Last week Stuart Hall, a BBC broadcaster, ‘admitted 14 charges of indecently assaulting girls, one aged nine’.
It emerged in what the BBC call a ‘Respect At Work‘ review, that ‘some behaviour appeared to go unchallenged by senior managers, with certain individuals seen as being ‘untouchable‘ due to their perceived value to the BBC’.
Appallingly, especially if you are or have been a parent to a nine year old child, ‘the BBC turned a blind eye to Hall’.
I suspected as much in my post ‘The Perverse Cult of Celebrity‘ last October. Read More »
When I joined the advertising business, there was a new buzzword called ‘marketing’. Few knew what it meant. At Ogilvy & Mather, where my career was born, we had a guy – yes, one person in the whole agency – whose job was to explain this new concept to our clients.
Now, some people argue, everything is marketing.
In his wonderful, intelligent lecture on screenwriting, Charlie Kaufman said:
‘They’re selling you something. And the world is built on this now. Politics and government are built on this. Corporations are built on this. Interpersonal relationships are built on this…. it has all become marketing.’
In this sense, within the space of my career, marketing has gone from nothing to everything.
That’s some journey. Read More »
In what may be my most read post to date, DLA Disgrace, I discussed the shameful process that our Government inflicts on the disabled people in our community. It is outsourced to ATOS – ‘an international information technology services company’.
Do you know what this means?
It means the Government does not trust your doctor.
How so? Read More »
What is it about the national debt that I am not getting?
Please forgive me for not being an economist but, when you owe loads of money, you can’t keep up with the repayments and you plunge deeper and deeper into the doo-doo, there comes a time when you go to your creditors and say:
‘Hey guys, hard as I try, I can’t pay you this money and, if we go on like this, I ain’t never going to repay it. Let’s work it out.’
Please forgive me for not being an economist but, back in the day, some Third World countries did this and, rightly, the banks who held the debt recognised the reality of the situation and wrote the money off. It was called ‘unpayable debt‘.
So who owns our national debt today? And at what point is it ‘unpayable’? Read More »
Last week, I heard Jeffrey Archer promoting his latest book on the radio.
In the light of Chris Huhne’s jail sentence for perverting the course of justice, the presenter insisted on asking Archer about his own experiences in prison. Monosyllabic were the answers. Not quite the PR His Lordship was after.
Isn’t it odd how some people take for granted an outstanding talent they possess in sacrifice of a dream they are never going to achieve? Read More »
Cynics might interpret the title of this post as a definition of marketing and, thus, the world we live in today. But, as marketing is my job, how could I agree?
One of the advantages of working in creative businesses is that, on the whole, decision-making is based on creative talent and strength of argument rather than rank or pay grade.
After all, you can’t expect people to write what they don’t think, draw what they can’t see or film what they cannot imagine. Read More »
For how long will we say that our educational system is our country’s greatest failing?
It won’t surprise you when I say for as long as our inadequate career politicians are in charge: Read More »
It was revealed last week that, following the introduction of tuition fees, there has been a 40% drop in university admissions.
What a surprise.
You don’t have to be the world’s most sophisticated marketing or behavioural expert to know that if you start charging money for something you used to provide for free, you are going to lose a large percentage of your ‘customers’.
After the anger of my last post, you may be expecting a tirade against another flawed UK Government initiative.
But no. Read More »
So now we are here in another New Year and, in the UK, the savagery of social welfare cuts continues to slice through our society.
We have had:
06 January: ‘Soldiers, nurses and teachers hit by benefit curbs’
07 January: ‘Benefit cuts will see more children taken into care’
09 January: ‘Pensioners could face universal benefit cuts after election’
13 January: ‘Benefit cuts threaten women’s refuge services’
14 January: ‘Benefit cuts: reforms will leave disabled people ghettoised and excluded’
Happy New Year from the British Government! Read More »
This post on kindness was going to be my Christmas message until the massacre in Newtown forced me, and many others, to rage against the inhumanity of the US gun laws.
Mind you, even at Sandy Hook, there was evidence of extraordinary human behaviour: ‘What we forget, too often, is the kindness and resilience of this nation.’ And, way beyond kindness, who will forget the heroic bravery of Victoria Soto and her colleagues?
On 18 November, the TV producer John Lloyd was on Desert Island Discs. He is behind such programmes as Spitting Image, Not The Nine o’Clock News, QI and, yippee, Blackadder. In a surprisingly introspective interview, this cultured and educated man said:
‘Intelligence is something you’re given. Kindness? That takes effort.’ Read More »
