WINTER IS COMING

Officially winter starts on December 21st. Yet first thing on Friday it was really chilly with a frost. I recalled a poem First Frost by Edwin Curran an American poet born at the end of the 19th century:

The flowers grow in the garden pied
Velvet, imperial, laughing-eyed,
While on them all hovers a breath,
The whistling frost of silver death.

I’d been feeling pretty mouldy for several weeks so I empathised with phrases like “silver death” but more to the point the blue sky, the bright sun and that familiar ‘Brrr!’… feeling as I wound my scarf more tightly round my neck, made me feel so much more alive than I’d recently felt. I love seasons. Autumn, like claret, is my thing but I also recall the thrill of bleak midwinters as imagined by Christina Rossetti.

I was up early as we were taking our 7-year-old granddaughter to school. The children all “laughing eyed” were waiting patiently at the gate looking eager, happy and expectant. The tired dismay I’d been feeling earlier, based on a mess of dismal news about institutional racism, sleaze and sheer stupidity, together with unexpected Republican victories in America, ebbed away. These children were the future, and it was lovely to see. No prejudice, no-isms  just a joy in life and the present. There was also a sense of humour that was rich in wicked fun:- 

“So what did you do in school yesterday?”

“Oh, fighting and cutting up butterflies.”

Fall is yet to happen. The leaves are still withering but green on the trees. Winter is waiting. As are our fuel bills. Ours I’m told will be over £5,000. Eyewatering but it’s my wine cellar that will take the hit to accommodate that.

I’ve decided to stop grumbling about the racism, sleaze and sheer stupidity journalists are slavering over.

 

Instead I’m thinking about reading a good book – currently Sarah Dunant’s “Blood and Beauty” about the Borgias, sipping a chilled Pinot Grigio – tiny ones to savour - and listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.  His music has such a sense of fluent certainty about it.  He makes it sound easy.

The story of our times is not that complex; it’s happened before; it’s a perennial story. Old v New; Past v Present; Continuity v Change. As people get older they’ll often lament “why do they keep changing things?” The answer is because old naturally has to renew; because humanity is creative and keeps on trying to improve things and the sheer economic logic of change which creates work, money and jobs.

The biggest difficulty in life is people. Understanding them, hearing them and speaking to them. Persuading billions of people to be poorer more uncomfortable and colder is difficult. We are wealthier, healthier world than we were a century ago because we’ve worked harder, more creatively but also created more pollution.

But things are changing. In India a 15 year old has invented a solar powered ironing cart to replace thousands of previously coal powered ironing carts. Enterprise and determination win again.

In the Dominican Republic a start-up business is working successfully on cultivating coral on land, making it more resilient to changes in temperature and acidity and then transplanting it to the ocean. Great story. 

Finally read Jeremy Paxman’s Black Gold.  It tells the story of coal and how it transformed us in the Industrial Revolution and then propelled us globally to where we are today. But we have changed. Coal is of yesterday as the horse is a mode of transport. And we can change further because, remember… winter is coming.

 

VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR...

This single by the Buggles went to the top of 11 international charts including the UK in 1979. The lyrics concluded as follows:
Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star
In my mind and in my car
We can't rewind we've gone too far

I was thinking about it last Thursday as our book on start-ups was launched and Co-Author Rachel Bell and I sat in a sound recording studio in Hammersmith doing a series of Radio interviews.

Radio wasn’t of course killed by technology, which this curiously elegiac pop song suggested. Radio’s listening profile is remarkably consistent remaining at just under 50 million weekly individual listeners throughout the current decade.

Have you ever done it? Headphones on, red light showing you’re on air, a tiny studio the soundproofing in which gives you illusion of being deaf.  And then you’re nearly on air…

“I’m Fiona, Terry’s producer you’ll be speaking to him in just 20 seconds”
You hear a long forgotten pop song blaring through your headphones  - Video killed the Radio star…ooh ah – which fades
“We have with us today Rachel Bell and Richard Hall who’ve written this book ‘Start-ups, Divots and Prop Ups’ – I got that wrong didn’t I – sorry guys - well what’s it all about?”

Just for a moment you have no idea. Your mind blanks. You are not sure you’ve ever written a book. You recall Jeremy Paxman who had a walk on part in The Edge of Reason, the Bridget Jones film and who found it utterly terrifying, literally struggling to walk and talk at the same time.

Or there was the time a taxi driver called (say) Ted Davies waiting in BBC reception hearing a bossy PA calling  “is Professor Davis here?” He raised a tentative hand and was rushed into a studio to be interviewed by someone like Martha Kearney about a recently published  report on something esoteric like black holes in space and earnestly trying his confused best:
“That Wapping High Street can be a black hole in the rush hour”…

The mind is a funny thing. You hear a voice – not your own surely – higher, rougher, slightly aggressive with a nasty sardonic chuckle. It’s talking very fast and quoting people you’ve never come across. You sound rather pleased with yourself. It’s all rather ghastly.
“Thanks Rachel and Richard that was great”…”Thanks Fiona” you croak.

 

I have a recurring nightmare of finals at Oxford and discovering I can answer nothing, have read all the wrong books and am staring dry mouthed in horror. This happened to one candidate I heard about who taking things into his own hands shouted “you bastards” and ran up the Examination Hall to attack one of the examiners.

The reality was all the radio stations were very professional and slick. The interviewers were charming, helpful, mentioned the right title of the book and got the best out of us.

Video killed the Radio Star? Not last Thursday it didn’t.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published on October 3rd by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.

WHY THE BBC MUST NOT XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Has the BBC taken leave of its senses in their redactions of the Pollard Report?

I was at Balliol with Lord Patten. Chris (as we knew him) was seen many times ccc vvvv xxxx nnnn cccccc nn bb yet we never thought this ,,,,mmmmmmmm despite his obvious propensity for  bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb discreetly.

It was David Cameron in his relationship with ccccccc nnnnnnn who raised more xxxxxxxxxx. He was discovered one vvvv,,, with his finger bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb laughing in mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and in discomfort.

Ed Balls or Balls up as his friends described him was well known for vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv            vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv with evident relish.

And he thought this picture said it all:

SssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssSssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssSssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss disgusting.d d disgusting.

As all the above shows the practice of redaction makes innocents subject to unjustified speculation because redaction feeds the wit of Merton and Hislop on “Have I Got News For You?” and the fertile imaginations of the rest of us. No wonder Jeremy Paxman’s so frustrated.

It’s hard enough running anything.  People just make it worse. The tensions between indulging creative talent, human ambitions and the tendency that human beings have to cut off their noses to spite their faces makes being a leader one of the most complex tasks that exists.

How does one reconcile the frailties of leaders like Steve Jobs, Ron Dennis, Frank Lowe with the fact that each in their respective fields have been leaders of utterly brilliant business enterprises?

I watched “Moneyball” on Friday – Brad Pitt playing Billy Beane General Manager of the Oakland “A”s a financially strapped Baseball Team who uniquely used data to help recruit a hugely cost effective team in 2002. He broke all the rules of intuition old timers relied on in judging potential. It’s a riveting story of new business models.

As John Henry owner of the Boston Red Socks says to Billy:

“You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent one point four million per win and you paid two hundred and sixty thousand. I know you've taken it in the teeth out there, but for the first guy through the wall it always gets bloody, always. It's the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it's threatening the game. But really what it's threatening is their livelihoods, it's threatening their jobs, it's threatening the way that they do things.”

Redaction feels old fashioned too. Some believe it’s saving their jobs but it isn’t.  They should start opening up, telling the truth and changing the way they do things.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

HAPPY EASTER AND SEE THINGS FROM A NEW PERSPECTIVE

“We don’t do God” Alistair Campbell famously told Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister.
Nor do I but I love the frisson of religion and especially the creativity that key events in the Christian year evoke. Here’s Tintoretto on the last supper. It’s a real meal full of life with a thieving cat, a dozing dog, sweating servants and ghost like angels lurking in the rafters.

Yes, this smells right for the days leading up to crucifixion when a landslide popularity swung the other way for Jesus Christ as the spin doctors got to work.
What a great story and what a great depiction of its dying moments here unlike Leonardo’s timorous last lunchtime snack of a painting.

Another recent story, familiar to most, is about Joseph Kony and the campaign to bring this Ugandan warlord to justice. Look at the enclosed video and begin to see new ways of making things happen.


KONY 2012: Part II - Beyond Famous from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.
The world we knew is crumbling (“crumble” is remember a slow words – “crumble” doesn’t mean next month, next year or even next decade.) But when Caroline Lucas MP for Brighton Pavilion – Green Party and George Galloway MP for Bradford West – British Respect Party (and gosh, won’t each of them hate being juxtaposed like this) overturn expectation and their voters disobey convention isn’t something new happening?

I detect the fragrant smell of rebellion.

For sure I think Mr Galloway isn’t exactly the most appealing of operators whilst being aghast in admiration at his ability to beat up his interrogators from Jeremy Paxman to the Senate Committee in Washington. Whilst Caroline Lucas is a slightly zany breath of fresh air in a world of political bluster.

The bottom line to all this is the established powers are all on a slippery slope – the “authorities” as a gardener I once had used to grimly describe them are losing out to the people.

It’s time to review the marketing strategies of the politicians and companies everywhere.
But however good a story - it has to look, feel and smell real.

And in the end that’s what I love about that Tintoretto painting as opposed to most religious art….it feels gritty and true not bland.