In a year when I have seen hardly any films, it might seem odd that the second (or is it third) movie I saw this year was Mamma Mia. Not exactly adding to my cultural arthouse credentials. Only saw it after spending most of the evening cycling around West London trying to find a non-sing-a-long version - only to conclude at the end that it was such fun that we should have had a go at belting out SOS -- after all, could hardly be worse than Pierce Brosnan (OK I could be - but I am not co-starring in a musical -- know your limitations).
But why is Mamma Mia raking it in at the Box Office? The Abba songs? - but Abba Gold is on sale for less than the price of a ticket at the Coronet, let alone the overpriced Odeon High Street Kensington. The shots of Greek islands? - but you can get that watching A Place in the Sun or the travel channel.
I think the secret of Mamma Mia's success is first that the cast look, literally as though they are "having the time of their life" (that's a quote from Dancing Queen if you didn't spot it). But it is also almost unique in recent movie history - or maybe in all movie history - in showing a bunch of fifty to sixty year olds having a great time, pairing up and dominating a movie as the LOVE INTEREST? When did that last happen? and when did you last see a 50+ man ending up with a late fiftiesh woman - as opposed to be someone young enough to be his granddaughter.
So that is quite good for the thesis that fifty is the new thirty. Added to that the triumph of some older biddies in the Olympics - the forty-one year old swimmer (swimmers seem to be getting older by the year - a decade or so ago they were all under 22 -- now they seem to go on for ever). Gymnasts in their late 30s (and looking older). Cyclists coming back for more and more. I will start training for London 2012 now.
But then this upbeat thinking about age and lack of impact is completely shattered by an item on the Defra website trailing a new government website aimed at the over-50s, entitled "Full of Life" - check it out at http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/fulloflife/. Aimed at older people (sic) it tells them handy stuff about how to use the internet (maybe it does tell you how to put hyperlinks into blogs); is full of inspiring stories about how wise they are... and shouldn't be written off yet. Did the people inventing this stuff try it on their Permanent Secretary first who might enjoy the handy hints on not being a totally useless member of the community at age 50+? And will we all get the day off on Oct 1st - now officially Older Person's Day. Party time on zimmerframes.
So I am now officially annoyed. The Mamma Mia effect has worn off and I'll stop thinking that some day my pierce will come. No option but to give up my Olympic ambitions and return to being Victor Meldrew and book that Saga cruise.
Monday, 1 September 2008
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Essay crisis
Its the last chance to add to the August blog list -- and I need to get something down urgently or will have only one thing down for the month. But so much to do these days with the gym and the tennis court, the Olympics with success of the oddly named Team GB- did they always call it that or is it some subliminal thing? , the resurgent KP England (good thing I didn't immortalise my great "terrible decision" prediction there for all to read) and now the US tennis to watch (though Murray gets no less annoying). Brief stumble in Nadal worship caused by his very un-Federer like decision to appear on the front of the New Yorker with his shirt off - but am sure it was all in a good cause. On medical front have new physio and new exercises which require me to make my buttocks ache - her words not mine... so my current aim is to be a pain in the backside - or at least to have one.
So that is a whole bunch of excuses - and why the dullest August on record - its official - has actually been quite fun - helped by spending it in Greece and Spain. But the new month;s resolution is to get back to blogging - as the political season gets back from the beach, we limber up for Matt Santos vs whoever Geena Davis played in that Commander-in-Chief thing which seems to have dictated McC's VEEP pick (time for the Hillaristas - I missed where PUMAs came from - to realise views trump gender), the words Alistair Darling and gaffe appear together in a headline for the first ever time.
So I have read a lot; got a bit browner and fitter; made my buttocks ache - but not enough - and am generally feeling like getting back to serious work - until my next holiday on Friday. I will have only worked one Friday since July -- and that feels pretty good. And I have finally cracked using my nice little Defra laptop from home. And this is a portable computer that even I am prepared to lug around - so more "working from home" may be in order.
So new month's resolution - back to serious blogging. The holiday is over.
So that is a whole bunch of excuses - and why the dullest August on record - its official - has actually been quite fun - helped by spending it in Greece and Spain. But the new month;s resolution is to get back to blogging - as the political season gets back from the beach, we limber up for Matt Santos vs whoever Geena Davis played in that Commander-in-Chief thing which seems to have dictated McC's VEEP pick (time for the Hillaristas - I missed where PUMAs came from - to realise views trump gender), the words Alistair Darling and gaffe appear together in a headline for the first ever time.
So I have read a lot; got a bit browner and fitter; made my buttocks ache - but not enough - and am generally feeling like getting back to serious work - until my next holiday on Friday. I will have only worked one Friday since July -- and that feels pretty good. And I have finally cracked using my nice little Defra laptop from home. And this is a portable computer that even I am prepared to lug around - so more "working from home" may be in order.
So new month's resolution - back to serious blogging. The holiday is over.
Saturday, 9 August 2008
Breaking the drought
too much going on all summer to do much blogging.... loads of people passing through - visitors from Virginia, Sudan and Kosovo (why do my friends all end up in weird places); gyms to be gone to; starting playing tennis again - ball toss gone awry and still very immobile; cricket to watch - day three of a cracking test at the Oval - though forecast dire from lunchtime. And in between even some work to do as we ready ourselves for autumn relaunches.
Interesting holiday in Corfu - lovely villa - a real Place in the Sun special. You would definitely buy it - especially if you didn't know about the wasps when investing; for the pool but also for the views across the picturesque harbour of Kassiopi over to the barren hills of Albania. But what you didn't see from the villa was that the influence of Brits has turned the undoubtedly charming fishing village Kassiopi was twenty years ago into a Laganas lite. Having avoided the costas in Spain it has been a long time since I have been exposed to the reality of Brits at play. No need or attempt to speak a word of Greek. Sky sports, karaoke and pop quizzes in every bar. A lot of pink and blue flesh on display. And - I am told by our teenage companions - very good nightlife - consisting for them of Sloanes on something called WKD - not to be confused with WD40. Biggest crisis was when the teens got carded at 4.00 a.m. in the morning and got chucked out for only being 17.... and discovered their fake ID was lurking at home unpacked. Biggest complaint was that this was unfair as the average age of the drinkers in the bar was 14. Still, one red card seemed not to count for the rest of the holiday as the same bar happily had them back (suddenly aged???) night after night; daybreak after daybreak.
Interesting that if these children were not being sent to expensive schools by their parents, and lived in SE3 rather than SW3, their behaviour would probably make them near ASBO candidates - though their gangs carry fake Gucci handbags and credit cards rather than knives. Instead most of them will be at Oxford in a couple of years time, and the Etonians will probably be leading the Tories in another fifteen to twenty (scary visions of watching them around the pool that I was on holiday with Cameron and Osborne's younger brothers). But despite the success of Dave and Boris they will need to work on the Wooster accents their schools seem determined to handicap them with - and which will certainly rule out a job in the BBC.
But biggest surprise.... except for the morning I got woken up when they were coming back from the bar just as I was battling an annoying mosquito and debating whether to get up to do a Sun Salutation (from my fifteen minute yoga book) at dawn, they were good holiday companions... as long as there was enough ketchup around to go with every meal. Maybe McDonalds has an even greater impact on lifetime habits than
Eton.
Interesting holiday in Corfu - lovely villa - a real Place in the Sun special. You would definitely buy it - especially if you didn't know about the wasps when investing; for the pool but also for the views across the picturesque harbour of Kassiopi over to the barren hills of Albania. But what you didn't see from the villa was that the influence of Brits has turned the undoubtedly charming fishing village Kassiopi was twenty years ago into a Laganas lite. Having avoided the costas in Spain it has been a long time since I have been exposed to the reality of Brits at play. No need or attempt to speak a word of Greek. Sky sports, karaoke and pop quizzes in every bar. A lot of pink and blue flesh on display. And - I am told by our teenage companions - very good nightlife - consisting for them of Sloanes on something called WKD - not to be confused with WD40. Biggest crisis was when the teens got carded at 4.00 a.m. in the morning and got chucked out for only being 17.... and discovered their fake ID was lurking at home unpacked. Biggest complaint was that this was unfair as the average age of the drinkers in the bar was 14. Still, one red card seemed not to count for the rest of the holiday as the same bar happily had them back (suddenly aged???) night after night; daybreak after daybreak.
Interesting that if these children were not being sent to expensive schools by their parents, and lived in SE3 rather than SW3, their behaviour would probably make them near ASBO candidates - though their gangs carry fake Gucci handbags and credit cards rather than knives. Instead most of them will be at Oxford in a couple of years time, and the Etonians will probably be leading the Tories in another fifteen to twenty (scary visions of watching them around the pool that I was on holiday with Cameron and Osborne's younger brothers). But despite the success of Dave and Boris they will need to work on the Wooster accents their schools seem determined to handicap them with - and which will certainly rule out a job in the BBC.
But biggest surprise.... except for the morning I got woken up when they were coming back from the bar just as I was battling an annoying mosquito and debating whether to get up to do a Sun Salutation (from my fifteen minute yoga book) at dawn, they were good holiday companions... as long as there was enough ketchup around to go with every meal. Maybe McDonalds has an even greater impact on lifetime habits than
Eton.
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Sign of the times 4
It may just be a small sample, but in the bike shop yesterday the bikes seemed to be flying off the shelf. I have no idea how many they sell in a week - but at 6.30 on a Monday there were two bike sales being completed. And at the Hyde Park corner crossing this evening there seemed to be a lot of gleaming Ridgebacks and Giants on show.
I tried to check up on what was happening on the ONS website. But looking at road transport just gave me a lot of car data - ONS don't seem to use anything else -- and the latest cycle data I could find finished in 2001.
Stories from the US of soaring bike sales as SUVs become a thing of the past. I wonder what the hard data is here.
I tried to check up on what was happening on the ONS website. But looking at road transport just gave me a lot of car data - ONS don't seem to use anything else -- and the latest cycle data I could find finished in 2001.
Stories from the US of soaring bike sales as SUVs become a thing of the past. I wonder what the hard data is here.
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Lessons in leadership
where did John Browne go wrong at BP? that - rather surprisingly - was the question that came up at a two day festival of leadership at Michael Portillo's alma mater of Peterhouse Cambridge (nice orchard) last week.... All CH rules so can't go into too many details -- but I joined a group on whether leaders needed crises in order to lead. And the proposition was that it was opposition within BP to the JB rebrand to Beyond Petroleum and the replacement of the shield by the helios that lead inexorably to his downfall. Not surprisingly, that thesis was advanced by someone who had worked on the rebranding....
Nice to put yourself at the centre of the story - but the link between people who did not like Beyond Petroleum and the people failing to invest in safety in Texas City is pretty tendentious. So I put forward my alternative critique of what went wrong at BP under John Browne (notwithstanding that an awful lot went right as well).
The first - and biggest - BP mistake was the performance culture. There is nothing wrong with a performance culture - indeed I have never felt under so much performance pressure as I did at BP. But the BP performance culture became a macho obsession -- every quarter better; no admission of failure; no recognition of reality. The result was that any manipulable number was manipulated -- to make it -look good. No surprise that when sarbanes-oxley hit, an awful lot of underprovision - of environmental clean-up; pension provision was discovered. And that is the same mentality that starts cutting back on routine maintenance.
The second problem was the interlocking incentives that became a high performance mirage conspiracy. If my bonus depends on your performance I don't have too much incentives to question the phoney numbers you are serving up. So what should be a way of giving the Board assurance on delivery becomes a virtual performance Ponzi scheme.
The third was a culture of sycophancy. Hardly anyone ever dared challenge John Browne. he knew more about your business than you did. He was always right (and his one error - on Sidanco in Russia would be forgotten by the triumph of the TNK JV - well that was the theory). Everyone was jostling for the succession -- and knew that they were all part of a prolonged beauty contest with only one judge. Not an environment conducive to serious internal challenge - more like the court of Henry VIII.
But what about the non-executives ask the corporate governance groupies? But that exposes the weakness of the non-executives. It is simply unrealistic to expect non-execs to be able to see off an apparently all-conquering executive team. And if the right numbers and messages aren't coming up to the top of the executive tree, hard to see how the part-timers even more distanced from the business are going to be able to do it.
So what are the lessons? John Browne was the most impressive leader I have come across. But he would have been even better if he had encourage a culture of internal challenge and honesty and not ruled by terror. And then someone might have dared admit that there was a big safety issue in the US refineries. Or that things were going wrong in the Alaska pipelines. And his reputation - deservedly high for transforming BP from second division to top player - would not have suffered a torrid final year.
Nice to put yourself at the centre of the story - but the link between people who did not like Beyond Petroleum and the people failing to invest in safety in Texas City is pretty tendentious. So I put forward my alternative critique of what went wrong at BP under John Browne (notwithstanding that an awful lot went right as well).
The first - and biggest - BP mistake was the performance culture. There is nothing wrong with a performance culture - indeed I have never felt under so much performance pressure as I did at BP. But the BP performance culture became a macho obsession -- every quarter better; no admission of failure; no recognition of reality. The result was that any manipulable number was manipulated -- to make it -look good. No surprise that when sarbanes-oxley hit, an awful lot of underprovision - of environmental clean-up; pension provision was discovered. And that is the same mentality that starts cutting back on routine maintenance.
The second problem was the interlocking incentives that became a high performance mirage conspiracy. If my bonus depends on your performance I don't have too much incentives to question the phoney numbers you are serving up. So what should be a way of giving the Board assurance on delivery becomes a virtual performance Ponzi scheme.
The third was a culture of sycophancy. Hardly anyone ever dared challenge John Browne. he knew more about your business than you did. He was always right (and his one error - on Sidanco in Russia would be forgotten by the triumph of the TNK JV - well that was the theory). Everyone was jostling for the succession -- and knew that they were all part of a prolonged beauty contest with only one judge. Not an environment conducive to serious internal challenge - more like the court of Henry VIII.
But what about the non-executives ask the corporate governance groupies? But that exposes the weakness of the non-executives. It is simply unrealistic to expect non-execs to be able to see off an apparently all-conquering executive team. And if the right numbers and messages aren't coming up to the top of the executive tree, hard to see how the part-timers even more distanced from the business are going to be able to do it.
So what are the lessons? John Browne was the most impressive leader I have come across. But he would have been even better if he had encourage a culture of internal challenge and honesty and not ruled by terror. And then someone might have dared admit that there was a big safety issue in the US refineries. Or that things were going wrong in the Alaska pipelines. And his reputation - deservedly high for transforming BP from second division to top player - would not have suffered a torrid final year.
Monday, 7 July 2008
Strategic error
Not a recantation of the Defra strategy refresh - but a lament for a key failure of decision-making under uncertainty.... whatever possessed me to be the only person on the planet who failed to see the last set of the Rafa v Roger epic last night. Am trying to analyse how I go this so wrong... So let us analyse the factors.
First, timing. The rain break at 7.50 meant that I could just catch the last direct train. Five minutes later I would have not been able to get it...
Second, meanness. Staying in Chichester imposed a cost - the extra £ 26 of buying a peak fare to London instead of a saver. £ 26 seemed a high price to pay for the option of a last set - when it looked improbable (notwithstanding Alex the Wimbledon weather man claiming play could restart within 25 minutes) that play would restart and finish that night.
Third, a feeling that Federer would win in the end ... after Rafa failed to take the three key break points for 5-3 in the third set; failed to impose himself at 5-2 in the tie-break; take the two match points he did create in the fourth; a feeling that in the same way as England crumbled in Adelaide, he just didn't quite believe that he could win.
And fourth, so I valued avoiding an evening in Chichester watching it rain at Wimbledon and Sue Barker get ever more despairing, a slightly early start the next morning at more than having the option on watching the final set of the greatest tennis match ever. On a par with my friend Jayne's decision not to pay £ 10 for the option to watch England win the Ashes at the Oval in September 2005 (but that had a much lower probability in March that year - so a less loony decision - but being there is a more intense delight than simply being one of the 13.1 million watching here on TV - so a higher cost for getting it wrong).
But I got it wrong. I now realise that I would have paid a really quite high price to have seen that last set of nerve-shredding tennis in the gloom of Wimbledon. So after missing the last set last year, I vowed never to miss a Nadal-Federer final - only to repeat again. Next year I will not budge - but next year the roof will reduce the uncertainty so maybe this is a dilemma that I will never face again.
Still, Rafa still won - so a great week for Spanish sport - but I can't believe I saw the football... and missed the drama of the tennis.
First, timing. The rain break at 7.50 meant that I could just catch the last direct train. Five minutes later I would have not been able to get it...
Second, meanness. Staying in Chichester imposed a cost - the extra £ 26 of buying a peak fare to London instead of a saver. £ 26 seemed a high price to pay for the option of a last set - when it looked improbable (notwithstanding Alex the Wimbledon weather man claiming play could restart within 25 minutes) that play would restart and finish that night.
Third, a feeling that Federer would win in the end ... after Rafa failed to take the three key break points for 5-3 in the third set; failed to impose himself at 5-2 in the tie-break; take the two match points he did create in the fourth; a feeling that in the same way as England crumbled in Adelaide, he just didn't quite believe that he could win.
And fourth, so I valued avoiding an evening in Chichester watching it rain at Wimbledon and Sue Barker get ever more despairing, a slightly early start the next morning at more than having the option on watching the final set of the greatest tennis match ever. On a par with my friend Jayne's decision not to pay £ 10 for the option to watch England win the Ashes at the Oval in September 2005 (but that had a much lower probability in March that year - so a less loony decision - but being there is a more intense delight than simply being one of the 13.1 million watching here on TV - so a higher cost for getting it wrong).
But I got it wrong. I now realise that I would have paid a really quite high price to have seen that last set of nerve-shredding tennis in the gloom of Wimbledon. So after missing the last set last year, I vowed never to miss a Nadal-Federer final - only to repeat again. Next year I will not budge - but next year the roof will reduce the uncertainty so maybe this is a dilemma that I will never face again.
Still, Rafa still won - so a great week for Spanish sport - but I can't believe I saw the football... and missed the drama of the tennis.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Signs of the times 3
Fascinating stuff from Stuart Rose yesterday on the Marks slump.... people changing the way they shop. Fewer journeys to stores. More visits to local stores. Rejecting out of town shopping. And overpriced and overprepared M and S food. And there seems to be much less traffic on London streets -- I have managed to ride to work and not have to stop at Great George Street which normally only happens in the school holidays.
And on the TV they are just saying that Starbucks is cutting 12000 jobs in the US and cutting 600 outlets. Need to start monitoring that too.
Having to chop your own vegetables.. and make do with a bit less caffeine (not sure how much there is in a Starbucks coffee anyway) hardly seems the equivalent of the Irish potato famine. Which points to the need to make sure that wallowing in our own recession gloom does not make us forget where the real impacts of the food/ oil price hikes are being felt.
And on the TV they are just saying that Starbucks is cutting 12000 jobs in the US and cutting 600 outlets. Need to start monitoring that too.
Having to chop your own vegetables.. and make do with a bit less caffeine (not sure how much there is in a Starbucks coffee anyway) hardly seems the equivalent of the Irish potato famine. Which points to the need to make sure that wallowing in our own recession gloom does not make us forget where the real impacts of the food/ oil price hikes are being felt.
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