Criss cross, passing ships & the escalator lives of the Social Commute

30 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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AA MIlne, Brogues, DubStep, Escalators, Fluffy Mules, Gene Pool Imperative, Hipsters, Hoxton, Identity, ley Lines, Material Girls, Medieval Royal Courts, Postcode Tourists, Robin The Frog, Shoreditch House, Sloanes, social advancement, Toffs, Trustafarioans, W11

“Half way down the stairs is the stair where I sit.

There isn’t any other stair quite like it.

I’m not at the bottom;

I’m not at the top;

This is the stair where I always stop”

Courtesy of AA Milne & Robin The Frog

Kermit’s nephew is an inspiration for more than just folksy green-leg swinging sing-songs for small people. For anyone interested in the subtle shifts and shapes of social dynamics and advancement, the transient beauty of the place he describes is quite illuminating, being at that point between top and bottom: a moment of clarity in the space between being neither one thing nor the other.

And as the creator of this profound little ditty, the writer, AA Milne, proves how much he was in some ways far more than just a writer of children’s stories.

Outlining as he did the dynamic differences and human vibrations that exist between our grand aspirations and banal realities, the petty social jostling that pervades the space between them; and the immutable frameworks and hierarchies of life into which it all fits, he strikes me as more that social diarist and commentator.

Half way down the stairs is indeed a wonderful place: a vantage point from which to drink in the human condition and view some of life’s subtle people-powered idiosyncrasies in all their glory. Even when those stairs are of the rolling steel toothed conveyor kind.

Traveling through Shoreditch station recently I was reminded of the social ‘in through the out door’ nature of London’s slicker and more happening post-codes, especially when viewed from half way down (or up) the stairs and escalators, depending on your trajectory.

Watching the tribes of London pass like ships both in the morning as well as the night was already a quiet observer sport for me.

It was only after some time of watching though that I started to notice the fractal shades of difference between those who were commuting down the escalator and those on the up.

Both the Ups and the Downs ostensibly deliver the postcode vibe: whether that be Tech Hipsters, Money Monsters, PortoBelles, Fashionistas, Indie activists, Media Molotovs, Toff-ee Mochas, Mayfair Mules or Tattooed Love Sexys. A shared moment of complicity enacted in the fleeting criss cross at the mid point on every escalator or stair well.

Sloane Square, Shoreditch, White City, Notting Hill, Whitechapel, Brixton; these escalator moments of criss-cross spot the difference are note exclusive to one or two stations. They are legion across London (and every other thronging highly emerged metropolis on the planet for that matter). Waves of social similarity washing up and down the escalator in both directions; little to choose between them – all card carrying citizens of their particular postcode vibe.

(That Postcodes tend to attract particular types and tribes is unsurprising; and for that very reason they are able to successfully deliver and maintain their ‘vibe’ or atmosphere. Much of what orientates this ‘oneness’ remains unspoken. This points to something of the Ley Line at work in these postcodes.)

So at first glance there is little to separate those commuting either up or down these escalators on any given morning.

But look a little closer and there the similarity ends. Look closely and you will see small differences start to appear between those on the morning Down stroke and those on the Up-ward claw.

What is that? There. Barely discernible but yes, just there. That! Is that… a quiet swaggerdaccio we see in some of those who commute down and away from the postcode?

Perhaps. After all they carry with them the self assurance of being The Real Deal: no neighbourhood tourists these. They don’t work here. They live here. The pubs restaurants brasseries boutiques and cocktail bars scattered before you are their locals – firmly untouched by them in the day or for early doors drinking. That’s for the postcode tourists. This is their back yard. No drift home to some more sub–urban existence at the end of the day or last orders for them. They will never experience the burden of carrying the creeping disappointing of having ‘been there, done that, bought the ridiculously overpriced T Shirt’ with you back down into the tube tunnels like a cheap fading fragrance.

That quiet, centred and softly confident sense of belonging in the Down the Escalator Morning commuters emanates an aura that the Up The Escalator arrivistes simply cannot and will never be able to match. They remain both literally and spiritually the Upwardly Mobile in every sense of the phrase.

But up they come, day after working day (this is a Mon – Fri affair) – relentlessly, happily, expectantly; something oh so enervating about working somewhere smart or cool. And every day they get to come up that escalator and be in that postcode, is another day they managed to not get found out or set aside. They are cutting it and they’re going to enjoy every second lest it gets ripped away from them by some unseen arbiter of what constitutes being the real deal.

And every day somewhere, the Scuffing-Downs stumble tunnel-ward blissfully unaware of this tension lurking opposite them… ish.

Perhaps a small frisson percolates through them every now and then, when they look up from their gorgeousness reflected in an oh so déshabillé, slightly beach-bruised smart phone for just long enough to remind themselves that they are going down the escalator, with the quiet luxury of knowing that they belong there; up there, in that place up the stairs behind them; written into the property and social fabric of it – rooted. They belong there even when they’re not there: so by day, the Sloane happily inhabits a dingy warehouse in E1 or the W11 Trustafarian a bland vanilla office in Acton in the full and certain knowledge that eventually she or he will return home; climb back up the escalator to ‘being’.

And with this laissez faire acceptance of the Downs place in the world comes a relaxed attitude to those who ape them to the point of genetic similarity. Mimicry is and will always be after all the most profound and absolute form of flattery; especially to those coming down from on high every morning.

So criss-cross; the moment of invisible reverberating collision – where the cultural ‘what is’ meets the social ‘what could be’.

But look again, closer still and you will reveal more layers in this social puppet theatre.

One such layer is amply provided for by the human penchant for living so far beyond our means that we need to buy a home in a different postcode to house our aspirations in.

This human truth of this scale of self-delusion and aggrandisement plays nicely into the theatrical complexity of this criss-cross escalator moment.

And in doing so points to a third ‘ type’ we haven’t mentioned yet – the cuckoos; those pretenders to the postcode throne. Yes, they obey the laws of similarity: as they should. They aspire to this demise so therefore should be respectful of its dress & styles codes. But therein lies the difference. Perhaps they are a little too over respectful? Too attentive to the detail and churn or what the postcode demands? Too vocal about what’s soooo amazing about Postcode x or y. A little too hung up on breathing in and out with every infintesimal more of belonging.

How do you spot them? With difficulty. Their rather overly self-conscious attention to postcode fashion detail can sometimes be a giveaway. But it demands a forensic knowledge of sartorial detail and minutiae and a instinct for trending.

A more illustrative litmus paper can be found hosted just behind their eyes – and on it you will find the dark reactive stain of being ‘almost’. Local -ish. But far from indigenous. Close but no cigar. And the pressure fostered by the pretence can be suffocating. Their intensity of purpose is just a little too pointed. There is an absence of Scuff & Amble in their gait. And under their demeanour behind the safety curtain of their laissez faire an arch pensiveness boils. Clinging to the edges of their Scuffing-Down life (and the over-leveraged mortgage and credit card tsunami that makes up the bulk of it). There by the grace of bonuses, the odd windfall, and an ability to juggle a comedic level of credit go they. A small desperate voice in the back of their mind relentlessly flip flopping them between the distant luxuriant basso profundo embrace of an eventual inheritance and the hysterical alto soprano anxiety fuelled by the immutable fact that their parents have no intention of dropping off this mortal coil anytime soon and those credit card statements simply wont go away.

(These are the urban silent-screamers, who other than their location, are much the same as their sub urban cousins – all shiny largesse and thriving conversation – locked firmly in the hi tensile rictus smile of their fragile success.)

Anomalies in the criss-cross world provide a couple of variants just to keep us on our toes.

There are the visiting cohabiting friend from somewhere exotic and equally zone/zip/post obsessed– staying for a couple of months – and bringing a confusing and very different zone/zip/post vibe to the daily commute.

And then there are visiting siblings. They can really throw you. They look the same, so familiar, so similar in so many ways BUT totally different post-code vibe. The academic or the soldier visiting their banker sibling. The golf club gold card local business person visiting little brother or sister in the Hoxton massive. Baby brother Uni-Boy in the Sloaney Hen House. The normal weight normal life teacher sister in the W11 cat house of eating disorders.

They can completely shift the dynamic of any morning criss cross BUT thankfully, we can broadly agree that the Ups, Downs and perhaps the Cuckoo Types are where the heat and fun is at.

The cross cross moment is also a rich source of information and illumination.

For example the mid point tension between these types of faux similarity on the escalators might remind us why we’ll continue en masse to be material girls and boys in pursuit of Kardashian flash and gold-plated everything.

As someone pointed out to me recently: find me a poor person who doesn’t want to be rich!? The gene pool imperative applies. And the smart rich person; whether escalated there from a poor beginning or born there with a clear vantage of how life is so much better up in the rare air; knows this.

The anomaly is the educated liberal academic elite in the middle, flush with intellectual riches and a sneer for anyone in any way materially driven: and unlike their asset laden, cashed up contemporaries they are profligate with their own riches, motivated to little commercial purpose: and with societal equilibrium and fairness their cause.

Rich people and poor people have no time for this ‘posturing’ as they see it: life is simple.

One is either super rich – counting in BNs – loaded £50M and up – minted £10M+ up – Rich – £5M-ish – or comfortable – the euphemism for being worth £1M+ or more.

Or you’re stiflingly poor. And always just one scratch card away from £1M or a lottery ball away from £26 M and a bloody good life (familial and social consequences of staggering wealth aside).

And a huge pointer to what you’ve achieved or been handed and your subsequent position in life lies in the post codes you both live work and hang out in

For the ordinary people in between, happiness lies in the grey middle ground of ‘almost’. The space between Not Being and Being someone who belongs in that postcode and all it purveys.

Most in-betweenies (whether they choose or care to admit it or not) would like the chance to aspire: to hang out with the big dogs, the cool kids, the upper echelons. Every now and then they want to lounge where the money is and bask in the reflected glory of what its like to be someone who actually lives in the postcodes that the stations serve: to feel ‘happening’: ‘minted’; ‘in flow’.

People want to be part of those post codes that house who they wish to be, even if just for a moment; even if just to spend 8 hours a working day creating a seismic atmospheric tipping point by spraying fragrance at already terribly over cologned passing shoppers in Selfridges before returning to Sutton on the 6.35.

Some of our political parties are in fact the living constitutional embodiment of that right to aspire – by fiercely conserving and protecting the sanctity and very existence of those individuals that so many of us are so desperately trying to stand in the shadow of, even if just for a moment. The Medieval Royal Courts positively thrived on this desperate need to be part of the elite: and the large number of crimes of acquisition used to fill their coffers and expand their lands and the crimes against humanity that usually accompanied them remained more than adequately fuelled by aspirational types and their preparedness to do anything to court the favour of their ‘betters’.

So it comes as no surprise that if there was one thing that many of us would love to sustain, to make last forever; it’s those moments where we are in the thrall of and breathing the same air as the powerful. The only downside one might point to is that in those moments alongside the passing glitter of ‘being’, is the crouching genesis of disingenuous identity, delusional social affectation, crippling personal debt, cheap money, living beyond ones means, profligate waste and a self confident disregard for those less better off than ourselves.

Don’t look down the human condition says to itself. I’m not going back down there. It took me a bloody age to get just half way up the stairs. I’m looking up, to the point were Ill need a neck brace. I’m commuting up into the demise of glory and a better life.

But the fragility of it all is hard to deny.

All that social ‘shimmer, glimmer and glitter’ fades all too quickly after leaving the cocktail bar on Sloane Street to catch the tube back to Finchley or Tooting.

The ageing taste of that last Shoreditch House mojito takes on a less ‘happening’ tang as the Overground wends its way to Highbury.

And that slamming DubStep club night that got you so pumped up fades into the distance when you have to trawl back up the Piccadilly line to Cockfosters.

Perhaps. though therein lies its greatest attraction – its fragility and fleeting brilliance. A precious volatility; such that it all might burst into flames at the drop of a well-turned fashionista hat. Perhaps that is what makes it so delicious. And sordid. And gratifying.

So what they hey!

For a moment, in the prism refraction of the brightly lit morning commute – half way down the stairs; clutching your over priced cappufrappocrappachai-ccino, sling backs or sockless brogues clacking, at a point neither up nor down; not at the bottom and not at the top: for that golden moment everything stops: and you belong: you are one with the ‘vibe’. And life is beautiful.

So postcode anyone?

Big Bags, travelling light & the escalator of life.

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Conspicuous Consumption, Evolution, Hand Luggage, Identity, Kevlar, Kings Cross Station, Lighter Living, technology, Wall-e, Wheelie Bags

There I was. Kings Cross station. Coming up from the fusty depths of the Northern Line. The station is a little, lets say, mobbed. I see a young woman. A tourist. Spanish I believe. A scientific wonder wheels along at her side.

Its a wheelie bag Jim, but not as we know it!

This bag she wheels is staggering. Its shiny pearled finish is a disingenuous mirage to belie its capacious interior. You could murder people and transport them in this bag.

These are the luggage children of the ergonomic performance fetish. This is the world of the Snugpack Roller Kit Monster 120L. And Kipling’s Youri Spin Suitcase. This is the world of the behemoth ‘hand luggage’ wheelie case.

The super strength outer casing owes more to the military industrial complex than a bag-maker: the box mounted swivel wheels ergonomically balanced in 4 corners bring the soft polymer whoosh of a hi-end Venice beach skateboard to the airport and railway terminus. I half expect there to be some form of skype wall and an MP3 player tucked in the seams somewhere.

I can see the advert now:

Hand luggage has evolved. The New kevlar frame Darwin Wheelie Bag with smart pocketing, GPS, X-ray friendly tech lining and Panic Room. Hand luggage will never be the same again.

Correct.I am uncertain as to whose ‘hands’ this luggage was scaled for? Chewbacca? The Yeti? Bruce Banner’s slightly grumpy alter ego travelling companion? Jack The Giant slayer will be not too far behind this piece of conveyance.

Hand Luggage was originally designed for those that needed to travel lightly through the world. Uncluttered by cumbersome and barely needed debris and the pillars and stones of faux domesticity. Hand Luggage was going places. The athlete of luggage. Striding past the suitcase and the trunk and the ‘Oversize’ Luggage Conveyor. Svelte and lean, packed for speed and efficiency. Slipping effortlessly and seamlessly from plane train to automobile. Not any more.

For some reason I found the girl’s case a wonderful metaphor for the over-sized, over cranked life we lead. The was no shadow of smarter lighter living going on here. The light effortless art of living we once may have known seemed, in her case (pardon the pun) to have been obscured by an enormous weighty bag.

We live lives enabled by all kinds of ingenious brilliant stuff. Feats of engineering abound. Technology haring along at light fibre speed. Apps that wipe our backside for us; and remind us to tell people we love that we love them. Networks that create friends for us. Platforms that plan our virtually parallel lives for us. Algorithms that predict when we might think something all by ourselves. We use the technology to deny the weight we carry. The burdensome, leaden heaviness of it all – made light and effortless by technology – the standing stones of our consumption rendered feather like by an ingenious system of credit weights, tech levers and identity pulleys.

And while the technology works: everything’s great; everything’s cool. Until it doesn’t.

Then watch our little worlds collapse.

Evidence of the increasing stress of our speed of life?

Or is the big bag theory simply proof that we are being rendered about as resilient as an odour eater by our own evolutionary progress?

We seem increasingly to have moments of utter cluelessness about what constitutes a real life lived within a human existence and context.

We are slowly becoming the human race in Wall-e. Spiritually and digitally obese, rendered inert by the kit we surround and submerge our lives in.

The systemic failure that greeted the young woman at the bottom of the escalator was a beautiful demonstration of this truth.

Yes, the genius of the escalator, on any given day, is in its ability to move millions of tonnes of human cargo up and down very steep inclines.

The problem with this one was that it wasn’t working.

Chaos. The expression on her face was one of absolute incomprehension.

While every escalator and lift and travelator works – genius.

And I am certain that the life she carried in one bag like some retro-chic refugee had until now moved effortlessly through the world on its small punk skate polymer wheelie wheels. But suddenly this massive pile of pointless and unnecessary chattels – the debris of a consumer look at me look at my stuff world – stuffed into a bag more commonly used to breezing through the planes trains and automobiles of life, was brutally bought up short.

The absence of movement in the escalator raised a tricky question.

Was she actually capable of carrying (revolutionary thought I know) her own ‘shit’ (to coin a Midwest phrase) up the stairs?

Simple answer. Not a flying chance in hell.

Not in God’s own wildest will could she lift the enormo-bag and carry it up a rather long and currently fixed staircase.

And this to me was a perfect summary of the lives we lead.

The bag and its contents the perfect metaphor for the ridiculously over burdened delusional load we carry either in some blind attempt to ‘show off’ in the gene pool imperative department: or because we’ve actually allowed ourselves to believe that we need all of that stuff to ‘survive’ on the road.

We’re kidding ourselves. Our lives, every square inch of them, from our purses, to our shopping trolleys to our homes, to our wardrobes to our workplaces are over packed to bursting: our every waking hour in fact is over stuffed with a tsunami of stuff we just don’t need.

But its fine while the ‘escalator’ works. Of course we can carry it. We’ve nailed it – sorted. Look at me. Look at me ‘operate’. Look at me ‘work it’. Look at me carry my bounteous life.

Yuh, right.

Until the ‘escalator’ breaks down.

And suddenly there we are. At the bottom. With a spiritual, financial and material ‘credit’ bag that suddenly feels like it’s the size of a small third world economy.

And those little spinny wheels are no good to anyone any more.

And suddenly we’re looking for help from a stranger who might ‘get’ us up the stairs.

And what should that stranger think?

“There, there; we’ve all been there: its tough: let me help.”

“Screw you; grow up; live within your means and learn to carry your own ‘shit’.”

Discuss.

But we seem incapable of ‘letting go’ of all out stuff. Mores the point, we wield it everywhere we go. We bully and tyrannise those around us with the receptacles of our ‘stuff’.

Not enough to blindly turn around and let some of those train and bus passengers ‘eat my velcro kevlar glory

Our funny wheelie bags that we stuff into overhead lockers, poking other travellers left and right. The wheelie bag assertion of ‘I’m here – eat my Me’.

Like the uber baby buggies we’ve all been convinced to buy – the panzer regiments of primary creation: going ‘look at my buggy: look at my progeny: hear me roar” as we cut a swathe through bus restaurant and airport with their ankle snapping, thigh bruising uber-carriage.

These wagons and trucks and freight liners are a like a blunt weapon of our consumptive selves. The shinier the finish. The larger the capacity. The more ergonomic the wheel technology: Christ we’re amazing. And we’ll wheel the bastard at your ankles until you get out of the way.

And lets not forget the underlying logic that validates any size of bag to carry with.

‘I bought a big one ‘cos I’m going shopping when I get wherever I’m going: and I’m going to buy more Me stuff to put in my ‘wheelie’ bag. ‘cos I can.

(Stick it on a card that’ll help!)

Retail therapy is one of those things that represents the gift that stops giving the minute its on credit. The feeling never gets better. It’s simple. You are using someone else’s capital to buy stuff. And when you do, you give them permission to control you. Make you feel bad.

“I just bought some smart knickers, and a bottle of Prosecco: So shoot me”.

Problem is, you did it on a credit card that has 4 grand stacked up in the corner and you’re barely making the payments you’ve got.

Like that super home cinema set up he just HAD to have. Mmnnn. So the sensibility is? You couldn’t pay for the plug with real money: what are you doing buying the set on a card?

But we all need some rewards don’t we??? Its really tough out there working hard for the money to pay the credit card bills. Life is stressful!!! Bleat Bleat.

So we’re going to buy some stuff and make ourselves feel better. And we’re going to put it in a wheelie bag. A great big lumbering barely moveable wheelie bag

And there it all is – in a wheelie bag of joy trundling along side us: shiny. Pearlescent. Spacious. International. Wind-swept and interesting. Until we get to the escalator of life that is – and there’s an engineering fault.

Damn.

Geezers, Home-grown Jihadis, & the distant death of teenage angst.

30 Thursday Apr 2015

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HEALTH WARNING: Please note – this blog piece uses the common ‘vulgar’ vernaculars for ethnic minorities, the disabled, the imperfect, the educationally stunted, the deformed, the impaired and a sprinkling of a few others. This is not to shock or provoke. It is simply to point to the fact that these vernaculars are close to if not on the tip of many people’s everyday tongues. And if society chooses to use them or condone them or stay silent in their presence, we must find ourselves culpable in the potential impacts and consequences of their sustained use in our society at what ever level or to whatever degree

Jihadi John.

The tabloid name for the now infamous home grown IS jihadist has always struck me as something better placed in a Guy Ritchie movie, or one of the slew of razor bottle shooter coke slag blag nonce geezer movies that followed Lock Stock and Two Smoking ‘aitches. It’s exactly how I’d expect the ‘big man’ in the pub to refer to him, regardless of what John actually did.

“…Jihadi John was in earlier – in a right state he was about something – getting all Taliban about some fella who’s ripped him off on some carpets”.

At its most basic it simply says that John is both of middle-eastern extraction and a bit of a hot head – a man both a little ‘trip trigger’ and messianic.

In that way the name Jihadi John has the blunt prosaic brutal logic that is regularly applied by ‘geezers’ for those they know or are familiar with.

Turkish. Cos he’s Mum’s Turkish.

Razors ‘cos he uses one.

Tone the Poofter, because his name’s Tony and he’s a poofter.

Heavy Metal Dave, ‘cos his name is Dave and he likes heavy metal.

And Three Fingers Micky ‘cos… well, you get the idea.

Gangstery name calling; usually done with a very twisted form of respect is just one shade of a far wider reaching cultural phenomenon that is something of a rite of passage in our Great British culture.

We love calling people names. Our tabloids are simply the imprint of the name caller writ large.

We have lots of kinds: names for physical traits. Names for reduced mental agility – and then the really acidic sleights for those with a physical disability.

Regional name-calling requires slighty less creativity A 4-letter word suffix is placed after local tribal delineations like Scouser, Jock, Geordie, Taff, and Cockney. As in “What are you looking at you Cockney *%@* ?”

And let’s not forget the delicate chimes of North South divide – a blunter delineation still of regional nuances – Northern Basstard meets Soft Southern Shite.

And we of course reserve a small pocket of affectionate cultural shading for our ANZAC and Commonwealth cousins – e.g. the Australian ‘Criminal’ – who have shackle marks on their wrists.

Religion offers but a few – tellingly – usually aimed at anyone suspiciously NOT of the marvellous and stalwart CofE kind – Yid for example – though that has been twisted on the terraces of Spurs to turn a slander into a bellicose clarion call – observe the chanting of Yid Army by Spurs fans on the rampage. And the Papal spites of the Catholic Left Footer.

Sexual orientation offers up a host of them.

And then of course we have the more racist name-calling! Mick. Frog. Wop. Paki. Coon. Bub. Chink. Spic. Dago, Towel Head.

The punchier ‘foreigner’ names are still openly and shamelessly used by ‘grown ups’, often in front of their kids, who in turn think its completely normal to refer to someone that way. The children know the words are meant to hurt, upset or denigrate the recipient. Just like the playground spleen of Gingger or Big Ears. They know that broadly, bar a few exceptions (the double edged shadings of Loser for instance can be both a direct put down and a strange form of affectionate dissing between close mates), these are not meant to be a sign of affection.

(Though saying that I have at times been lovingly, though incorrectly, referred to as Spic by some friends of mine in reference to my Italian [WOP] heritage.)

But what takes someone like a ‘Jihadi John’ from being no more than just a chirpy market stall nomer for a hot-tempered young English bloke of foreign extraction to being the nom de guerre of a fierce, sadistic, righteous murderer of hostages.

What is the cause and effect of him?

Is it straight down the line good old-fashioned psychopathy? Poverty? Lack of opportunity? A paucity of decent education? Or is it the staggering power of their religious fervor at work?

Is it that simple? The standard ticker tape list of the victim turned aggressor with a little theological top spin?

Or is our society just a little more culpable than it would like to admit in shaping to even the smallest degree the Jihadi Johns of this world?

Is there something in the nature of how we ( and all other over-confident highly emerged ‘arent we terribly civilized’ Christian societies for that matter) see and treat foreigners or anyone with a flavor, shade or spice of something other than our Anglo Saxon Beige that acts as an invidious yet powerful propellant towards something much darker and more dreadful?

For someone of a different hue, the claustrophobic and quietly demeaning nature of living in what I like to call our ‘Fareige’ culture (in homage to the parochial camel-haired mediocrity of Nigel) might perhaps create a far deeper problem that we imagine.

Being relentlessly on the receiving end of the nastier end of great British banter can get a little tiresome at the best of times for even the strongest of people. But, one imagines that if you are overly sensitive or psychologically dysfunctional, these relentless mantras can inflict invisible rips in already fragile identities. We are becoming all too aware of how the spiteful side of this ‘singling out’ can cause terrible psychological trauma in teenagers blighted by the worse of on line bullying: suicide as proof of how brutally this can affect and degrade the mind of the recipient.

Add to this a broader cultural schism of someone already feeling marginalized or for that matter wholly disrespected or demonized and it can get very ugly.

(If, for example, you have had the pleasure of being referred to – or no; let’s go one better: have heard someone refer to a person you dearly love; your father or mother lets say; as a ‘black’ or ‘Paki’ bastard – or perhaps had a few hundred people march down the street you live in requesting quite loudly that you and all the other ‘ filthy stinking [insert racial slang stereotype here] go home’, you might be seeing these names as something more akin to sticks and stones.

And you might wonder whether this society will ever allow you to consider this ‘home’. An therefore cease to see it as such.

This end of the banter/slur/slander/racism spectrum religiously applied at every opportunity can potentially engender a festering shame of identity – a shame that tends to carry itself on the inside.

BUT, even in that instance does this really stand as any kind of excuse?

Name calling at its cruel and tribal worst is a truly ugly little past-time that all too often gets out of hand. It can be a signifier of a far deeper social schisms and malaise but this doesn’t even begin to explain away what compels a reasonably normal human being to do a skype beheading a few thousand miles from ‘home’ while sporting an exotic headdress.

What else could pressure-cook a person into reaching far beyond what seems normal or believable? What other things might pot boil the ‘nutter’ in our midst?

Well let’s not forget that just at the point where children have had a few years sharpening their name-calling – that swiss-army knife in the toolkit of survival and belonging – providing both a form of self assertion, provocative humour, allegiance, individual and collective denigration, and of course attack as the best form of self defence – just as they have started to latch on and home in on the power of identifying and ridiculing the minutiae and differences in each other as a way of jostling for position in the playground – BANG – life plays the cruelest of tricks and adds some fuel to the fire – for either good or bad.

We should never underestimate the role of that most stalwart contender for what makes young people make dramatic reckless stupid and dangerous statements and gestures that stretch the boundaries of sanity, civility and the social norms far beyond name calling.

Puberty and the turbulence of the Teenage Angst.

Happy Day. What a confection. Imagine.

Teenage Angst. What a stock-pot to simmer all those racial sleights and dismissals and sneers inside. What a perfect cooking pot to tumble all of the clinging inner shame and self-loathing into.

Teenagedom. A stroke of cruel genius in the rites of passage department.

A ready-made treadmill of relentless discomfort, sartorial hell, self loathing, fumbling and flailing, cataclysmic social gaffs, trip wires, trapdoors and boobie traps.

Alienation; marginalization; and a lack of understanding seen in every look, gesture, word and demand of the grown up world. Add to that a yearning for identity and a collective sense of self against parents or school or authority that strikes both indivudally and collectively like hormonal tsunami and perhaps we have a glimmer of cause to our Jihadi effect.

Start with mono-sylabic grunting, surliness, sporing skin surfaces, new pungency in the depths, cracks and crevices of your fast developing body – and your stumbling identity takes on the twisted form of a messed up slo-mo Instagram app eternally buffering to no seeming end.

Your common or garden hormone rush can be relied on to deliver a rollercoaster of emotion, a dash of ‘play chicken’, some derring do and a heap of moments of utter fearlessness of the ‘I am immortal I am youth’ variety in most teenagers. That these surges and vortices of madness and inner turmoil demonstrate themselves differently in boys and girls is not really the point. The point is the immutable ‘power’ of them. The way they create compulsions of such extremes.

Simmer lightly in the social networks.

Sprinkle in some stalking fear and dark mythology of gangsta yoot lurking around every corner just to keep you on your toes. Douse liberally in a little over amplified celebrity-fuelled ‘look at me’ ness: underwrite it with stammering stuttering performance at school – a twist of crushing heartbreak/first love action and some cyber bullying for good measure and BINGO we’re really running on high.

And let’s not forget that ‘Jihadi John’ is a boy. So he’s already primed from a young age to have a predilection for the morbid study of all things bellicose, military and martial. (Yes, there is the issue of Jihadi Brides, but by the standard of fast food propaganda that seems to be being tweeted currently I will not dwell on them right now as it seems a long way from beheading; though complicity is a powerful thing.)

Boys have a strange attraction to all things uniformed death and armoured mayhem at the best of times – pumped up as they are by a kaleidoscope of inspiration: war books and documentaries; artillery, cavalry and soldiery; the great warriors and battles of Lord Of The Rings, the techno-morph petrol head madness of Transformers; X Men and the epic clashes of Marvel & DC; and of course the chance to play at violent attrition through the likes of Titan Fall and Call Of Duty. And that’s before we even get to the really grown up and darker spaces. As The Dark Knight cocktail of good and evil swirls; and the gamer and comic characters evolve and age; the complexities of them multiply: scarecrow psychosis and inspiring fear becomes a thing of pride, and being a baddie seems like a good thing to do.

We have enough examples in the Mid West of troubled youth harbouring and acting on shoot’em up fantasies of revenge against some sleight of society – and using the symbols characters and tics of their heros as their calling card.

One could posit and many do that The Joker or Marilyn Manson is not responsible for the crime – that is the sole responsibility of the fractured mind that commits it.

Mmmmnnn. Sounds like a load of lefty excuses coming our way

No: its just that if you mix a teenage boy, and all that comes with that with a fractured or fragile mind and the stealth stigmas of second-generation child of an immigrant and their need to reassert themselves in a society that actively demonises them can take on drastic and sometimes horrifying proportions.

Compounding extreme identity issues, a little introversion, cultural alienation – some learning difficulties? A likelihood of bullying perhaps? Just might open a small door to some kind of reason why a young man might feel so marginalized, troubled and insecure that he would even consider for a moment to do what he does,however insane we might find it.

Hang on! Hang on! Sorry I have to say something here. Insecure! Marginalized. Don’t start getting all bleeding heart liberal now. You’ll be telling me to hug a Jihoodi next.

Look, that a disenfranchised second-generation immigrant youth wears a headscarf and carries the flag of IS is only a pointer to which shade of manipulator is using his incendiary passion and aggression to do their dirty work. The ‘costume’ could just as well have been a Joker mask or a Helter Skelter lyric T Shirt. Same misdirected madness. Different Dressing up box.

And anyway, what do you mean by immigrant? There are loads of bloody immigrant families in the UK that lead utterly decent, respectable lives and offer an enormous boon to the UK. And they certainly don’t go around losing their own or anyone else’s head for that matter.

Fair point. Lets be really clear here. Not all immigrants fit the ‘ladder of madness’ profile that might even begin to end at a Jihadi John.

Lets focus on those most vulnerable and predisposed to radicalization – teenagers of of Southern European, Middle Eastern, North African or Asian descent then.

That’s better..

So, we’re talking a teenager with all the incumbent emotional and physical angst of puberty and ‘growing up’; with some twisted fantasist version of boyish military obsession PLUS all the extra baggage that comes from being of a very particular immigrant stock: not from here: and obviously so.

Gotcha.

Young, sensitive, impressionable men who have weathered small embarrassments – like that of being bought up eating what their school friends and families might call ‘filthy foreign muck’.

You’ve got it now. ‘You stink. Your house stinks. You smell like that foreign slop you eat’. But whats this got to do with a psycho maniac chopping people’s heads off?

Granted, the alien nature of exotic aromatic food and a Grannie who cant speak English is a really good foundation on which to build a gnawing inner embarrassment, sense of marginalization and even an indelible stain of shame – but it doesn’t really stack up as an excuse for what a Jihadi John chooses to perpetrate.

No shit Sherlock. ‘course not. That’s his mentalist religion? Bloody Islam! He’s a towel-head nutter. It’s religion’s your problem. Like that lot at the Paki shop? Wasn’t that Dusty Bin Laden a paki?

No. Osama Bin Laden was from a wealthy Saudi Arabian background and educated in the United States. He operated from both within Afghanistan and Pakistan some say with the collusion of the Pakistani military.

Alright smart arse – so, not a Pakistani – but Dusty Bin was just the same – a weird, odd, geeky or dweeby teenage bloke living with issues – ours just happen to live in in the UK but from a slippery Towel Head Muslim culture.

Well no, to be precise, ‘towel head’ is a derogatory slang that refers to the Arabic head wraps favoured by the desert tribes. Arabs can be all kinds of faiths. Not all Arabs are Muslims.

Don’t care. They’re all rag heads.

Make your mind up. Rag head or Towel head

Shut Up. Where were we? Muslims. Terrorists the lot of them.

Which ones in particular?

Whaddya mean?

The filthy terrorist Muslims you speak of: apart from the aspersion regarding their hygiene and potential tendency towards forms of insurgency, when you say Muslim, do you mean Sunni or Shia? As there are different schools of Islamic theology and sub groups of followers to particular shades of the faith.

And the school of Wahabist extremism is very, very particular with fierce adherents.

This is starting to do my head in. ‘just saying that they’re Arab rag head dodgy Muslim murdering filth the lot of them.

What even that nice boy that lives next door?

Especially him. Spends too much time on his computer if you ask me. Probably watching beheadings. You want to watch him. Bit of a creep. Never talks to girls. Something right shifty about him. Said as much on twitter. Weird the lot of them. And as for that bunch outside the mosque.

So to be clear about this, you’re saying that every socially inept boy playing war games in his room; a boy from, what was it you called it, ‘ a filthy towel head terrorist’ culture or background is not to be trusted and preferably asked to leave the country

Yup. Violent, cruel, vicious. And they’re home grown. The worse kind. Went to school with them. They’ve been to my house. Eaten my food …they’ve turned against their home and the culture that they belong to. They are all foreign scum and should all be sent ‘home’.

But that’s the point. Sent ‘home’. Which you cite as somewhere other than here. Haven’t a very vocal part of our society spent a lot of time and money trying to tell them to go ‘home’? So what are they betraying? We’ve told them that this is not their ‘home’; they’re not welcome and made it clear they’re from somewhere else we’d like them to go back to it.

No I don’t think they should ALL be sent home. But you know. Live in our country live by our rules.

But thousands of them do, everyday.

Not the point. I’m talking about the likes of those two fellas that chopped that fellas head off in the high street. I mean the violent bastard that thinks it Ok to do that to a British Soldier – in a British street!!! It’s not on.

What, you think its unprincipled – not on – for a foreign party or agent to use units of terror to unleash extreme violence in someone else’s country?

Bloody right I do.

What’s a drone?

That’s different.

So what separates the motivations of the Jihadi Johns out there and their violence from the dozens of nasty acts of violence undertaken everyday by crime gangs and street gangs in every city across Britain?

Well there you go. They’re all the same. Bunch of bloody foreigners the lot of them. Either your West Indians – your Yardie gangs; the ex IRA paddies up in Archway; and the Turkish mob bringing the Smack in – and your Albanians – now the Somalis – even the bloody Ruskis are at it. Its like the League of f*%*ing nations over here.

What happened to your old school British Crims: at least they had some honour, some codes – they were nothing like this lot.

Oh hang on: feels like we’re moving towards the ‘Kray twins had a code of honour’ cliché excuse for all home-grown white local thuggery, murder and sadism. It was OK to screw someone to the floor with a power tool as long as you loved your mum.

No; granted that’s just sick. But there’s no proof.

And what about the film captured on every CCTV camera in every provincial town across the nation every week? Where young men try and stamp on anther’s head to see if they can make it ‘pop’. And glass someone so hard they almost remove half of their face.

Quite a number of them are old school white working class men: marginalised and futureless. And their violence was ever thus. That’s a whole lot of violence and cruelty without the excuse of theology or religious fervour.

Dunno. You’re getting weird and arsey now.

So, perhaps in the end all the tabloids are doing is helping us (the British public) digest the staggering horror of this all by presenting it in a form more akin to Danny Dyer on Gangs with a sprinkle of East End ‘treacle’ – because the deeper truth is perhaps more unpalatable than we choose to accept or could ever contemplate.

Just a thought…geezer.

One Rusting, creaking planet, Repo Men & the Hipster ET.

03 Friday Apr 2015

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1977 Ford Bronco, 3rd Rock From The Sun, Aliens, Classics, Daily Mail, Downton Abbey, ET, ET Hipsters, Family Guy, Fast Radio Bursts, global warming, Hubble, HUman Existence, Intelligent Life, James Webb Space Telescope, kepler, NASA, Phone Home, Planetary Degradation, Repo Men, reposession, SETI

Are these mystery radio bursts messages from Aliens?

You have to give it to the Mail On Line. We underestimate their facility for tabloid ‘Phew What A Scorcher’ headlines at our peril.

The feature was around a series of 10 or so Fast Radio Bursts and the surprising revelation that they all form unexplainable multiples of 187.5 – colliding neutrons or signs of alien life?

The discovery of ‘communication’ from outer space is indeed amazing.

And listening for extraterrestrials or ‘intelligent life’ is a wonderful thing – impressive in a ‘Massive dishes pointing skywards in opening X-Files sequence’ kind of way.

SETI listens but hears nothing. Then Patterns appear. Wow! But from where? And Who? And What are they after? And How can we connect?

We have been clearly told to not expect ET. Even if alien life does exist it is apparently far more likely to be of the single cell amoeba variety as opposed to a complex multicellular organism with a light source in its longest digit.

But whatever they are, they have to come from somewhere (or do they?).

The James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s grand successor, combs the galaxies for bio signatures (evidence of Not ET) by reading infinitesimal variations in light.

And what of the exoplanets we have already found with NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope? Like Kepler 438b – an earth-like planet capable of hosting life. We’re not sure whether it has an atmosphere but if it does, there’s the potential for it to have a surface temperature of 60 degrees Celsius and the potential for water to flow as a liquid – and therefore a source of potential life (and, let’s be optimistic here, a water park of sorts?).

But ET? Highly doubtful (but in all fairness, one must allow for ET believers in the absence of solid proof to that fact).

My question is less about ‘Who?’ and ‘What?’ And ‘Where?’ And ‘How?’

I am more focused on the Why?

We have lots of vibrant and robust discourse and debate on the former – usually complemented by sometimes wholly specious assumptions of the type, form and intelligence of the ‘alien’. But ‘Why?’ they would bother is a question I hear raised far less often.

I find this especially surprising as it is hardly going to be to invade, rape, pillage and plunder us. For that they would have to have ignored or been in ignorance of the patently obvious and immutable nature of the fact that the universe (and the multiple universes beyond that) is packed with planets stuffed with resources of every particular kind. Also, being smart, they would have assessed the condition of ours, so why travel all that distance to secure a substandard source of anything.

So what other motivation? Loneliness? For that we would need to arrogantly assume that the said intelligent alien organism had a moment of crashing deep space isolation and claustrophobic melancholia and thought, “Come On…its good to talk. Lets communicate with another organism. What’s the worse that could happen?”

(Given our shabby track record in the planetary stewardship department the answer to that closing remark doesn’t bear thinking about.)

Do we really believe that intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos have got through all the Intelligent Life antidepressants on their current planet/s and whatever the Intelligent Life equivalent of every full boxed set of Family Guy, 3^rd Rock from the Sun and Downton Abbey might be before they really hit the emotional skids?

For that we are also having to assume that they interpret their existence in something as clumsy as Emotional & Rational intelligence. And that in turn assumes that they are comprehensive or cognitive of the fact that they ‘exist’ in some form that we might even begin to understand.

So perhaps it’s simpler than that. Perhaps it bears more relation to the mind and vision of Douglas Adams.

Perhaps there is some planetary Repo Man at work in the Universe. Perhaps someone somewhere thought “Right. Not only are they a bloody disgrace as a universal species. More importantly they have just NOT a) kept up the payments on their planet and b) respected the conditions and obligations of the lease therein.”

The amount we invest, collectively, civilly and individually, in ensuring that our planet remains a resilient and habitable environment in which to sustain our desired state of existence is desperately wanting on every level. Even achieving some form of decent consensus on what the level of that investment might be and how we all can contribute to it seems to be beyond the wit of Man.

And as for the damage we inflict on the rock we live on I can see the clause like it was printed in front of me.

Contractual Conditions and Obligations of Planetary Leases –

Clause 12. Sub section 9: Paragraph 5: Damages & Dilapidations: Fines, Extraordinary Damages & Repossession.

The Lessee agrees to keep [planet ref goes here] in both reasonable working order and within the desired state and condition in which it was received from the Lessor at at all times throughout The Term – and to make all endeavours to mitigate the possibility of or make immediate amends for the damages and dilapidations thereof to said planet.

For the removal of any doubt and/or conjecture to this condition:

Any Dereliction, Degradation or Damage to the material nature and integrity of the Lessor’s property found to be the cause of willful abuses in the maintenance of said property

Any devaluation and diminishment of the Lessor’s property to that effect that might be caused by the neglect, evasion or avoidance of the required attentions and supplementary maintenances and provision of said maintenance or actions by the Lessee that might justly be found to stand in breach of said Conditions will result in the immediate application of penalties, fines, or, in extreme circumstance, the immediate repossession of the said planet – which might allowably be undertaken with any force thought necessary.

Put that way. We’re Busted. Bang to rights guvnor. Lease nulled and voided.

Perhaps that is it – we have been found wilfully in breach of contract as the extant and dominant species on said planet. And the Intelligent Life is hunting us down to repossess it.

But then again perhaps intelligent life is more (or less) advanced and sophisticated than we think. Perhaps there is no universal interest in us and our planet – only a small interested community in the midst of that Intelligent Life.

If that were the case, who would be interested in Planet Earth as a possible ‘win win’ scenario?

When we’re not ripping, butchering, gouging, shooting, stabbing, bombing, mutilating, raping, brutalising, enslaving and generally degrading our own species we’re merrily dispatching the others we share this rock with and the environment in which they live; all to our own selfish benefit.

In fact if there was an accolade for general planetary mismanagement we are over achieving both in the roll of indolent tenant and tyrannical landlord.

We would undoubtedly win Universal Gold for our exemplary works in pursuit of acidifying our oceans, plundering every resource we find far beyond its ability to renew itself while sending our planetary existence up in a plume of terribly cheap highly convenient and ultimately very damaging smoke while turning every blind eye we can find (and making some more when we run out) to that fact.

So when we take the space-eye view of the planet seen from an IL Point of view, maybe the answer lies in the truth of that.

We’re the planetary equivalent of that rusting, primer-patchwork, bent-axled, one bald tyre 1977 Ford Bronco one might find in the corner of an old barn on the forgotten farm at the end of the Universe.

A ‘dog’ of a planet, neglected. Forgotten. BUT…

To the right person, somewhere in that heap there’s a glimmer of vision – a spark of potential – of something really, really special. Just in need of a little TLPC

To the Universal ET Hipster with an eye for a classic perhaps? Sure, there are newer fresher more efficient planets out there – Kepler 438b with its fancy fecund and seductive atmosphere for example – but hey, where’s the individuality? They are devoid of planetary personality. Where are the dents, rents and marks? No life scars. It’s alive yeah but has it really ‘LIVED’? Does it have a ‘story’?

So that’s my punt – when SETI do identify those wave patterns, I reckon there’ll be a Universal ET Hipster at the end of them – with an eye for a wheezing rusting Classic.

Which with the ridiculously childish finale to an overworked metaphor leads me to one thought.

If you were to think, even for a moment, that that pile of rusting wheezing junk in your back yard ‘might’ be a Classic – would you allow someone to come and take it off you for close to nothing – knowing that with a little investment in its reconditioning: a little love and attention – they would find themselves in possession of a beautiful highly individual and priceless thing?

Or would you find a way – any way possible – of doing the same yourself – and reaping the reward for yourself and for everyone you passed it down to subsequently?

Bleep ptrrrzzzpppp farp bleep bleep ptrrrzzzpppp

I know what I’d go for.

#voom, voices & the murmurations of the twitterati

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

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#voom, A.I., beauty, Communications, desire, dynamic data, ecosystems, entrepreneurship, flocking, geolocation, mobile, murmurations, nature, Old Street, ornithology, phenomena, pitch to rich, recognition, Social, social brand, social mapping, Social Purpose, starlings, Twitterati, Virgin Media Business, voice

There’s something rather magical about the fluid shape shifting phenomena of social media.

And it has reached far beyond the slangy codified data dynamics and scale numbers thrown around Old Street hot desks of doing.

Dependent on the context and the lens through which you view them, there is something truly phenomenal in the surges swoops and sweeps of the numbers and the geophysics of how where and when they occur

Having just launched the Virgin #voom/Pitch to Rich campaign (not personally of course but as one of a very large team) I have started to view social phenomena through this lens and things are looking quite beautiful. And revelatory.

The staggering social reach and the dynamics of flocking in the social media networks around the campaign and some of the numbers being achieved (45.2 Million social media reach in 6 days-ish) has for me stretched far beyond the need for collective nouns.

(How the #voom/pitchtorich campaign reached this scale of impact is a much larger thing to consider. But the finger points to the spirit, mood, exceptional impact and revelatory nature of the Branson films Bruce Goodison of Sundog Pictures created from the various pieces of paper and email chains – supported by some leading media thinking and doing across a substantial number of interrelated and interdependent media channels, partners and audiences)

The wave of furious activity #voom/pitchtorich has inspired in the social networks bears a closer look. The irony is that the further back you stand the closer you can observe the ‘nature’ – the physical virtual dynamics – of its social phenomena.

Originating in a clumsy joke of mine about twitter and birds flocking – I slowly came to the quieter joke of murmurations of twitterati. I am always astonished and in awe of murmurations of starlings. There is an ‘otherness’ to them – as if they are in thrall to a different dimension of existence – to the magnetic turbulences and older forces at work in the world that remain otherwise unseen.

It is also incredible to think that we as humans get to observe them in ways they will never know from the white heat heart of their furious purpose.

Perhaps the same is true of ourselves in relation to our virtual otherness and the collective behaviours and actions in which our virtual selves participate.

I have always sensed that the shape shifting mass of a murmuration carries its own ‘voice’ within it; a relentlessly changing imprint of cadences, inflections; sharp punctuations and sublime emphasis – an ornithological oratory written across the sky.

It then occurred to me that if we mapped our social murmurations – by numbers and actions across time and space we could perhaps visualise our own greater voice carried within them.

For example if there was a social campaign that could be plotted not only by number of participants (flock) but by intensity (altitude) geolocation (topography) and time (horizon) – perhaps we could create animated murmurations of social phenomena.

If we could do that we could then perhaps study the patterns and nature of them in much the same way that we study sound waves and voice recognition patterns.

And perhaps with the wider ambition of attribution, we could begin to recognize traits and characteristics in each pattern that helps us to define the real voice at work and its source and integrity.

Just a thought that I would love to explore a little more.

Brands, old-school Diplomacy & the New Humanities

26 Thursday Mar 2015

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7 Revolutions, Adaptive Governance, Al-Indirsi, Back to the future, Brand Diplomats, brand futures, brand Influence, Business Schools, Castlereagh, Consumerism, corporate leadership, Cosmography, CSIS, DAVOS, Diplomacy, ecosystems, geopolitical leadership, Human resilience, Humanities, Napoleon, resilience, WEF

We’re up to our ‘proverbials’ in Brand Advocates, Influencers & Champions. The social shock troops have to no little degree saved a lot of the big consumer multinationals from themselves. They have proved themselves both central in driving relevance and a vastly improved and far more respectful model of customer service. They are to that end critical in securing the survival of relevance in many multinational brands who until quite recently had acted with old school impunity and arrogance when called to account.

But the blunt grass roots tool for creating better is just one of two required to secure an improved human existence in the face of our stratospheric levels of consumption and the brands who feed it.

The other (just as important as its grass roots cousin in shaping what better looks like) is though of a more nuanced and rarified nature. It is subtler, sharper; multi-faceted, fluid; intricate.

To build the more resilient and adaptive form of governance and influence that multinational businesses are increasingly going to require will take more than just a an MBA upgrade on the usual business school thinking and doing.

It will demand a new creature.

“The effective leader will jettison vertical integration information hoarding and dogma in favour of optimization, recalibration and negotiation.” (CSIS 7 Revolutions).

To navigate the ever-greater complexity and turbulence of our accelerating world, Leadership must be augmented by a new kind of executive corps.

The cats-cradle of interdependencies, interrelatedness and infra-connectedness of global business and the ascension of global brand potency in regards to global acts of responsibility demands more than a just ‘a faster executive horse’.

“A well-run business that applies its vast resources expertise and management talent to problems that it understands and in which it has a stake can have a greater impact on social good than any other institution or philanthropic organization” (CSIS 7 Revolutions).

Execs are increasingly finding themselves participants in and the conveners of dynamic and diverse conventions of actors and agents within the sphere of their commercial and social interests.

This new and more fluid model of engagement in the scale challenges that face both their businesses operationally and systemically and the communities in which they seek to thrive will become the norm.

Strategic coalitions consisting of governments, corporations, NGOs, and academic institutions will be necessary in mounting effective responses and capitalizing on important opportunities (CSIS 7 Revolutions).

The brutal truth is that they will be ill-prepared and increasingly incapable of managing and orientating these groups to any great degree.

This is because they simply do not have the skills and the training to do so.

To be brutally frank, the Davos & Done school of global stewardship needs a hearty and well placed kick up the arse.

Watching the currently fitful and flawed nature of a new world brand conversation should be all the proof we desire.

Current 21^st Century Brand dynamics demand that Brand Leaders be capable of meaningfully engaging in a conversation that often spans a staggering breadth and depth of subject matter:

operational and systemic excellence, innovation and advancement
geopolitical sources of volatility and influence
the impact of global and local financial governance & volatility
the evolving nature and mandate of labour rights & the social contract
enlightened and reasonable understanding of adaptive governance models
the impact of technology both systemically and socially on global Value Chains
clarity and influence on relevant local, national and transnational regulation
a clear understanding of the value of enlightened sustainability practice and value
resilient growth modelling that embraces both quantitative short term and qualitative long term objectives

Add to these the escalating nature of responsibility and the multinational businesses ability (and more importantly its obligation) to focus all of its skills on improving both its own systemic nature and ecosystems as well as that of the societies, cultures and environment in which they are rooted and the need for a master-class in Brand Diplomacy quickly becomes critical to the successful evolution of our human existence.

The new leader and those that advise them will not only require an audacious breadth and depth of understanding but also, even more importantly, the artistry to navigate the nuances, multiple agendas and cultures of the multiple actors and agents operating within their realm.

This is what leads me to believe that this is the dawning of what I like to call The Age of Global Brand Diplomacy – and the rise of The Brand Diplomat.

Real diplomacy is a rare gift of the few that exists usually only by accident, quirk or happenstance. It requires a very particular education: a highly diverse immersive and passionate pursuit of breadth over fashion, depth over trend. It demands a real investment of purpose and person – a commitment of measurable integrity.

Given the scale and importance of the challenges they will be faced with and in which they will need to have a profound impact, the new breed of leader will at best be schooled in both the arts and discipline of geopolitics, anthropology, civilisation & culture, the Arts, the history of diplomacy and the intuitive Social Sciences.

So the question for me is not whether a Business School of global merit and stature should do this; but which School? Which business school is going to rise to this challenge and embrace the task of shaping this new creature more formally?

Which school can credibly host the Master-class in Brand Diplomacy?

It requires access to and the benefit of an environment that enjoys an effortless multi-cultural aspect. It requires exceptional immersion in a dynamic accelerating ‘living’ throng, not splendid isolation. It requires an audacious fabric of skills and disciplines to be stitched together into one compelling proposition.

But mostly of all it requires people steeped both in the commercial marketed and applied world and that of the NGO the government think-tank and the venerable institution.

It will also I sense require a new trajectory and term of influence and engagement: a longer and greater arc of nurture and devwlopment coupled and a more interdependent quality of rolling assessment and dispositional measurement from a far earlier point in the shaping of a mind.

It will also demand a clarity of purpose sparked and elevated at an early age – in much the same way that the British Public Schools of old shaped the disposition and the ascent to position of boys from their prep school years – through the study of War Craft, the Classics – a living, breathing understanding of how one fits into and then, if in your interest, how one starts to run and lead a ‘mini me’ hierarchical society; through the use and leverage of various tools at ons disposal – the pride and allegiance of the House system, Corps duty, prefecture and eventually the position of Head of School.

The only difference now is that having stepped through that system – the rest was quite straight forwards – based upon an assumption of position underwritten by an impenetrable right of entitlement.

The modern world has different demands. The fierce competitive nature of it cannot be dissuaded simply by an accent and a tie anymore. Quite the opposite. The brutally mercantile nature of it allows no easy options of rides. resilience and adaptability are critical in the survival of the Brand Diplomat.

In shaping the curriculum of the new Brand Diplomacy we also have the benefit of hindsight and the sensibility of foresight

We have the advantage of knowing that setting foot in the real world beyond the hypothesis and the theory is what ultimately shapes an exceptional leader so we are already one step head of the old model; the raw talent pouring into the world is more connected, engaged, Worldly and far more rounded. We also have the welcome addition of living in a time of the female competitive advantage is in its ascent (something the British Public Schools could have done well to embrace a lot earlier than they did).

The Business School that chose to accept the challenge of Brand Diplomacy would need to very clearly set their sights on those at a school age with the potential to fulfill their potential in this rare space where global politics, commerce, finance and cultural anthropology collide.

I believe that a course in Brand Diplomacy would need to be designed to be the culmination of a journey to enlightenment. And enlightenment is the word here.

No posturing blue-tooth slide show talker will be able to busk or bluff this. We already see in the sustainability and social purpose ‘game’ the limitations of the stage walker: too many rooms: too may panels: too little progress: their ceiling all too apparent to everyone but themselves.

This will demand true leadership skills from enlightened and measured minds.

A meaningful course in Brand Diplomacy should plumb not only the usual texts and case studies to hand but also look beyond the 20^th Century scholars and Students of Diplomacy to the Birth of it in the Italian City States of the Quattro Cento and amongst the Bourbon Courts of the Southern Mediterranean. It should look to the life work of the likes of Castlereagh (the subject of Henry Kissinger’s thesis I believe), the much maligned but now redeemed British Foreign Minister from the era of the Napoleonic Wars: a master statesman who shaped much of the best of the interrelated and more stable nature of European politics – but only by virtue of combining foresight and the subtlest of diplomatic arts to everyone from Tsar Alexander and his own Regent to the masterful Austrian, Prince Metternich et al.

To shape the a more resilient future the business world needs to look past the lazy interrogation of the same old business school tenets and brand pillar thinking to the expansive landscapes of the Humanities and the depths of Geopolitics – to look beyond the One Size Fits All model and embrace the diversity of an Renaissance perspective.

Brand maps and models should begin to resemble more the cosmographic maps of the middle ages and the early powers – where character, tribe, geo-centrism, chronology and purpose exist on one plane seen as a whole.

This would be respectful of the new broader more complex and dynamic world that superbrands exist in and in which they have enormous influence on.

And to be frank, I sense it would be a damn fun course to attend.

So my original question stands: which business school?

Living The Dream?! sustainable living & a Great British conversation just begging to be had.

19 Thursday Mar 2015

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Austin Powers, Banter, brands, Castles, Cats Cradle, China Dream, Climate Change, Constituencies of Action, Consumerism, Dreams, Emerged Economies, faith, great British conversation, Identity, John Stuart Mill, JUCCCE, Lighter Living, love, M&S, Pay Day Loans, Peggy Liu, Pork Scracthings, Prosecco, Reimagining Prosperity, Smarter Living, Stenna Stairlifts, sustainable living, Transforming Desire, UK Dream

Funny how some phrases just fall in to your lap. Funny how some just stick. Living the Dream is just such a phrase – a gift horse that was staring me in the mouth.

In the space of two days I had the polarities of Great British aspiration and disappointment writ simple and large on my storytelling wall. Our Great British M&S-stylie Prosecco & Pistachio lifestyle and its poor PaydayLoan & Pork-scratching cousin came gift-wrapped in one exquisitely simple phrase.

In a West London brasserie bar sat a woman, fashionably turned out, the odd fancy shopping bag at her killer-heeled feet, a glass of bubbles in front of her, txting furiously on her i-phone 6. Her friend appeared suddenly, looking a little bedraggled, but on seeing her shiny friend she brightly chirped,’ living the dream babes…look at you…bubbles and everything…’

And within days of the upbeat version wafting in front of me, its poor cousin appeared in North London, just beyond N1. I see a bloke, obviously far from rolling in it: a bag of DIY stuff in one hand, one child in the buggy, the other mid tantrum, on the phone to his partner/girlfriend/wife/babymamma. She is patently giving him an earful. Cue a friend of his walking past on the other side of the street who shouts ‘ Oi Tommy..Living the Dream then mate!?’. The beer-battered sarcasm of this banter simply inspired a meek self-deprecating shrug in the bedraggled bloke on the mobile. True.

As a phrase Living the Dream does what every great tenet, mantra or philosophy of any authenticity and substance should do – it easily and effortlessly embraces every extremity, turbulence, nuance, depth and not so subtle shade of the thing it seeks to define or describe – in this case the quality of life the person is leading at that very moment the phrase is deployed.

It allows enormous complexity to sit just behind it, knowingly, without ever having to say it. The back-stories of these two people were plain to see without having to set them out.

This was the power of the phrase for me.

To be fair I had been searching for one to wrap up a very UK ‘dream of better’ for a while.

We had searched for a conversation starter around a more sustainable lifestyle – one that started in the real everyday world.

In 2013 we ran 4 pilot workshops in London for the UK Dream project to that end – to find a more populist, scalable conversation to inspire a more enduring model of prosperity: a thriving vibrant life open to all, underwritten with sustainable truths.

We needed a new narrative: a new lexicon of better for people to use in their everyday lives. The old narrative was simply not working. Sustainability people speaking to themselves: impenetrable, arcane, complex, off-putting.

For most people the end of the month comes before the end of the world. They are more concerned with making ends meet than with how they might meet their end in some post-apocalyptic climate-induced catastrophe. The old narratives, rooted as they are in the activist roots of environmentalism simply do not chime with your average Joe and Jane.

So we had a chasm to cross. We needed a simple and very UK-centric or British hook that allowed us to start with simple everyday human-sized truths – What keeps you up at night? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What does good look like from where you’re standing?

In a search for this new narrative, we had already applied the 7 stage Dream-In-A-Box methodology (well, three of them at least) to try and shape what better might look like and scaling the everyday conversation around it.

We got as diverse a group of individuals as possible into a room to play with, pull down, interrogate and explore the traits, dimensions, idioms and aspirations of a prosperous life underwritten by sustainable truths. And we did it by first banishing the language of the circular economy, up-cycling, collaborative consumption (a co-created art installation project by 17th Century British poets surely) stewardship, materiality, EP&L, Net Positive and every other phrase on the trending circuit.

The most interesting and charming conversations were sparked around the old arts of thrift – smart shrewd living skills. A form of street smarts for aspirational living. people who know know…

The idea of Lighter Living. Lightening the burden on oneself (bills, cost, beyond ones means) and on the world in which we endeavour to thrive offered an overarching narrative hook that felt aspirational; breezy; cool.

So UK Dream identified Smarter lighter living represented a good beginning – positive – something one feels before one thinks it.

But we still had the tricky D word. Left to its own devices, Dream is a very divisive word, regardless of how you underwrite it; especially in Britain. On the up side everyone likes a dreamy something – we are happy to have the dream job, the dream holiday. But these are specific uses of the word that define a clear and tangible set of benefits and experiences.

Use the D word on a more rarified cultural and nationalistic level and the long shadow of John Stuart Mill enters the room at the faintest whisper of the word.

Dreams. A tyranny of pasteurized living. The death of individuality. An opiate under whose suffocating crop invention withers and spirit is anaesthetised. Dreams: the heartland of the indolent and fearful. The sharp corners and friction of individuality are what keep us alive. Not buttered populist platitudes for us to get fat on.

For the UK audience, Dream just invites the cynic and the heckler to rip it up; test its edges, even when you try and put it in a box.

Hence my search for the phrase that delivered the idea of a dream of better as part of life in the here-and-now; as measured in clear and tangible terms – a phrase that could happily ladder up or down; for better or worse; good or bad; funny or sad.

Cue Living The Dream?!

As soon as we place the ‘Living the Dream?!’ question at the top of our conversational ladder everything shifts – and becomes more human.

It allows us to engage with really simple scenarios to begin with – what keeps you up at night? the ‘mares big and small of every day life – What gets you out of bed in the morning? the dreamy stuff that makes life worth living.

This simple two pillar approach can be used to inspire conversations around identity, fashion, lifestyle, living, food & drink, education, energy, finances, technology, travel & transport, leisure & entertainment, white goods, furniture – anything. Easy conversational doors into complex nuanced stories.

It also means that we can reframe conversations that interweave multiple dimensions (usually only looked at or explored as single threads) and explore them as we find them – as slightly more chaotic jumbled buckets of conversation.

For example:

Love & Shopping

The old intrinsic nature of love and how we demonstrated it – through nurture, provision, protection, empowerment, support and belonging – has been hijacked by brands trying to inveigle their way into a lead position on our purse. We are more likely to make an active demonstration of love through a commercial transaction than we are through a personal one. The extrinsic demonstrable nature of the neu-love we now practice is making us live beyond our means.

So we find ourselves living in a culture that celebrates Saturday shopping in Westfield as an act of bonding and love. Families share in the pursuit of living the dream; even if it just loading love on a credit card for later. Every demonstration of love seems to come with a bar code: DISCUSS.

Faith & Banter

Faith has become more than just the repose of religion – faith and leaps of it are required in every corner: humanists take the leap of faith in humanity and its ability to prevail. Philosophers cross the chasm of the ontological between universals and particulars. Artists relentlessly leap from humanities to science to metaphysics to the primal with an absolute faith in the eventual ascension of something sublime. Even in brittle science, in the absence of an M Theory waiting to be revealed, they undertake a leap of faith of their own every day between the two quantum truths without a bridge to join them.

But in the UK, if you get too serious, watch your language, lighten up and Get over yourself. This is the nation of ‘taking the piss’, heckling, ribbing and anarchic banter. How does something so serious play out in a culture where to be serious is to be dangerous. DISCUSS.

Castles & Cat’s Cradle

Every man is an island and every Englishman’s home is his castle. Well, ‘ish’. Given the level of Great British personal debt, mortgage rates, the ascendence of the pay day loans, just to keep the ‘castle’ from falling down, the old securities of a fixed and stable life are fast disappearing. And as the castle walls shrink or crumble, splendid isolation gives way to dynamic connection and collaboration. We are stitching ourselves back together again in myriad different ways, finding new ties that bind. If 2008 smashed the family china and pulled down the gazebo and the politicians are fracking society who’s got the UHU?

In the gaps and cracks they leave behind new opportunities and alliances form. Run down regions and communities are regenerated. people find new purpose. Can a new more enlighted aspiration for a more enduring life rise with the cultural phoenix? DISCUSS

Wellness in an highly emerged society.

In exploring the Living The Dream conversation, we also realised that culturally, socially and systemically, the UK is so emerged it’s submerged. Simple and very meaningful topics so easily and directly dealt with in other cultures are in ours hidden inside a complex and codified landscape. Triggering conversations around these topics is a minefield: an assault course of social gaffes, trip wires, trap doors, raspberries and silences. So achieving just the right lightness of touch and integrity is critical.

The conversation around wellness and wellbeing is just such a conversation. It is not in the direct line of conversational fire. We speak indirectly of these things, usually as part of a different conversational thread. We are more likely to fall upon the topic of well-being through jokes about Stenna stairlifts, incontinence pants, supersize mother in laws, smoking in bed and Austin Power’s teeth than we are directly with a straight face.

Wellness is a supermarket trend supported by chemist brands – it is NOT a stitched in part of the great british psyche just yet. But we are getting there in our own sweet time.

This is very different to the China Dream where its emerging economy status means that health & well-being are absolutely central to the idea of what better looks like. A conversation that begins and ends with the need for something drastic to happen around air, water, food integrity and diet and their role in building a more resilient and dynamic society.

All in all, Living The Dream?! (for now at least) creates a simple conversational foundation for a bigger conversation around what good looks like and how we might get there individually, communally and collectively. Apply simple rules of smarter, lighter living at the heart of it and perhaps we might move the dial from over indexing on what keeps us up at night and start peaking again on what gets us out of bed in the morning!

All we need now is the right partners to scale the right conversation and start asking the right questions of the right people.

So any platform or brand looking for a purpose in the UK – looking for a conversation to fuel, inspire, support and celebrate – come on down. We have the beginnings of something good.

FOOTNOTES

LivingTheDream is planning to undertake 10 workshops across the UK in 2015 – simply to start asking the right questions of the right people; of what better might look like for them – in their language, in their words and from where they are standing. The curated outcomes will then be shared with the constituencies of action – local communities, councils, faith leaders, collectives, interested parties, brands, institutions and organisations – to adopt, reflect and act upon to start making better a reality.

Living The Dream & the art of smarter, lighter living is an organically developing theme rooted in the original Dream in A Box UK Dream project workshops and part of a wider DreamInABox initiative which includes the founding China Dream movement run in China through NGO JUCCCE and spearheaded by the inimitable Peggy Liu; inspiration and co-founder of all things DiaB.

Restoration, Mighty Fear & the immutable power of Millennial Passion and Belief

05 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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a new conversation, Back to the future, beauty industry, fear is an energy, Foot Long Suasage Rolls, Governance, HR Strategies, leadership, millennials, passion & belief, Punk, Resilience Strategies, Restoration, Social Purpose, Sustainability, Sustainability Diplomacy

From the dressing up box of clashing social fabrics, a Queen arose: restorative, reckless, feckless and committed. The Restoration Queen.

Harsh. Brittle. And of Exceptional mettle; and a little crazy perhaps.

But that’s how to get on in this money-sucking carbon-wheeze of a 21^st Century.

Too many bankers living in a coke and Purlina lunch schema; tucked up tight with the cross-dressing maid-interfering industrialists who say ‘what the hey, Ill be dead tomorrow…what if some kids drink piss from a rusty wheel rim and the forests collapse. I’m coining it, my kid’s at Harvard and I’m in the Cinquante Cinq’

But down the Production Catwalk of Life strode the Restoration Queen, no knickers and a pair of slab-soled Kickers to put the boot into every rhino skinned half-wit with a double-bubble scratch-card life with Ugly lurking under its soiled foil veneer.

And, wrapped in battling plaids, leaden white skin, and piercing black eyes thus spoke the Restoration Queen:

All the Shiny in the world shall be yours if you make it fairly and in good faith: but make someone else pay in misery and squalor for the colour of your money: and as Not God is my witness I will hunt you down and nail you up on a poster pasted to the honour of your disgrace.

If I find that for even the briefest second of your existence you can question the provenance of your good luck and in doing so find it tainted – dipped in the ink of someone’s diminishment, heartbreak, pain or misery – and in the second that immediately follows the first, do not immediately act to make amends in some way of other – you truly are the lowest in my domain and will suffer accordingly.

So, punchy? Perhaps. Threatening? Most certainly. And mediaeval? Without doubt. BUT effective none-the-less.

Polite entreats to corporate and government, to turn the nature of enterprise to better and kinder purpose, had made good dinner party conversation; the diplomacy of intellect deployed into rare and grand salons and boardrooms warmly welcomed. But you see everything was written in the courtly language of the Academic – and riddles rarely make for revolutions in anything.

Once the conversation had climbed out of the impenetrable linguistic forest of the bureaucrats, civil servants and systemic bourgeoisie; and ripped itself free of the suffocating social creepers of the over-educated, under-whelming middle classes, the language of Sovereigns and Serfs reigned supreme – and it is a surprisingly and disarmingly simple one – heart filled, base, emotional, primal and blunt.

There had been something fundamental missing in the more rarified and courtly conversations: something powerful enough to override the staggering self interest of the die hard industrialist and money monster – something that could present a healthy threat – a razor sharp blade waved at the fabric of their voracious acquisition.

What had been missing was Fear: Fear with a capital F. Fear of being hurt. Of being Humiliated. And diminished. Fear of LOSING!

And if there’s one thing that the Restoration Queen could inspire in the hearts and the underpants of the stolid grey captains of industry and finance – it was fear. because without her they were nothing.The Queen and the land were one. And without her the land would suffer. Poison her, act against her interests and their future would crumble into the sea never to be given a moments thought ever again.

From whence and where the Restoration Queen came is a matter of conjecture to some and legend to others. Her punked credential to rule in a land of shaped hedges, swinging Cul de sacs, subversion, elegance, eccentricity and foot-long sausage rolls was without question. But her conscience? Her fiery righteous conscience written across the world: where did that come from?

Some say from just an hour in a sweat shop outside Delhi – that the shock was too much for even her bullet-proof sensibilities – and that to scuttle from a palatial room to view a button pauper stitching Hope onto jackets put the first fissure in her armour of suburban everydayness – and sparked a more regal purpose in her heart.

Others say that it was that day at the Palace all that time ago, when the stick finally pricked the ardour of her anger at the inequality and destruction of it all.

So the Restoration Queen took stock and a deep breath; and she thought ‘time to knit a new fabric of life: one hitch and stitch at a time.’

There are alternatives, she thought, to the burning, drilling, cracking, fracking, and spilling that props our most industrious purpose.

Why is our ingenuity applied in such dark corners? Why do we abdicate all personal responsibility and accountability to new technology and innovation and the whimpering simpering ripostes of ‘I just didn’t realize – if only I had known’.

And so it was: slowly and surely at every turn and every opportunity: where she found distemper and malaise she cut it dead. In the presence of toxic arrogances cluttering tables and rooms, her acid dismissal followed. Intuitive, and ingenious improvements were made, some small and expensive; some grand and expansive.

Slowly but surely a new dawn arose, as the restorative nature of the Queen spread rapidly across the land. A fresh vibrant shout went up in think tank, factory, mill, studio, office and laboratory.

All Hail The Restoration Queen.

And restorative missives and mantras were pinned (kindly) to trees, walls and doors:

Goes around comes around, Mend and Make Do, Thrifty is Nifty and Waste Not Want Not; Look after the pennies…

Everything was to be restored – not through the recreation of some over sentimentalised Narnia of what was, clambered into through a wardrobe of smoke-stinking camel hair coats and a barrage of idiot politics – but by tempering a sharp edged, keen and bright future forged out of the mettle of the past.

Back to the future was the way forwards – reaching back into old wisdoms and a sense of fair play. Reaching back to a time when decency wasn’t stunted and twisted by technology.

But this all seems so simple as to almost ignore how long – how terribly long – it took for the Restoration Queen to arise to her throne. Why?

Well, at first, they laughed. The ‘Mostly Men’ of Enterprise and Industry. And they laughed and laughed – at the mad harridan, the witch, the acid bitch, the righteous trollop. Laughed at her assertion that industry can be good: enterprise can be honorable: and business can thrive without extracting every shade and shred of Hope hosted inside every heart of every worker and every thread of natural capital the world has to offer.

Her ridiculous naïve protestations at the tenor of their destructive exclusive diseases raised howls of derision:

Anarchist – tree hugger – lofty lesbian – lefty dyke – punk slut – suburban nobody – clothes hag – freak.

Who are you to question the integrity of our enterprise, the substance of our trade and the provenance and integrity of our wealth creation?

Governance is reserved for those fit to govern, and agility is an over rated skill. Adaptive Governance my arse. We shape the world to ‘me’, not we to it.

And in the end?…Short time living long time dead, Love, so you can stick it. We’re off to the Guinea for a 100 Guinea’s worth of grub.

These ‘mostly men’ who everyday proved themselves to be mostly men (but not quite – perhaps therein lay the issue) would throw buns and scold and mock the Restoration Queen and her little theatre of ‘better’.

Ridicule and sneering was an everyday curtain call.

You can take your silly clothes and your gawky principles and awkward politics and stick them up your ignoble arse.

Everyday the mockery fell from the purses of the industrialists and the bankers. But the Restoration Queen was immutable and immoveable.

Until one day, amongst the hubbub and the screeching and the guffaws and coins spitefully chucked, a chair scrape was heard.

This was no ordinary scrape. This was the scrape of an antique chair crafted in Asian Oak, Teak & Walnut, hand finished in Windsor and reupholstered in St James. This was the scrape of a chair leg across a floor repeatedly oiled and waxed for hundreds of years to a sheen of patrician ‘just so’. This was a scrape of great import.

The dark, bright eyes of the Restoration Queen lifted from her Orb of Hope in the direction of the scrape.

There stood one industrialist: his heart in his hand. Courageously silent; and fiercely vertical in a room of horizontal disdain and louche legs crossed.

One solitary man in a shade of unsexual grey – a knight had arisen. The Restoration Queen had her first champion.

To honour this courageous chair scrape, the Restoration Queen matched with a scrape of her own, as she rose to her full fierce Celtic height – and stepped lightly off the podium and into the swarming mocking crowd.

Together they stood in the mote dusted, smoke filled half-light. The Restoration Queen and her First Knight.

The rising of a champion only served to provoke the laughter to continue louder and the mocking to increase;

BUT through the laughter a small whistle was to be heard. A wry whistle, through smiling pursed lips.

Who’d have thought it? The Restoration Queen has skinned her first Money Monster and revealed the human underneath – with a wish to create better together; not just more for his own.

But that first step to better seems so long ago now; and there is still much to change.

But lets hail the day that a real fear of retribution entered the halls of the mighty, that the possibility of their failure became real.

Praise the day the riddles ended, that language opened up its doors once more and the debate opened out to include everyone, and conversation flowered on every street corner and thoroughfare.

Let’s Hail The coming of The Restoration Queen.

NOTE: The Restoration Queen is the embodiment of the immutable thronging mass of Millennials and Post millennials rising up through the ranks – bringing with them their ‘naive’ assertions that it is incumbent on any business or enterprise to deliver rewards both financial and social, to mind their manufacturing and operational manners, take care of the people they both serve and who serve them, and to take a role in securing a more resilient human existence for us all.

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

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

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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

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!

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