WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH

All over Brighton the bins are full and the streets are overflowing with rotting rubbish. It’s been like this for two weeks. The latest news about the strike is it could last until mid-November given talks between the GMB union and council have broken down. The GMB called action over changes of duties, drivers being removed from long-standing rounds and pay. Pessimists are predicting a six month stand-off.

 

The irony is the Council is led by the Green Party. A similar strike happened before -  nationwide in 1978-79 leading to Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power over the bones of the Labour administration in the “winter of discontent”.

 

 

I’ve been surprised just how relaxed everyone seems to be about this hygiene catastrophe, exhibiting mild grumbles rather than outrage. A group of valiant lads proposed commandeering a lorry and clearing their area but were told by the council it would be illegal to intervene and dispose of this illegal rubbish in the tip.

 

What a load of rubbish. 

 

We might start burning it – not very green but we wouldn’t have a plague of rats. My frustration is that no one is seeking a solution to this urgent problem. Politicians, Waste Management Experts, Journalists, Union Officials are talking about it but not creating a solution…unlike the Pied Piper of Hamelin’s musical solution.

 

Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor, who has had something of a rubbish week himself given the findings of the Health and Social Care Committee’s report on the handling of the Covid pandemic, said he believed we needed more engineers and engineering systems. 

 

Engineering, unlike Patrick, had a great week. The front page of the Times carried a story about the need to rename engineers. Professor Elena Rodriguez-Flacon thinks engineers should be called 'ingeniators' – ingenious innovators. 

 

Well, I think that’s rubbish. We need to celebrate engineers not rebrand them. I like the dictionary definition of the verb “to engineer” – “to skilfully arrange for (something) to occur”. Engineers are not just TV repairmen or radiator installers. Think Brunel, think Stephenson, think Archimedes, think Tesla (the engineer not the car!), think Leonardo. All engineers.

 

 

Given the current global fragility of critical systems a few smart engineers would seem to be exactly what we need. Engineers not MBAs, engineers not politicians. If politicians had engineered the Channel Tunnel it would have ended up in Antwerp and then flooded.

 

Three stories that have cheered me up in the midst of the garbage mountain outside our house.  

 

1. I had an x-ray recently at the Hove Polyclinic. Spotlessly clean. Plenty of parking. Charming people – It’s a no-appointment place;  I was in and out in 15 minutes. The radiology manager was Sid. Remember the Gas Privatisation advertising in 1986. The NHS can be amazing  when there are “Sids” to make it happen. 
2. A friend of mine is running an incubator seeking new ways to convert waste (yes, rubbish) into useful and valuable material by employing the inventive skills of Chemical Engineers. It’s flying.
3. Restaurants are open. Wild Flor in Brighton is back, delivering a splendid experience. They ‘engineer’ a perfect conjunction of relaxation, taste and pleasure.

 

What I’ve realised this past week is that good intentions, optimism and unbridled hope are not enough. We can eliminate grumpiness but never the need to question and work out how to engineer solutions and systems that work, are robust and adaptable. 

 

What’s happening in our rubbish strike is an absence on all sides of common sense, compassion, compromise and community. Brighton’s not a nice place to live in right now.

IT'LL BE THE DEATH OF ME

Last week I went to a funeral…another funeral. My life seems to have comprised a succession of funerals. They are nearly always stimulating, thoughtful and important. A pause at a moment in time; a chance to remember; a positive moment when we recall the best of a person.

 Life is a film which, when it ends, is edited with all the dull moments hitting the cutting room floor. Most of us hope to end up like Hugh Grant in “Love Actually”. As a  hero, kind, a high-achiever, funny but clever…exceptionally talented. A star.

It was the absence of proper funerals during lockdown that was especially sad for many. Death became a furtive transaction with a crematorium rather than a celebration of a life well-lived.

Joe Orton, genius playwright, wrote “Funeral Games” for the BBC in 1968. I recall a line in it “We set off for the funeral in high spirits” which I always loved. Those high spirits were dampened when the car bearing the coffin ran out on control down the hill spilling all inside. Orton could always see the funny side of things with immortal lines like these:

Truscott: Why aren't you both at the funeral? I thought you were mourners. 

Fay: We decided not to go. We were afraid we might break down. 

Truscott: That's a selfish attitude to take. The dead can't bury themselves; you know. “

or this about privilege:

Hal: That's typical of your upbringing …. Every luxury was lavished on you - atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision. I had to make my own way.

Like Death itself Orton’s writing constantly takes you by surprise, but I think he’d have liked this story last week:

“Increases in the size and weight of Dutch people are forcing the country’s funeral industry to introduce bigger coffins, more pallbearers, wider crematoria ovens and longer cremation times. A study by the NRC Handelsblad newspaper has found that the Dutch funeral is changing as people in the Netherlands get fatter.”

 

Poor cat. Blame their Gouda 

 

Moving north but remaining morbid, the Swedes believe in something called “döstädning” which means “death cleaning.” It originated in the urge to remove the misery of clearing up after someone dies, all those old letters, birthday cards, books, photographs. An artist, Margareta Magnusson, who had to clear up after her parents and her husband has written a book, no doubt, with a sense of frustration “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family From a Lifetime of Clutter”.

I’ve been thinking about this and am planning to do the following:

• Reduce the huge number of books – I’m obsessed by the need to have a “library” but what I need are paper books that inform and need referring to – history books, biographies, books on philosophy, art, politics and poetry. I reckon about 200 is enough. Nearly all the works of fiction can go on my Kindle which I’m going to upgrade.
• Photographs – reduce to the emotional few. How many pictures of the Zattere can anyone want?
• Clothes – I’m Dutch-like tubby following the lockdown so a lot of my clothes don’t fit me (sorry, I don’t fit my clothes). So they’re going to the Salvation Army.
• Stuff one keeps because it’s perfectly OK – like clocks, scissors, old spectacles, cufflinks, shoes, biros, pencils – but are redundant. “sorry shoes, I’m  downsizing so I’m afraid we’ll have to let you go.” 

It sounds so easy on paper. I think it might be quite hard to do: In fact, it could be the death of me.

TO HELL IN A HANDCART?

Is that where Britain’s going? You’d  think so based on schadenfreude articles in Germany on our “post-Brexit-plight” to e-mails from friends in France entitled “Doom and Gloom” to articles in our own press about the collapse of the economy.

There are issues, to be sure, but to predict as the Times did  that “This could ruin Christmas”  is foolish. Taking a calmer view we can understand why these local difficulties have happened and how we can cope with them.

The shortage of HGV drivers. Better pay and conditions will solve this.

Blame Eddie Stobart. Rescued from collapse by private equity in 2014 the name that once dominated our motorways is seldom seen now. Instead we see the word “logistics” meaning “the organization and implementation of a complex operation.” When Eddie was king of the road life just seemed more straightforward than that.

Being a lorry diver used to be tough - long hours and poor pay. Now there are allegedly salaries of over £50,000 a year being offered plus a signing-on bonus of thousands more. But if you want a cushier life operating nearer to home Amazon are offering van drivers up to £17 an hour (that’s around £40k a year.) The good news is some school leavers are seriously considering training to become HGV drivers.

The fuel shortage will be a blip - such things always are. In 2000 we had a fuel crisis. At the time Archie Norman was Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. I met him at a cocktail party – those were the days – and was surprised to hear him saying “I fear this country may be becoming ungovernable”. When I suggested this was nonsense he stormed off. But then as in 2005 and 2007 a fuel crisis is an easy thing to start. Just hint a shortage of something important to people and expect a surge in demand.

Lavatory paper, gin, fuel, eggs, bread, chocolate. Those’ll do for starters.

The gas price boom. The large number of virtual gas suppliers selling on price was always going to be unsustainable as Russian and Norwegian supplies eased. Any market where price becomes the primary driver is a minefield for small, inexperienced players. Again a blip that will stabilise.

Food shortages. Some of this is to do with a poor summer in the UK leading to poor harvests but not just in the UK. The durum wheat harvest in Italy was a bad one too. But the shelves remain quite full, just a few gaps, not empty.

There are other disturbing  issues like the virtual nationalisation of a major section of the rail network, massive “logistical” fissures appearing in the NHS and the very culture of the Police Force being under scrutiny following the ghastly murder of Sarah Everard by a policeman. We always focus on hellish thoughts when that’s what the media tells us.

Let me lift your spirits a little.

Less driving will do us no harm.

The low-wage culture is rightly changing; maybe the minimum wage should be £15 an hour rather than £10.

After nearly two years of Covid, depression is understandable. Amazingly most of us are OK and beginning to be sociable again. 

Low price, low margin, low quality are on their way out. 

As a high wage, high quality, highly skilled economy we’ll be happier.

It’s always been easy to grumble. Our society will be fine. How fine is up to us.

To hell in a handcart? Nonsense. Just relax.

And Christmas won’t be ruined without pigs in blankets. Ho! Ho!  Ho!

  

A STORY OF EXCESSES, RAGES AND A BAD APPOINTMENT

This weekend following the British Museum exhibition “Beckett: Murder and the Making of a Saint”, we are going to a conference which is about Thomas in Canterbury.

It’s the 12th century. England has been ravaged by 14 years of civil war between Stephen and Matilda. The country is in chaos. In 1153 Henry 1’s grandson, at 21, becomes King.

What’s he like? He has hyper-energy, eats standing up, is always on the move, he’s petulant and impetuous. But in his short reign this man-of-action restores order. The barons submit to him; castles built without permission are torn down. The mercenaries who’d been hired in the Civil War have a few days to leave England or be executed. They decamp in a hurry. He sets up trial by jury and assizes (old French for “sittings”) where judges hear cases. Prisons are built and villages and towns are repurposed with proper market days. The country becomes less mediaeval, more civilised and calm; much of this owing to Henry’s decisiveness. 

Yet he only speaks French and Latin and lives 2/3 of his life in Anjou. A key to his success is Thomas Becket, who is recommended to him by his Archbishop, Theobald. They get on tremendously well, so well that Henry makes him Lord High Chancellor. Thomas is smart, charming, a fixer and a man who makes things happen. He’s the King’s right hand but also his best friend.

He’s a show-off, dandy and poseur. He keeps monkeys and wolves. He has a vast array of silk garments. When he goes to France to negotiate the marriage of the King’s daughter he does so in fabulous luxury with a huge entourage. He behaves as if he were King. He loves bling.

Then something awful happens. When Archbishop Theobald dies Henry has a brainwave. Why not make Becket Archbishop as well as Chancellor?  Henry has been irked for some time by something called “benefit of clergy” which simply means whatever a member of the clergy does they’re immune to civil law. So, if they commit murder, say, a Bishop’s Court might defrock them or exact a penance. That’s all. But there’s a bigger game to play. The church represents a sixth of the population and is very wealthy. Henry wants to clip its wings. Thomas is the man to do that job. He’s proved this before.

 Huge mistake.

Becket’s transformation from super-rich courtier to Man-of-God takes two days. One day Thomas next day the Reverent Thomas, next day Archbishop Thomas, answerable to the Pope as well as the King. 

But he won’t do what an increasingly bemused and enraged Henry wants. He becomes as saintly now as he’d been epicurean before. For 8 years he’s an absentee Archbishop in France. From brilliant Chancellor and best friend  to intransigent churchman and obstructive foe (as Henry sees it). Thomas cannot be judged a success in his new role. He has constant rows with Henry causing great distress to the people who’d seen this previous effective partnership  collapse and create national disharmony..

Henry’s increasing frustration and rage is interpreted by four loyal but not too bright knights as a wish that Thomas be silenced. So, they come over from France and butcher him in Canterbury Cathedral.

It’s the most infamous murder ever. For the last 19 years of his life Henry bitterly regrets it, lamenting the loss of a friend, his own rashness and poor judgement, the tarnishing forever of his previously brilliant reign and becoming just a footnote in history.

We instead have the most famous Saint. 

Lesson for today: Be very careful about senior appointments. Especially if it’s a friend.

 

WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY SEEING AND FEELING?

When I first went into marketing I was fascinated by Ernest Dichter, the American psychologist, described as the “father of motivational research”. His analyses of why people did what they did and his books like “The Strategy of Desire” seemed more interesting than the quantitative beasts like Gallup and Nielsen, research firms that just counted stuff and produced voluminous documents.

He described his process as:

"I observe hidden clues; I listen with the third ear; I interpret. I see where others are too blind because they are too close to the trees. I find the solution….. I have acted as a discoverer, as a general on the battlefield of free enterprise."

A general on the battlefield, “yes” I said to myself, “that’s what I want to be.”

Now we live in more numerate times when the data is supposedly what drives our decision making. Over the past two years the media has contained a lot of data. Covid’s been defined by numbers…. (I hope you hear a “but” coming.) 

We in Brighton get a lot of Covid data - weekly rates of infection, hospital admissions, deaths and so on BUT I’m not sure what this means. Not really. My own experience is revealing. In the last year’s first wave of Covid I only knew few people who caught it. Currently I know at least 16 people who’ve caught it or are suffering from it. They are not hospital cases but are very unwell.

And at this point Government data contradicts my feeling that something is very much amiss. In just the same way, however loudly the Bank of England explains the absence of inflation, my own wallet says otherwise. And my own wallet is beginning to seem more reliable than the unflappable Governor of the Bank, Andrew Bailey. 

Here’s what the Office of National statistics said of the August inflation numbers:

“The increase ….is the largest increase ever recorded in the CPIH National Statistic 12-month inflation rate series, which began in January 2006; however, this is likely to be a temporary change.”

“Is likely to be?” We shall see. September is already looking like +3% with +4% on the cards.

In these transparent times great masses of data serve the same purpose as lying. They can contradict and confuse. Politicians and commentators have become skilled at choosing whatever data best serves to support their argument.

As things stand I sense (how I like that word: it’s a Dichter word) I sense like an animal smells something about to happen that the Covid spread is about to intensify through schools and universities and to us. Our mask-free, back-to-normal-society is in for a rude shock in its health and – if I’m right about inflation – its wealth. 

Meanwhile in the past week in politics the pantomime continues. “Behind you Gavin!” Commentators have described this reshuffle as a “strategic political distraction.” But the way ministers are moved around to positions they know nothing about has always baffled me. Imagine my alarm if, as I’d forged (or tried to forge) my way to being a Marketing General in the business battlefield, I’d been told: “Congratulations you’re the Finance Director now.”  

I loved this from James Poniewozik, the New York Times journalist:

“Politics has always been a mud fight – better that citizens jump in the trough than lose interest.”

No chance of that. Most people love mud fights and I sense this is going to a long winter of mud fights. Me? I'm putting on my uniform, polishing my medals and I’m off to the battlefield to join in.

COMMON SENSE AND THE UNEXPECTED

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of “common sense” is blessedly to the point:

“the ability to think about things in a practical way and make sensible decisions.”

Recently I read something that Tony Blair said. He’s 68 and a somewhat discredited blast-from-the-past. His think-tank (The Institute for Global Change) claims that consistent,  widespread, but relatively small changes in human behaviour – flying rather less, driving a little less, eating less red meat - would achieve surprisingly major improvements in carbon emissions. The excessive radicalism of Extinction Rebellion will, he believes, achieve less,  fostered, as it is, by a desire to demolish capitalism rather than just expressing concern for the planet.

The idea that violent revolution is less effective than radical change seems utterly sensible doesn’t it? Apart from anything else, brutal change is, for most of us, hard to stomach. We can see that being played out in the various approaches to managing Covid. Well, would you like to be an Australian right now?

In politics we constantly see ambitious Ministers trying to achieve the impossible. Sadly their problem is the 5 year span for governments whereby ministers try to create attention-getting legacies rather than solid ones. They live in their own bubble of “creative destruction”. Fine when thought through as Schumpeter does. He was the Austrian economist who became a Harvard Professor. His attitude towards the evolution of transport is clearly practical. 

In contrast, not a lot of common sense, practicality and sensible planning seems to have gone into the recent MOD £3.5 billion fiasco of vastly overbudget and ineffective Ajax tanks. These put soldiers in them at risk of tinnitus and swollen joints if driven at speeds above 20mph and they’re unable to reverse over objects higher than 20cm.

Yet it’s easy to revile politicians. Too much time is spent doing that, but they tend to be their own worst enemies and be neither calm nor particularly sensible. They seek the glamour of fame but less often seem simply to focus on getting the job done sensibly and in a practical way.

In another life many of us would like fame…apparently a worrying large number of young people asked what they’d like to when they grow up reply “famous”. But fame is hard won and more easily lost without constant application. When it really excites us is when it’s unexpected.

Emma Raducanu’s extraordinary performance in winning the US Tennis Open last Saturday is, based on experience, form and world ranking, nonsensical. Pundits were reduced to spluttering disbelief as she coasted through ten matches without conceding a single set. It’s the stuff of journalistic cliché to be sure but more importantly it shows how sport can transform lives and attitudes when they confound expectation. Defying the logic and common sense of the form book when you are a smart, smiling, 18 year old is thrilling.  

Does Emma pass the commonsense test? Does she demonstrate “the ability to think about things in a practical way and make sensible decisions”? Obviously yes. Her victory was a brilliant display of ruthlessly efficient shot making. She kept her calm and her rhythm. It was the emergence, pretty well without trace, that was so mind-blowing. It reminded me of Tiger Woods who won his first golf major, the Masters, in 1997 in record-breaking fashion and became the tournament's youngest winner when he was 21. 

 Common sense isn’t boring. Think about what it really means and it’s what we all look for but the added spice is the drama of winning against the odds. And that isn’t just fame. It’s stardom.

DO WE REALLY KNOW BETTER?

As technology hurtles us along a path of unending knowledge advancement something odd is going on. We seem to know less and less and we’re making more mistakes. Big ones. Whoppers.

I’m so enthralled by this I’m taking a week off to let my mind empty of assumptions. I shall be eating, drinking, listening to fine music and walking a lot.

Back in the black old days when we knew we knew nothing walking was the thing.

We shall see. In the meantime, the sound of a rushing river fills the air.

I’ll write a proper blog next week.