WHY ARE OUR SUPPLY CHAINS QUITE SO COMPLEX?

For years guided by MBAs and McKinsey we’ve been persuaded to “think global,” construct complex supply chains, offshore production and cut cost. Our world we believed was driven by price and the need to be lowest cost producer. Which was fine when globalisation was the thing and Asia was to the place to get things made.

Covid has changed a lot of things not least the increasing belief driven by the vaccine contretemps with the EU and post Brexit complications that domestic production is the safest strategy for many industries.

Currently my underpants come from Bangladesh, my jacket and my socks from China, my sweater from Cambodia and my T-shirt from America. Over 50% of what I eat and drink comes from outside the UK – from Holland, France, Peru and Spain.

This is not the ranting of a xenophobe. If we’ve learnt nothing else over the past 14 months its been that the old rules don’t apply. The rebellion started with “America First” and then the bizarre decision to exit the EU. No more frictionless travel. No more working across the EU using the business lingua franca – English – to do business. Two years ago I visited seven different EU countries in as many weeks in co-ordinating a project. That won’t happen again. 

Now perhaps for the first time I’ve begun to wonder about whether I’d want to remain in the EU after the shabby performance of Ursula Van Der Leyen over the EU’s failed procurement of vaccine. I’ve been shocked that the EU, rule maker and follower of rules is now a rulebreaker, with member countries off doing their own thing. The irony of their demanding more Astra Zeneca vaccine even as they withdrew permission for its use was eye-wateringly comic.

In a crisis we retreat to localism. The Covid crisis will change many things but the most significant thing will be the pressure to grow and make our own. Small businesses will be created doing what previously bankrupted businesses did until globalisation became the hot, new thing. 

Except there‘ll be a difference. These new businesses will be better run, with electric speed delivery, concern for climate change and with brilliant customer service. We bought a new car recently . The whole process took less than a week. It used to take forever. Thanks to Amazon and the growth of online our expectations have been transformed. Old fashioned standards are dead. Our world is a better place in which (blame it on the ‘elf and safety woke-culture’ in fact) workplace deaths and injuries have plummeted in the past few years.

Our ability to transform our economy  will be driven by the astonishingly interventionalist strategies of the least conservative government we’ve ever had. Once they realised that people must be paid when, through no fault of their own, they can’t work, then the realisation that inspiring and incentivising new businesses that usefully employ people makes economic sense, can’t be far behind.

But the small is beautiful argument always seemed weird to me especially when small as in pubs, shops and roads often meant rotten and inefficient. Equally the argument for scale falls on stony ground. The NHS we’ve been proudly told is globally the biggest employer after the Indian Rail Service and the Chinese Army. Why is that good?

If we want to stop just being a “nation of shopkeepers” as Napoleon scornfully described us we need to start being producers as well. We’re actually rather good at it. Films, gaming, pharmaceuticals, software, cars and shoes – yes, my shoes are all made in Britain.

  

NOTHING IS SIMPLE ANYMORE

A friend of mine is very clever but he also has the irritating habit of describing complex issues as “incredibly simple” or even “insanely simple”. In fact nearly everything we have created nowadays is distinctly not simple at all. The idea of ‘just in time’ as a supply chain concept couldn’t be simpler but in fact it requires Rolex precision processes to work. It’s complexity is such that any tinkering with it will break it.  ‘Almost in time most of the time’ is not a viable concept; it’s like a watch without a minute hand.

What has shocked me most over the past months is the pitiful ignorance of many politicians in failing to understand how complex businesses with sophisticated supply chains work. I suspect they imagine that Tesco is like a larger version of a corner shop or what we used to called “Mama & Pappa Shops” or more interestingly “Cat in the Window” shops.

Our world, like it or not, comprises Smart Phones which are ludicrously over powered pieces of technology worth thousands of pounds but through volume production driven down to cost just pence. The warehouses that supply us with books and clothes and food are increasingly driven by robots so when the Ocado Warehouse in Andover caught fire last week the fire brigade couldn’t get in as it was totally robot controlled. Eventually they hacked holes in the roof but too late. The warehouse was completely destroyed.

The big things we create like the NHS with bigger and better hospitals, new MOD toys like leading edge aircraft carriers and fighter planes so technologically advanced that understanding just why a glitch occurs and how much it will cost to fix is not simple -  it’s very complicated.

There was an old world that an 85 year-old dreamily described as “when we made Spitfires”  (during World War 11 we made 22,000.Morgan currently makes 1.3 k cars a year – fewer but that’s Spitfire country.)  That old world was duller, slower, dirtier (who remembers smog?), and much less efficient in every way but it was simpler and we collectively are beginning to feel it’s simplicity that’s been stolen from us.

How many people really understand the algorithms that drive the Facebook Empire. When  the late Molly Russell’s parents tried to have their daughter’s social media data retrieved – her suicide possibly encouraged by online imagery -  they couldn’t get it done because we’ve become victims of complexity.

I used to play the game “what would you do if the internet permanently collapsed?”  The Millennials burst into tears whilst older people rubbed their hands, got out their Airfix catalogues and Parker pens.

The reality is our sophisticated, incredibly clever systems can’t be done by hand. If the internet collapsed it would be chaos. Banks, retailers, hospitals, transport systems, schools and government would grind to a halt.  Our world is too complex to go back.

And that’s why none of this is simple however much we wish it was.

DISTRESSED, STRESSED OUT AND MESSED UP?

My own cheerful optimism is unchanged but I’ve encountered a lot a gloom recently. “The dark side is descending on us” I was told by a ‘scholar of doom’, “you can feel disintegration in the air.” Hmm.

Talking about the Utopia of our current world (only relative to the brutish past) cuts no mustard with such people. Take knife crime and the “epidemic” -  about 40 deaths in London so far this year which is awful but – bloody, great, enormous BUT – in 2002 there were over 1000 murders in the UK and recently it had dropped to just over 550. The London victims are of gangland killings not of a homicidal pandemic.

The NHS “horrors” are largely overstated and dramatized for political purposes. My own recent experience with a close-to-dying close relative were of impressively on-the-ball, confident and charming professionalism. That’s at the Royal Sussex in Brighton which is in special measures with wretched inspectors crawling all over them.

The stress of living in 2018 is created by something a lot closer to home than dark forces or catastrophic institutional incompetence. Because in general we are surrounded by great competence and skill.

But we are also surrounded by breathless fear and unreasonable expectations. We all seem on our bad days to be chasing our tails, trying to keep up, rushing around with a glint of terrified-purpose in our eyes. Many of us are driving cars today which would have served as tanks a century ago. We are surrounded by astounding levels of household debt - £1,630 billion with student loans doubled, credit card debt up 23% since 2012. Put in perspective the average household debt level is around 2.5 times the average annual household income. So I guess a little fear isn’t wholly misplaced.

People sleep badly. I keep hearing this. People are having bad dreams. Why? We live in a civilised world populated by nice people trying to do their best. Maybe we’re just trying too hard. Too hard to keep up. Too hard to be judged as successful. As the rumble of Brexit rolls on I suspect it’s like the Russian Novichok nerve agent the horrors of which whilst real seem not yet, at any rate, mortal.

If as pundits suspect we end up slightly poorer and less important in world terms because of Brexit –Britain rather than Great Britain - maybe that’s going to be OK. Less stress, less mess and a happier bunch of people. Trying to exceed our talents and resources is seldom a great idea.

I found this quote from Jack Nicklaus, the legendary, champion golfer and good guy particularly helpful. I hope you do too:

“Every player must find the balance between ambition and insanity. Were major championships my focus? Yes they were. Were they my only focus in life? No. My family always came before that. Could I have worked harder and won more majors.? Probably. Could I have driven myself crazy doing it? Certainly.”

 Thanks Jack.

AN OUTBREAK OF FOOT AND MOUTH

“Just a little prick” she said. No I’m not reporting a typical comment at a Party Conference

I was having blood taken before an operation on my foot and this was nurse with her hypodermic. She then gave me a cotton bud and asked for a “groin-swab” - that’s the private sector for you. My procedure’s a relatively trivial affair, (“procedure”s much less invasive than operation isn’t it?) for which, nonetheless, the surgeon would, if Afro-Caribbean, doing the same thing with a street knife, get a term inside. I am in short being set up for a legal assault. Privately.

The NHS is a great product but lacking in enough hygienic premises, charm and the money to keep going smoothly. Most out-patients departments are frankly grubby, grumpy and overloaded. In contrast private hospitals are carpeted, magazine-crammed and helpful. Patient service is high on the agenda. And they smile a lot.

It’ll be over in a day and then the recovery time, because it’s a load-bearing foot, is at least six weeks. My osteopath (I’m well served with medical people) said I’d be like a caged tiger by the end and asked if my wife was all right. “Nurse Hall is fine” I spat.

We shall see. Future blogs will either be self-pitying, morbid or non-existent. But I plan to read a lot. And write too, although with my leg having to be held above the level of my heart…yes I know, you try it…my writing output may be restricted. I shall regard it all as a holiday from life. A world of good meals on trays, glasses of wine, the random snooze, not well enough to do disagreeable things and having a pathetic small voice. And I’ll need a bell…and a role model.

And that of course is Mr Woodhouse in Jane Austen’s ‘Emma.’ Poor Henry Woodhouse was a “valetudinarian” - the only time I’ve ever seen the word. It means a person suffering from ill health (and being unduly anxious about it. I’m reminded of Spike Milligan’s immortal epitaph “I told you I was ill”.)

But it’s more serious than just a foot. It’s my mouth too.  I underwent an extraction - nearly an hour of yanking - and 1½ hours of intense root canal work. It was during the latter that bored to death I managed to go to sleep. Auto-anaesthesia is I gather uncommon. My dentist wanted to do what he could thereby maximising his fees in case I snuffed it in my foot operation. How can dentists be so jovial? Well as one in the past said to me “staring into mouths all day might be bad but imagine being a gynecologist.” 

I am well. But the health of this country is not so good. During my convalescence I shall think a lot.

There needs to be some serious surgery.

Bring back someone like Michael Foot! Apart from the pun (sorry) he was so much cleverer than Jeremy or Theresa.

A WORLD OF LIARS

This isn’t just another let’s-be-nasty-to Trump piece although I thought the comment made by Freddy Gray (Literary Editor of the American Conservative) was pretty good:

“In his anger, shadiness and batty orange campness, Trump looks like America’s answer to Hugo Chavez.”

I hope he’s wrong given the current state of Venezuela.

What I want to think about is truthfulness.

When the Leave campaign in the UK Referendum created a blatant lie - ‘give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week’ - it struck a chord with many voters. Only after their victory was it stripped from their website and grudgingly acknowledged as a “mistake.” Not a “lie” a “mistake.”

Politicians don’t “lie” any more they “mis-speak.” And isn’t it interesting that an MP isn’t allowed to say that another politician’s lying in Parliament - even when they are?  If they say it, they’re dismissed from the chamber?

But Donald J. Trump is in a different class altogether. And why this should concern us and, regardless of its consequences, we should stand up against this appalling charlatan, is the example he sets for the future generations. How do you say to young children “don’t lie” when they now can, and having more courage than we ever did, will reply:  “why not? You lot do it all the time. Look at the US President”?

In a moment of arcane philosophical reflection the Managing Director of M&C Saatchi, Tom Firth, said this:
“This is post-truth politics, so you can literally say pretty much anything you want as long as it fits with what people think is true”…or, I’d add “what they want to hear”.

Another take on the US Election was this from Peter Thiele, co-founder of PayPal:
…“the media takes Trump's remarks literally, but not seriously. Trump supporters take them seriously, but not literally. "

Which is all very well and very smart but it worries me to death as do all the apologists and gurus who are currently analysing Trump’s campaign and pronouncing him a genius marketer.

Sorry. That just will not do.

His campaign was a cynical piece of showmanship full of lies, monster over-claims and bigotry. He’s an impressive TV performer. His Apprentice series in the USA on NBC got audiences of 30 million I heard.
Hang on. No. It was the highest rating TV show in the history of US TV reaching 100 million people and winning a Palme d’Or at Cannes.

No, it didn’t. But the lie once spoken captures the average attention.

There are very few people like my friend Leon Kreitzman who will always say “hang on let’s examine those numbers for a bit to see if they feel right.” So here’s today’s formula. Lie first and repent later. Exaggerate, embroider and hype. Oh  for heaven’s sake I spent years in advertising so I know about that but it really will not do as a strategy that’s acceptable any more in an increasingly credulous world.

We’ve got to stop it.

THE OLD, OLD STORY

Back now from New Year celebrations for a big exercise in “I told you so’s.” The retailers tell us about their Christmas.

Next, after several smug years, was given a sharp kick by the consumer, John Lewis had a great time and M&S had another shocker. Mark Bolland said rather plaintively “but we did brilliantly in food”. And they did. But he resigned anyway.

M&S has always understood its food customer. They have in their mind reasonably wealthy retirees who indulge themselves a bit. And then there are people who either live alone or with a partner working incredibly hard so Simply M&S is a saviour. Get a decent, low calorie Chicken Jalfrezi, a bottle of Chateau Neuf and bed.

M&S has a brilliant team of food developers. Their quality and taste is miles ahead of Waitrose who had a rather mediocre Christmas. Alone amongst food retailers M&S seem untouched by Aldi and Lidl who tortured the big grocers by stealing their luxury food sales . A Goldman Sachs Analyst confessed to finding the Goose, Champagne, Smoked Salmon, Stilton and Panettone not only much cheaper there but also better.

So how can M&S get it so right and so wrong?

I have a confession to make. In the past I’ve found M&S men’s clothes good value and a quick, lazy way of looking reasonably smart. Then I discovered style with Charles Tyrwhitt and Boden. But after a while quality went sideways in both.

Now I buy my clothes from John Lewis - stylish, interesting and easy to shop. My last visit to M&S Marble Arch left me slightly nauseous with the insane range of stuff, all of it randomly displayed and none of it exciting.

In their 12,700 sq. ft. Food Store just outside Brighton, M&S parade the best and newest they have to offer. They share “yum” factor with Nigella.

I don’t believe anyone much under 50 shops there for clothes but M&S would be embarrassed to acknowledge this. Stuart Rose was right to research the M&S brand with the Women’s Institute. But what happened next?

It’s time to be realistic and focus on the older generation who are living longer and longer.

And even longer if Dame Sally Davies has her way.

We may (she says) only drink 1 ½ bottles of wine a week, with three days alcohol free, or we’ll die prematurely.

Shocking as it may seem I am raising my own consumption level to try and die before I get dementia.
Forgive me Mary for being so cross with you. We need to balance our approach to health. But as with M&S the key target is the elderly and avoiding them becoming a cohort of medically fit, free of the curses of alcohol and tobacco, yet away with the fairies.

I think we should encourage the elderly to smoke and drink a lot.

It might save the NHS.

And it would give the rest of us a lot to look forward to.

Cheers.

WHEN HELP DOESN'T HELP AT ALL

We’ve moved house and so had to register with a new GP. As I used to have high cholesterol I take statins and had to renew my prescription. The conversation with the new Doctor went well enough until referring to my medical notes he started talking about “my heart disease.”  “What heart disease? They once thought I had it but after an angiogram they found I didn’t” “Oh yes; you do have it …it says so here”…and he read something extremely fast that was both news to me and incomprehensible.

I went home and sat down. Evidently I wasn’t very well. In just a few minutes I’d aged 20 years. I wondered if my funeral would be before or after the Ashes series was over.

I went to bed.

I want to talk about “iatrogenics”. The term was unfamiliar to me before reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of ‘The Black Swan’ and ‘Antifragile’).  From the Greek "brought forth by the healer" it refers to any effect on a person resulting from a Doctor’s treatment which rather than being helpful has the opposite effect.

Effects include anxiety about or annoyance with the Doctor. So bingo…. I was a victim of “iatrogenics.”
I’d felt less well immediately…as though I’d been poisoned. Later on I recalled completing a form on my alcohol consumption from the NHS. I’d said it was on average 24 units a week. I then got a text asking if I needed to discuss reducing my consumption levels. It made me feel like an inebriate. (Stop looking at me like that! Anyway I’m off to New Zealand.)

Melissa Kite the journalist wrote recently about being denied HRT patches because of NHS guidelines about its dangers (allegedly small). Eventually in despair and not sleeping,  she snarled at her Doctor: “Give them to me I’m a danger to the public otherwise”.

Is the NHS is ignoring the simple strategy of encouraging people to feel well? Better surely to have a slightly shorter, happier life than live to be an old valetudinarian.

Stanley Holloway was renowned for his monologues like “My word you do look queer” about a guy who recovering from being ill is told by everyone how dreadful he looks. It has immortal lines like

“Oh, dear! You look dreadful: you've had a near shave, 
You look like a man with one foot in the grave…….    
I heard you were bad, well I heard you were gone. 
You look like a corpse with an overcoat on.” 

Eventually someone says ….
“You're looking fine and in the pink!'
I shouted, 'Am I? ... Come and have a drink!” 

So is the NHS spending too much time worrying about tactics and changing the rules (what for instance, is the “5 a day” Campaign but an invention by the Californian Fruit Marketing Company?) rather than improving morale?

Let’s relax a bit more… overall we’ve never been healthier…

“Are we really?”

“Yes”.

“Come and have a drink.”

And let’s beware of iatrogenics.

WELL I CAN'T COMPLAIN

I recently have gone on about customer service, the lack of it and the need to improve it. I hear no dissent. Tiers of corporate executives are all out there benchmarking and establishing robust measurement processes of their own customer satisfaction.

But what about the complainers - are they always justified and when did that world weary “can’t complain love” disappear from our language? For years I associated this with our putting up with overcooked food and weak tea, an era of laughable cuisine and public sector attitudes to service.

Inflation record 1956 - 2013

It changed in the 1970s. In 1975 inflation was nearly 25% and getting worse. Businesses would merrily inflate their prices twice a year. Britain was a basket case. And customer service hit an all-time low. Thatcher’s wagging finger symbolised the change. And her intolerance towards shabby standards was given daily articulation by the Sun and the Daily Mail.

We created a new generation of people. In Network (1976) Peter Finch playing Howard Beale said:   “I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'”

This was a time when we were sold the Austin Allegro, Morris Marina and Triumph Dolomite (renamed the Triumph Sodomite by Robert Robinson BBC broadcaster). These were the worst cars ever built (if such a sturdy word as “built” is appropriate.)

A friend of mine claims around this time he had a made-to-measure suit created for him by a Soho tailor. When he first wore it a sleeve came off. The tailor looked at him suspiciously when he went back to ask for an explanation. “You’ve been wearing it haven’t you?”

In those days we didn’t really complain….we prefaced our “observations” with phrase like “I’m sorry to bother you but”…

Last week I saw that Southern Rail had been taken to task for standards of punctuality and heartstrings had been tugged by a “handwritten” letter).

I personally think the service from Southern is remarkably good.  You could argue that they should just put their foot down and overtake or ram the wretched First Capital Connect laggard trains dawdling ahead of them. Or being pessimistic about the timetables they could say “expected arrival time …whenever” and offer free G&Ts to every customer to quieten them.

Things always swing from one extreme to another and I think we’re becoming a nation of complainers quite often without real justification. From the NHS to education to all the institutions there’s an increasing sense of discontent.

Yet the optimist in me wants to shout - things are so much better than they were. All that currently happens is the exception always proves the rule. One botched operation typifies a NHS breakdown, A few late(ish) trains demonstrate the wicked ineptitude of the provider.

Not so. Stop grumbling.

WHY I DECIDED TO READ THE DAILY MAIL

It had been a strange week what with Clacton and the prospect of the Stroud and Rochester by-election at which the Tories promise (threaten?) to send the Cabinet several times to drum up opposition to Reckless. It’ll be ghastly for the voters.

Ghastly is how I felt as I saw a lethal Panorama report by softly-spoken Darragh MacIntyre on Nigel Farage. As I watched Nigel’s brazen contempt for the EU and his embarrassing behaviour I remembered that great advertisement which the Democrats ran in 1960 against Richard Nixon.

Like Nixon, Farage has a slightly sleazy and flaky look about him - definitely a “nice little runner only one careful owner and because I like your face I’ll knock off fifty quid. OK?” sort of person.

And then, I thought, I must read the Daily Mail and see what’s going on. It was 88 pages long with some 42 stories in the first 40 pages (before we hit travel, property, lots of ads, TV, Sudoku and sport) of which 7 dealt with sex - mostly rape and paedophilia - 7 with politics, mostly anti Tory establishment, and an astounding 14 on health, many lambasting the NHS.

A sample of these

• “Air Passenger in protective suit as ebola fears start to grip the west”
• “Filing your nails daily does more harm than good”
• “Run off four miles to burn off just one bottle of Coke”
• “Piling on the pounds? Blame it on Jet Lag”
• “Don’t call 999 until you’re unconscious, dying man is told”
• “France to curb binge drinking”

But on page 35 - immigration rears

• “Adult asylum seekers pose as teens to get school places”
• “Our right to be here by Park Lane migrants”

What was the overall effect of the paper?

There were some rather grumpy arguments between my wife and me about how the paper seemed to use consistently just one ‘typical’ story to stir up general anger about immigration, the NHS or government.

I was very conscious of the Taxi Driver grumble - “and another thing” - and I noticed this, for instance, in the leading article when Cameron’s team were accused of being in danger of making “a mistake they’d made all too often in the past”. Expressions like “All too often, not for the first time and how typical” are key words of negative thinking.

How did I feel? I felt shocking to be honest. This is not company I want to keep or a country I recognise or would want to live in. It’s sterile, cantankerous and permanently discontented. The sun doesn’t shine in Northcliffe House the Mail’s HQ.

And another thing - they really do think “Voting for UKIP will hand keys on No10 to Miliband” (p.19) - source: Lord Ashcroft. And you know, I think they actually want this.

Because then they’ll really have something to complain about.

“That Miliband made a right balls of it - typical!”

THE DANGER WITH TRANSPARENCY

We’ve just entered what I call the “nudist phase” of our lives when current political thinking is that we should show it all. And I’m not sure it’s too practical or what people really want. A little bit of mystery is usually more interesting and may allow greater happiness.

Would people on a flight really like the pilot to be more transparent?

“This is your pilot. We are flying at 30, 0000 feet and my co-pilot has just passed out and we’re running low on fuel. We have a 50:50 chance of landing OK at Heathrow. Thank you for flying Consul Airlines.”

Knowing more when you can do nothing about it may actually work against the desired result (and in this case provoking a hysterical riot).

Quite often sorting out a cock-up and getting everything back to normal in private may be a far better option than confessing to it before you’ve had the chance to fix it calmly.  Yet from NHS to education we have acquired a perverse need to show everything that’s going on behind the scenes which, whether in a play or in any business I’ve ever been in, is not always a good idea or an inspiring spectacle.

Now I was intrigued to see that Doctors will be forced to be transparent and disclose their salaries to patients. I’m not sure why? You go to see a doctor to be told what to do to feel better.

There was a joke about medical transparency.

A doctor goes to see a patient in a hospital bed. As the curtains are closed he says:
“I’ve got good news and bad news.”
The patient says “Better give me the bad news doctor”
“I’m sorry you are going to die and there’s nothing we can do”
“Oh God…but what’s the good news doctor?”
“You know that blonde nurse? Well I’m giving her one”

And we don’t want to know that. It’s irrelevant to our condition and needs as would be a doctor saying:
“Sit down. Well I thought you’d like to know that I trousered £150,000 last year. Now what can I do for you?”

But there’s something else. I have a grave suspicion of anyone who says “to be perfectly honest” as it implies this is an unusual condition for them. Equally when journalists, politicians or doctors claim to be totally transparent I know there’s a fair chance they are concealing something really important from me.
It’s like this trend to glass fronted kitchens. I don’t want to see the cooks; I want to eat the food. And why is there a belief that a less than wonderful meal that you saw being prepared is somehow going to be improved by your watching?

Don’t confuse honesty with transparency and don’t be deluded into believing transparency is a substitute for quality of delivery.

As Dr Johnson might have said but didn’t - transparency is the last refuge of the mediocre.

FESTIVE CREATIVE THINKING AT WORK

I live in Godless Brighton where in the 2011 Census we ranked right up there with the worst place in the UK as the fastest declining in believing in Christianity and containing the fewest believers in anything.

So …. away with your mangers and your cribs and with any wise men.
This is going to be the most secular of blogs.
First of all sex - David Cameron seems to have it on his mind when he talked this week about tantric policy making – “the longer you wait the better it is when it comes”.

Dave’s gone potty. Zero for creativity. High marks for being rude.

Secondly – the closure of police stations. When Mr Plod is stationless he must have somewhere to pee, to sit and take statements. Options discussed as police-venues are coffee bars and churches. I favour churches. This could provide much needed income to this suffering group. It would also bring a whole new dimension to religion….”hallo, hallo, hallo God”…and when Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple we were there saying “right son, you’re nicked”… brilliant. It brings church into the centre of the world and keeps the doors open – shut doors in churches always seem to me a disgrace.

Thirdly - “Doctor you’re in trouble” – blame Sir Bruce Keogh leading cardiac surgeon, medical director of the new NHS Commissioning Board. He says like Tesco, GPs should be open for business at the weekend. Of course….and about time too.

Fourthly storytelling – the Hoxton experiment in which the Ministry of Stories has been set up to help young people write creatively. Founded by Nick Hornby it’s coming to Brighton. Really effective creativity teaching for the young – brilliant.  

Fifthly the good side of Christmas – the music, the celebration and through all this a strange sense of bonhomie and the realisation that a whole sector of society  is beaten up and isolated….providing just half a chance we’ll begin do develop a bit of “caritas” – love, kindness and old-fashioned charity.

Finally community – our ability to touch, know and celebrate Christmas with those in our tribe, our family or our team.

I’d been talking to an old friend about Malcolm Gladwell who in “Tipping Point” said an effective team peaked at around 120 as the optimum size using WL Gore as an example. Interestingly this is the rough size of an Army company.

At my 4 year old Godson’s Christmas show I engaged with those around me on this. The view was quite simply this was the sort of number you could keep in touch with. And maybe that’s simply it.
The number with whom you could share stuff be it good, be it ill but especially – whatever -  at Christmas.

It’s a large party but it’s still a party….and one with rich potential.

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