Rachael McKelvey

• Repopulating a city
• Friendship with Elizabeth Day & Phoebe Waller-Bridge
• Shou Zi Chew and all the cringe from Congress
• US Book Banners hit the books hard
• John Lewis: Dismantling an institution

Repopulating a city
Would you go do your job abroad with a concierge service to help repopulate a city? Venice needs you. The city is actively looking to entice digital nomads, the totally remote workers and freelancers to move to the city to help bolster city population, fill vacant properties and office and boost spending in the local economy.

With Venice looking to embrace being a city for residents, rather than a city for tourists with the new tourist tax and cruise ships no longer docking in the centre, there wouldn’t be a better time to want to live a life in Venice than now.

Oh boy do I wish something like this was possible when I was younger and would I encourage any young person I met now with even a vague hint of wanderlust to look into doing a scheme like this, absolutely. There will soon come a time where life gives you reasons it’s not feasible, even if you don’t have children.

Friendship with Elizabeth Day & Phoebe Waller-Bridge
I had the absolute pleasure of seeing Elizabeth Day in conversation with Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the absolutely gorgeous National Theatre at the Southbank Centre to celebrate the release of Elizabeths new book on Friendship, as a self-proclaimed friendaholic the book explores all things friendship, from both a philosophical and research perspective to real life case studies.

The book is in my tbr pile, but I would like some kudos for not panic buying a hardback and sticking with my pre-order of the kindle edition, because don’t need another physical books, but just from the conversation between Elizabeth and Phoebe I definitely think it’d going to hit me in the feels and while I don’t think I have a problem determining the difference between when I mean friend vs when being friendly I do wonder if the time I put into my “friendships” is as well spent as it could be.

Elizabeth went to the lengths of interviewing some of her best friends to do that audit (Phoebe did her best to deflect her questions) and while I absolutely will not be doing that with my friends I definitely think it’s something in the relationships area of my life that needs work

Shou Zi Chew and all the cringe from Congress
Well the balance of cringe has at least been restored, on this side of the pond it was the person getting questioned who set off our collective cringe glands and after seeing some of the coverage of Congress questioning TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, it was those asking the questions who set our collective cringe glands, so net effect from official government questionings this week is net nil.

Shout out to those survived over four hours of questioning and those who asked questions for over four hours but honestly. Tech experts rarely get an easy ride in front of Congress but I think this was next level mind melting…so rarely do Republicans and Democrats agree on anything but they are united in thinking that TikTok poses a threat to national security and want to ban the app entirely from the US and it felt like there was little Chew could do convince Congress otherwise when he could get a world in edgewise and when he was asked an actual question that made sense.

While the UK government has mandated that TikTok needs to be removed from government devices, I’m inclined to agree with the conclusion from the discussion between Hannah Moore and Alex Hern on Tuesdays Today in Focus podcast – Should you delete tiktok, that if you think you should delete TikTok from your phone because of security concerns then you definitely should have already deleted it based on the impact it’s having to your brain.

US Book banner hit the books hard
This week the Friday newsletter from Chartr shared some data around the attempted book bans in the US and just how far they have soared post pandemic, where they slumped by about half to less than 200 in 2020.

Over the last to year have reached a whopping 1,269 demands to ban or restrict access to resources in America’s public and school libraries last year with 2,572 unique titles being targeted for censorship with the majority of books challenged written by or about LGBTQ+ and people of colour…in 2022.

This is one to keep an eye on as the American Library Association are going to release the top 10 most challenge books on Monday 24^th April for National Library week and all this in the same week that Bloomsbury raised their profit forecasts with readers turning to fantasy books to escape reality.

John Lewis: Dismantling an institution
It was announced this week that the John Lewis Partnership are looking to explore the sale of a minority stake in the business to raise funds, if successful the business would not longer be 100% owned by its staff which it has been for 70 years. The Partnership is looking for up to £2billion in new investment and with the cost of the restructure that would be required to take Waitrose and John Lewis out of employee owned hands this is a significant moment.

It’s not secret that the retail group is struggling with inflation an falling sales with pre-tax losses of £234m to year ended January, up from a quite significant smaller loss last year of £27m. The high street is hardly the first place anyone goes for anything anymore and its chicken and egg. If you do venture the high street you want fantastic customer service but with staff shortages and cost pushes staffing is one lever to pull to close the gap but then that further disincentivises people to venture to the high street.

Current watch:  Panorama – Surviving the pay squeeze – Wages are not keeping up with inflation and it feels like a real terms pay cut, how do you absorb the price increases when there is little you can do to move the needle on your income, but why does it feel like this? The Government say one thing, but the reasons are many and go back many years. Ros Atkins goes back to the town he was born in, in Cornwall, to meet people struggling to make ends meet and explains why wages are stagnating and living standards are declining compared to other wealthy nations.

Current read: Alchemy: The Magic of Original Thinking in a World of Mind-Numbing Conformity by Rory Sutherland – Ogilvy advertiser Rory Sutherland explains why logic is one thing but how casting aside that logic is the real insight to solving any problem. A real master piece in the need to always remember behavioural science can trump any business forecast, economic outlook or governmental strategy. People are weird and its well worth remembering that. Any advocate of thinking less, is a friend of mine, I do this thing with my hands when I offer a solution my right hand moves from top to bottom to mimic the logic and thought that has gone into the solution, then my left hand does this like this outline of a cloud motion to indicate all the other stuff and I usually say ‘there is all this other stuff’. Rarely have I been so excited to read a book as I was this one.

Most Impactful Listen: Today In Focus – Should you delete TikTok – it couldn’t not be! With the UK government joining other big nations in ordering government officials to remove the TikTok app from their work devices amid security concerns Alex Hern and Hannah Moore explore how likely it is that Chinese Tech owners ByteDance would allow access to sensitive data to the Chinese government given the questionable history of how it has used data in the past. Worried at all about the impact of TikTok, this is a must listen.