HELP THE RADAR'S DOWN

Bad news for bookies, pundits and psephologists - the old fashioned way of predicting through balancing talent, achievement and form has gone out of the window.

As they might say in Iceland:  “Við þandir Englandi. Svo mikið fyrir mannorð þeirra.“

Does anyone know what’s going to happen next? We got the prospects for Corbyn, Brexit, Leicester City and Trump wrong. We seem to have lost our touch. Just as “Big Data” arrived to allow us to forecast with greater sureness something weird has happened.

Unpredictability rules OK …or have we just lost the plot?

The late founder of Body Shop, Dame Anita Roddick, said:

“Running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rear view mirror.”

But that’s what all the big institutions have been doing for a long time.  Headhunters select candidates on the basis of where they’ve been rather than what they might do. Hence their arrival into (and thereafter departure from) similar jobs to the ones they’ve had before, showing how efficiently we recycle senior executives. The biggest change in our world is that mass movements like epidemics-of-extreme-opinion happen faster than we could have imagined in older and slower times. Apathy is dead. The silent majority has started to shout.

Some of the things that we couldn’t have imagined - everyone uncomplainingly wearing seatbelts, smoking being banned in virtually all public spaces, adult smokers down from 46% in 1974 to 19% in just 40 years and plastic bag aversion…. what’s effectively a “fine” of 5p per plastic bag has produced an 80% decline in uptake in Tesco alone.

The thundering herd embraces games and fashion too - Pokémon-Go for instance where the groundswell of excitement may burn out but the appetite for the next PG will be waiting for more.  We’re told we need leadership. Well, look at the leaders. Are the Trumps, Le Pens, Wilders, Putins, Erdogans and others what we really need in a civilised world? Aren’t they all just part of a wave of militant nostalgia?

We are spending so much time focusing on the past,  looking in that rear view mirror, rather than exploring the future.

But what we aren’t doing is looking at and listening to what Martin Lindstrom calls “small data” (author of “Brandwashed - Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy”). His thesis is small changes and phenomena make the difference and anticipate the tidal wave that creates trends. Like people beginning to think that smoking looked unfashionable and unusual was what it took to prick the nicotine bubble.

Radar can help us predict the future but having a sense of conviction as to where we want to go and being determined to get there matters more.  A long time ago Sarah Lee had a great idea for promoting their cake mix. “Just add an egg” they said.

We need to find the egg that’s missing in our lives and then - well - just add it.

I'M GOING TO BECOME NASTY

Consider the respective benefits of managing with stick or carrot. Personally I’ve always had a pocketful of carrots in the unshakeable belief that the nicer we are to each other the better the results. But I’m not any longer sure that this is right.

We’ve exhausted our patience, our management skills and bank balance on our extensive house refurbishment. Seventeen different people have marched through our house, drunk our coffee, used our loos and exercised our respective people skills. When one of them said to me “you know you’re the nicest people I’ve worked for” I knew something was going horribly wrong. Now it’s a common refrain and we are left waiting (nicely) whilst the unreasonable bastards who scream and shout get instant attention from these characters.

My self-doubt increased on June 23rd when I realised that civilised debate with Brexit people was a waste of time.  Being nice was a mission too far when they told me that they didn’t want straight bananas, unelected bureaucrats (what? Like our own civil servants, police, judiciary), bad treatment of animals, Polish builders and so on and that they wanted a return to our “yeoman values”, control of our destiny and poverty (yes that’s really a price worth paying).

June 23rd was for about half the country our 9/11. That Thursday our world changed. And the EU-Leavers took our country away and they stole my sense of humour. Because where we are and where we’re going isn’t funny.

How bad is it?

A friend told me he rooted for Iceland in the European Cup - “I hate old England’s vulgar nationalism”.

To misquote Dr Johnson but probably more to the current point:
“Patriotism is the last refuge of …”the ignorant.

The last time I felt this bereft was when my mother died. It’s created a real sense of permanent loss. And as the “I told you so’s” pile up I feel worse not vindicated. On Saturday, for instance, the pound overtook the Argentinian Peso as the weakest leading global currency.

The division between leavers and remainers is acute and I believe permanent. It appears nearly all the people I know think like me. The very few leavers I know have values and attitudes to capital punishment, homosexuality and life in general that are not what I can live with. (What would Roy Jenkins our most radical liberal 20th century spirit think of all this?)

I feel ashamed, belittled and angry. And I want to find my real home again. Fortunately Brighton was strongly pro-remain but my gut says I must find solace in London or Scotland. Richard French, a friend, believes there should be a new country called “Scot-Lon” and to hell with the rest.

But here’s a thought. By 2020 over 1½ million of those people who voted Brexit will have died to be replaced by a more pro-EU group aged 18+.

So we have to wait for this madness to pass and just be nastier in this post-nice world.