Rachael McKelvey

• Please don’t run out of coffee on my watch
• A-Level results deflation day
• China halts youth unemployment data
• The Hundred
• Are falling birth rates…a good thing?

Please don’t run out of coffee on my watch
Coffee is life and consumption around the globe has doubled in the past 30 years and shows little signs of stopping, but we may now have a real problem with estimates predicting global consumption to be 6 BILLION cups of coffee a day by 2050, a figure I could well be contributing significantly to if the rest of life doesn’t significantly improve in the next 27 years.

The current supply chain isn’t fit for purpose, consumption is already outstripping production with climate change adversely impacting growers ability to produce, before even factoring in El Niño and the fact that once again, growing and producing coffee doesn’t sustain a living for many of the farmers in the coffee belt countries, the majority of the additional value added to coffee all happens after the production of the bean.

With coffee in high street chains already looking overpriced, it’s a conversation I have regularly with friends, there isn’t much I don’t enjoy about coffee, this absolutely stunning article from the FT on this exact topic may be the exception to that.

A-Level results deflation day
A-Level results day saw results drop back to that of “pre Covid” with the Guardian advising students to be “braced for disappointment”, which is a tough gig for the generation that got bolstered GCSE results after their exams were cancelled for Covid. The impact of the expected grade deflation will no doubt fall on the most disadvantaged students, a gap which also widened significantly due to Covid, with many students unable to catch up or access additional help to bridge the lost learning gap.

The impact also quite visible in all the nations across A-Levels, T-levels and BTec results, leaving students now desperate to find university places through clearing (I went through clearing, my deepest sympathies) with UCAS confirming the largest number of students in England ever are going into clearing to secure University places. Universities will no doubt be desperate to fill their vacancies because the current funding model doesn’t keep the lights on. For a process that so clearly doesn’t work it’s almost bonkers we keep perpetuating the myth that university is the be all and end all really.

China halts youth unemployment stats
Chartr this week have reported that after 6 months of rising youth unemployment Chinas National Bureau of Statistics is just going to stop reporting the figure for the 16-24 year old age bracket. With the unemployment rate doubling in 5 years from 11.2% in 2018 to 21.3% at last reporting in June. You can understand their reluctance to want to continue publishing a rather gloomy number, but also at the same time it doesn’t just get better if you ignore it either.

The reason behind the suspension in reporting is to give a chance for “further research” into data collecting methods, you know to see if they can find some more 16–24-year-olds who are employed to buck the trend a little or maybe they finally want to include the rates from rural areas in a hope that the outlook might be a little more optimistic. When the news hit Chinese social media it was also met with a quizzical look, the economic outlook in China is not currently the most optimistic, but nowhere in the world is, and comes with the usual scepticism about how true even the currently 21.3% rate really is.

The Hundred
We really need to talk about The Hundred, because I will really only now have one conversation about The Hundred, which is how great it is. All other opinions are dead to me and dealt with by stating the simple statement “that The Hundred is not aimed at you, so you opinion doesn’t matter”. The Hundred was arguably the best thing about summer 2021 when it started, a back to back double header with a run time of less than three hours? Excellent. Sign the scrolling generation up.

Cricket does not have the best reputation, generally from afar, nor up close and in the detail, it’s fusty, old and pale. I used to play on a mixed team as a kid and our Business Studies teacher would always let us have the cricket on in lessons via the medium of Ceefax (yes, I am that old) so trust me when I say Cricket is also sometimes really boring and really long sometimes, when play is great it’s good, but when it’s not it’s hard going. I used to play on a mixed team as a kid and our Business Studies teacher would always let us have the cricket on in lessons via the medium of Ceefax (yes, I am that old).

What I love about The Hundred is what the people who hate The Hundred really hate, it threatens their perception of their power over the game. Let it be fun, let it be quick, accessible, snappy and bright. Cricket it’s the most profitable sporting enterprise and anything it can do to cultivate a more diverse fan base to keep it alive the better.

Are Falling birth rates…a good thing?
With the population due to peak in 2080’s and start to decline by the 2100’s, good luck to those alive then, there are already a number of big nations around the world reporting declining birth rates, including the US and China but this week Professor Sarah Harper CBE direct of the Oxford Institute of Population Aging said that this was a “good thing” for the planet.  ONS data points to slowing birth rates in England and Wales last year, the lowest number since 2002.

The pandemic significantly reduced birth rates, which seemed a little odd amongst the middle classes as it seemed for a while there all my friends TVs were broken, but apparently in the UK the birth rate in 2020 fell to 1.58 children per woman, but given poor economic outlook and current cost of living and childcare, it’s not great surprise people aren’t rushing to have dependants when barely able have a nice life themselves.

A slowing birth rate in any nation will have significant economic impact, with aging populations there will be fewer younger workers bolstering state pension pots, more strain on public services that are less likely to be adequately staffed and that’s not even considering the impact on politics, is it a bigger risk that global warming as one unpopular billionaire thinks? At this point who knows.

Current watch: Heartstopper – With Season 2 all ready to go, I had to go back and watch season 1, a beautifully British coming-of-age romantic, comedy-esk drama based on the webcomic come graphic novel by Alice Oseman. The series received critical acclaim for its sweet nature and tone around the portrayal of LGBT people and the more you find out about how it all came together the more there is to love in the casting and it has Olivia Coleman in. What is not to love. It’s such sweet, kind, heart breaking but easy watching and sometimes just what you need. My heart forever with Tory Spring and that slurp.

Current read:
Equal Power: Gender Equality and How to Achieve It by Jo Swinson – Released in 2018 and very little has changed, Jo asks the evergreen question of why does so much power remain concentrated in the hands of men and why does the problem always seem to big to solve? This is a practical how to and a call to arms to everyone, regardless of gender, about the steps we can all take towards gender equality. Jo doesn’t back away from the harsh realities and doesn’t sugar coat pointing out the inequality all around us. This book is well written, considered and really engaging and is a must read.

Most Impactful Listen: Nudge Emergency Pod: Harvard Fake Data Scandal – My heart ached for Phill at the start of this podcast, picking up quite beautifully on the current state of play of the Harvard fake data scandal from the data anomalies highlighted by the guys at DataColada. With Francesco Gino, Italian-American behavioural scientist who officially as of this month is on unpaid administrative leave and barred from the Harvard campus due to the accusations of academic fraud, Phill quickly and most wonderfully put together an emergency podcast on what had happened,  what it means for behavioural science industry and how it will impact marketing and the future of his very show.