Polls Not Policies

The television goes from the Brexit Correspondent to the Westminster Correspondent to the Political Editor who do not know what is going on and can explain that in about 5 minutes each time. I now watch films or something else when 'Brexit Crisis' appears on the screen. There is no crisis there is a process that people are unhappy about.

My prediction is that that May is holding on because the polls are usually wrong and she hopes they keep up their abysmal record of predicting the outcome of votes.

Boris is Napoleon not Churchill

There is a focus on Boris Johnson as he promotes his buffoon king to the media proletariat who love and hate him in equal measure. Even the ones who don't like him are not able to ignore him.  The interesting things I think are all the things that he is not.

He is not posh - he a middle class upbring and there was not a lot of money and support for him.  He got scholarships that helped out but he was moving around a lot when he was younger. There are other MPs with wealthier parents and more family support who play that story as a working class person made good.

He likes to look disorganized and lazy. He works hard but only at the things he likes ad the things he believes will advance his cause. In retrospect, we can see what a good Lord Mayor of London he was by the mess the next person made of the same role under less pressure.

He likes to promote himself as Churchill but he's more like Napoleon. An outsider who rises on his merits and has the skill to win campaigns. He's popular with the troops but unlike Napoleon, he is not so popular with his lieutenants and we rarely see anybody who works alongside him rise to a senior position.  Perhaps he chooses mediocrities to look taller in comparison. It is the Boris show and he cannot exist as a team player.

Do we need a Napoleon at this particular point of crisis?

Modern Politics as Punk Rock

It was the throwing of the milkshakes over politicians that gave me a sense of familiarity with what was happening.

The established parties (Conservative, Labour and Lib Dems)  are doing what they have always done in order to discredit the Brexit Party. The more they do it the more they expose how tired and staid their views have become. Even the MPs who are trying to be up to date are not hearing what their constituents are saying. They are too busy talking to the BBC, Sky, presenting a radio show or making a podcast. This reinforces the feeling that they are out of date and with no new tunes.

They have forgotten earlier rebellions when the same tactics gave the Sex Pistols a global following. We could draw comparisons between Johnny Rotten and Nigel Farage as being voices of rage and a catalyst for other bands. It gave new sounds and new voices to people who would have been heard under the old record label system. Look at the relationship between the Sex Pistols and EMI and the lack of understanding of the record label with what to do with the band.

Farage is attracting the same adoration and anger as Johnny Rotten. Whereas they spat at Rotten they throw milkshakes at Farage.

In the end, punk became mainstream but for a while, it energized people to write music, form bands and make their voices heard. This is also what has happened with the extinction rebellion group.

We have seen the establishment try and hi-jack Greta Thunberg to continue to look relevant and cool but instead, they show them themselves as shifty and untrustworthy.

The punk period and its aftermath produced bands of such variety as the Buzzcocks, Soft Cell, Dexys Midnight Runners and ABC, Human League, and Altered Images. Perhaps the Brexit Party is an early indicator of a new wave of politics as the Heavy Metal of the Conservatives and Labour and the Prog Rock of the Lib Dems becomes a niche enjoyment. 

New Work - Elisabeth Taylor as a Greek Legend, Circe

Wrote a 10-minute script where Elisabeth Taylor is addressing an acting class and describing her career and relationship with Richard Burton in terms of the Greek sorceress, Circe. She had power over men, turned them into animals and provided Odysseus with useful career advice when they had tired of each other. Both Taylor and Burton fit those roles quite well but they may be personalities that are not so well known today to be of interest. 

It's difficult to find such figures in modern day cinema where the announcement that they are to play a major role makes it a must-see movie or think of such a cinematic power couple. 

New Work started - Options

Submitted two scripts based on a dialogue between a man and woman after a funeral of a close friend who was the business partner of a friend. I tried to capture the barriers that men use to suppress their feelings while they are still processing them and how women try to help and support and challenge them at the same time. I made him a bit of a monster as monsters can be attractive and fun. I made her intelligent, prying and knowing.

It's been sent off so I'll start and finish another piece. This one is where I imagine Elizabeth Taylor giving an impromptu lecture to an acting class and drawing parallels between herself and Circe, the enchantress in the Odyssey.

Risk Should Bother Us But We Need to Be Grown Up About It

I met with a couple of friends who are working in Fintech and we were discussing risk and how well banks understood it. Many years ago when I was implementing Risk Management systems into several London banks they discovered their real risk was different from what they reported and cleaned up their act.

We discussed that a once in a lifetime event can happen three times over a short period because the clock is reset each time and the cosmos has no memory that it has caused recessions in 2008.  The herd effect means that too many people have the same ideas at the same time and distort the market (thanks 24-hour news and analysis)and the only things that are reported are the downside for a sector on the population and not the upside. Example: If the exchange rate weakens for sterling it makes holidays more expensive but it makes our services and exports more competitive. If our businesses do well then the stock market does well and so do our pensions.

My friend was saying he was risk-averse and his partner had a higher risk threshold. The challenge is that there is a curve that goes from high-risk and high reward to low-risk and low reward. He said he was a medium-risk and medium reward person. The problem is that most people are the same but the market does not look at the theory and a lot of people invested in medium-risk assets and lost a lot. You need to have a combination of zen patience, opportunism like a gambler and the stamina of a donkey to keep pushing on.

My other friend quoted an analysis from the Economist that predicted the last recessions and reckons a new one is on the way. Way back in history there was a Dr Dee who used mathematics and astrology to provide a service to the court of Queen Elisabeth. He provided input on when to go to war and other important decisions. He was quite successful for a while and I think the Economist has resurrected his thinking and approach. They can now predict the past with 100% accuracy. No wonder people are disillusioned with the elites if they are reduced to simple spreadsheets to predict the future.

As Minsky said too much stability can be destabilising. We need change and flux and we need to understand there will be winners and losers and it is not possible to ensure against every eventuality.

Introduction to the talk 'Exploring Wonderland' in Richmond

Exploring Wonderland

The purpose of this talk is to highlight the influence of the two ‘Alice’ stories. ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’  with examples from modern times and modern people who seem to find inspiration and ideas from these two books. We will put Carroll into context as a Victorian and a Modern person with ideas and approaches that resonate today.  We will look at the stories and see what makes them so engaging and fascinating that they are renewed and refreshed as books, theatre, painting and films. We will go a step further and see how the themes in the books and the characters still resonate after more than 150 years in the 21st century. To do this we will touch on technology, psychology as well as some other 'ologies' to explore Carroll’s Wonderland.

The two books of Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ may seem like typical Victorian artefacts at first glance. However looking at the timeline we see that these two books have been adapted and evolved from being Victorian children’s stories into modern adult entertainment. Consider if you know any other book that demonstrates the same longevity and diversity in how it is reimagined. On that timeline, films have been made with Gary Cooper, WC Fields and Ringo Starr. Peter Sellers and Peter Cook have played roles from ‘Alice’ on television and there have been numerous songs that have referred to the characters in Wonderland such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Lewis Carroll was born in 1832 and died in 1898  He was a writer, he was a religious man, he was a teacher, a photographer, an inventor and a mathematician. He was the eldest son of 11 siblings.  He liked wordplay and puzzles and mathematics. When he was young he created family newsletters with jokes and puzzles and parodies for his brothers and sisters. He liked to do magic tricks and kept on doing them to amuse friends as he got older. The legend is that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was written on a boat trip in Oxford but I think it started in Daresbury, at home,  when he was younger and he developed it when he was in Oxford and added a few chapters as well that he never talked about on the trip.