enterprises?


I watched “Moneyball” on Friday – Brad Pitt playing Billy Beane General Manager of the Oakland “A”s a financially strapped Baseball Team who uniquely used data to help recruit a hugely cost effective team in 2002. He broke all the rules of intuition old timers relied on in judging potential. It’s a riveting story of new business models.

As John Henry owner of the Boston Red Socks says to Billy:

“You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent one point four million per win and you paid two hundred and sixty thousand. I know you've taken it in the teeth out there, but for the first guy through the wall it always gets bloody, always. It's the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it's threatening the game. But really what it's threatening is their livelihoods, it's threatening their jobs, it's threatening the way that they do things.”

Redaction feels old fashioned too. Some believe it’s saving their jobs but it isn’t.  They should start opening up, telling the truth and changing the way they do things.


www.colourfulthinkers.com


Monday, 30 May 2011

HOW DID YOU DO IN YOUR EXAMS?

Anyone who knows me thinks I’m an optimist maybe, sometimes, too much of one. A colleague in advertising suggested I’d enthuse over old turnips to win the account for Old Turnip Growers. So when I say that because Brighton’s population has a greater % of people with degrees than anywhere else in the UK, you need a 2.1 to get a job at Pizza Express, everyone would assume I was being flippant.

Which I was. But now I’m not so sure.

All I hear anyone talk about now is education. I see people doing jobs they hate, working themselves to death and suffering rotten lifestyles to fund their children’s education or lying sleepless in bed in case the dice falls the wrong way when they allocate primary school places. Fortunately it fell the right way for my grandson. Great excitement and relief; even pride. Grandson aged 4, asked if he had anything to say, replied (and I love the brightness of this):

“Yes. Can you stop going on about it. It’s only a school.”

It’s only a school. Right on son and it can help but not substitute for your innate smartness and appetite for life.

This week I heard of a brilliant young talent in childcare who wouldn’t (couldn’t) do his exams so now he’s out of childcare and into…whatever (or nothing). Imagine if they discover Wayne Rooney had insufficient GCSEs and was being fired by Man United. Or if you were told the meal you’d just enjoyed in a restaurant had been cooked by a degree-free chef. Imagine the rising sense of nausea. Not even an HND?

Exams trap people rather than liberate their talent. I want to know what people show a liking and talent for. And that talent being encouraged and becoming great and amazing.

Degrees are not qualifications. They comprise a pretty easy exam at the end of a pretty enjoyable three years talking, listening, drinking and learning. Which is good in its own right..

But education is not about ramming stuff into kids, it is…Balliol. Oxford? Literally, from educere (latin) – to lead out, draw forth.

So more of this drawing out, please. And the next time I hear someone given a job based on the exams they’ve passed rather than their energy, enthusiasm and appetite for life remind me to be optimistic if I can.

Turnips indeed!

Monday, 2 February 2009

JIM ROGERS THE POUND

Jim Rogers went to Balliol so he can’t be all bad.

But last week he told the world that sterling was finished, to sell the pound and that Britain was bankrupt.

It was all rather depressing.

Especially as Jim’s an exceeding rich and successful person and a one time colleague of George Soros.

So he should know.

Yet apparently this is the man who told us a couple of years ago to invest in Zimbabwe.

This piece of news about him cheered me enormously.

Britain is not finished but some of its aspirations are and thank heavens for that.

  1. We are not a Premier League country any more.
  2. Britain sounds great without the Great
  3. Can we stop giving our money away to Overseas Development – we don’t have much left
  4. Can we have a sensible conversation about the Olympics?
  5. Can we invest in a 21st century manufacturing/innovation economy?
  6. Can we stop trying to keep the terminally ill companies alive that have no future?
  7. Can we get an SAS economic squad together to resuscitate the ones in peril that we need to keep by taking smart people out of retirement if necessary to help them?
  8. And can we stop paying stupid fees to advisers? I heard about a consulting firm who claimed they had to charge large fees as their overheads were so high. Ironically their first name is “Price”.

Britain will be fine.

All it needs is for us to be resourceful, innovative and energetic and – this is the real key – stop listening to the doom mongers….Jim Rogers is wrong (again).