BORING OR ENTHRALLING?

First thoughts.

Is it just me showing my age but when did elections get as boring as this one? As I recall When Wilson won in 1964 it was an exciting shock.

And his cabinet was full of intellectual superstars - Healey, Jenkins (above) and Crosland. People like Ian McLeod were in opposition. One sensed these were very clever people. One didn’t necessarily agree with them but they were heavyweights. I watched Roy Jenkins and Ian McLeod debating the finance bill in the commons in the early 70s - riveting, rigorous and courteous.

I just don’t think the calibre of people, thinking or debate currently matches that of these Titans.

Politicians now are not, as some would have it, inept. They are however a bit timorous, cautious and lacking in flair. I have been constantly surprised that so many seem to think being nasty (even if they feel it justified) is a good tactic. Voters mostly hate “rude”.

Try this tactic instead:-
“Ed (or David)  is a nice and I believe well-meaning man. Most politicians are but I believe he just has this policy wrong and it would harm the country if he were to win this election”

If our grandchildren behaved like many politicians do they’d be made to sit out. I love the idea of hearing someone say: “Teresa May I’m appalled. See me afterwards”

Second thoughts.

2015 has been different because the two of the most popular voices have been on the side lines but thrust centre stage by the media. Nicola Sturgeon and Russell Brand.

Nicola has grown in stature and 4% of the UK (that’s Scotland) seems to adore her and Russell is rather like an extreme left version of Boris. Both Boris and Russell are fluent, addicted to long sentences and are ever so slightly crackers (slightly?) That he and Nicola are the ones turning on so many is significant.

Don’t you think they really ought to get together and have babies - what fun that would be.

What both do is reflect our times, reach and inspire a few people - in Russell’s case a generation of non-voters, the millions of youth who can’t be bovvered. They are both of them articulate and fearless. They aren’t looking over their shoulders; they’re punching away and looking like they’re enjoying themselves.

In Nicola’s case the prospect of wiping out lazy Labour in Scotland may mean she’ll have every right to be a bit smug. But the Scottish brand is thriving.  Brand? Think Irn bru, Innocent and Pepperami all mixed together. Inspiration has conquered economic caution and it’s exciting. As is Russell’s brand of rebellion.

The old political brands look like Tesco or Sainsbury’s or Asda in a world of Waitrose, Pound Land. Zara and Aldi.

So I was wrong. This election isn’t boring at all; it’s enthralling and we’re lucky to have ringside seats. It’s the other fight of the century.

WHAT WENT WRONG WHILST I WAS AWAY?

We’ve just spent a fortnight in Venice - again. That city’s life started with people fleeing attacks from Germanic and Hun hordes. These refugees from places like Treviso and Padua scrambled to relative safety (but with very wet feet) into the marshes in the Venetian lagoons.  No horses would come there to pursue them. They were wet but protected by swamps. Wet, on their own  and with only the future to think about.

They built upwards by learning to drive piles of wood down and creating platforms on top of them. A city grew from trial, error and persistence. Any management consultant would have told them they were completely crazy. “It won’t work, there’ll be floods, disasters, go to dry land”…and back to the Huns?
In 570 AD Venice didn’t exist yet just 600 years later it was the biggest and most powerful city in the world. Necessity drove imagination, energy and success.

Management consultants (them again) have propounded the effectiveness of creating crises to enliven and motivate management teams - a kind of “jump-start” theory.

Well, coming back from the balmy calm of the one-time Venetian master state I encountered the current Scottish referendum ‘crisis’ with a degree of amazement.
“I go away for a week or three and you wasted, simply wasted 20% lead points. You all need a damn good shaking.”

The realities, as most of us, the experts and most businesses know them, is that independence is not a good idea judged from an economic perspective. The head is shaking (‘No. It’s a very bad idea’) … but the heart is thumping away (‘Yes. Yes…. just imagine how wonderful freedom could be.’) It’s extraordinarily naïve of us to discover this late in the game that ‘YES’ is a more powerful, motivating and exciting word than ‘NO’.

So what’s happened in this fortnight of apparent madness? Quite simply rather than ravening hordes of spear-wielding barbarians it’s been the grey suited, male Westminster crowd of dull, old fashioned and self-interested, elite politicians who’ve driven away the more adventurously, positive yes-minded and discontented Scots rather like those Venetians years ago.

Maybe it’s too much Prosecco, maybe it’s too much holiday , maybe it’s the rebel inside me that’s got provoked but I’m beginning to see the “yes” votes point of view quite vividly. If you have to choose between Ed, Nick and Dave or mad Alex and if you’re into a bit of excitement, well, you know where to go.

Scotland, if you do take this brave (reckless even) step to be alone, you can survive, indeed you will thrive if you take the Venetian route of building new foundations and pretty well starting from scratch.  My guess is the chill of the ballot booth will calm the urge for risk and there’ll be a “no” vote but we shall see.
But I think Roy Jenkins got it right years ago in 1959. Try this:

Colourfulthinkers.com

LOVE, LAUGHING, LISTENING AND LUNCH

I have predicted that 2012 will be the year of lunch, of that forgotten art of eating together, playing with ideas and feeding the mind and soul as well as the body. For too long Gekko’s words from Wall Street have coloured our lives. “Lunch is for wimps” he said and sales of Prêt sandwiches soared. We now, typically, stare at screens and don’t talk. We are prepared to embrace the philosophy of the Valley of Austerity just as the prohibitionists embraced moral austerity in America in 1919. My first picture defines that neatly. Although this is a finely wrought spoof it manages to capture the world we could create if we chose this path. No love, no listening, no lunch.

In the party time of the ‘80s we went the other way, as we see, in the “Feast of the Gods” by the wonderfully named Renaissance painter Johann Rottenhammer. This reminds me of the legendary parties we had at the advertising agency FCO when we were producing our most creative work. Odd coincidence that. Lots of love, lots of listening (and talking), lunch never stopped and the work was courageous and alight.

The joy of lunch was best epitomised by Roy Jenkins who revered the ceremony. Our best ever Home Secretary and one of our best writers, he’d down a large amount of claret, captivate conversationally and stroll home to write 5,000 words on Asquith, Baldwin, Churchill, Gladstone, whoever. Without lunch Roy Jenkins would have been a lesser person. So here is a vision of lunch in the sun about to happen. Eighteen people about to sit and eat, laugh, love and listen. And do one other thing. Think.

I give you the lunch party as an altogether better way to run the world than the introspective structures we currently have. And if you believe creativity is what really makes the difference (”the last legal way to gain an unfair advantage” as Maurice Saatchi put it) start filling the 1230-230 slots in your diary. It may make you a little rounder and a lot more cheerful; it’ll also, make you a better person. Bon appétit or if you prefer mahlzeit, pofta buna or smaklig måltid.