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 NOT SO SUBTLE ART OF LYING

Having spent a considerable part of my life in advertising it would be fair to say some of it’s been in the company of the Lord of Mendacity. Richard French a doyen of the ad business, was asked at a party what he did and said: “Me? I’m a professional liar”. He did it to get a laugh which he got.

Over the past few years I’ve watched aghast at the example politicians and others are setting to a generation of young people to believe it’s perfectly OK to tell whoppers. No longer “the dog ate my homework.”  Instead “we were burgled last night; they wrecked everything. It was terrible… and my gran got whacked above her left eye and is badly bruised poor thing. They got away with TV, Cocker-Poodle and worst of all our Lenovo with my homework” (well done, specifics help add veracity). 

Strangely the more punctiliously regulated world of advertising is virtually devoid of lies now. 

I recall hearing a golden moment on a terrible night for the Tories in 1992 as their share of vote collapsed to Tony Blair. Tory spokespeople tried to eke out comfort by analysing swings so as to try and gild that crock of disaster. Chris Patten, Party Chairman, was interviewed and asked whether he’d admit this had been a bad night for the Conservatives. 

He retorted crossly that it had not been bad; instead it’d been an absolutely ghastly night. And he added when asked why it had gone wrong that the voters had said they didn’t like the Tories and they would have to change. Patten demonstrated the power of truth in putting down journalists wearing earpieces being instructed on the questions they should ask and failing to hear that word “ghastly.” 

Older generations were made to believe telling the truth was important. Getting away with it is the new cool way of behaving. Find a £20 note on the ground and say “nice one” not “whose is it?”. There was the doubtless apocryphal story of the traffic cop saying  as he pulled over a young man for exceeding the speed limit “I’ve spent all day waiting for someone speeding” to which the culprit said “I got here as fast as I could.” And, of course he got off.

Our biggest conundrum in politics is Boris who, despite the Brexit falsehoods about Turkey entering the EU and those slogans on that campaign bus, has earned a certain respect from the electorate for his barefaced bravado. I remember once seeing him interviewed about his exotic private life. He harrumphed and described himself in the third person as a scoundrel whose behaviour was execrable. The conservatives are currently 13% points ahead of Labour much as Trump is far ahead of his Republican rivals despite his extraordinary untruthfulness.

But it’s getting worse. Actor Miles Fisher described as a deep-fake viral creator has impersonated Tom Cruise so well on Tik Tok we are inevitably heading to a world of visual lying.

There comes a time when we need to say “enough”. Lying, like shoplifting, like driving whilst drunk, like bullying needs to be decried. If the post-Covid “build back better” campaign is to have any credibility telling the truth needs to be applauded and its ugly brother, lying, needs to be shown up and shamed.

Final point. Journalists need to be less aggressive. Their contemptuous behaviour has added fuel to the Liar’s party. Telling fibs to a sneering ogre of an interviewer seems almost acceptable.

Almost. But not quite.  Time for us all to be more sceptical.

DO I REALLY CARE ANY MORE?

Well, actually I do but not so much recently. So long as we had the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, terrible infection and mortality figures from Covid and a rampant tweeting Donald Trump we had plenty to worry about and get angry about.

Suddenly Brexit is done, vaccinations are happening and, good heavens, at an alarmingly impressive rate of knots, and in a well organised way, and the Donald is silent and has gone. 

The sun is out and much of the world has snow. It’s chilly as winters should be. The critical issues that have been keeping us awake are resolved or resolving. There ‘s light at the end of all the clichés.

But things are getting worse. Because the little things like breakdowns in IT, a collapse in the Royal Mail meaning a friend called to say his Christmas card from us had only just arrived, a missed item in a supermarket delivery, oversleeping or an irritating paper cut have suddenly become issues.

With lockdown our world has shrunk. Events outside until now kept us aware of where we stood…maybe angry, enraged or alarmed but as part of a greater whole. Now we’ve become more inconsequential and vulnerable. I don’t get angry now; I just get irritated and (word of the week) peevish. Little things prey on my mind.

I tried apathy. But I do care. I don’t want to be alone. John Donne said:

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…” 

 But Brexit has seen to that, Scottish Independence may go further and lockdown, social distancing, masks and isolation have extinguished togetherness further. Goodbye untrammelled travel across Europe, goodbye hugs, smiles and kisses. It’s grumpy time for many.

Lunch is a thing of the past, I’ve forgotten how. I was thinking about Odin’s my favourite restaurant (long since ruined and then closed by barbarian owners) where conversation spilt like wine across the table. Real Masters of the Universe food and wine. Real original thinking. Or was it more ordinary…a fantasy I’m remembering?

Talking of fantasy I see some pundit economists are predicting a third quarter 2021 through 2022 boom in the global economy. Well, I wish. But an awful lot of retraining will have to happen as unemployment figures soar in hospitality, finance, retail, automotive and travel. That lot accounts for 8 ½ million jobs in the UK alone.

The Marylebone High Street I recall in 1960’s was full of gaps, lots of charity shops in prime sites, drear and uninviting. Until now this envy of the retail world was pretty ghastly back then. So, for sure, recovery and boom may well occur but not for some time, I fear, for most of us. The acid test will be whether the start-up revolution about which I’ve enthused really takes off but if it does (and  I wish fervently it does) it will take a while to bed down.

I am neither a pessimist nor an apathetic. I still feel part of this game of life and that I can make perhaps a small difference. And I do have a solution. Given the issue that will drive the economy is not money alone but human energy, enterprise and resolution. So, when we can, I’d ship as many young people as possible to the Democratic United States of America, to New York and say “get a taste of this for upbeat, chutzpah and energy and bring that back here”.  Show how much the Americans care. It’s infectious but in a good way.

WE'RE NO LONGER GOLDEN

Last week I spotted a piece in the Washington Post, a worldwide poll which indicated a growing disenchantment with democracy as an effective form of government. The negative response was more pronounced amongst millennials than any other age cohort.  There was also a rising  preference for strong leadership instead of elections. It was slight in the UK, pronounced in Germany and strong in Spain, South Africa and Russia.

This is surprising given a conversation I’d been having a few days earlier about how in my youth in the 1960s  there’d been a global rebellion against the establishment. From the music revolution in the UK to the Paris riots to Woodstock to the Washington anti- Vietnam War protests in Washington to the more extreme Baader-Meinhof terrorists in Germany. Millennials were seemingly all into free love, flower power and revolution.

The words of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” linger in my mind recalling that  world which was finding its voice and swinging leftwards:

“We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden” 

We believed we were golden as the old order crumbled. 

(All shades of red above and getting redder as authoritarianism strengthens.)

Like it or not we’ve recently been swinging towards totalitarianism

Trump is not an aberration. He’s a sign of the times and of things to come. There are reactions of course like BLM and environmental activists like Greta Thunberg but they are ultimately being drowned out. People are frightened and when that happens they veer right. They’re frightened that things seem out of control. 

The second conversation was with someone who’s lived and worked in China for 20 years. He described a country where Covid is now over (no more face masks) and where the economy is booming.  The rules to contain the pandemic were and are still rigorous. Anyone – Chinese or foreign -  entering the country or returning to the country is quarantined for two weeks, isolated in a hotel room near the airport…quite a nice hotel but, nonetheless, a prison. In China no one breaks out of their bio-secure bubble; everyone obeys the guidelines and the law. One shudders to imagine how the Chinese authorities would have treated those rugby players, the  Barbarians’ twelve, who evaded their security guards to have dinner together at an Italian Restaurant on Thursday night breaking the Covid code of conduct to which they’d agreed. 

It’s behaviour like that that inspires so many people to say they want a more strict enforcement of rules and a more widespread lockdown.

China is a country without compromise when it comes to law enforcement and although the liberal in me shrinks it’s seemed to work. Interestingly within China there seems to be a widespread acknowledgement that they’d “been eating the US lunch for years” and that the election of Donald Trump was of a US President that China deserved.

But look at China today and you see the second biggest global economy emerging relatively unscathed from the pandemic that’s wrecked the rest of the global economy.

(Jan. 2019 – Aug. 2020)

China unlike most other nations has a long term strategy to achieve stability and growth. They seem intent on avoiding unnecessary trouble. When I asked about Hong Kong my friend looked puzzled – “well that’s all over now. China is in charge. Stability is the winner once again.”

How curious to regard China as a role model. We don’t want to know about what happens to those who step out of line. So much has happened that we want to ignore like Tiananmen Square massacre in the past, like the repression of the Uighurs now. But  the fact that China has 61 self-made women billionaires  (2/3 of all those in the world) and that they have a new generation of aspiring, linguistically adept and smart young people is rather impressive.

Many are wondering if “benevolent” dictatorship works. “Benevolent”? Just let me think about that.

 

WHY RIOTS FAIL

Only an idiot would refute scientific evidence about global warming. Their issue, the deniers say, is we’ve had such cycles of change before in the world’s history. Maybe but not so pronounced nor that correlate so closely with global industrial activity.

So what are we doing about it? Sir David Attenborough has done more than most to open our eyes and minds and, quietly in the UK, we’re doing quite a lot - rather more than anyone else. Nothing to be smug about though. However we represent about 1% of the world’s population and just 0.2% of the world’s landmass so, whilst we can set an example, we can’t make a real difference.
It was nostalgic watching ‘Extinction Rebellion’ doing their thing last week. It brought back memories of the ‘Ban the Bomb’ marches in the 1960s, the miners’ strike riots of 1984, the Poll Tax riots of 1990 and the London riots of 2011. The voice of the people getting louder, increasingly intolerant (but as ever rather ineffective.)

The argument for exhorting urgent action is strong.  But when the extinction rebels get going with their japes they make me dislike their cause.  They’re simply so annoying that they neutralise my conscience. They are as idiotic as those denying their cause. What a pity that they get it, and so many of us, wrong. And how ironic that those schoolchildren taking time from school to wave their “Save the Planet” banners meet in their thousands and then depart leaving, would you believe, mountains of litter and plastic bottles.

Extreme language and thoughtlessness is the stuff of social media. It has a strangely shouty quality about it. Enoch Powell’s notorious “rivers of blood” speech in 1968 produced howls of execration. Now threats of killing them, to those who disagree with other people seem almost commonplace.

When Andrew Neil interviewed an extinction rebel on TV last week she said banning the use of gas for cooking, driving cars and flying by 2025 were an acceptable trade-off in trying to reverse climate change . This extreme position, leading as it probably would to our becoming a mediaeval country again, would be impossible to enact.

There are certain uncomfortable truths, in addition to those Al Gore talked about, that early apostle of describing the perils of climate change, not least the fact that this world is healthier, wealthier and more content overall than it has ever been. We have made so much progress. But, yes, we have become far too greedy for growth and swung that dial too far.

The climate change rebels are presenting their case so badly as to make it noisily inaudible. Most politicians today go over the top – Donald Trump lives in a racing, spluttering first gear. Our own Parliament is full of rage.

But words matter. Calm, thoughtful argument matters. Riots, vituperation and violence aren’t the right tools for a balanced discussion.

The rebels have a strong story but super-gluing themselves to planes obscures that story.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published on October3rd by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.

A VERY BRITISH STORY

The British are masters of the stiff upper lip… proud of our manners. Here’s what it says on ‘Study Links', a website addressing foreign students in the UK:- “Knowing a little bit about British etiquette will help you ensure that your behaviour is polite and appropriate whilst you are studying in the UK.”

So I’ve been puzzled by what we’ll call ‘Ambassador-Gate’ because we seem to have become happy to be rude, although the Foreign Office has always seemed to have encouraged a Private Eye style of communiques from its ambassadors. One in past years, described the Swiss as “neither the wittiest or the prettiest of people”. There has been this tradition of satirical wit which may have pleased writers and recipient but belongs to a previous era.  When we actually had an Empire.

In 2019 we all know (don’t we?) that nothing we write down is safe from hackers. In 2019 we need to be circumspect. Poor Sir Kim Darrock was neither of those and all that talk of supporting him seemed rather absurd when it appeared, because of his tabloid comments about the current Presidency that got leaked, he couldn’t,  when denied access to the White House, do his job … that’s why he was there in the first place.  He was, anyway, just a few months away from retirement. Poor rude (even if crudely truthful) Kim.

The behaviour of the - blessedly to be short-lived - British MEPs turning their backs in Brussels as Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” is played – the EU anthem – was lamentable. This also happened when the NSDAP (Nazi party) 1926 turned its back on the Speaker of the Reichstag - so well followed Nigel Farage.

But even this performance was dwarfed by Ann Widdecombe’s abusive tirade. When did she decide being rude was a strategy?

Our diplomats and our political representatives are currently doing our country a disservice. So what about our probable next Prime Minister? His Andrew Neil interview this week was revelatory. Bluster, bombast and braggadocio. Some pundits thought he made some sort of fist of it but I was dismayed to think he could soon be our leader.  Optimism, which is his credo, is fine but not to the exclusion of thought and reason. I remember playing cricket with an irredeemable optimist who, as the rain lashed down, bellowed  “stop!  I shall not be defeated by this shower.” Boris is extraordinary. He’s not, for sure, a role model, albeit he could be called a shower.

Nor is Jeremy Corbyn better as we watch the agonising suicide that is the antisemitic Labour party. Shameful and shameless.

This is a British summer, Ascot, Wimbledon, Lords, Silverstone, strawberries and champagne. It’s a season of charm, courtesy,sunburnt mirth and friendship.  It is (usually) when we are at our best.  Keats described it so well – “with beaded bubbles winking at the brim and purple stained mouth.”

We are not being true to ourselves and it’s such a shame.

THE ART OF THE MODERN LEADER

The art of the modern  leader

In a recent poll by the Hansard Society and Ipsos Mori, most people polled said they wanted a “strong” leader (whatever that means) and 54% approved of a leader who’d break the rules.

I’m deeply suspicious of this.

Currently the most successful leaders in sport and business are a more consensual breed. They recognise we no longer live in a world where blind obedience is demanded.  I once witnessed something in an American business to whom we were consulting. The Chairman had a bee in his bonnet about introducing colour variants to their flagship brand to make to more appealing to children. We begged his top team to tell him this was insane, wrong and doomed to failure. They wouldn’t … and it was.

Obedience is over-prized. “Because I said so” was always the worst reason to give a child for doing something they disagreed with. And our world is slowly changing in recognition of  this. “So what about loyalty to the company?” I’m asked. Loyalty goes both ways and all the loyalty in recent years has been to investors and top management rather than to the downsized workforce. 

I was once asked to do a presentation on Generation Z to a household name in office
equipment. All the available research and that I did myself showed they were mostly fair minded, determined to do a good job,  unimpressed with material  possessions, sceptical about things like simple  “career paths” or “property ladders” and most of all disinclined to take instruction at face value. They interviewed rather than were interviewed and took instruction reluctantly. The senior executives listened to this with stony faced incredulity whilst at the back of the room the interns were applauding.

Today leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are praised  by those who might in the past have applauded Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini – men who made things happen – people who saw things in black and white and in capital letters. In business such leaders would be characterised by comments like “at least you knew where you were with Tom” which is rather like saying you know where you are with Ebola.

In the 2020s, as they approach, we need a new breed of leader and top team that coaxes the best out of their people rather than tries to beat it out of them.  Above all they need to be leaders who are selfless, better listeners and great coaches. Leaders who say “we” not “I”. Here’s what gurus at Harvard say:

“People will be more effective leaders when their behaviours indicate that they are one of us, because they share our values, concerns and experiences, and are doing it for us … rather than their own personal interests.“  (Kim Peters and Alex Haslam Harvard Business Review August 2018)

Old fashioned attitudes to leadership exist because we’re reluctant to discard our worship of historical role models. But the world is changing so leaders had better change too or be changed.

RIGHTS, WRONGS AND LOOPHOLES

Am I alone in thinking we have a moral vacuum in which views about what’s right and wrong float in helpless confusion? The absence of instinctive certainties is one of today’s biggest problems. The BBC Radio 4 programme “The Moral Maze” exists solely because of this.

The recent debate about Shamima Begum, the 19 year old British girl who fled to Syria aged 15, joined Isis , got married to a Dutch terrorist, lost two babies and now, pregnant again, is claiming her rights to come “home”, have and look after her baby in peace … is a classic example of an issue filling the Times (their “scoop” ) polarising views, with politicians calculating what plays but …. no one knows what to do. When the modern world was created there was no set of instructions and no rulebook issued.

It’s unbelievable but in 2019 we seem to be making it up as we go along. And I see this happening in companies, charities and community projects where reference to constitutions (if such things exist) is often seen as pettifogging bureaucracy.

The problem that all this creates is demonstrated in a series of remarkable events last week.

The first was the protest movement of some 10,000 school children walking out of their schools on Friday at 11 am and demanding more radical action by government to arrest climate change and save the planet. There were some great slogans “I’m studying for a future that’s being destroyed,” “I’ve seen better Cabinets in Ikea” and so on.  I wonder if this isn’t the beginning of a long painful wedge for government. Youth had its say, in interviews spoke well and may have got a taste for it.

Secondly  the President of the Disunited States. I spend most of my time speechless when I see Mr Trump. However I totally agree with his action last week. He was right to call a State of Emergency. But it’s not the wall – a preposterous notion - it’s Donald Trump being President who’s the emergency. Can’t someone get the schools in the USA to walk out? He might listen to that. If being completely confused, grumpy and disoriented is less bad than being swaggeringly certain and plain wrong Britain unbelievably is in better shape than America right now.

Example 1. Save 50% by skiplagging

Finally finding loopholes in pricing structures. A bit like tax avoidance which is OK whilst tax evasion is not so it is with “skiplagging” (no me neither until the other day). It’s when Airlines charge less for multileg flights than straight trips and some resourceful passengers are buying these and missing off a leg.

Example 2 : Lufthansa from Seattle to Oslo via Frankfurt £556. Seattle to Berlin over £2000. So get off the Oslo flight at Frankfurt and buy a cheap ticket to Berlin. Smart? Well no.  A passenger who did this has been sued; Lufthansa lost but has appealed saying airlines have to make a profit.

Again I’m speechless.

HOLD UP THAT GLASS AND THINK...

Is the glass half full, half empty, completely empty or broken? As an irredeemable optimist who always looks on the bright side of life I really haven’t known where to look for the first time ever. Uncertainty is a malevolent state of being and right now I’m not even sure there is a glass. We should probably read Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ a brilliant satire on the flaws of optimism where he rousingly refutes Leibniz’s thesis that all is for the best in all possible worlds.

It isn’t and this is not the best of times. However all is not lost. So many good things have happened in 2018 and just focusing on the constipation and squalor of politics is short-sighted. Here’s my take on what 2019 might look like. These are not predictions so much as observations about change. So let’s lift our heads up and feel good.

The smell of war (or is it just fireworks?)

There’s a whiff of cordite in the air. It must have been like this in 1913 when the irritability built up and the lack of certainty made people yearn for something to clear the air. Rupert Brooke in his poem ‘Peace’ put it like this:
“With ….. clear eye, and sharpened power, 
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, 
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary”

“Old and cold and weary” describes how many people feel right now. But there’s an increasing view that what’s been going on is just a political story “told by an idiot full of sound and fury and signifying nothing”.  (Shakespeare, Macbeth)

Grumpiness is in our DNA. In 1641 in Britain a Civil War started which we are beginning to realise never quite finished. When people stop debating and sharing ideas they usually start punching each other. This is when any sense of strategic intent or forward planning disappears. As ex-heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson put it:

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

But this awkward, argumentative country usually gets on with it and plays the cards its been dealt mostly in harmony even if it’s uncomfortable harmony.  What’s going on right now is a firework display not the battle of Ypres.

Only one cheer for democracy

EM Forster wrote a book called “Two Cheers for Democracy" in 1951 – that’s a long time ago but some ideas don’t change. In it he questions the hierarchy of power and says  - “I believe in aristocracy - not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky.” I sense that a democracy that brings us Donald Trump and Brexit may get only one cheer. We accept as an act of faith that democracy is the only good form of government. And here’s the good news - soon there’ll be a 46th President of the USA who will have been “in power” for either 4 or 8 years. Robert Mugabe was President of Zimbabwe for 40 years. That’s why democracy works. Half the world has been democratised and has the ability to oust its leaders. Maybe we’ll look back on this decade as one where the people voted irrationally just to prove they could.

Part 2 will follow around 10am gmt tomorrow...

OH DOCTOR I DON'T FEEL WELL

 I was quite unfairly accused of being a hypochondriac last week when I groaned in a rather melodramatic way. But the fact is I was feeling a bit below par and the behaviour of our politicians was causing me acute mental anguish. In a word I thought I needed sympathy and treatment.

Perhaps however I was just suffering from an acute idiopathic condition which was probably sub-clinical and mercifully pre-terminal.  In other words I was really OK with nothing to worry about.
“Idiopathic” is a useful word. It comes from the Greek “idios” - one’s own and “pathos”- suffering. Widely used medically it actually means diagnostically “denoting any disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown”. Or in plainer English “this chap’s probably a malingerer; I don’t know what’s wrong”.

The current situations in the UK, France and America are idiopathic and pathetic. It should, I suppose, make us feel less bad about Brexit to see the French setting fire to themselves and shouting very loudly. One commentator actually said sententiously “this is how the French Revolution started.” Macron is now the most unpopular President ever. In a run-off between him and his predecessor, the despised Francois Hollande, Francois would win by a landslide.

Meanwhile over in the States Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s lawyer has pleaded guilty to eight charges and will be going to prison. From the President’s viewpoint the most serious guilty plea Cohen made is that he made hush-money payments during the presidential campaign to women Trump had slept with. Worse – that the President had directed him to do this. So that’s clear. Donald is nailed. Dead as a parrot.

Ah, apparently not. Trump immediately tweeted “totally clears the President. Thank you!” There is something so barefaced about him you almost (almost but not quite) admire him for it.  Set against the 2nd French Revolution and the impending defenestration of the 45th President of the United States our Brexit squabbles in the UK seem quite petty if undignified but at a much lower level of disgracefulness than France or America’s woes. If we were to be generous we could argue there is a genuinely important disagreement between parliamentarians about a matter of principle. However I do not feel very generous-minded when the bulk of MPs are polluted by a naked quest for power. This is a case of MeMe# as opposed to MeToo# 

Alone and abandoned Theresa May makes a long suffering, resolute yet curiously impressive figure. I never thought I’d feel admiration for her but I do. Most of the rest of her colleagues are a clueless and sadly squalid bunch. The question for me has long ceased to be about Brexit but about whether we can trust many/any of the 650 MPs to oversee and direct the affairs of Great Britain Limited.

I don’t believe that many of them care for our collective wellbeing at all. Which is pathetic and very disappointing. Happy Christmas.

WHERE'S THE LOO?

Of course we‘ve no intention of moving but every so often I scan “Right Move” wondering what it would be like to live in Rye, Lewes or Salisbury (near that cathedral which is on every Russian’s must-see list…’spire reaching up 123 metres’). The appeal of cathedral music is huge. Like living next to a free Wigmore Hall.

So when I saw a picture of a rather nice house close to Chichester Cathedral I thought “what fun”. When we were next in Chichester I went to have a look.  Facing the loading bay of the House of Frazer – lorries,  dustbins and mournful signs (“store closing down  January 2019) it didn’t look promising. Nor did it smell good - unmistakably of urine. Sadly the house was next door neighbour to a large and extremely popular public lavatory.

Nothing is quite what it seems. I‘d dreamt of potentially being a neighbour to the incense filled cathedral. The reality was smell of a different kind. Time to stop cropping the picture  and missing an essential feature.

This reminded me of the film called  “The Impossible”. In it a family is caught up in the nightmare of a tsunami in Thailand. One image vividly stuck with me. The mother sees her sons playing in the sea  with the tsunami behind them in the distance. She runs towards them waving frantically in warning. Uncomprehending they wave back in play and salutation.

In a week in which the increasingly strange Donald Trump infuriated his liberal critics by again insisting there are only two colours in an argument - black and white ….only two, only two…there’re no others. In a week in which nuance therefore takes another beating I realise that a bit like the public lavatory in Chichester the elephant in the room is ignored – “what elephant? Fake elephant. I see no elephant.”

We are all guilty of conspiring against balanced arguments. We read newspapers that simplify information. So this week, for instance, there was a headline in the Times on page1 which claimed “Eating organic food makes you 25% less likely to die young”. They’ll  doubtless be one next week saying “Science shows organic food is bad for old people”. It’s the cropping of information that makes the photograph lie. Thus the response of Guy Singh-Watson, who owns Riverford Foods, the organic farm and  veg box delivery company, to the blanket condemnation of plastic saying in some situations plastic wrapping is the best way.

Two of the most potent words in disputing a categoric claim are “not necessarily” . But in this black and white world the response to most offences would be that of Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts “off with their heads.”

Whilst the Chinese as we learnt this week seem keen on mass re-education it’s us who could with some ourselves. It’s time to see the whole picture not just the bit that fits our argument.
To the side of every piece of scenery lurks a metaphorical public lavatory.