A PLEA FOR RECOGNISING REAL TREASURE

I am not one for nostalgia. The allure of steam trains, pipe smoking and warm beer seems to me massively overrated. UKIP may look fondly backwards but hankering for the past doesn’t create a useful platform for developing the future. Indeed almost everything about the present seems to me a massive improvement - from restaurants to transport to houses everything has simply got cleaner, cheaper and more efficient.

But three times this week I felt a little twitch of affection for long lasting treasures which were they not here we’d be really sorry.

The BBC is obvious enough but the way this organisation is currently reinventing itself is astounding. Dr Who was always good but now it’s reaching Shakespearian levels, similarly Sherlock which has an intellectual power and narrative drive we see seldom except in Stoppard.

And it stretches to C-Beebies - in my days the poncy-voiced lady said accusingly “are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin”. She terrified me. Even John Humphrys has become human on the Today Programme as Cherry Owen in Under Milk Wood asking Mrs Cherry Owen (played by Cerys Matthews) to “give us a kiss”. This, after being called a “silly sausage “by Johnny Rotten in an interview. What fun. What a brilliant apostle for change “Auntie” has become.

And then the Co-op dubbed a joke company following the escapades of the Reverend Flowers and the departure of top management. But you know something? Following the Tesco story and the way the city is walking all over our grocers something stands out. The Co-op may be flawed and foolish but at least it’s authentic in its foolishness. It’s like the Archers full of humanity not behaving like a crooked MBA. Its latest advertising for its bank (proof its feet are made of damp clay) - “ethics, values and a tattoo parlour” is dreadful.

Beware a person who says “...trust me. I’m honest”. But beware a London ad agency for leading the good old Co-op down the smooth ad campaign route. The Co-op is authentic, real, has values and some great products. Focus on the facts and the stories but not in glossy ads. The Co-op is not nor should ever be glossy. But I still it love it warts and all.

And finally people: the diversity I recently saw in Shoreditch which more resembled New York than the London of cosy Soho. Or the laconic conversation I had in a Brighton Lidl about the weather with a quite large lady whose basket seemed alarmingly full of pies.

The Treasury has confirmed what we lovers of immigration have always known (immigration, by the way, creates what has always made the country we live in what it is- a brilliant mish-mash of talent, diversity and resourcefulness.) The Treasury news is this: immigrants bring a net £20 billion to the economy.

£20,000,000, 000 - thank you.

The BBC, the Co-op and our people - human, imperfect and brilliant. We are so lucky.

BEWARE TREATING FASHION TRENDS AS PERMANENT

When I was very small I was shaken awake by mother one Sunday night. She had urgent news for me.

“It’s wonderful. Wake up. Bird Dog is number one”.

She’d been listening to Radio Luxembourg and she was living proof that being old didn’t mean you couldn’t join in. Or was she? At that moment I wondered if the Everly Brothers were meant for me.

The recent controversy over social media this week made me think about age.  The trouble is if you are in that quarter of the population over the age of 60 who are struggling to either comprehend the way to make it work or to come to terms with whether it actually matters, social media seems as hard to understand as the Sex Pistols were to our parent’s generation.

Much of the problem lies in the sheer inappropriateness of MPs and mature citizens, with their aching extremities, pretending they are young and trendy and merrily tweeting their passing thoughts. It also exposes the dangers of playing a game where you don’t really know all the rules.

As Daryll Scott the Creative Director of Noggin advised us: don’t try and join in because whilst it’s second nature to the young it’s not for you. You trying to be techno-cool is embarrassing, as embarrassing as a 60 year old trying to dance the invisible horse Gangnam style. After all do you remember watching your father doing the twist?

Enter 17 year old Jordan Hatch. Government is now advised by teenagers like him. We’ve seen him this week in his shorts and trainers talking very sensibly about websites. Someone who knows how to interpret fashion trends and predict what will be important and what won’t.

Many people say the world has been usurped by a conspiracy between technology and youth – that quarter of the population aged between 15 and 30. But beware they have discarded their laptops for their mobile phones and the social media they like and use are way beyond Twitter and Facebook. They’re Pinterest, Snapchat, Kik and Tumblr. Things are changing very fast.

But what is fashion and what’s sustainable?

What price the Washington Post?

Actually it’s $250 million. That’s what Jeff Bezos of Amazon paid for it. He has a brand that resonates with truth; a brand that’s been around for nearly 150 years; a brand that could link past, present and future handled right. (Look at the success of the Mail Online which is,  now, the world’s most popular news site.)
The trick will be to do what happens in Dr. Who – regenerate every so often as the Mail has done.
So when they shake you awake now they’ll be saying.

“It’s wonderful. Private Eye Online has overtaken the Huffington Post. Honestly.”

www.colourfulthinkers.com