DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA

Someone we know has retired and is moving lock, stock and barrel to Argentina. “How lovely,” we said, “but why there?” He got quite cross and said Britain was hopelessly overcrowded…we thought about the Highlands and Norfolk and shrugged…”and?” He now got a bit red in the face and barked: “because there is no quality of life in this country.”

Yes, the UK only comes 22nd out of 150 counties surveyed by Gallup in terms of happiness but Argentina comes 29th so that doesn’t quite ring true. If you like wine and beef you’ll love Argentina. And I know no one who’s been on holiday there who hasn’t absolutely adored the scenery, food and people. But we need to dig a bit.

In Argentina you’re seven times more likely to be murdered and five times more likely to die in a car crash. Corruption plagues the country and, allegedly, the justice system has many incompetent and corrupt judges. Inflation is 15% (down from 24%) and government interference in the economy makes Jeremy Corbyn look soft.

 In 2001 Argentina defaulted on its debt - think Greece but bigger - and since then no one has trusted them - unsurprising given their investment profile has been so badly damaged by fiscal mismanagement, protectionism, and expropriations. In comparison the UK economy looks wonderfully rosy and liberated.

If you think Tony Blair and Chilcott look dodgy cop this. Alberto Nisman, a crusading prosecutor, was shot dead in his apartment the day before testifying in court and accusing President Cristina Kirchner of attempting to cover up the 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish Cultural Centre.

This has created political turmoil. Oh yes, one other thing - the Vice President has been prosecuted for corruption. Not that any of this much matters as the Kirchner government controls nearly 80% of the Argentine media, either directly or indirectly.

So do I think our friend is crazy?

Provided you can tolerate an extremely left wing and suspect regime of government and will trade this for a spectacular landmass - imagine Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden the North Sea and the Atlantic south of Iceland to Cornwall - you’ll be fine.

From what I know, which is very little, Argentina is scenically extraordinary but most of this comes from albeit sophisticated tourists but none the less tourists. No one I’ve encountered would through choice want to do business there. No one I know is a champion of their politics or economic management.

Yet perhaps there’s more to life than cities and spreadsheets. Perhaps our friend will be munching tender steak and quaffing robust Malbec in the sun whilst we commute grumbling to

London and worry about interest rates going up from 0.5%. And he’ll be enjoying the passion of the people whom Marlene Dietrich described:

“Latins are tenderly enthusiastic. In Brazil they throw flowers at you. In Argentina they throw themselves.”

Maybe food, drink, love, beautiful women and the tango matter more than money.

GET AWAY

David Cameron is being criticised for having too long a holiday. He’s planning to take most of August off first in Cornwall and then Portugal; swanning off when there’s Greece, an ISIS crisis and increasing problems with the SNP. Clearly he should be at number 10 worrying and having Civil Servants bouncing around like Duracell bunnies giving him advice.  Surely he’s meant to be Prime Minister not Sometime Prime Minister.

Some think - wrongly - holidays are for wimps.

Years ago I knew a football manager called Brian Clough. He ran Nottingham Forest between 1977 and 1993. He was Manager of the Year in 1977-78 won the league title twice , the FA Cup four  times and the European Cup twice. He was a legend.

He once said to me “I’m in trouble with my Board, young man - I just took off for Spain for a week - because I felt tired and needed to think and sleep - they want me there every day - well they can get stuffed”. And they did because in 1978 no-one argued with King Brian. Watch him filleting the hapless football commentator John Motsom in that year- wonderful stuff. The stuff of a relaxed man.

Brian understood the need to rest, to, as he put it, “be a bit daft” and using a change of scene and regimen can do that.

To be as good as you can be you need to stay in shape.

You need to invest in your support system, your wife, husband, children, grandchildren and your friends. Research proves (well we know it proves very little but I just love starting sentences like that occasionally). Research proves human beings make better decisions than computers and when they don’t it’s because they decide to behave like computers, whirring away 24/7.

Do we really get the need for sabbaticals, being like Yvon Chouinard CEO of Patagonia the apparel manufacturer?  Here he is in the office:

We live in an austere world and it’s one the brilliant educationalist Sir Ken Robinson analyses devastatingly when he laments the absence of creativity in modern education.

So my grandsons’ recent school reports interested me. They were very good although the forensic detail over many pages of closely typed pages worried me. The boys were 8 and just 6 in the school term in question. The detail was about the same as you’d apply to a senior marketer’s appraisal in a big corporation or an ‘A’ level student.

They should all lighten up. I think they need to be inspired not ground down by Gradgrinds.  I think they should do what a very successful friend of mine did. For family reasons he and his brothers took six months out of school when he was 8 and built the biggest, best, tree house ever. He said:  “It was then I learned more than I’ve ever done since.”

Six months’ up a tree is better than a term of modern maths. Trust me.

HOW CAN HUMAN BEINGS BE SO UNKIND?

I was walking back from Waitrose festooned with bags of balsamic vinegar, olives, pretzels, hummus and wine - all those essentials in my life when a guy said “can you spare me some money?” I gestured at my hands trapped by the bags and he smiled and said “sure”. He was certainly civilised and on his uppers. At least I gave him eye contact, at least I tried but my failure to slip him a few quid has been  making me feel lousy ever since. Why are so many people down on those who are already down about as far as they can get?

I’ve heard people saying about the Syrian and Libyan refugees  that in their midst are terrorists using the cover of human misery to sneak to our shores and blow us up.  Most of the people fleeing are women and children with no credible other option than to make a risky and expensive sea crossing. Maybe surprisingly it was Jeremy Clarkson who compared the refugees with a neighbour whose house was on fire. Do you shrug and say “not my problem mate” or help put it out and put them up until things are sorted.

Which brings me to Greece.

The last time I took a view on Greece I was heavily criticised for being soft on debt and soft on the causes of debt. They must be punished. It’s the only thing they understand.

If the ”they” are the ordinary population of Greece and not the oligarchy I couldn’t disagree more. The sheer unkindness of the EU, IMF and ECB has made me uneasy about the whole ethos of the EU. Do we really want to remain part of such a beastly cadre? All my strict attitudes about good governance and prudence are blown out of the water by a swift study of the Greek situation. It’s the sort of thing that Dickens would have written brilliantly about. We need that sort of passion now.

The reality is the debt mountain was not built by the average Greek. It was created by the “generosity” of the EU and the banks and the smiling corrupt barons at the top of Greece.

The trouble now is, as some are saying, “we might just as well vote “no” and preserve a bit of dignity; we have nothing left to lose except that now.”

I feel as though I need to fly to a Greek island and throw a party for them. I love the Greeks and I have done since 1964 when I first went there. They are generous, good humoured and mischievous. I love the scenery, climate and the food. I love their swagger and sense of pride. I love their appetite for life.

I loathe what the Troika has done and we as passive spectators are doing in letting this being quenched.
Whatever they vote on Sunday we have a collective responsibility to be a lot kinder to them than we have been so far.

UPDATE:  60% + saying ”no”….amazing. Wish Greece well

HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU?

It’s been strange. We have a TV in our apartment in Venice and it’s remained silent and unused for two weeks. We haven’t seen a newspaper. We overhead an Englishman muttering “this Greece business looks bad”…..plus ḉa change…..but other than that we’ve been a news free zone.

First of all we feel free of that anxiety about English cricket, the EU and the latest tech company to tumble. Life is parochial, sunny and more orientated to lunch and supper than matters of state.  And here’s the question. Have we, through the 24/7 wonders of our uber-fast communications set up in today’s world, become wildly undiscriminating and lazy? Everything matters and nothing does. News comes non-stop in torrents of little gobbets like cicchetti.

What is remarkably obvious is freedom from the news for a while is incredibly relaxing. Although I must confess I sent an e-mail to my garage about a service but it seems it ended up in their “junk folder” and so it should. Next time we come here there’ll no phone or laptop either.

So what news do I have apart from my rant last week on art?

Just three things:

Customer service here in Venice is getting better and better from the highly personalised welcome from one restaurant, the Riviera - “Good evening…I own this restaurant and want you to have a really lovely time this evening…call me if there’s anything you want” (and I think he genuinely meant it)

to another at La Bitta where on giving me the bill the owner said  “I’ve taken €10 off as you’re friends” glaring at a German couple at the next table who clearly were not (but yes we do go to this restaurant a lot)

The centre of Venice around St Mark’s Square, the Riva degli Schiavoni and the Rialto are packed by bemused tourists but as now we know how to have a quiet restful time in Dorsiduro and around Santa Croce. Do not trust people who say it’s noisy, crowded and ruined any more than you’d say Brighton or London are.

Venice is good value. Yes honestly. It isn’t a rip-off joint. Take Alsquero, a little cicchetti bar which deservedly gets rave reviews on Trip Advisor. Think triple sized canapes costing just 80p each and a wonderful small glass of wine at less than £2. Lunch costs about £5…and this is not atypical.

The final point is to anyone and everyone in business. Every so often take off to a place like Venice which is alive and trading but restful too. Get an apartment - hotels are so claustrophobic and reminiscent of business. Read lots. Walk lots. Eat lots. Don’t take too many clothes. Wash out that dull, news filled dusty mind.
I only realise now how bad tempered, knackered and stressed I’d been. And I have a really easy life.
So “rilassarsi, divertirsi e cin, cin” and remember doing nothing is sometimes the best strategy.

WHAT I HAVE IN COMMON WITH GEORGE CLOONEY

George is in the new film “The Monuments Men”. It’s about a team of curators, museum directors and art historians who are sent into Germany near the end of the Second World War to save Nazi plundered art from destruction as the Germans realise their game is finally up. As Clooney puts it in the film:  "We’re fighting for our culture and our way of life. If you destroy your enemy’s achievements, it’s as if they never existed. That’s what Hitler wants."

Clooney, a recent convert to the arts, because of the film I guess, has become a lover of Greece and wants us to return the Elgin Marbles to the Pantheon (sic) – it’s the Parthenon, George. He has a point. We should do anything we can to help Greece.

I was there last week helping at a multinational conference. It was at the Hilton in Athens, acres of marble, thirteen floors of luxury, two terrific restaurants and a fantastic conference. As George might have said “what’s not to like?”

It gets better.

Outside it was hot and sunny with those deep, blue Aegean skies. The Greeks it appears didn’t have a word for “blue” but they liked the colour a lot hence Homer’s description of “wine dark seas.” I have a new expression “deep-eyed skies”. Every time I see one of those Greek skies I think it’s like looking into a beautiful girl’s blue eyes. George and I have so much in common.

As I stood on the terrace in one of those conference lulls wondering why I hadn’t packed the factor 30 I realise how I’d missed real sunshine over the recent bleak months and how my mood was lifting. There’s something indescribably sublime about this country. I had a Greek salad in which the tomatoes tasted of sunshine, a fish meal in which the parrot fish tasted of fresh morning waves whilst the waiters argued that the olive oil was not just good but super-premium. And their story about the red wine lasted a solemn five minutes and was about the Xinomavro grapes in it. The word means “acid black” and the grapes, rich in tannin, age beautifully. It’s so smooth they intoned. It was …. and so strong too.

And the economy? Petros Christodoulou of the National Bank of Greece is sounding upbeat as were the Troika on a recent visit. Being a young Greek and out of work – which you probably are – is pretty awful but GDP growth of just under 3% is forecast for 2015, deficit reduction is ahead of plan and  tax receipts are up.

As the sun shone and the strains of last year’s Greek Eurovision Song entry by Kosa Mostra “Alcohol is Free” – it came 6th by the way – filtered into the Athenian air I felt the yearning to spend more time in this amazing country. The service in the hotel and restaurants and elsewhere were of a new, more focused and more attentive style than I recall. So…..welcome back my Greek friends.

“Καλώς ήρθατε και πάλι τους Έλληνες φίλους.”

DOCTORS ARE REALLY IN THE TRANSPORT BUSINESS

I suppose I could change him for someone less philosophical - my doctor that is - who came out with the slightly gloomy thought as he examined me during a routine investigation that all life strategies ended in one place.

Death.

Put it into an economic environment and this would mean all empires and business empires end up collapsing. Which if you take a long view of history is about right. Persia. Egypt. Greece. Rome.  And, probably in the near future, will include Western Civilisation.

However he then added something slightly more cheering which was the journey of life was what mattered anyway. Enjoy it, discover new things and try to make a difference. He was there to make sure, as best he could, that one had rather more time than otherwise on the journey enjoying the experience, but, nonetheless, on a train without brakes that would one day hit the buffers.

Business leaders talking about long term strategy as opposed to short term tactics, about exit plans or about sustaining themselves through a series of generations are deluding themselves. If there’s only one certain exit plan it’s death.

Jeremy Clarkson talked about trying to lose weight and giving up drinking. He concluded:

“Waking up feeling fresh is like dying with a clear conscience and a healthy bank balance.  It means you’ve wasted your life”.

We’ll look back on the South Sea Bubble, the traumas of the 1970s miners’ strike and the current recession as blips in a high speed journey through vivid landscape.

So when you sit down to write your business plan in today’s chaotic times think of the tactics of short term success - of how you can make technological, marketing or simply product breakthroughs sooner rather than later…there may not be a later. Think about doing great stuff not about creating a great company. As Herb Kelleher founder of South West Airlines in the USA put it:

“We have a strategic plan; it’s called doing things.”

Ben and Jerry may not quite match Watson and Crick; Walt Disney may not have been as significant as Alexander Fleming and Woody Allen may be a pale shadow of Shakespeare but each and every creative journey is a roller coaster like the legendary Kingda Ka in New Jersey - the world's tallest roller coaster, the world's second fastest roller coaster and voted the scariest roller coaster.  There’s nothing strategic here just a near-death experience.

Which brings me back to my doctor.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

SOMETHING CONVULSIVE, SOMETHING REPULSIVE

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the spectacular Euro show and here’s Stephen Sondheim to take us on the journey.

Something familiar,
Something peculiar,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Something appealing,
Something appalling,
Something for everyone:
A comedy tonight!

Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns;
Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns!

Old situations,
New complications,
Nothing portentous or polite;
Tragedy tomorrow,
Comedy tonight!

From the appalling Grant Shapps – how apt to appoint a Minister of Housing someone who most resembles an Estate Agent – who told us “I spend my life on Twitter” to the Prime Minister, no less, being teased about not remembering trivia two years ago by the oleaginous QC at Leveson (I bet that silk’s tax returns get stared out very hard next time round) to Francoise Hollande’s women in lingerie-tearing Twitter brawls to George telling us there’s another £80,000,000,000 for business (to cries of “we’ll have that” Bob Diamond inter alia) – Georgy who always looks as though he’s off to an orgy and Ed Balls who looks like he’s just come back from one – it’s those staring eyes – “you should have seen her..(enough Ed. Ed) to the ex underpanted-on-Facebook Vicar Chris Bryant saying to Jeremy – please-don’t-hit-me-sir Hunt in the Commons – blimey the sauce – “you  have lied” ….fuck that’s terrible (how could he use such language) to …it goes on.

Later on in “Comedy Tonight come the lines “nothing that’s Greek/nothing that’s grim”. In Greece they vote tonight…before you read this but I fear it’ll be tragedy tomorrow whatever happens. Their hospitals are running out of towels, medicines, disinfectants and nurses. On Leros where they have their notorious mental hospital (still called a lunatic asylum) the inmates haven’t had food for a week as the money’s run out.
There’s this weird sense I have that we are as they used to put it “going to hell in a handcart” no actually it’s an update of that….we are going to hell in a BMW and we’re dancing a mad dance of joy as it happens and focusing on trivia which wonderfully is what humans do (“move that bloody deckchair to the left”.)
Robert Jay QC: And so Prime Minister can you recall for us how many bowel movements you had in the first week of May 2007?

David Cameron: What? No…no …I can’t

Robert Jay: What no glimmer? Not a vague impression or recollection?

David Cameron: no…oh I don’t know maybe 10 times


Robert Jay: Ten times, ten times…I see (he smiles and shakes his head)

Game over.
Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns.

SO HOW DO WE DIG OURSELVES OUT OF THIS?

The gloom deepens and we risk all become just unquestioning spectators.

Good: Diamond Jubilee, Euro 2012 (mostly). 

Ashby de la Zouch celebrates

Bonfires start at the bottom. This was a big national bonfire. Learn from the power of locals to ignite campaigns – cheaply, fast and well branded.

Bad: Syria, Greece, Spain…deeper and down (but I love the fact the dispossessed from the homes are repossessing empty power blocks owned by discredited banks.)

Prospects: dire for us and for England in Euro 2012… I have a funny feeling we may surprise….just wish we weren’t playing in so inimical a series of places.

“Sometimes I feel so depressed I decide to stay in bed. Then I worry that I might fall out and hurt myself.” Robert Benchley

So what in practical terms can we do about all this? Here are seven thoughts.

1. Challenge everything

A young relation is trying to get into Oxford – I began to put her through the sort of inquisition she might encounter. “What’s your best dream?” I asked “Clean water for the world.” She sparkled. “Yet when our water in Britain was at its dirtiest we ruled supreme. Explain.”

Balliol College Oxford where the questions never stop and where that green space keeps thinking (hopefully) fresh.

2. Become an obsessive planner

Sit and think and plan. Speculate how various changing external factors could alter what you try to do. How nimble can you be? How fixed are your costs? How stubborn are your preconceptions. Tear up the old business models.

A tsunami wave. Poignantly symbolic of the forces and surprises we will face. Nothing is impossible. Plan for that.

3. Simplify everything you do

The “Apple-trick”– fewer, better features. More focus. Get more force in the water from that hosepipe. We live in a crowded, noisy world. Beware becoming a Facebook slave or a Twitter addict. Do less, do better. Stop chatting. Start planning.

Apple have been the brilliant simplifiers. Less is more. Declutter. Aim to do three things briiliantly.

4. If you aren’t getting better you’ve got a problem

James Cracknell – rowing gold medallist said “our worst had to be better than our competitor’s best”. How good are you at what you do? Really? Tell the truth. And if you don’t know everything you do is guessing.

Crazy guys with huge stamina. But they knew how to win. Tell the truth. Train harder. Be better. Attack. Focus on winning.

5. It’s what your customers think that matters

Tell that to the bullies at Visa who through their sponsorship of the Olympics have had other ATM machines disabled. In fact if you don’t have a Visa card you can’t go the Olympics. You are in effect bankrupt. The PR from this is needlessly damaging. Visa’s an acronym for “very insulting stupid…” can’t think of a word for “a” … They’ll listen to their customers but too late.

Shame on you bully. You’re a great brand that’s stopped listening to people.

6. Do some stuff

“We do strategy here – we call it doing things” That was Sam Kelleher legendary boss of South West Airlines. Action; speed; innovation;change. If you aren’t trying and rejecting and doing stuff you’re in trouble.

South West Airlines internal poster – nice – one on the world’s success stories – active, interactive, fun; shows it can be done.

7. Get help to pull all this together

This is a cross between self-help, major surgery, a severe work-out programme, a re-launch, botox and good resolutions. Welcome to 2012. Don’t try this at home alone. Surround yourself with a few friends, gurus and inspirers just like the Olympic stars do or smart people trying to climb mountains.

The Sherpa on the left is anonymous but this wouldn’t be easy without him. Get a Sherpa.

BEATING THE DOOM OF JUNE

I’m starting this Jubilee Blog with an image to terrify any civilised person. It’s about poor old Greece. From the cradle of civilisation to a rather messy deathbed. The man scrambling through the skip for a few drops of olive oil is you and me. Middle class, probably a professional not so much down on his luck as suffering because of geography, nationality and politics. But read Michael Lewis’ “Boomerang” to get a vivid insight into what Greekness is. He says that even the Greeks don’t like each other.

And having shuddered at this in a kind of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I way,  thank your lucky stars you live here in Britain which is a great place to be.

Tim Smit from the Eden Project talking about the Big Lunch on Saturday Live on Saturday May 2nd was wonderfully irate about the doom merchants:-“I’m sick and tired of hearing ‘Broken Britain’. We can say what you want without being found dead in a ditch. We get free education, free health care and most people are really nice and get on with each other.”

Well said Tim.

And there’s one other thing that Matthew Parris noted. We currently have a marked “absence of crisis” this Jubilee weekend. All is not that well but it sure isn’t pear shaped or olive oil smelling. Absence of crisis may be boring but it’s calming.

 And talking about being able to say whatever you want can I make a strong comment about the marketing of cigarettes? As a consequence of Government intervention I really want to take up smoking again. Not slightly want to – I mean really, really want to. It’s that fabulous new packaging they’re going to bring in. I think they’ve got it all wrong. This is the biggest re-launch of fags ever. After years of their marketers fiddling around with designery stuff we’re going to get big bold plain packs creating a sort of Absolut for nicotine. Smokers kit not poncey brands.  Blank pack as role model. Note the words I’ve highlighted in red. Brilliantly satirical stuff….only they’re serious.

"WHAT IS PLAIN PACKAGING?

Plain packaging means that all tobacco products will be required to look the same. All brand names would have to be written in a standard typeface, colour and size. And all other trademarks, logos, colour schemes and graphics would be banned. 


As it stands, designed packs are the tobacco industry's last form of advertising. Shiny holograms, pretty pastel colours and wrappers are all used to attract children and lessen the effectiveness of health warnings on packs."

And then there’s Mr Krugman, the famous American economist who has won prizes for his insights and enraged opponents with his plain speaking.

I heard him speak and was dazzled especially when asked how he could be so rudely contemptuous of people who disagreed with him. He explained this was not the case at all, that he was only contemptuous of those whose views were contemptible. I could have listened to him for hours.

And finally in this world we are so lucky to inhabit where madness like plain cigarette packaging are provided as political comedy moments, where Paul “I am right and you are wrong” Krugman speaks with such beautiful certainty and where  the Queen is praised for her commonsense by PM Cameron  (sounds just like the school report that says “tries hard” meaning stupid but not naughty) I am going to drink some claret and dream of the future. Like the splendid Mark Twain did – why do the American’s have all the best lines?

'Twenty years from now you will more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines; sail away from the safe harbour; catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.  Discover.'

Happy weekend and catch those trade winds.

CONFIDENCE AND CREATIVITY ARE THE CRITICAL CURRENCIES

It’s easy to talk oneself into a state of despondency. Read any economist today on sovereign debt and you’ll reduce your forecasts and plan to dine on gruel two nights a week.  Lose your confidence and your expectation of success reduces too. Barack Obama said “always act confident”. If we acted on what we are reading currently we’d all be doomed.

But there is a side effect of the prognoses these economic gurus are having. They are dispiriting most of our competitors and giving the rest of us huge opportunities. Strategically we should be embarked upon a share-gain plan, ruthlessly selling the benefits of our products and services at the expense of our more pessimistic competitors.

This is the age of the salesman…they crop up every decade or so …where confidence, can-do and enthusiasm will win friends and sales.

The world has changed. Countries like Greece and Portugal, we’re told, are structurally doomed and being targeted by those who make their money by selling things short. But none of this makes a scrap of difference to someone selling industrial flooring, pesto sauce or who’s running a restaurant. We may live in a global economy but on a day to day basis we live in our own worlds, world’s a lot simpler and more driven by practical needs than those of macro-economists.

In planning for 2012 you’ll be told to expect downturn to which your answer must be “not necessarily”.
The answer to most things will be to retain good, cheerful, smart people in the front line, to focus on existing customers encouraging and incentivising them to do more with you, to invest in programmes of positive coaching for all your sales people and to be much more creative in your presentations and your solutions to problems.

This is the age of creative confidence when ingenuity and the ability to talk things up rather than be down in the mouth will pay dividends.

And in the end with low interest rates and an increasing pressure on people to work harder 2012 could be quite spectacular in terms of share growth and productivity for some of us.

To put it in perspective here’s what one-time US President Calvin Coolidge said about the prospects of doom:

“If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.”
  

HOW SOCIAL IS OUR MEDIA?

A really bright creative called Scott Leonard said to me last week – “let’s not talk about social media let’s talk about how unsocial old media used to be”.

To be sure letters to the Times and Any Answers were about as interactive as it used to be and I recall sitting irritably in a Greek Harbour waiting for the ferry to arrive with the Sunday Times. I’d have killed to have got the last copy. To read it, by myself, like a news addict.

Although now Mr Murdoch seems have finally proved how anti-social old media could be.
But why can’t I get more worked up by Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin?

I think it’s to do with their content.

Most of the stuff on them barely raises itself above the level of “OMG don’t you hate Sundays. Groan!”

And imagining you can sell stuff on Facebook seems naïve. It’s a place to chat not to do transactions and having big brother brands next you pretending to be cool is absurd.

But as the riots and the Arab Spring have shown, social media is an efficient way of managing the expectations and movements of crowds.

When it comes to ideas, though, something else is needed – Dave Trott provides that in his blogs with  genuine “I hadn’t thought about it – whatever it is – quite like that” insights. Ken Robinson and Matt Ridley do it on TED.

And TED and its mission to spread interesting ideas that seems to change our world.

It’s when you can pick away at and disagree with someone that something interesting happens.
What is happening, I imagine to the distaste of most politicians, is a lot more people are starting to think and the old fashioned art of conversation has started to be revived.

I like neither the word “social” nor the word “media” very much – if only we could describe the phenomenon as “community conversations” I might be less grumpy.

Because that is really interesting – the idea of groups of people spreading ideas and thinking about stuff that really matters.

The megaphone is redundant. Welcome back the village pump and the oral tradition. Welcome back storytelling.

Welcome back discussion.