TAKING THE LONG VIEW

I don’t often quote from the Bible but I noticed this from Isaiah and it seemed to sum up the mood in Westminster last week.

“For darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples”

Not just darkness but irremediably stupid, impenetrable darkness - “thick darkness.”

So many angry faces, so many rageful eyes, so many brains switched to zero reception. Meanwhile we, the passive electorate for whom, notionally, these jokers work, we eat, sleep, yawn and lose interest in the debate which has stopped being about Brexit and has turned to kindergarten tribal warfare. Watch our MPs and the Tutsi, Hutu conflicts which were so difficult to comprehend begin to become clearer.

And then on Friday a soft, resonant voice spoke on the Today programme. It was a grown up at last.  Koji Tsuruoka is the Japanese Ambassador to the UK. As usual John Humphrys tried to elicit the Armageddon response from his opposite number

“So if there’s no deal  that’ll be the end of our relationship with Japan?”
“No I don’t think so.”

And the Ambassador patiently explained the relationship between the two countries had always been fruitful and Japan was still betting on the UK economy. He said that a no deal would need to be avoided because if the current deal on the table failed it would hurt the global economy as well as the Japanese and of course the British economy.

He explained the concept of Just-in-Time production (the idea of a minute by minute arrival of key components flabbergasted John)
“Minute by minute!!!”
“No not minute by minute”…
“Aha!”
“No. More like second by second”
“!!!!”

He then proceeded to explain calmly that Japanese Industry was prepared for all contingencies and would adapt in an orderly way when the situation was clearer.

I loved the way he called Theresa, “Prime Minister May” reducing her to the same status as say Signalman Arkright. Someone doing a menial job. The dignity of Downing Street was then punctured by his calling it “Downing 10” a bit like “Cell Block H”. He was wonderful - so imperiously in command.

I recall when working with Panasonic years ago that they had a 250 year plan and that there was a patience about their marketing that we sometimes just didn’t get. We couldn’t understand their tentative launch into the battery market in the UK. We – all advertising short termists – wanted to create the “kill Duracell” advertising campaign. They waited. Today 20 years later they are in partnership with Tesla to produce next generation automotive batteries.

The Japanese economy has flatlined but it’s still the 3rd largest in the world  and the country is still one of the cleanest, most dignified, punctual and charming in the world.

I agree with film maker Roman Coppola.

“Japan is the most intoxicating place for me. The culture fascinates me: the food, the dress, the manners and the traditions. It’s the travel experience that has moved me the most.”

OH DOCTOR I DON'T FEEL WELL

 I was quite unfairly accused of being a hypochondriac last week when I groaned in a rather melodramatic way. But the fact is I was feeling a bit below par and the behaviour of our politicians was causing me acute mental anguish. In a word I thought I needed sympathy and treatment.

Perhaps however I was just suffering from an acute idiopathic condition which was probably sub-clinical and mercifully pre-terminal.  In other words I was really OK with nothing to worry about.
“Idiopathic” is a useful word. It comes from the Greek “idios” - one’s own and “pathos”- suffering. Widely used medically it actually means diagnostically “denoting any disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown”. Or in plainer English “this chap’s probably a malingerer; I don’t know what’s wrong”.

The current situations in the UK, France and America are idiopathic and pathetic. It should, I suppose, make us feel less bad about Brexit to see the French setting fire to themselves and shouting very loudly. One commentator actually said sententiously “this is how the French Revolution started.” Macron is now the most unpopular President ever. In a run-off between him and his predecessor, the despised Francois Hollande, Francois would win by a landslide.

Meanwhile over in the States Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s lawyer has pleaded guilty to eight charges and will be going to prison. From the President’s viewpoint the most serious guilty plea Cohen made is that he made hush-money payments during the presidential campaign to women Trump had slept with. Worse – that the President had directed him to do this. So that’s clear. Donald is nailed. Dead as a parrot.

Ah, apparently not. Trump immediately tweeted “totally clears the President. Thank you!” There is something so barefaced about him you almost (almost but not quite) admire him for it.  Set against the 2nd French Revolution and the impending defenestration of the 45th President of the United States our Brexit squabbles in the UK seem quite petty if undignified but at a much lower level of disgracefulness than France or America’s woes. If we were to be generous we could argue there is a genuinely important disagreement between parliamentarians about a matter of principle. However I do not feel very generous-minded when the bulk of MPs are polluted by a naked quest for power. This is a case of MeMe# as opposed to MeToo# 

Alone and abandoned Theresa May makes a long suffering, resolute yet curiously impressive figure. I never thought I’d feel admiration for her but I do. Most of the rest of her colleagues are a clueless and sadly squalid bunch. The question for me has long ceased to be about Brexit but about whether we can trust many/any of the 650 MPs to oversee and direct the affairs of Great Britain Limited.

I don’t believe that many of them care for our collective wellbeing at all. Which is pathetic and very disappointing. Happy Christmas.

DON'T PANIC MR MANNERING

It’s the silliness but accuracy of human observation that still makes ‘Dad’s Army’ appealing. It has this ironic sense of human incompetence, despite itself, prevailing over catastrophe.

Today economic forecasts are worsening with growth figures stagnating to just + 0.1% in the first quarter, the worst figures for six years. Worse still the EU did rather well in the same quarter. Words like “collapse, slide and crisis” fill the papers. As Harold MacMillan once said when asked what Prime Minsters most feared: “Events, dear boy, events”

UK growth slows to brink of stagnation 

And this is an event. So is it time to panic? No. Is it time to tear up our aggressive growth plan? Maybe. Is it time to recalibrate our expectations? Absolutely. Panic is tremendously popular. It involves lots of action, noise and apparent leadership. Panic is essential in creating a crisis where seemingly strong people pretend they’re in charge. Steven Leacock the Canadian writer got this spot on when he wrote this:

“Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions”.

Steve Peters the famous Australian sports psychologist has a simple philosophy:

Life is unfair.

And they keep moving the goalposts.

But you can only try your best.

Yet we demand that leaders are proactive and that they get a grip. Matthew Parrish in Saturday’s Times describes the dilemma of a Secretary of State who inherits pockets of unpleasant history and is expected to have read, considered and interrogated every memo, e-mail or conversation relating to these specific issues. In particular our current Home Secretary seems not to have assimilated a six page memo on Windrush. Not surprising really. I hate six page memos and I’m in in good company. Winston Churchill in his famously short memo entitled “Brevity” says this at the start:

"To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points,"

What we need is patience not panic.

The urgency of social media has created panic via a tyranny which demands spontaneous as opposed to considered decisiveness. We are living in a crisis ridden present. We are having existential crises - moments at which individuals questions if their life has meaning, purpose, or value. Yes that’s May, Corbyn, Rudd and the rest in the weekend just past.

We all live in a world of optimistic targets, the missing of which is a criminal sin. But you can only do your best and only by recalibrating your growth trajectory can you return to a world of sanity, common sense free of that bastard panic.

Consider Monty Don, who presents ”Gardener’s World.” Impressively laid back like most gardeners he watches nature unfold every year and works with it. He doesn’t drive change management programmes. And he doesn’t panic  - he just seems rather sensible.

SUDDENLY IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO READ

Do you remember when it was all so predictable? Until Harold Wilson, in 1964, said if the country was to prosper, a "new Britain" would need to be forged in the "white heat" of this "scientific revolution."  I remember thinking how exciting it all sounded. Labour had giants like Crossman, Crosland, Jenkins and Castle.  It was a tonic after what was described as “13 years of Tory Misrule” (what a soundbite that was).

Since the war (72 years ago) we’ve had 17 governments, 7 Labour (three of those under Tony Blair so “labour” rather than LABOUR), 9 Conservative and just 1 coalition in a rather dull game of political ping-pong.

But on Thursday that changed.

From an ostensibly unassailable lead in the polls Mrs May seized defeat from the jaws of victory and having claimed to be her team’s best player and only hope, dropped a dolly catch and said - mortally - after her u-turn on her manifesto social care plans in apparent exasperation  that we didn’t seem to understand her: “But nothing has changed. Nothing has changed.”

The Prime Minister cannot deal with the chaos of life, untidiness and contradiction. As such she isn’t an ideal leader or (heaven forbid) a negotiator in our modern world. Because of course things had changed, and always do change. More than anything else this rigidity lost her votes.

The restless electorate used the ballot box as an instrument of punishment for this inflexibility in a new way. Above all youth gave the Tories payback for Brexit. I’d never before heard diehard voters say “I don’t know who to vote for.” Imagine Arsenal fans supporting Spurs? Impossible in football perhaps but it’s now it was happening in politics.

I live in Brighton - two out of three seats marginal.  Caroline Lucas, the Green, doubled her majority.

But it was in Kemptown and Hove that we saw the real action.  Kemptown went from Conservative to Labour on an increased Labour vote of 19%. In Hove Peter Kyle increased his vote by 22% on an amazing 78% turnout turning a 1000 majority marginal into a 20,000 majority safe seat.  Localism, young voters and talent have played a major part in the election overall.

Jeremy Corbyn’s right in saying the face of British politics has changed and that Theresa May is the old, inflexible face. New and relevant faces are people like Emmanuel Macron, Ruth Davidson and Justin Trudeau. The new faces are not compromised by party machines. They are young, angry and authentic. Most of all they listen to other people.

The old “irrelevants” simply stay stuck on message with old ideas, bad scripts and fifth rate soundbites.
If you are out there and want to play this new, sensible politics then draw up a chair and please join in.
We need talent because everything has changed, yes, everything has changed. It’s a terrible time to be a diehard but a great time to be open minded and articulate.

"STRONG AND STABLE" - IS THIS REALISTIC IN TODAY'S WORLD?

Apart from an irrepressible desire to giggle when I see or hear this I wonder how and why the Tories ever saddled themselves with such a curious steam-engine of a phrase. Presumably they hadn’t counted it on it being gainsaid so emphatically.

But was it even appropriate?

I imagine focus groups said they yearned for strong leadership. Oh for the days of Attila, Genghis Khan or Frederick the Great the respondents said. We want someone to stand up and fight for us. We want a strong leader to take a firm grip.

The researchers concluded that people want a more predictable and ordered life.

They want hot summers and cold winters. This has become a prosecco and pesto world and people really yearn for bitter, pie and gravy. They yearn for an era of 11 plus, ‘O’ levels, 45rpm, mini-skirts, shipbuilding and capital punishment; an era of upper class, middle class and lower class, of pen and ink, of slide rules, of the TV Test Card and of BBC interviewers who call the Prime Minster “Sir or Ma’am” when they interview them. They want the past because then they know what happens next. The future is just so unstable.

Thus said the researchers…..

But this brave new world isn’t brave at all. It’s a nervy place where what we want isn’t “strong” (if by strong you mean, Trump, Putin or Erdogan.) What we really want and need is “smart”. And “stable” is not what you get on the ice rink of modern life.  Maybe calm and controlled would be better. What we want is to be as good as we deserve to be. And what we need is a top team who’ll help us get there, avoid us making a mess of things and be advised by sensible experts who have no ideological axe to grind.

On Friday I spent a few hours with a very bright 26 year old who’s extremely relaxed in part because he’s resigned from his stressful, busy-busy job where he was offered a seat on the board. Instead of building a glittering, “stable” career he’s earning enough freelancing whilst he reflects on his future.

Chances are he’s got 60-70 years of this adventure left.

He’ll have time to write some great books, have ideas for some successful and entertaining TV series, invent some life-changing products and even eventually become part of a smart, creative and adaptable leadership team.

Whatever else he’ll undergo lots of rich and exciting experiences and never just be what we once called a “wage slave”.

Maybe the world will gradually lose its urge for growth; our Brexit decision may create a platform for economic retreat. Most of all “strong” will be replaced by receptive and “stable” by adaptable.  What we are heading towards is a more natural way of living and possibly a happier and more productive one.

It’s the end of the old normal but strong and stable it’s not.

WHY BEING A BIT AWKWARD WORKS

I’ve even gone so far as to espouse rebellion, something Thomas Jefferson perhaps unsurprisingly recommended. There’s simply too much dumb acquiescence going on right now in business and in politics. I keep on hearing this dire word “alignment”. Alignment behind Prime Minister May’s manifesto by her Cabinet is horrifically servile. Thank God for Ruth Davidson the only Tory with an awkward brain. This manifesto was crafted by Nick Timothy (as my mother said never trust a man with a beard.)

Awkward is about asking “why?” Children can be awkward in their genuine attempts to unravel adult totalitarianism:

“Why?”
“Just because I said so. Now be quiet”

Hey, that sounds like a Cabinet Meeting.

But most awkward of all is democracy. Those who praise the strong stable leadership of Erdogan or Putin are discounting the fact neither accepts any attempt of truth being spoken to power. Working in a democracy is tough as it involves give and take and constant compromise. In a democracy you have to listen and you have to be patient.

So imagine the dismay that poor perplexed Donald Trump must be feeling as his attempts to impose his will on an American Constitution are thwarted so publicly. He actually thought being president was like being CEO. As a wise commentator recently put it:

“Somehow he seems to lack the skills that the job requires”

Those skills include patience, diplomacy, guile and charm.

Awkward is also about being persistent and trying to ensure that the downside and potential for problems is understood and anticipated. Here’s how Sir Kit McMahon, one time Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, put it:

“No time is as usefully spent as that spent guarding against disasters that do not in the event occur”.

Life is awkward. We are not masters or mistresses of our destiny. We are constantly surprisingly and irritatingly mugged by little setbacks. It was like this over 50 years ago:

Interviewer: “What is most likely to blow a government off-course Sir?”
PM Harold Macmillan: “Events, dear boy, events”

My own bit of awkwardness relates to books.

I spent my long and idle life building a quite decent library of a few thousand books. When we moved house and downsized somewhat, the few thousand books wouldn’t fit in. I tried hiding them in cupboards and keeping some (no idea which ones now) in expensive storage.

Belatedly (this is where patience comes in) I’ve decided to adopt a process of zero based book collecting. If I shan’t ever read it or refer to it, if it isn’t central to my core interests and passions, if it isn’t a “friend” whose absence will be noticed and depressing and if it is too big and weighty (no one needs the complete works of anyone…the complete includes stuff that a good editor would have discarded) they are sold, given away or destroyed.

Last awkward thought: time is too short to be tyrannised by people, music, art or books.

PREPARE FOR LIFT-OFF AND A DODGY FLIGHT

Increasingly what defines our lives lies in the execution of stuff. A great recipe badly cooked and carelessly served is a disaster. An ordinary recipe beautiful cooked and lovingly served is a triumph.

We are living in a world of change, innovation and contradiction, a world where nothing is quite as it seems, where long held assumptions about civil rights, equality and being nice to each other were just taken for granted.

Let’s consider gastroenterology and the state of chronic constipation. That’s how the EU bureaucratic has felt for some time as has the US dominated by its MBAs, Silicon Valley and its Financiers. Enter the two best laxatives known to humanity - Donald Trump and an elixir called Brexit.

Here’s how Dave Barry a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald described his own laxative moment:
“On the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavour. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-litre plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a litre is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humour, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another litre of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.”

In political terms that is what we’ve just started to go through.

In years to come we’ll describe not draining the swamp but emptying the body of its waste so we can start to behave sensibly again. Neither Trump nor Theresa are permanent fixtures - they are watery movements and they’ll pass on quite soon.

Am I unduly optimistic? We are - I suggest- going through a curious phase as this cartoon suggests. Time to use these laxative tools and then get back to down to earth again

BEFEHL IST BEFEHL

In saying “Brexit is Brexit” Theresa May is using what is called the Nuremberg Defence - “an order is an order.” It didn’t work seventy years ago at the Trials. I don’t think it’s going to work now.

I’m talking about Nuremberg because I was at a meeting there this week (sadly not at their Christmas markets.) The trees were frost-white, the hotel full of Christmas trees and smiling people. Germany seemed very comfortable with itself - and why not? They live in one of the most deregulated and decentralised counties in the world. 

Germans are bemused by the British cry of “We want to get back control”. They have control. Their governmental structure devolves quite considerable powers down through regions to towns and even villages.

I was driven to Munich Airport from Nuremberg in an Audi Quattro - it’s 106 miles yet it only took an hour. At times we reached 150mph along deregulated motorways that interlink across Franconia making distances at which we’d wince a mere stroll.

The transport system at all levels was amazing. At Munich Airport it took me 10 minutes from being dropped to go through Passport Control, Security and get to the gate - another five minutes or so and I was on the plane. This is an efficient but lightly regulated world.

Is this a love affair with Germany?  No. But on re-watching them I do find the Germanophobia in both Monty Python and Fawlty Towers painfully unfunny. Denis Healey in his autobiography “The Time of My Life” said of Germany in 1936 where he spent five weeks before going up to Balliol, and this despite the remorseless rise of Hitler:

“The main impression of those five weeks was of the beauty of the landscape and the friendliness of the people.”

Plus of course the depth and spread of culture… especially opera.

What has always struck me are the Germans’ ability to speak flawless English at all levels and their sardonic humour. I had a splendid dinner where they romanced their Franconian Food - I was told a speciality was “breast of dove” (hmm!) - I had goose which was magnificent. I noted to the waitress it was apparently “free range and fed exclusively and happily on corn.” She eyed me wryly and said:

“Yes, and then he died.”

Most throughout Europe currently view us with somewhat puzzled amusement wondering why so many of us take offence by their very existence, as though being foreign somehow “isn’t right.”

Meanwhile the activity in the USA with the appointment of Linda McMahon to a Cabinet post is the most distracting news of the week. She is CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and has been seen playfully kicking wrestlers in the balls to spice up the shows.

Well, as they say “Trump is Trump” and “Brexit is Brexit” whilst Germany seems sane, relaxed and civilised - rather like Britain used to be. No need for orders because they know precisely where they’re going.

DEATH TO MISANTHROPY

We live in grumpy times. The referendum didn’t help much. I’m still coming across people who haven’t been on speaking terms with their Brexit-voting parents since June.

It’s reminiscent of Jonathan Swift’s descriptions in “Gulliver’s Travels” of seemingly trivial but vitriolic disagreements between the Lilliputians and Blenfuscuans as to which end of an egg to break open, the small or big end. This ding-dong led to thousands of deaths. There’s yet another dispute in the Lilliputian court between the Tramsecksan and Slamekstan factions, the one favouring low heels and the other high heels. Neither party will acknowledge or speak to the other. Splendidly the Emperor seeking a rapprochement wears one low heel and one high heel “which gives him a hobble in his gait.”

Ah, the hobbling gait of modern life foreseen back in 1726. Plus ça change….

What I love about Swift is his ability to put the spotlight on the triviality of human obsessions and that urge to take extreme positions even when Lustrog (Swift’s fictional god in this instance) has proclaimed:
“All true believers shall break their eggs at the convenient end”

Depends on what you mean by “convenient” they all cry and the Smallenders and Bigenders in rage and hatred set about each other…kersplat!

Surely we are better? Well not if you read about the alleged tantrums displayed by the third and not-so-lucky appointment to head the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse by Theresa May, when Home Secretary, a few months ago. Dame Lowell Goddard, according to the Times, “treated staff with contempt and flew into rages”.

She refutes this but even if a tiny bit true it might explain why so many people at work there and generally today are so unhappy. Workplaces are increasingly driven by targets, by egos and by fear.  And this made me sad when the so-called NHS Whistleblowing Tsar Dr Henrietta Hughes said the NHS needed more of the “trust and joy and love as in Love Actually” hormone oxytocin and was derided by Santham Sanghera in the Times. More mirth and better manners and, yes, a bit more love wouldn’t be so bad but Santham hates the film for its sugariness, inappropriate sexual liaisons - just about everything.

Come on. Richard Curtis must have done something right because Love Actually grossed $259 million worldwide and nearly $30 million in the UK and was the apotheosis of “feel-good”. And feel-good is what we’re missing. Santham reduces life to mere functionality when he suggests all an employee needs to be happy is to be reasonably paid and do interesting work for a successful company. Most people achieve none of those.

What the workplace currently misses (blame computer screens and savings on coffee and biscuits) is the sound of buzz, gossip and laughter. Make it a place people want to go to for work and a pay packet, sure, but much more a place where interesting stuff happens and where grey people and misanthropes get mercilessly teased.

Bah humbug!