CHOOSING THE RIGHT JOB

Being promoted to a bigger job is not always the right move to make. In modern politics people ill equipped for a given role nonetheless greedily grab it. Because, they say, that’s what you do.

When Graham Potter left Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club where he earned a “meagre” £2 million a year for a £10 million job steering Chelsea to glory, many of us were sceptical. He was in a great position at Brighton inspiring a club he’d nurtured. He joined the lofty unknown of Chelsea. It was also unknown if he could do it, if his limitations might be exposed, if the players would recognise his authority. It was like going from provincial theatre to the West End before you’re quite ready.

Knowledgeable pundits said he couldn’t say “no” to this golden opportunity. Events are proving them wrong so far. He’s been “luckless” as the Times has said but also he seems out of his depth and lost. Chelsea isn’t just big it’s monstrous. It’s valued at just under $1 billion. It’s had 10 different managers in the last 10 years including Potter and it has 23 players “earning” over £2 million a year (3 of them over £15M.) It’s potty, Potter, as you’re discovering.

In my own career I was occasionally approached by people from much bigger companies trying to lure me to lead their broken, unwieldy businesses. In saying no I never regretted it because I knew the language they spoke was not my language. 

A colleague once took the CEO job at a huge multinational. The perks were great. Vast salary. Chauffeured Jaguar. City-centre skyscraper office. But it was a complete nerve-wracking disaster for him.

Boris Johnson was always self-evidently the wrong man for No.10. Wanting to be the top-dog is not a qualification for getting that job and doing it well. Read “Chums” by Simon Kuper to understand the psyche of this flippant, narcissistic scoundrel. 

It's not easy building a leadership team and true leaders are hard to find. They need time, they need mentoring, they need modesty, the desire to learn, yes -  they also need luck but above all they need to believe they’re really up to the job and are focused on it.

I read about a job description recently for a job in the NHS, a well-paid “Director of Lived Experience” (what on earth is that?) who is “interpersonally talented and a strategic bridge-builder.” It occurred to me that opaque language like this goes a long way to disqualifying people from applying for jobs. But they’d be mighty miserable if they actually got the job and found themselves drowning in a morass of jargon.

I was once interviewed for a job I didn’t really want by people who, soon into the interview, I found I didn’t like. They asked me that dread question – “what do you think you’d bring to this job?” I thought and replied “a touch of levity perhaps”.

The Head of HR (sorry, the People Propagator) looked very shocked and the interview ended.

The mission of any business is to do what it does very well, profitably and to be adept at changing and improving. The leader’s role like the conductor of an orchestra is to recruit the best team, get the best out of them and constantly explore initiatives and new music to excite them, grow them and keep them on their toes.

The one thing a leader, conductor or surgeon shouldn’t be is light on experience. Real leadership is about people’s lives and their dreams. It’s not a game. 

 

We gotta get out of this place...

It was 1965. The Animals.

We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
'Cause girl, there's a better life for me and you

These are the words which became the theme song of the Vietnam War and are burnt into my brain.

Every time I get away for a break, note - not a positive thing like a “make” but a break, a destruction of something that works I resolve it’ll be the first of many. Never is. 

This one’s hardly a summer holiday. We’ve already had one of those but as I recall – a rather fuzzy memory -  I had Covid and spent most of the time asleep. No, this is a retreat to a quiet apartment overlooking a nature reserve and a stream.

In Canterbury for glorious choral music, Elizabethan architecture, lazy lunches and bison. Virtually extinct in Europe and pretty well unknown in Britain these creatures, the heaviest living wild land animals, are like powerful demolition machines. In a rewilding experiment  at Wilder Blean in Kent they are turning jungles into parks. And a baby bison has just been born so things are looking up.

And everyone else seems at it too. Good friends have just returned from a brilliant trip to and around India. It’s strange that when I was there a few years ago it seemed somehow familiar as though I’d lived there in a previous existence. It smelt wonderful and mysterious and was exciting in a way China, although fascinating too, somehow wasn’t. Poetry as opposed to prose.

And our daughter, son in law and grandchildren are in New York doing what we all do in the most thrilling city in the world. Walking. Walking. Walking. Walking through diversity. Chinatown. Harlem. The Financial District. Brownstone buildings. Central Park. The High Line. The Staten Ferry. Broadway diners where resting artists are now waitresses who suddenly burst into song. The biggest burgers ever. Whale sized Lobsters. And Walking. Walking. Walking.

What we missed through the drab days of lockdown was travel, experiences and change. In those same as, same as days of imprisonment that sixth sense of discovery and change was turned off which was tragic because ultimately it’s that sense which we need and which turns us on when we get weary.

So we are getting away because there’s a better life than Brighton great as Brighton is. But right now it feels like this dirty old part of the city where the sun refused to shine. Living in Brighton is like a never ending dish of scampi. Delicious but occasionally I need steak or – can this be me – tofu. 

I’m looking forward to rediscovering deep sleep and getting rid of mental cobwebs. I’m also looking forward to learning a few new things – I don’t know what yet but when I find out I’ll be sure to tell you.

Have a great week. Have fun. Plan your next adventure.

APOCALYPSE SOON!

The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, speaking to the House Treasury Committee said: “I’m afraid the one I’m going to sound, I guess, rather apocalyptic about, is food.”

I was apoplectic when I read this. Governors of the Bank of England have in the past been more circumspect. The word “Apocalypse” describes the “complete final destruction of the world as described in the Bible Book of Revelation.” And we’re not there Andrew, not even close.

We seem to have lost the art of balanced argument and nuance.

Try this for Prime Ministerial understatement - Harold MacMillan in 1958 following the resignation of his Chancellor of the Exchequer and several others in the Treasury team just before his leaving on a Commonwealth tour, said“I thought the best thing to do was to settle up these little local difficulties, and then turn to the wider vision of the Commonwealth.” 

Last week we decided to abandon “apocalyptic Covid caution”.

So we went to London, visited Home House drank a refreshing few glasses of vino verde, strolled up Marylebone High Street bought some books in the delicious Daunt’s and ambled home on a busy train; then celebrating the Brighton Festival we made visits to the theatre and two amazing concerts in swift succession plus supper at Bills. There was barely a mask in sight anywhere; people hugging each other; smiles, laughter and sunshine.

No pandemic? Well actually there have been 239 cases in the past week in Brighton and Hove and in total a cumulative 96,000 (out of a population of 280,000). We are well on the way to achieving, if not herd immunity, pandemic saturation. But now 2 ½ years into this virus we know more but still not enough. The WHO data suggests that all European countries and the USA performed similarly in terms of “excess mortality” (that’s how this abnormality is measured. It’s the number of deaths – from all causes – that occur during a crisis that’s beyond what would be expected in typical times.) 

Some of the precautions taken like paranoid hand watching and surface disinfecting have been shown to be futile as preventative measures. Most importantly carrying on pretty much as normal like Sweden did seems to have been more effective than the more restrictive lockdowns in Germany. How did we do? The UK did averagely well or badly, depending how you look at it, although Scotland seems to have performed rather worse despite Nicola Sturgeon’s insistence on sustained tougher restrictions.

Taking a balanced view it seems fair to suggest that getting on with life, going to work, going to the theatre, cinema, restaurants and so on is the way forward. “Circumspect normality” we’ll call it.

So what about China and their “Zero Covid” strategy? The “big whites” (the Covid Inspectors dressed all in white with huge powers) have become very unpopular although infection rates have recently dropped. But so too is their economy. Bloomberg (gloomy Bloomberg) expect the Chinese economy to grow by only 2% this year compared to the USA at 2.8%. If so, this would be the first time China has lagged behind the US growth rate since 1976 and this despite a $5 trillion stimulus.

Possibly it’s a short-term correction but it’s also a lesson. Your economy will slow if you lock everything down.

Back to the Governor: another lesson is our overdependence on food imports. We’ve failed to focus on and have faith in domestic food. In 2020, the UK imported over 46% of its food. That’s got to change to avoid future supply difficulties.

Spoiler alert: But no apocalypse

 A Ukranian Spring

Thank you, Justin Webb, for reminding me in Friday’s Times of what Trotsky said:

“You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you.”

Friday was chilly but with a brightly blazing sun in Brighton. The stridently yellow daffodils fluttered in the breeze muttering: 

“all’s well, Spring is coming, relax …. all is well.” 

The daffodils were wrong.

In Kyiv it was raining, cold and about to get much colder. War was being declared. No, not “declared” so much as “visited upon us” and the world was waiting aghast as the missiles flew. We were living in a world gone mad. After 77 years Europe was once again a warzone.

I recalled Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy written after the Peterloo Massacre in 1819.  The second stanza stuck in my head, now slightly re-written (sorry Percy):

I met Murder wildly shooting 

He had a mask just like Putin

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;

Seven blood-hounds followed him.

The most unlikely people have suddenly become militaristic. Quentin Letts, political sketch writer, observed with astonishment that the Liberal Democrats, of all people, were in the Commons with a bellicose “Come on Vladimir let’s be having you” attitude.

How did we let this Russian thug and our own greed get us to this ultimately predictable point? Chelsea football fans lament your ownership. Estate Agents in Knightsbridge be very ashamed. But despite my initial horror and anger something else has replaced it. The courage and the spirit of the Ukrainian people in slowing down and in places thwarting the Russian advance made me feel just a bit better. There was something epic about the tragedy of Snake Island in the Black Sea where 13 Ukrainian Soldiers and their families were slaughtered after refusing to surrender to a Russian Warship … “Go f*** yourself Russian Warship” were their last words. Courage and resilience are an enviable epitaph. And it’s their resilience that heralds the Ukrainian Spring because it is Springtime that characterises resilience.

Keats didn’t manage an Ode to Spring. Pity. The best we can find is, nonetheless, terrific.  Either the beginning of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales – “sweet showers” - or Gerard Manley Hopkins will do – just these glimpses from him:

    “Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

    When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush” 

  

And “the racing lambs too have fair their fling….”

     

   

 And then     

“What is all this juice and all this joy?         

     A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

     In Eden garden…..”

“Long, lovely and lush …all this juice and joy” – yes that does it for me …that’s my kind of Spring. And this year’s Spring is delivering already – primulas and violets vigorously doing their thing and tiny tête ά tête daffodils laughing in the chill.

Spring is about innovation, new beginnings and a simple celebration of growth. A blitz of Russian missiles can’t change that. Spring cleaning is one of the most useful of occupations discarding the unused and unusable, simplifying our possessions and cleaning our shelves, our cupboards and our minds. 

I for one have spent too many seasons worrying about newspaper headlines about which I can do nothing. My mind is full of “stuff” -  much of it negative. Time for a good Spring-Clean. Time to think positively. Time to walk through woods where buds are bursting and birds are finding their voices.

It's too late to stop the stupidity. But never too late for hope. Nature always helps our perspective. Flowers grow out of rubble. Juice and joy cannot be blown away by a bomb.

WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH

All over Brighton the bins are full and the streets are overflowing with rotting rubbish. It’s been like this for two weeks. The latest news about the strike is it could last until mid-November given talks between the GMB union and council have broken down. The GMB called action over changes of duties, drivers being removed from long-standing rounds and pay. Pessimists are predicting a six month stand-off.

 

The irony is the Council is led by the Green Party. A similar strike happened before -  nationwide in 1978-79 leading to Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power over the bones of the Labour administration in the “winter of discontent”.

 

 

I’ve been surprised just how relaxed everyone seems to be about this hygiene catastrophe, exhibiting mild grumbles rather than outrage. A group of valiant lads proposed commandeering a lorry and clearing their area but were told by the council it would be illegal to intervene and dispose of this illegal rubbish in the tip.

 

What a load of rubbish. 

 

We might start burning it – not very green but we wouldn’t have a plague of rats. My frustration is that no one is seeking a solution to this urgent problem. Politicians, Waste Management Experts, Journalists, Union Officials are talking about it but not creating a solution…unlike the Pied Piper of Hamelin’s musical solution.

 

Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor, who has had something of a rubbish week himself given the findings of the Health and Social Care Committee’s report on the handling of the Covid pandemic, said he believed we needed more engineers and engineering systems. 

 

Engineering, unlike Patrick, had a great week. The front page of the Times carried a story about the need to rename engineers. Professor Elena Rodriguez-Flacon thinks engineers should be called 'ingeniators' – ingenious innovators. 

 

Well, I think that’s rubbish. We need to celebrate engineers not rebrand them. I like the dictionary definition of the verb “to engineer” – “to skilfully arrange for (something) to occur”. Engineers are not just TV repairmen or radiator installers. Think Brunel, think Stephenson, think Archimedes, think Tesla (the engineer not the car!), think Leonardo. All engineers.

 

 

Given the current global fragility of critical systems a few smart engineers would seem to be exactly what we need. Engineers not MBAs, engineers not politicians. If politicians had engineered the Channel Tunnel it would have ended up in Antwerp and then flooded.

 

Three stories that have cheered me up in the midst of the garbage mountain outside our house.  

 

1. I had an x-ray recently at the Hove Polyclinic. Spotlessly clean. Plenty of parking. Charming people – It’s a no-appointment place;  I was in and out in 15 minutes. The radiology manager was Sid. Remember the Gas Privatisation advertising in 1986. The NHS can be amazing  when there are “Sids” to make it happen. 
2. A friend of mine is running an incubator seeking new ways to convert waste (yes, rubbish) into useful and valuable material by employing the inventive skills of Chemical Engineers. It’s flying.
3. Restaurants are open. Wild Flor in Brighton is back, delivering a splendid experience. They ‘engineer’ a perfect conjunction of relaxation, taste and pleasure.

 

What I’ve realised this past week is that good intentions, optimism and unbridled hope are not enough. We can eliminate grumpiness but never the need to question and work out how to engineer solutions and systems that work, are robust and adaptable. 

 

What’s happening in our rubbish strike is an absence on all sides of common sense, compassion, compromise and community. Brighton’s not a nice place to live in right now.

IT'S THE SILLY SEASON AGAIN (AND WORSE)

They used to call August the silly season. 

Well, like Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels, it’s back. After months of competitive Covid with us out-vaccinating the EU (especially France) only to discover their infection levels are still below ours because of their more stringent controls - we’re now all talking about other things.

Anger however remains especially the rage of the anti-vaxxers who’ve convinced themselves that Covid is a conspiracy by global governments. In Brighton they attacked a vaccination centre forcing it to close. But here’s a nice story (for a change) from Russia. A 70 year old hermit whose 20 year life of isolation was induced by his dislike of society,  has come down from his cave to be vaccinated saying it seemed the sensible thing to do.

But anger has its place. Anyone who isn’t angry about the allied forces intemperate evacuation of Afghanistan and the potential harm this is bringing especially to its women is insensitive. It’s cruel that we’ve abandoned so much good work and hope.

We hear many more  children than usual have done well in their recent exams and that this grade inflation at A level and GCSE has enraged many. That’s ridiculous. Unlike Afghanistan this isn’t about life and death. So well done guys. And there’s more good news (unless, of course as a parent,  you’ve shelled out getting on for £ ½ million on your child’s private education to give them an edge in life). This is that the percentage of State Educated children getting into Oxbridge has gone up. So for you young Etonians with your A*s this must seem a silly season! This is diversity Britain and you can’t buy success easily anymore.

And talking of Etonians and buying success what a continuing dismal (and actually tragic) story is that of deluded David Cameron. He’s reputedly worth £40 million and has earned around £10 million from his Greensill Capital directorship, £800,000 for his book and £120,000 for each speech he makes. It seems his energy is focused on making money and now it’s coming home to plague him. In the silly season his pecuniary exploits (book or business), at neither of which he’s particularly excelled, will I suspect increasingly be in the spotlight. He’s always seemed to be effortlessly able until now. As Warren Buffett said:

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.” 

My mood lightened recently when driving through Ditchling a Sussex village, the traffic in which suddenly becomes single-lane. In a moment of PG Wodehouse inventiveness, I exploited what I’ve called “the pre-emptive gratitude”. Quite simply on seeing a gap whizz into and through it smiling and thanking the previously oncoming traffic effusively. They will respond to your beaming thanks in kind. Silly but it works – maybe only in August . We’ll see.

Meanwhile the “say no to H20” brigade in America are at it. Here’s a comment in the magazine the Atlantic:

“12,167 hours of washing our bodies. That’s how much life you use, if you spend 20 minutes per day washing and moisturizing your skin and hair (and you live to be 100, as we all surely will).That adds up to nearly two entire years of washing.”

Apparently a lot of Americans agree and are avoiding washing.

‘I don’t smell!’ Meet the people who have stopped washing

Silly season? It’s the first time for ages when the media is crammed with strange stories. Is this normality? No just seasonal silliness I suspect.

GOAL!!!

I feel out of touch. We’re in the middle of the Euros and I don’t feel engaged. Worse…whenever I hear the word I think of “Uros” or Urology, the branch of medicine that focuses on surgical and medical diseases of the male and female urinary-tract.

What’s wrong with me? What’s not to like about this tribal, passionate game that evokes such spirit, creativity and wealth with 50 world players estimated to be worth more than £50 million? Why don’t I warm to their chants:

Two of these to the tune of “Lord of the Dance” 

“Park , Park wherever you may be, you eat dogs in your home country. It could be worse, you could be scouse and eat rats in your council house”

(About Ji-Sung Park, the Korean player at Manchester United)

The fans followed this up with 

“He shoots, he scores, he’ll eat all your Labradors”

The second, some time ago, was Chelsea fans singing about John Terry after his affair with his fellow player Wayne Bridges’ girlfriend:

“Chelsea, wherever you may be, keep your wife from John Terry”

And because I live in Brighton – whose team (my team, I suppose) managed to remain in the Premier League this year:

“You’re practically French, You’re practically French, you’re so far southern you’re practically French” (Hull fans at Brighton)

And from Arsenal fans trading on the reputation Brighton has for having a large proportion of gays in its city: 

“We can see you, we can see you, we can see you holding hands”.

But there’s one I like. It’s been sung by various teams when they’re being trounced (like when Tottenham were 4-0 down to Liverpool)

“Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend we scored a goal” 

This is followed by rapturous applause. I like this because these fans appreciate the irony of their devastating defeat and are saying self-deprecatingly “it doesn’t matter….it’s only a game.”

The biggest news for me about the Euros/Uros (whatever) is the stand-off between the government and some 2,500 UEFA officials who are coming to the Semi-Finals and Finals at Wembley, who unless the latter are given a quarantine waiver are threatening to move these games to Hungary.

We’re not very popular anywhere right now are we? 

The USA gave us a detention (a seldom given “demarché") before the G7 – it’s a formal bollocking in diplomatic circles indicating displeasure about our behaviour – namely our failure to sort out the Irish protocol.

The French hate us, our sausages, our fishermen and just about everything else about us. 

The Germans don’t trust Boris. So what? Who does?

Even those nice people in Chesham and Amersham don’t like our government, booting out a prospective Tory MP in a by-election who was nearly 10 feet tall and installing a Liberal instead in this rock-hard-safe Tory seat.

We have in footballing terms become the Millwall of politics:

“Nobody likes us we don’t care”

Actually I do care. I care about our values and how others see us. I feel patriotic but most of all that we need to be seen by all our colleagues across the world as reliable, trustworthy and civilised.

Politics and diplomacy are not like football not yet even after Donald Trump who set a certain adversarial tone that jarred. But we’ve acquired a “Chopper Harris” attitude to life - Ron Harris played for Chelsea and had what was euphemistically described as “a tough approach to tackling”. 

We need to get smarter not tougher but I can’t see that happening soon. And as far as the Euros go, frankly my dears I don’t give a damn.

THE PRICE OF THE PANDEMIC

Plenty of economists are concerned about the possibilities of inflation. Generation Y and Z won’t remember what it was like when we had 27% inflation back in 1978. I also remember 1992’s Black Wednesday when interest rates went from 10% to 15% on a single day as we crashed out of the ERM. That meant someone with a mortgage of a ‘can-we-afford-it-hmmm-only-by-skin-of-our-teeth £300,000’ was overnight facing annual increases in payments of around £15,000 or more. 

Inflation favours those brave in pricing their goods or have goods or services that are price insensitive like fuel, pharmaceuticals (or ironically taxes.) Inflation favours the wealthier elderly with savings growing in value as interest compounds. It also favours certain entrepreneurs who in crises like the pandemic or war always thrive. No surprise then that a record number of billionaires have been created in the past twelve months.

Another price to be paid for in the past year of restrictions and lockdowns is that our senses have become dulled. Like our sense of touch. No hugging or kissing – I hadn’t realised how sad that was going to be. And now we’ve forgotten how to or are too embarrassed to do it. 

Our sense of hearing. It’s Brighton Festival and we’ve been to a couple of performances – Paul Lewis, the fantastic classical pianist and the Chineke Ensemble, all brilliant,  instinctive musicians.  But wearing an ever-dampening, fogging-up mask dulls your appreciation of music.

A solution: drink two large brandies before the show and enjoy inhaling your own breath. It doesn’t help the music but it helps keep you jolly.

Being jolly? Our sense of fun has withered. Yes. I confess. I used to be flippant and even occasionally amusing. The price of the past year has been to make me feel dull and cautious. And as I look around I see people desperately trying to revive lost lives thinking “let’s party.”  How? The party I’m afraid is over for most of us now. But maybe that’s OK – after all who really needs a party?

Who needs to work? The whole furlough business, Zoom and working from home has created a new, odd attitude to work. People have been paid to do nothing or work from home performing only to a TV screen. The price we’ll pay for that isn’t clear but corralling people back into offices as many companies want will be resisted strongly by a lot of people.

Yet there is a brighter side. In the Sunday Times Alyson Rudd describes the 2020-21 football season as “weird but strangely wonderful”. That captures the story of the whole Covid event. Somehow people have managed to be astonishingly tolerant, patient and obedient whilst in Holland and Italy there have been examples of civil unrest and violence.

The upside of the pandemic is that it has thoroughly shaken things up and forced us to appraise what we really want from our lives. We’re seldom forced like this to reflect on priorities. How important is a holiday in the sun? Do we get real fulfilment from our work ? Are we stuck in a loveless relationship? How many friends do we have? Are we still  learning?

The price of this shake-up’s good news. Because most of us will end up happier in our work, relationships and lives. If a job or marriage can survive and thrive in  2020 and 2021 it must be OK. 

Weird? No. Strangely wonderful and strong.

Footnote: read Solzhenitsyn’s  “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. If you think the lockdown’s bad see how to stay cheerful in much worse. 

IF HALF OF US HAVE DEGREES WILL WE BE A BETTER COUNTRY?

At the 1997 Labour Party Conference Tony Blair announced his ambition to have over 50% of young people going to university.

Tony Blair! You once looked like this

In 2019 his ambition was fulfilled but the current Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has reversed this as a laudable aim saying there was an inbuilt  snobbishness about higher as opposed to further education.

Although in general  it goes against my nature to agree with Gavin, on this occasion I think he may have a point.

A model of the Lewes Road development – wall to wall student accommodation

In Brighton there are two universities with just over 38,000 students representing nearly 15% of the population.  New student housing blocks are beginning to dominate the city. Over 4000 apartments in such blocks have been built already with many more planned. But rentals of £1000 a month seems quite pricey for such tiny spaces.

A local resident – a Disgusted-of-Brighton is quoted in the Brighton Argus:

“The area has too many students already who, at such a number, do not add to the community and increase the amount of anti-social behaviour such as drinking and creating late-night noise (already a problem).”

Eureka!

He too has a point.

But something has changed owing to Covid. A sixth form college which has a brilliant record especially in obtaining Oxbridge entrants currently has several young people saying they won’t bother with University possibly ever but at least until after a gap year or two. 

Learning by road as opposed to by rote

It’s time to reflect seriously on what education is for. What’s the point of doing a three year course in Psychology and Politics and then working in a Call Centre? Is the 72 weeks at university and the £27,000 tuition fees plus living expenses (say a further £50,000) worth it? If your answer is “I learnt loads about myself and life; I met inspiring people who’ll be lifelong friends; I learnt how to do research; I learnt how to meet deadlines; I also learnt how to busk my way concealing what I didn’t know” then university will have been good for you and for society as a whole. Even better still if you learnt enough to know you can become an advancer of knowledge. 

But I worry that the academic ambition of universities is diluted because too many of that magic 50% shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.

Whilst for some, university opens doors in their minds and builds their resilience and confidence, for others it should enable them to learn how to be useful.  As teachers, nurses, care workers, architects, and engineers. Whatever.

But universities have become big businesses focused on scale. It’s never been easier to get into a university – good for their income - which leads to many providing a less than fulfilling experience.

University should be either the most thrilling and inspiring experience imaginable. The process of intellectual osmosis whereby the smartest kid in their school finds they are suddenly only average but then discovers talents they didn’t know they had is only found in good universities where the community of minds creates this joyful chemistry.

Or it should be useful.

"I hope we get jobs"

I believe in the virtues of academic education but not for everyone. The problem we’ve created is to presume “higher” is all that matters when “wider” for many is what they want and need.

Universities can do both.  Create geniuses and people with brilliant craft skills. They must do both to justify their existence and growth.