Rachael McKelvey

• Are we entering a social recession?
• A fond goodbye to the first lady of Radio 1
• The Centenarians are on the rise
• SEC Greenlights Bitcoin ETFs
• Have you thought about dying recently?

Are we entering a social recession?
According to the Social Progress Index the answer is we already are. The Social Progress Index is an alternative measure of human progress than that of GDP and was adopted by the EU, Indian Governments and some UK councils over the last 12 years and for the first time the index has gone into reverse showing the extent of global decline in social progress, based on measures that aren’t driven by productivity and output but social and environmental data.

While its likely Covid has left its mark, 66 countries saw a “significant decline” in social progress and more than 77 stagnated with only 32 countries seeing an increase. The decline follows a decade of improvement in all but 4 of the 170 countries…The UK being one of those, in the company of Syria, Venezuela and the US. The report states ‘This downturn marks the world’s first social progress recession in the past decade, primarily attributed to declines in Health, Rights, Voice, and Information & Communications”.

Countries are ranked on 57 different criteria that measure standards of living, from access to opportunities, how basic needs such as sanitation are met, levels of violence, academic freedom and perceptions of corruption. This years findings in particular prove the optimist thinkers right in the sense that GDP isn’t the be all and end all showing that GDP per capita is not delivering abundant returns in lived experience considering its continued rise!

A fond goodbye to the first lady of Radio 1
I was shocked to hear of the death of Annie Nightingale this week, there is no stage of my life that doesn’t know Annie Nightingale, Radio 1’s first ever female DJ and broadcaster and the absolute champion of new music.

Annie’s family announced her death today following her six decades o broadcasting describing her as “pioneer, trailblazer and inspiration to many”. Annie joined Radio 1 in 1970 (which is still 30 years ago if anyone asks) and has never left, for 12 long years it was just Annie before Janice Long jointed in 1982. Annie holds the record for the longest career as a female radio presenter and she absolutely introduced some absolute bangers to the world.

Her families statement included the reminder to “Never underestimate the role model she became. Breaking down doors by refusing to bow down to sexual prejudice and male fear gave encouragement to generations of young women who, like Annie, only wanted to tell you about an amazing tune they had just heard.

The outpouring of love and thanks from other non-male broadcasters has just beautifully highlighted just what a pioneer Annie was, she is sorely missed, and I absolutely still love driving at night and early morning to Annie Nightingale Presents. Rest in peace you absolute legend.

The Centenarians are on the rise
This weeks ONS data drop is on “the very old, including centenarians” of England and Wales and we all know I love a data drop and the geriatric of England and Wales. ONS deem “the very old” to be those over 90 years, who has a population increased by 2.1% from 2021 to 2022 totalling 550,835 people which the highest ever recorded total in that population. Even if you assumed they were all 90 that’s a combined minimum age of 45,575,150 years!

The stats reveal that 15,120 of those are 100 years and over, which is whopping 3.7% increase from 2021 with those at 102, classed as the post-World War One birth co-hort, making up 17% of those 100 and over, which gives me the same feeling as seeing Einstein chatting with Oppenhiemer and being like ‘those two couldn’t have met’ and then finding out when Einstein actually died.

There is some unsettling news, the sex ratio of centenarians has dropped by almost half in 20 years, while in 2002 there were 8.2 women to every man in 2022 this had reduced to just 4.5 women to every man and here is the frustrating bit of data, its just numbers, there is no context to make it information, what’s happened in the last 20 years to decrease the longevity of centenarian women please? *looks around* oh, yeah all that.

It’s the week for data on the centenarians with stats from the US indicating their centenarians have tripled in the last 30 years with their projections that by 2050 there will be more centenarian men than women. On the whole across the world the population is aging and birth rates are declining with data from 2020 showing the number of those aged 60+ outnumber the total numbers of those 5 years old and younger.

SEC Greenlights Bitcoin ETFs
After what feels like a life time and a so close but yet so far just at the start of the week by Wednesday the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US have greenlighted 11 asset managers Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications which opens the crypto investors market up wide, with investors no longer having directly hold crypto or have a digital wallet it means they can invest in it, like any other asset class. The benefit of ETF’s is they can be traded on the stock exchange.

Needless to say, Bitcoin rallied, and prices rose quite spectacularly, Bitcoin had a solid performance last year rising over 150% in the year. Just hours before the SEC announcement the price was $46,500 which considering following the collapse of FTX in November 2022 the price was trailing at $16,000 that is quite a spectacular turn around. The approval of the ETFs could massively increase the price of Bitcoin with expectations at 6 figures before the end of the year.

The SEC remain sceptical about crypto and was careful to state that its decision to approve these 11 Bitcoin EFTs did not mean it endorses bitcoin, or indeed crypto in general. Gary Gensler, the agency’s chairman said
“Investors should remain cautious about the myriad risks associated with bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto,”.

Have you thought about dying recently?
I’ve seen a fair few articles recently talking about the importance of thinking about dying and what happens to your assets. While I do think thinking about dying regularly is important I also think its just as important to think about what happens if you’re living but unable to make your own decisions, what then?

Things change, life changes, needs change, asset values change, relationships change, the rules around how much you can give to whom and when might have changed, you might also have moved countries on the same land mass where the processes are different. You also might have thought you had a savings account with the Post Office and it might turn out that you closed that over 12 months ago and completely forgot what you did with the money in it (it wasn’t a lot of money by the way but it was something). The list of what is where is just as important for you, to plan effectively as it is for the person who might need to support you in your decision making or ultimately be left administering your wishes. An executors job is miserable, time consuming and frustrating even the clearest instructions.

It’s also important to remember it’s not just about cash and assets, it’s about memories and things, that photograph on the wall you love that you notice your friends daughter always spends 5 minutes staring at, that inexpensive but sentimental garment that you love that’d you’d love your best friend to have to turn into something beautiful. What things am I waiting to die to start doing that actually I could start doing now if I thought about the possibility just a little bit more. New year new me seems like a good time to check in with “old” you to see if that’s what you still want to happen should things change and their important conversations to have with yourself and those around you and if you don’t know where to start I’m happy to have that conversation with you.

Watch: The Edge of Everything – this documentary follows Ronnie O’Sullivan on and off the snooker table throughout 2021 on his mission to win the Snooker World Championship for a record 7^th time, even if you know nothing about Snooker, chances are you know who Ronnie is, what is does and maybe why he is a famous name. This documentary features his greatest friends, his hardest moments and how he concours everything to be present.

Read: Weather or Not?: The Personal and Commercial Impacts of Weather and Climate by Jim N R Dale – This was a great read, as someone who references seasonality by way of explanation do I actually mean weather? Reading this book, you can see how overlooked it is when making, taking and predicting decisions. Jim has built his life around weather and showing people the power of factoring it in to decision making and strategy, A brilliant book for a rainy day.

Listen: The Modern Mann – Justice by Numbers – This podcast dates back to 2020 and was the first-hand account of the impact of the Horizon software had on a young couple who had sunk their savings into operating a branch of the Post Office. In a week where its madness that an ITV drama has put this in the national and political conscious, it’s their stories that are important to hear. The follow up Return To Sender: The Post Office Scandal Revisited from October last year is also well worth a listen.

• FTSE 100: let’s hope life begins after 40
• BYD the worlds top selling electric carmarker
• The price increase in the Red Sea
• 2024’s changes in cost of living
• Obscene levels of pay inequality

FTSE 100: let’s hope life begins after 40
The FTSE 100 turned 40 on January 3^rd having started life replacing the FTSE 30 in 1984 and continuing to be the main benchmark of the UK stock market. It’s definitely not been easy being a Millennial, we were all blindly optimistic and on the up and up till the late 90’s and the FTSE 100 was no different, with absolute abundance of momentum growing and growing from 1000 listings to just short of 7000 by the turn of the millennium.

But true to the Millennial experience it was kind of downhill since then having experienced a ‘once in a lifetime’ event at every single formative benchmark of life stages, leading to stagnant growth and apathy, and yes still talking about the FTSE 100, and from that just an inability to keep up. At the point the internet was kicking off the FSTE 100 has always failed to attract technology firms which have been the driving force of this last 20 years, and even now tech firms would rather list anywhere but London.

Only 26 of the original 1000 still remain and even then many of them have undergone significant face lifts and remain unrecognisable, The high fliers of the years of the index have been the staple consumer products with Unilever and Associated British Foods among them but the selling of those products hasn’t yielded the same results with Sainsbury and Marks and Spencer performing poorly as more competition entered the market. It’s not great surprise the two worst performers are NatWest and Lloyds.

I think I speak for more than just the FTSE 100, I really hope life does begin at 40, even for Millennials.

BYD the world’s top selling electric carmaker
Can we acknowledge the elephant in the room here please? Because the headlines on this have been annoying, they have painted the picture that this is binary outcome, that Tesla have done badly and China’s BYD (Build Your Dreams) have pulled off some astonishing feat to be crowned victor of EV makers. When in fact both BYD and Tesla have outperformed their own expectations in Q4. 

That said, in the final quarter of 2023 BYD outsold Tesla by 42,000 units for the first time ever. It’s worth noting that the price point of BYD vehicles is significantly lower than a Tesla and they sell typically to their local market, they have significant state support and made the very clever move of acquiring a car manufacturer after having perfected the battery, so everything is done in house, which makes the enterprise perfect and able to manufacture at reasonable cost. 

Still this coming year BYD are looking to become a big player in International Markets, they also produce hybrid vehicles that often act as the gateway drug before people tend to go full electric and BYD intend to target Europe. They hope to release 3 further models into the market this year and announcing their intention to build a plant in Hungary. Watch this space. 

The price increase in the Red Sea
It’s predicted that the reported attacks in the Red Sea are going to mean a price increase in essentials on UK shelves this year, cargo ships are being forced to undertake extra nautical miles, around 3,500 of them, at a cost of £1.6m in additional food, fuel and wages PER TRIP based on the time involved to ensure that we have tea, meat, fish and wine on our shelves. 

The UK, US and other allies have called for an “immediate end” to the attacks on the container ships in the Red Sea which are being conducted by a state backed rebel group in the area. To date there have been 25 attacks on ships since November and the means of attack are intensifying and escalating. 

While destruction and pirating might seem a thing of the past and stories but the threat on the high seas is very real, the thought that slavery is a thing of past is the opinion of someone who doesn’t understand what really happens at sea. 

2024’s changes in cost of living
It’s hard to know quite what is going on, according to Economists it’s likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates twice this year. Inflation is likely to drop within “touching distance” of the 2% target and to stimulate some growth, but the energy price cap has increased by 5% this month to £1,928.

It is also expected that rail fares will rise again in March by 4.9%, April will see the impact of the decisions taken next month on Council Tax, unless you’re in Scotland and this is frozen till 2025, TV licensing may also increase in April and that is also the months where most utilities rise by inflation, yes I am looking at your mobile phone bills.

All this being said the current predictions for the energy price cap at its next review in April is due to fall to £1,660 and those costs that have not been formally announced could go down as well as up. Wages are increasing across the board, the National Insurance drop came into effect on Saturday but the tax thresholds have been frozen to 2028 so combined with the benefits to people pockets might not be as much as people think, but in a cost of living crisis every little helps.

Obscene levels of pay inequality
Let’s just end on a super depressing note, this is not a test, but if you’ve made it this far then chances are this already caught your eye, but according to The Trades Union Congress analysis by Thinktank High Pay Centre has discovered ‘obscene levels of pay inequality’. I for one am shocked, she says glaring awkwardly straight to camera. The wholly unpredictable outcome of their investigation is that FTSE 100 bosses will have earned more money by 1pm on Thursday 4^th January 2024 than the average UK worker will earn in the entire year, which by the way is £34,963! I for one could not be more shocked, obviously! The disparity is apparently thanks in part to the cost-of-living crisis, ongoing labour strikes and well the massive flipping pay gap between Chief Execs than the labour force.

For various complex reasons, that include the Conservative Government, Brexit labour shortages and inflationary pressures across the board, workers median pay has increased 6% since March 2023, but CEO’s pay has risen by a further 3% on top.

The report is an interesting read and calculates how long it would take other top earners to out earn the median UK worker (Economics version of Laws the man on the Clapham omnibus) and you’ve got to laugh or you’ll cry, typically all done and dusted by 16^th January, at this point you feel some comparative sympathy for everyone else who fall into the top 1% of full time UK earners (those earning £145k or more) who don’t overtake us average Joes (sorry Joe) until the end of March, the 29^th to be precise! Did I mention how shocked I am?

Watch:  The Traitors – I absolutely loved series 1 (and the American version where Claudia is played by Alan Cumming), a simple programme based on a game, there is a castle, 22 players and the possibility of winning £120k in the ultimate game of trust and treachery. It’s on three nights a week in January and I will not be recommending anything else to watch this month because this is where my time will be going.

Read: London Zoo: Zoo does annual stocktake – London Zoo does an annual stock take of all it’s animals (the audit kick test as it’s finest) to share with other Zoo’s around the world to manage conversation and breeding programs and everyone gets counted. Came for the article, stayed for the photos!

Listen: Nudge: How Sainsbury’s and Adobe nudge customers – A deeper dive into how a behavioural science approach helped Adobe increase their retention, how Sainsbury increased their mobile app downloads but quite some number and how a Ramadan project significantly reduced food waste amongst families.

• Overweight and grazing
• Word of the year
• Math’s thinks Chester is the prettiest
• 10,000 more McDonalds
• Next years colour of the year

Overweight and grazing
In the same week that a new report published that Britain’s “weight problem” is costing almost £100 billion a year and the effect on national productivity is nine times bigger than previously thought, Waitrose Food and Drink report determined that British people are no longer eating three meals a day but choosing to graze, with 30% of the nation eating two meals a day and replacing the third with snacks and 10% saying they only eat one meal a day and graze on snacks for the rest of the time.

The report indicates that Hybrid working, and the increased pace of modern living has caused the dramatic change in eating habits and why Boomers still traditionally stick to three meals a day, that and food and drink brands most definitely target our stomachs and leverage social media at different times of day.

The most popular time of day for snacking has turned out to be after 3pm…this is my favourite time, along with 43% of those 2,000 questioned for the study. The next popular slot was midday to 3pm, which indicates people are skipping lunch. The executive director of Waitrose, James Bailey said that food inflation had changed how people were eating in all aspects of their lives, from time of day to what they are eating.

Word of the year
As the year draws to an end, it’s time for Oxford’s Word of the Year 2023 and with over 32,000 votes a team of language experts have hailed “Rizz” their word of the year.

Apparently 2023 was the year for personal and professional PR and its charisma that commands the attention…so enter internet slang rizz to distil that romantic appeal and charm into 4 letters. While the first usage in the corpus is dated in 2022, usage sky rocketed after actor Tom Holland in June told Buzzfeed “I have no rizz whatsoever. I have limited rizz” and the internet then went wild with the memes.

The other contenders included “prompt” which has seen dramatic increase in usage thanks of AI, “situationship” to describe informal relationships, “swiftie” to describe enthusiastic fans of Taylor Swift. Other words also in the mix were “beige flag” used to describe traits in partners that are neither good (green flags) or bad (red flags),”de-influencing” to describe the act of not encouraging people to buy things, “parasocial” to describe that thing you do where you follow a celebrity so much you think you know them and  “heat dome” to describe a specific weather phenomenon.

Maths says Chester is the prettiest
Through the power of Google Street View and the “golden ratio” a group of mathematicians have named Chester the prettiest city in the world, beating Venice who placed second!

The cities were ranked based on the highest percentage of buildings adhering to the “golden ratio”, expressed as 1:1.618 which is a determined set of proportions that has “captivated mathematicians since ancient times”. It’s the ratio most observed in flowers and shells and is considered inherently beautiful in the natural world.

Chester is one of the most historically significant cities in England and boasts a 1,000-year-old cathedral, Britain’s largest amphitheatre and the countries oldest race course and a whopping 83.7 of the buildings analysed met the golden ratio, beating Venice by 0.4% and London by 1.3%. Little old Chester hey!

10,000 more McDonalds
McDonalds is thinking the unthinkable in its new targets for development, loyalty and cloud technologies with the aim of increasing stores across the globe by 10,000 by 2027, bringing its total store numbers globally to 50,000. Only 900 of those stores are looking likely to be in the States, with the focus of the expansion in developing markets China, Japan, India and Brazil who are in line for 7,000 new restaurants. These 10,000 new stores equate to a new McDonald’s opening somewhere around the world every 4 hours and 23 minutes, which is wild.

The restraint giant also wants to increase membership to its loyalty programme in the same time frame as it turns out those members spend twice as much as non-members even with their new menu. The introduction of phone ordering and in restaurant screens in fast food stores has seen an increase in the amount of food people are willing to order and I am definitely guilty of that, would I order a side burger or extra doughnut if I has to say that out loud to person? Absolutely not. Do I do it when I just have to tap items on the screen, yes I do!

Next years colour of the year
I’m a big fan of Pantone, there was a time in my life where the only redeeming feature of my role was the pantone book on my desk and the ability to use my brain to work out the required repeat for cutters and plates for printing.

Pantone have chosen to end 2023 on a high and unveiling its colour of the year for 2024, Pantone 13-1023 Peach Fuzz which can only be described as a soft peach-beige (sounds delightful) but according to Pantone reflects “our desire to nurture ourselves and others”.

“In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a color radiant with warmth and modern elegance. A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless. said Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, in a statement shared on the company’s website.

The colour chosen annually is selected by a group of the institutes members from various industries and backgrounds across the world who all come together to decide what they think the next year will bring based on colour psychology, research and mood of the global zeitgeist and so far so good, the colour of the year for 2023 was Pantone 18-1750 Viva Magenta which echoed a dark and richer barbie pink tone.

 

Current watch:  Fisk – I would appear if I had to pick a favourite genre it would apparently be Australian Comedy, they are witty and dry and I just seem to love them. Fisk is about a lawyer Helen Tudor-Fisk who returns to Sydney after her career and marriage have fallen apart. Helen is played by Comedian Kitty Flanagan who plays the role in just the most awkward funny way possible delivery laugh out loud lines alongside cringey awkward moments.

The show is ultimately rather clever in it’s approach to sexism, ageism and the social expectations of women. Season 2 has just dropped on Netflix and I am excited to see what happens next for Helen at Gruber & Gruber and whether she continues to feel that she’s “not really a dead people person either”.

Current read: Over Sharing – Jane Fallon – Some more fiction for this year, I think maybe my brain has reached that end of year need to wind down already. This was brilliant, funny and cutting in equal measures. I think you like and dislike all the characters in equal measure throughout the book and end up back at liking them all. The main protagonist is Iris, a forty something kitchen fittings salesperson whose life crumbled, because of one women, or so she thought. In her journey to bring down the now social media influencers perfect life she discovers that all might not have been how it seems. The book takes place for three people’s perspective of the same situation and it was a fun read that I would recommend with a blanket on rainy Saturday afternoon, which is all the kinds of Saturday afternoons we have.

Most Impactful Listen: Trendy: Oh Come, All Ye Faithful: religion, politics and values – This was really more interesting that I thought it would be, these two are a really great pair for getting into the why’s behind things. They ask are we now a secular country, who still goes to church and how much faith plays a role in running the country and determining policy. The why’s behind them and the cultural shifts are fascinating in a I’ve never linked those two things before but that makes perfect sense kind of way. I found the bit about education and the impact of religion eye opening, given that I’d also listened to The Bunker: Different class: A proles’ guide to the elite private schools that churn out our leader which acted as the timely reminder about the origins of private schools and how they were all founded to support the most disadvantaged in communities not just kids of rich parents.