In life, there are only three decisions you need to get right – and one of them is where you live.
In a TV programme called Escape to the Country, couples are helped to move house from an urban to rural location. The format of the programme is simple: Read more on Strategy: be decisive but keep an open mind…
Watching the BBC’s The Apprentice, I am reminded of a show in last year’s series when one of the contestants endlessly repeated ‘What’s the strategy? What’s the strategy?’ to a team leader who had no answer. Quite clearly, he didn’t know what a strategy was (or is).
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’.
Read more on Gagging clauses: what every business must learn from the BBC…
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.
Read more on Branding: understanding the importance of trust…
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 on NHS reform: can your doctor be trusted or not?…
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 on National debt: who do we owe?…
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 on When you don’t know thine own self…
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 on When you need someone to do something they don’t want to do…
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 on Education: every child has a talent at something…
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 on Tuition fees: evidence of an unkind system…
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