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Monthly Archives: January 2015

Top Tips for Carbon Dating & the life and times of a clean energy provider.

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Caring about what people care about, Clean Renewables, Coal, Dating, Double dating, Ethical Business, First Dates, Flings, Flirting, Gas, GE, Identity, Integrity, Jeremy Clarkson, Life Long Friendships, Long Term relationships, Love Ins, Nostalgia, Oil, Old Mates, One Night Stands, Sentimentality, Small Businesses, Sustainable Brands '14, Ties that Bind, word of mouth

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The populist conversation around creating a clean energy love in seems to be going nowhere about as fast as Jeremy Clarkson in an oil-burning, coal-fired, gas-expanded super-car through a village of impoverished 3rd Worlders living on scorched earth!

So anyone out there in the world trying start a conversation with the unenlightened everyday someone around the idea of embracing clean renewable energy can be in for a cold start.

So which reframe might help us get people to more easily consider moving from a short term promiscuous ‘lowest price who cares?’ transactional relationship to a long term committed ‘that price I care’ value based relationship.

Reason? Glamour? EQ? IQ? Finding the hook can be tricky. So lets try looking at the problem through the everyday human condition – one that everyone can relate to.

The first time you meet a dyed in the wool cheap coal and oil energy user with a shiny new clean energy package you could say it is a little like a First Date.

So lets start there.

As with all dates, especially first ones, you need to be clear about your objective going in, as this defines the rules of engagement.

Do you just want a few dates? Or would you like a long term relationship with them?

If its a just a few dates, some passion and then goodbye; go in fast and furious. Thick skinned. Impervious. Immutable.

If it’s the long term relationship you want. That’s a different thing entirely.

That demands a more intuitive approach. Sensitivity. Respect.. Awareness.

So, when approaching a traditional coal, oil or gas burning energy consumer for the first time, here are a few tips and watch-outs to help shape a better first impression and relationship.

First Dates

1. Don’t assume that turning up bright eyed and bushy tailed with a shiny new something will get you straight to First Base.

Appearing with a clean renewable energy package will NOT immediately have them springing to click on the ‘change of provider’ PDF.

Putting aside old familiar and trusted things – however toxic they may be in reason – is not a given. Sentimentality and attachment are very strong emotions in the human condition.

2. Don’t assume that Reason aces everything.

Not everyone sees things reasonably: usually they will be quite the opposite – viewing life through a very human and subjective eye.

So Pointing out the deepest most destructive failings and flaws of their current energy choice may not only make them highly defensive of the choice they have made but also of themselves for making it.

Example: When you first meet a very old and good friend of your new crush, only to find that they’re truly awful: some recidivist throw back to a 1970s British sitcom with all the chauvinist, misogynist, racist paraphernalia that goes with it; you can do one of two things:

Either call out their dreadful-ness as loudly as possible, pointing out and highlighting every flaw, to then flounce off muttering phrases such as ‘How can you put up with that &*$%”

Or you can sit back, observe the relationship; assess it: for the depth of its feeling, and the integrity of its bond. This allows you to decide whether the presence of the friend is immutable and in turn a corollary to as yet unseen things to come in your crush; traits or behaviours that you have simply not registered through your lusty mists.

3. Be prepared for Double Daters.

Most people are unlikely to put all of their energy eggs in one clean renewable basket straight away. They will probably switch backwards and forwards or leave the big stuff as it is and just flirt with a clean and serene energy lifestyle to warm themselves up and test the edges of it. In that way the average Jane and Joe is not dissimilar to the average energy monolith. Just like GEs diversified energy portfolio – which unsurprisingly contains the smoky old faithfuls.

4. Get someone to put in a good word for you.

With most successful dates, the battle is one before it is fought. Someone ‘bigging you up’ prior the actual meeting can work wonders.It is also a way of utilising the grapevine that will be buzzing whether you like it or not. The odd whisper and aside and some furious txt-ing and calling will have already happened on the side between the two parties friends and acquaintances way before you get to the bar/restaurant/club/room.

Small businesses are always looking for smart wins in the efficiency and economies department. And they have a far closer eye on the way the business runs itself and makes money. Target the Owner Managers businesses, deliver for them and they’ll be singing your praises in the pub in a flash in very everyday and human sized terms.

So lets have a run at that and see if it enlightens the moment and sets us up for success or failure. And if that doesn’t work we’re just going to keep trying others. because we need to. So all ideas gratefully received.

Answers on a postcard.

NOTE This blog was inspired by a chat at Sustainable Brands London’14 with some super bright clean energy people around the topic of rewriting the narrative of the whole carbon issue – which to be frank currently reads like a Wet Wednesday, when it should come across like a Sunny Saturday.

signs, messengers, wonders & a collision of flocks and fists

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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art frieze, eating disorders, fun runs, Golden Compass, leisure activities, London Business School, London Zoo, Lycra Chafe, lyra belaqua, MAMILs, Obsessive Compulsive, patello-femoral pain, punctuation, Regents Park, Sociopathy, Spores, Trainer Rot, Voles

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Pedantry, punctiliousness, pomposity and particularity to name but a few of the leading P emotions and responses this crime against language inspires.

I spied it as I mooched around the periphery of Regents Park yesterday morning.

Lack of punctuation aside, its accidental pronouncement on the presence of runners in the park is its least dynamic feature. Anyone who has walked around Regents Park when any kind of collective Run is under way, either for Fun, a good cause or otherwise, knows all too well the tyranny that is a fist of runners (for that is my bludgeoning collective noun for them) heading in your direction.

It’s their park. Their path. Their arena. Their world. Their moment. And they’re seizing it MAN. And what the HELL are you doing? Huh? Mr beardy sloth-assed walking, looking thinking guy? NOTHING. That’s what!

The smug self-centredness of some of them and their sense of right of entitlement to the by-ways they tread is quite impressive if not a little delusional.

They are vaulted it would seem into divine superiority over all other bipeds, tripeds, quadrapeds (and mopeds for that matter) by the mere act of relentlessly throwing one foot in front of the other while sporting the kind of luminescent tops and inappropriate lycra also favoured by their close cousins, the far less sexually diverse MAMILs.

(Watching Flocks of these MAMILs circumnavigating the outer circle of the park tempted me to imagine for one delicious moment a cataclysmic collision of vitamin water bottles, hi tensile lycra, chrome, rubber, carbon frames, magnets, exploding trainers and performance insoles where fist meets flock. Efficiency and a dislike of waste and excessive logistical challenges also led me to further imagine that the mangled result of said collision could simply be shovelled a few hundred yards up the road and feature in the next Freeze Fair Sculpture garden – just a thought)

Anyway, to the sign in question, whose lack of punctuation (verging on an almost spiteful dereliction of syntactical duty) plunged me into all sorts of confusions.

The absence of punctuation actually raised (in tandem with my blood pressure) many questions (narrative, directional, nominative/ablative, relational, subjective, contextual, existential – you name it; the sign raised it).

This was effectively common criminal assault disguised as a leisure sports event sign.

My mind raced.

CAUTION RUNNERS

OK. Of course it could be a simple error. A slip of the punctuational tongue. Two full stops or periods absent without malice.

It should rightly read CAUTION. RUNNERS.

A clear sign to make me aware of the presence of Runners (plural) in the vicinity: but was that it? Or did it mean something more?

Did this sign demand that I caution runners? generally or specifically – and if so, against what or whom? Lycra Chafe? Trainer Rot? Falling branches? Designer dogs? Wind-borne Zoo animal Spores? London Business School alumni?

Or perhaps I was to caution them on the particular dangers of running itself? (long term joint impact & ligament problems – ‘patello-femoral pain’; lower back strain, compressed discs). And accidental health hazards & opportunities of punitive litigation – e.g. Collisions (with pedestrians, pets, park livestock, skateboarders and the aforementioned cyclists).

Or maybe I was to CAUTION RUNNERS on the need to be very very quiet given the arrival of a small pregnant female vole on the bank of the flooded ditch between the park and the zoo.

Or maybe I was to caution those guilty of knowingly or unknowingly disguising their eating disorder inside a seeming ‘passion for leisure activities.

Or perhaps the cautionary tale was around the subject of identity. Was one to caution said runners that being a runner was not all it was cracked up to be? Antisocial, smug, ultimately nihilistic: isolationist and self obsessed: potentially a sign of a deeper sociopathy, narcissism or compulsive disorder.

And then it struck me like a Gobblers Demon (probably while heavily under the influence of the dark magical realm of Lyra Belaqua):

CAUTION RUNNERS

Perhaps this was a brief window into the otherwise invisible systems of a mysterious breed of messenger – fleet of foot, immutable, unstoppable and relentless.

CAUTION RUNNERS – the mythical clandestine deliverers of cautionary missives, marks, data, intelligence, remarks and tales.

CAUTION RUNNERS We do not see them; but we know when they have visited upon us. (Think of those moments when we suddenly have a change of heart against some course of action or decision we have chosen or made. It is not our conscience or our fears talking. It is the cargo of the CAUTION RUNNERS lodged firmly in the back of our head.)

But then how do this mythical and other worldly sect of such daunting purpose remain unseen in the world? How come there is no proof of their existence bar one random accidentally placed sign?

They would be hard to miss. They will be patently odd. They will stick out like a sore, swollen and swaddled thumb. They will be incapable of normal socialisation. They would speak in riddles or some inexplicable language. Their human disguises would be clumsy. Their obsessive and compulsive nature would be difficult to disguise. They would be called upon to go out at all times of day and night. They would have developed strange codes of communication shrouded from the view of normal human beings. What earthly disguise could ever absorb so much?

This is a conundrum that I shall endeavour to solve. Throw a lens or filter across the seen world that will reveals them in all their splendour..

But until then, I’ll  continue to wander around the park, populated as it is by badly punctuated signs and a lot of awkward obsessed people in lycra and luminescent canvas talking in riddles to each other in the middle of a rainy Sunday, uncomfortable in their own…HEY…HANG on just one dang minute …HANG RIGHT BLOODY ON RIGHT THERE…

FOUND THEM!

verukas, prosperity & the detritus of parental love

02 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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adult tantrums, boarding schools, cheap money, China Dream, Consumerism, credit card debt, designer baby clothes, Dream In A Box, ethics, family holidays, hogwarts, love, millennials, moral compass, nurture, parental guidence, propserity, quality of life, the 2 week summer holiday, Transforming Desire

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Who pandered to her every need?
Who turned her into such a brat?
Who are the culprits? Who did that?
The guilty ones now this is sad
Dear Old Mum and Loving Dad

Is the quality of contemporary parental love destined to go down the garbage chute quickly followed by the children it breeds?

Is the structure on which it is founded becoming increasingly fragile, facile and unsustainable?

Or will our children or grandchildren eventually just turn against us; crippled by their disappointments, and their inability to repeat or recreate the same or a greater quality of life for their own.

We already know that this is the first generation in recorded history that will be passing down a diminished quality of life to their children by our current measures of prosperity.

This question of whether parental love in its current form is unsustainable first raised itself whilst I was trying to assess and deconstruct the current model of prosperity we currently embrace and pursue.

(Let’s face it, for some the highway commercial robbery of Valentines Day, the poisonous barometer of the Tiffany box, Gypsy Weddings and the reoccurring arrival of Kim Kardashian’s latest ‘one and only love’ has firmly flushed the romantic model down the spiritual khazi already)

The exercise in deconstructing prosperity is a major part of a larger one I am undertaking as part of my ongoing involvement with the Dream In A Box initiative and its UK Dream iteration – which in particular terms seeks to Re-imagine the UK model of Prosperity through the transformation of what constitutes a desirous life.

On closer inspection (hardy surprising) it seems that a large part of what makes up our current model of prosperity lies in how we imagine, perceive, measure, pursue, and demonstrate ‘love’ and attachment: to friends, family, prospective partners, spouses and most pointedly our children.

There is no greater demonstration of loving provision and the profound contract of human care it seems than that hosted within the living bond between parents and their children.

But what was once only noted and measured in mostly invisible and passing terms – the degree to which we throw money at our children’s happiness – now seems to be worn like a badge of honour by everyone from the cord-breeched pseudo-toff urban preppy and the polo-shirt & chino mini-mes of the suburbs to the highly singular estate-inhabiting parent with a Burberry buggy.

The integrity of our attendance to our children’s needs and the strength of the love we hold for them now lies in the measure of its social visibility and worth.

We must be ‘seen’ to gladly or otherwise use every scrap of ‘cheap’ money we can get our hands on to further facilitate our children’s ability to hover above the ugly brutal truths of life.

Increasingly our ‘love’ seems to be wholly predicated on the scale of our investment: and not of the balanced, grounding, attentive, affectionate kind.

It would seem that it is wholly acceptable these days for a child to be intellectually stupefied, emotionally ignored, set aside and abandoned or passed over to some one or some thing – a digital device usually or perhaps a new pair of trainers – as long as the parent can be seen to have ‘invested’ at every turn.

From the designer baby clothes they learn to stand up in, to the grotesque and engorging hoards of seasonal gifts they now receive (from skip loads of Easter Chocolate to mountains of Christmas presents) and the increasing quantity of kit they now require to ensure they’re not seen as ‘going without’ – phones tablets game consoles to name a few – the scale of society’s expenditure on the presentation of the ‘loved child’ is staggering.

This is not reserved solely for the ‘kit’ we deck them out with. It seems to infect every corner of the family model for what constitutes a thriving life.

Another hellish tyranny of loving provision embedded in our current model of prosperity is the family holiday.

Even as I typed the words ‘family holiday’ I was suddenly washed in a sun drenched, lens flared, refracted moment of azure blue sky and crystal water splashes; stress free parents and laughing children perfectly framed against a distant white villa horizon speckled and coloured with the lobster clawed, 3 types of fish, pasta, pizza and west Indian slash Asian slash Mediterranean slash Tex Mex slash barbecue buffet.

The tyranny I refer to has nothing to do with the usual clichéd hooting and wailing you hear from many modern parents about the prospect of 2 weeks locked together in some slightly disappointing family resort.

(On that particular matter it will be music to the ears of every emotionally challenged and ‘highly individual’ parent to know that there are now two good reasons as to why that tyranny will quickly become a faint memory. Firstly we are seeing (so the people watchers tell us) that the 2 week block summer holiday meticulously planned and desperately undertaken is in its death throes in the more advanced mature economies. We are taking more and shorter and more impulsive holidays (with all that extra money we all have!!!) And secondly booking.com is chirpily telling any member of the aspirational mobile middle classes who wants to listen that never again will they have to booking arrive to find themselves trapped in some booking desperate, substandard hell-hole with a pool surrounded by drawn-on people and a dodgy booking breakfast buffet – as long as they book with booking dot com that is.)

Given the tsunami of availability and astonishing social pressure to just say yes to everything, it is no surprise that we’re running up a credit-card based personal debt mountain bearing a striking similarity to a Himalayan range built out of bullion and gemstones.

If a family doesn’t get to go on an all you can consume holiday plus a few weekends away and a second holiday thrown in, then they’re not cutting it. That a family with a annual family income of circa £30-40K quietly expects itself to demonstrate its loving provision through multiple holidays abroad is both financially unsustainable and morally questionable.

Education is another ugly social battleground on which ‘love of the child’ is undertaken with everything but balance. True this is a more particular and less universal truth – something usually set aside by the worthy as a First World problem.

It is of course driven by the clawing desperation of the upwardly aspirational middle-middle classes*, (the downwardly aspirational Toffs and upper-middles being otherwise healthily engaged in a swaggering mockney-gangsta walk through White City, Hoxton, Deptford, and the arse-end of Tooting).

These parents are not the first generation to have realised that the route to securing an improving prosperity for your child is a decent education.

The role of education (and skiing holidays for that matter) in social aggrandisement is not new. Parents with a particular predilection for elevating their own narrow lives on the back of the tiniest increment of superiority have been judging their dinner party neighbour by the scale of their educational investment for many decades. But they were (and still are) of a particular rare breed, reasonably cloaked and easily ignored.

What’s particular in the new trend is the frenzy with which the greater majority pursue this madness in the blinding glare of the social spotlight.

Over subscribed schools, post code hopping parents, dodgy intake policies and the see sawing fashion for Public versus independent versus Free versus State versus ‘who said Grammar? I didn’t say Grammar?!’ schools certainly has a lot to answer for.

But that’s still no excuse for the lack of human elegance, the vacuum of discretion, and the gaping hole that seems to have opened up in their ability to circumnavigate the sensitivities of others.

They take a bludgeoning approach to improving the child that is conspicuous by its conspicuity – gratuitous over expectation, intellectual bullying, litanies of after school clubs, multiple tutors, competitive schooling and the most insidious social engineering are all worn in public like a beacon.

Educational trends currently also raise some rather interesting existential questions – of the ‘life-imitating-art-imitating-life’ kind.

The recent Disney-fication of boarding school culture via one small wizard and a place called Hogwarts has had a large number of parents who can ill afford it sending their little darlings to prep and boarding schools ‘because the child demands it’. There’s only so long you can get away with stuffing the fees on a credit card until the house of plastic cards collapses. And love is rarely proven resilient by the relentless use of the word ‘yes’. But that is how society seems to be shaping the model of demonstrable love in a prosperous life. If the child demands it – the loving parent must give it: and blatantly.

For me these are reasonable examples of how warped I believe our sense of how we demonstrate love for the child has become, and evidence of a toxic model of prosperity.

If one takes these lite examples and generously sprinkles them with tons of over packaged brightly coloured and quickly discarded plastic, £400 bikes, theme parks, and mountains of cheap cotton basics with pointless groovy graphics, the landscape of parental love, certainly that currently exercised by the average emerged economy parent, is looking sparkly, cluttered and bleak, and ultimately unsustainable in so many ways.

Is this love of ours Tainted. Maybe. Is it Human. Very.

Is this progress? Perhaps. Or is this simply the gene pool opportunistically wrapping its progeny in as much as it can get its hands on before the moment passes. Most likely.

Regardless. Navigating the modern world and the byways of fruitful love, especially that which we feel and demonstrate for our children, was never going to be easy or simple.

But re-imagination of the model of prosperity we base our life, love and dreams on: one which holds greater store by that which cannot be bought might give us a few more compass points along the way.

It may well also help clear up some of the side issues: like the increasing population of staggeringly spoilt, increasingly sociopathic children… oh and that of personal bankruptcy of course, and a sparsely furnished dotage.

So, veruka cream anyone?

FOOTNOTES

*the middle middle classes are how I refer to a very active, vocal and seemingly forever squeezed section of the British population. They are, in class terms what Mickey Flannagan’s ‘out out‘ is to going out.

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