Rachael McKelvey

• Apparently we’re all really angry at work
• Our lousy summer is 5th hottest in recent years
• Waitrose launches £5 meal deal
• How not to resign (if she even has)
• Hot week for Science

Apparently we’re all really angry at work
Gallups State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report has reported that 1 in 5 British employees say they “feel angry at work” which is a big increase from last year, and unsurprisingly significantly higher than our European colleagues.

The report has some quite interesting, but probably not surprising, findings off the back of more of certainly uncertain year for the global workforce. Also has no great surprise it turns out the UK employees are also some of the most disengaged and dissatisfied workers in Europe, ranking 33/38 technically tied with Luxembourg and Spain and just head of France and Italy. It would appear the mood bleak amongst the UK workforce which is fuelling suspicions that the job market is preparing to the UK to enter recession with employees choosing to put up and shut up (or not) than make a risky move to pastures new.

Our lousy summer is 5^th hottest in recent years
With every week that passes it feels like we’ve been cheated out of a summer. I need my lights on to drive back from swimming now at 8:30pm and every time I’ve committed to summer clothes and bare legs it has RAINED, the inverse has also been true and if I’ve committed to a jumper the sun has gone HARD.

But all this being said there was a beautiful moment on twitter this week where Duncan Robinson of The Economist tweeted and article from The Times about how this week’s hot spell was probably the last of the year with the comment about how “the shittest summer I can remember is now over”, to which Lewis Goodall replied that “2021 was worse” and then John Burn-Murdoch entered the chat – with a graph, now hear me out, he is the FT’s chief data reporter so knows how to chart and he replied with “Sorry to bring data to a vibes fight” (love) but in turns out Lewis was right, 2023 ranks as the 5^th hottest summer in recent history, with June and August being the hottest ever recorded (based on cumulative days at or above 24 degrees in London) so all this lovely weather we’re having? Record breaking.

Waitrose launches £5 meal deal
Every employee loves a meal deal, some people make it their entire personality, who doesn’t love the classic sandwich, crisps, and a drink combo? Over the years it’s gone a little mad with salads and wraps and extra snacks and drinks and now the world has gone bonkers because Waitrose has launched its first ever meal deal.

Great you may say, but err why has the poshest supermarket had to appeal to blue collar workers? Waitrose lunch was always a Friday treat, because it was just down the alley from the little Italian deli where I could get just enough for 1 of all my most favourite Italian things and well if you’ve spent a fortune what’s a lunch from Waitrose on top of that?

I’ve no doubt it will be incredibly successful, but it does make me slightly suspicious if the cost-of-living crisis is now impacting the rich (yes, I consider Waitrose the choice of the top end of soft middle and the anywhere outside London end of rich), why do those at Waitrose even think this is a market for its customers and why now?

How not to resign (if she even has)
Nadine, are you okay hun? Have you even sent it in, or just published it instead of writing your column this week? Some points to note, it’s about two thirds longer than it needs to be and basically reads like you started writing it with a bottle of wine and didn’t finish it before you’d finished the first bottle. Am I correct? Nadine Dorries has been missing in action for the good people of Mid Bedfordshire for well over a year and despite claiming she was going to resign in July in anticipation of receiving a peerage in Boris Johnsons exit honours list, she did not as it was blocked by the current Prime Minister.

The letter, which is well worth a read is now freely available without having to accidentally click on the rag that shall not be names. A bold move to tell Sunak that “history will not judge you kindly” which is quite a line from a women for whom the same could be said. That resignation is quite some unself aware, state conspiracy, self-flatulating fluff. Credit where credit was due, Dorries is not cut from the same Tory cloth as the rest of them and there was a time where regardless of her politics you could say she acted to meet her own integrity, but honestly right now…I am not sure you could say the same.

So when is the nonfiction book you’re clearly now lining up to eventually plug coming out Nadine? Me, cynical? No that’s you.

Hot week for Science
There has been a lot of amazing things this week that really deserve a call out and a read if you have time from Scientist Figures Out How We Might Finally Find Missing Flight MH370: Barnacles which is just insane. This week has also seen The human Y chromosome has been fully sequenced for the first time which is also just wild and not only did India become the 4^th country to land on the moon, they did it for less than it cost to make Intersteller, which is also absolutely bonkers. In amongst all the rubbish news, it’s so nice to see some genuine human endeavours.

Current watch: London Zoo annual weigh-in 2023 – In amongst ALL The Hundred this week, I have devoured the whole live coverage from BBC News on the annual weigh-in at London Zoo. I do not condone fat shaming of any kind and but want to know how you weigh a penguin? Covered it. Meerkats, on it. Sumatran tigers? Done. Gorillas? Let me get the big ruler out. Did the squirrel monkeys even want to be weighed? You can find out for yourself. With over 2 hours of footage available for the next 26 days, please do have this on in the background when it’s raining outside, and you have a high executive function task on a low dopamine day. Instant serotonin. I promise.

Current read: Investing with Keynes; How the World’s Greatest Economist Overturned Conventional Wisdom and Made a Fortune on the Stock Market by Justyn Walsh – This is probably quite a niche recommendation, you’ve probably either heard of John Maynard Keynes or you’re a normal person and you haven’t. Keynes is one of the 20^th centuries greatest economic minds and there wasn’t much he didn’t do architect of international monetary system, writer, Baron in the House of Lords and prominent member of the Bloomsbury group. He made a lot of money on the stock market and died an incredibly rich man.

This book is a journey through Keynes life, picking out his observations of stock market behaviour that are still relevant today, it’s well written and interesting and really shows how much of todays thinking is still leveraged from his investment style.

Most Impactful Listen: BFFs: A Life built on Friendship – One of those random BBC sounds recommendations that did not disappoint. Host of the podcast Emily lives with 5 housemates, 1 is her partner the other are a beautiful blend of friends and would be friends. In this podcast Emily explores a life built on Friendship and whether in the modern world those traditional things we do with a romantic partner we can actually do with our friendships instead, from buying houses, to raising children and avoiding loneliness. Emily meets others basing their lives around friendships, young and old. This was such a lovely listen and really got me thinking about whether the world is ready to start thinking differently about milestones in life.

• 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.

• Please do not email me on a Sunday
• Rain stops play
• Are interest rates too high now?
• Does anyone watch normal TV anymore?
• Why doesn’t anyone want the Common Wealth Games?

Please do not email me on a Sunday
Apparently, someone paid for some research by Axios HQ that found that the best time to email your colleagues is in fact between 3pm and 9pm on a Sunday as they are likely to be read first, with the open rate a staggering 86% compared to between 50% and 76% during the normal working week.

You don’t need to commission me for research, you are getting this lived experience for free, but I can confirm that unless both you and your colleagues working patterns involve actual working between 3pm and 9pm on a Sunday, please do not send that email.

I know the temptation to get a head is real and there is absolutely nothing stopping you getting ahead on Sunday, but that’s your business not anyone else’s. Delay sending that email till normal working hours, most email platforms actively encourage you to do that these days, so imagine your colleagues delight at receiving an email knowing full well you got the advisory note to delay sending it and just decided that your priorities were more important than respecting the boundary of their working hours.

Rains stops play
Had a lovely trip to Birmingham this weekend and I can now technically say I’ve been Edgbaston, I still haven’t seen any cricket at Edgbaston which was kind of the point of going to Edgbaston really.

After barely doing much above 55mph on the M1 on the way up it seemed that Storm Antoni was genuinely posing a ‘risk to life’ with the wind and heavy rain across the UK with serve warnings issued for Northern Ireland and South-West Britain. The first storm to be named of the season. Rest in peace British Summer, we hardly knew ye.

The UK is looking at 10 more days of rain to complete our bumper summer and while people keep trying to sell me on the fact we might get a nice week in September that is all well and good but it starts to get dark at like 7pm in September as that is technically autumn. I want to sit outside and read the paper on a Saturday morning without needing a blanket. I’d like my front lawn to be dry enough to mow when I get back from work. I’d like my morning walk not to be in shorts and coat thinking I’m going to be sick because it’s too hot but too early to get absolutely soaked.

The Met Office have confirmed it should be slightly drier and a bit warmer for the rest of the month but there are “currently no strong signals” for any warm or settled weather for the rest of the month. It’s like they want to keep us all gloomy (iykyk).

Are interest rates too high now?
I don’t want to talk about the Interest Rate Rise, yet here we are with the base rate rising to 5.25% the highest it’s been for the best part of 15 years, but is it too high?

The chief economist of the Bank of England Huw Pill seems to think so, the same Huw Pill who early this year just told us all we need to get used to being poorer, that Huw Pill. The risk with continuing to raise interest rates is that over-tightening builds the existing inflated rate into the economy and therefore directly increases the chances of recession given the current state of absolutely everything *gestures vaguely around at the state of the world*

Even Jeremy Hunt now appears to be concerned that we’re getting stuck in a “low growth trap” following the actions of the Bank of England and Pills comment. Also a raft of other Tory MPs are apparently worried about how it will reflect at the ballot box, which is always my primary concern when the country is on a bit of a cliff…the optics for my personal brand, with one backbencher apparently saying “The reality is to get inflation under control, people do have to be poor,” said one backbencher. “You have to have less money. But that is not a particularly politically sellable strapline.”

Does anyone watch normal TV anymore?
Ofcom has seen its sharpest fall in viewership of traditional TV since records began according to its stats in this year’s Media Nation report, with a 12% drop-in viewing time over the space of a year down from 2 hours 59 minutes in 2021 to 2 hours 38 minutes in 2022. The proportion of people watching TV also fell from 83% to 79%, with even older core viewers engaging more in streaming services than regular TV. Disney+ being the unexpected hit with the over 64s.

I can confirm I have watched very little regular TV this week and gone straight into devouring a boxset that I should have watched ages ago and didn’t that was about to disappear from one of my streaming services of choice and that is literally how they get you. Dare me to watch 10-hour episodes in 3 days, completed it mate (during month end, I need help)

The same week Chartr first newsletter charted the unexpected re-rise in popularity of Suits, which finished airing in 2019, but is obviously a firm favourite…Gabriel Macht, no notes…Harvey Specter, also note notes and while sceptics are convinced that the shows revised popularity is the Meghan Markle effect, Gabriel Macht still garners more searches. It will be interesting to see what the impact of the writer strikes have on the balance of terrestrial and steaming views.

Why doesn’t anyone want the Commonwealth Games?
Last month Victoria pulled out of hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games and this week it was the turn of Canada to halt their current bid and the only bid for the games in 2030, so what gives?

The cost, pure and simple. In the case of Australia the original estimate of costs had doubled to £1.4 BILLION. To host the event there needs to be massive investment which mostly footed by the taxpayer and return is nominal. The latest report of the costings for Birmingham 2022 Game were that the investment was £778m and it returned £870m into the Economy and while I wouldn’t snub £100m, I can understand why other countries wonder if its worth it. Especially that, with the exception of India 2010, the last 5 events have been hosted either by the UK or Australia and literally no one else. The investment required to hold it elsewhere would simply be enough to make it a hard no, even if you were Canada and wanting to host the 100th game back where it all began. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.

Current watch: The Sixth Commandment – Why do I watch these things? Based on the real life murders of a local university lecturer and his neighbour and the events that led to the criminal trial of Ben Field. Maids Moreton will always have a special place in my heart, the day I realised how unwell I was when I had glandular fever (I didn’t know at that point) was having to stop in Maids Moreton to throw up on the way back from swim club at probably about 10pm on a Friday night. Anyway, the cast are absolutely incredible, the story telling is superb and all filmed with the blessing of the families of those involved.

Current read:
How to argue with a racist: History, Science, Race & Reality – I have a lot of time for Adam Rutherford and this book dismantles the age old assumptions around race and genetics and what they actually don’t tell us about human difference and how science is no crutch for racism. This book also includes one of my favourite quotes of all time from Jonathan Swift from 1792 ‘reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired’ which tends to stop me having useless arguments, because you can’t reason someone out of an assumption they didn’t get to themselves by logic.

Most Impactful Listen: FT’s Money Clinic – The financial advice we’d give to Barbie – What a brilliant episode, with Barbie approaching her retirement years what financial advice you would you give? Clear Barrett is joined by Hadelsbankens Wealth Manager Christine Ross and the FT’s own personal finance columnist Miora O’Neill who chat through the advice they would love to give Barbie after her long and glittering career and her relationship with Ken. A thoughtful insight into women’s finances and the things that need to be considered.

• “Rip-off” degress
• Where do you get your news from?
• We’re still all going to call it Twitter right?
• Do you partake in “phubbing”
• Feedback – love it or hate it?

“Rip-off” degrees
Rishi Sunak has pledged to crack own on “rip-off” degrees that don’t lead to a graduate job by essentially forcing English Universities to limit student numbers to “underperforming courses” which is determined on some very binary metrics of graduate employment rate and the drop out rate of the course. Apparently too many young people are giving false aspirations that learning more will get them and give them the skills to get “decent job” and I really don’t even know where to begin to unpack this.

Why do we want to double down on the rather toxic link that all further and higher education can only be pursued if the payoff is financial and why do we judge underperforming courses based solely on rather arbitrary metrics please?

At best this awful hot take should lead to some self-reflection that maybe we do need to look at education, from the bottom to the top and make it more suitable for the world as it stands and more importantly the skills the world needs in its next phase. I can’t imagine where young people are being sold the “false dream” of a “decent job” from when all you have to do is look around any boardroom, any middle management meeting, most of the benches of the houses of parliament and wonder where young people get sold their aspiration from, but try and get in any of those spaces without a degree?

Where do you get your news?
Apparently now more than ever young people are getting their news from TikTok, I can confirm that I am not on news side of TikTok and right now based on my TikTok algorithm I’d really like to be on the news side, TikTok if you are spying on us all, please take me there, but do keep the ones that I am there for the recipe as much as a production (IYKYK)

Ofcom have confirmed that a staggering 28% of 12–15-year-olds find out about issues and current affairs through the app, with YouTube and Instagram a joint second at 25%. Which seems a lot, but I’m old and of a generation where you only got the news if you parents listened to it on the radio or put on the evening news before bedtime and then of a generation where if I want to see a discussion around the news I go to Twitter, which in it own way is not less problematic than going to TikTok.

I do like how this article ends, with quotes from Christopher StokelWalker in The Observer that this is just a sign that news has evolved and not to involve in “format snobbishness” because after all “we no longer present the news in dinner jackets and bow ties” and you actually can’t argue with that.

We’re still all going to call it Twitter right?
It has just broken that later today Musk intends to rename and rebrand Twitter to “X”. Much like Cif is still Jif & Oil of Olay is still Oil of Ulay. I am just that old, I remember the fail whale.

He tweeted with a picture of the new icon that “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he said. The intention of replacing said icon blue bird with just a white X on a black background is to take the platform in the new direction, I don’t imagine the intended direction was elite strip club vibes and was likely a more hopeful one to entice some advertising revenue back to the platform to reduce that heavy debt load he apparently didn’t know he was taking on.

Not the first attempted rebrand of Twitter under Musks control, remember that moment in time where the sweet little blue bird was replaced with Cryptos Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu puppy dog that caused a surge in its market value? In the race to make the western worlds version of WeChat, would I trust twitter with making my bank payments? Absolutely not, just my low key sociable mental illness.

Do you partake in “phubbing”
I was this week years old when I found out what the term “phubbing” meant. I would also like to say this is a terrible portmanteau or a portmantNO if you wish of the phrase “phone snubbing”. I absolutely phone snub my other half, it is literally connected to my person at all times and although I am getting better at leaving it behind, that is morning Rachael behaviour and by the evening I definitely would rather mindlessly scroll than watch the news, or Pointless or the OneShow.

No great surprise if you indulge in “phubbing”, I can’t say it without air quotes its stupid, adversely impacts relational happiness as well as personal wellbeing, one of those behaviours we all do but also don’t think is a big deal, might in fact be a big deal.

Just knowing there is such an awful word for it makes me want to stop doing it. The study acknowledges the limitations of self-reporting of data and makes a more fascinating read than the article itself.

Let’s talk about feedback
Oof, this was a heavy collective endeavour chat for a midmorning Friday work meeting, but it was enlightening. I have joined a very self-aware organisation that really do those human relationships over human resources piece well, with some incredible product offerings to both us as employees as much as our clients.

I’ve had the recent pleasure of going through one of those flag ship programs and being incredibly uncomfortable throughout, uncomfortable with how comfortable I feel in the harder conversations in working relationships, but more awkwardly how uncomfortable I feel in the good conversations of working relationships.

Mostly to date because those experiences have been either a set up…this thing you did was amazing, congratulations BUT or here’s some more work, or here this project will fail needs a face that’s not mine so yours will do. The fated words of “do you have time for a quick chat later”, like failing to move forward on the ridiculous progress scale at end of year reviews because you don’t ever set print margins on any spreadsheet you created, when the person literally sat next to you all year and could have mentioned kindly at any time they wanted you to do that.

It was a really positive forum where a wonderful colleague who is a little bit further forward their acceptance of new culture journey beautifully articulated the challenge, to most of the organisation and the impact of that kindness to open up the pathways for discussion on the real impact of feedback will not be forgotten.

Current watch: The Diary of a CEO Russell Brand FINALLY Opens Up: Escaping A Lifetime Of Anxiety, Addiction & Finding Love! – Ooof I do not recommend this lightly, this was an incredibly uncomfortable hour and 45 minutes of my life, I have some interesting feelings about both Steven Bartlett and very separately Russell Brand, but a good friend of mine threw my own phrase back at me and told me to sit with the discomfort, you might learn something or confirm something. Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions. Objectively it’s hard to argue with the passion, insight and self-awareness that Brand has (sitting on the fact I don’t believe that redemption would have been available if he was a women) and from that there is always something to learn, even if it’s a fundamental inability to know how Steven Bartlett can just work in his socks.

Current read:
Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by James Bloodworth – An unflinching look at modern Britain, that I think considering this was published in 2019 and just how much has changed since them, long entrenched austerity now with cost of living icing. While this book doesn’t speak to new themes, it speaks to them directly where I live, in the UK, with places I have visited and even know better than that. It’s very readable, the perception is relatable and the there are some glimmers of hope and joy in the human condition.

Most Impactful Listen: CrowdScience: Why do we get bored? – I stumbled across CrowdScience entirely by accident and what a perfect episode to drop as the first since I found it! A listener inspired wander through the science and psychology around the phenomenon of being “bored”. Marnie Chesterton and a whole host of incredible contributors explain how boredom is not created equally, how it is the mother of all invention and how to embrace those bored moments to get the most impact from them. I definitely think I will come back to this episode when I am not sure.

• Why aren’t accountants happy being accountants?
• More viruses on the horizon
• Tim Harford’s museum of dreams
• Space junks exponential growth
• Why adulting sucks more as an independent women

Why aren’t accountants happy being accountants?
Despite not being part qualified anymore, I still get PQ magazine because actually I find it more useful for CPD than most networking options my actual professional body offers and the August front page asks the questions why aren’t accountants happy being accountants? TLDR; it just sucks, but cloud platform Dext have surveyed accountants and bookkeepers in the UK about their current feelings for their profession and what they would need to be happier…It makes for slightly depressing reading, but also for me makes me realise I am not alone.

I frequently get asked how I ended up where I am, recent direct quotes include “How on earth did you end up in finance?!” and “you’re too nice for that to be your job” but as the Dext research showed, I am in the third who are considering leaving the profession in the next 5 years and in the 21% of those who want to leave for a completely different career and I think I echo on the lack of healthy work life balance and spending too much time completing manual tasks. Typically, I find most organisations are reluctant to invest in their finance systems and processes but then I look around at my peers (the ones who do belong in finance and who aren’t to nice for their jobs) and I sort of think its just us standing in our own way, empire building, wrongly pretending we’re better than people who don’t get numbers and that we always know best.

While I do enjoy nothing more than getting my head down and reconciling something to the penny, I still fundamentally deep down think is the best part of my job is supporting colleagues to create and deliver a product or service they always dreamed of, which is rarely actually about the numbers, it’s exploring the idea and their current offering on to see what we can piggy back on the back of for minimal investment, it’s a great way to really test their passion for it and to see if the idea is viable, so does month end set my soul alight when I’m still working at 7pm knowing that when I get home I have to set up a back up running overnight so I don’t loose 2 hours I don’t have tomorrow? No, but is it a means to an end? In the right organisation absolutely, in the wrong ones I’ve quit for a lot less.

More viruses on the horizon
Umm it’s been a week for viruses and considering I am not a virologist nor is it 2020, it feels unfair that only I know about these things and as sharing is caring her is this week’s round up of all things that might kills us. Both UN and WHO have warned of an “alarming rise” in the increased risk of outbreak of bird flu in humans and while the current common strain of H5N1 was not passed between people, there have been 8 cases in humans since December 2021 so really is a case of when not if. There is currently an outbreak of feline coronavirus in Cyprus that is spreading fast with an animal rights group claiming 300,000 cats have died on the island this year so if the virus does come home with someone from their holidays we could all be in for a treat. Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever is also currently taking human life in Iraq, Pakistan and Namibia and is currently working its way across Europe by all diseases favourite transport mechanism, the humble tick.

Why does all this matter? Given the UK is finally reflecting on the impact of the Covid Pandemic and challenging our preparedness or not, it was definitely not, the true cost of surviving the pandemic are yet to be known so how can be learn for the next possible health crisis? The IMF said this week that the “Scars from the pandemic, including to students’ learning and [skill training], could weigh on economies for years to come,”  

Tim Harford’s Museum of Dreams
It’s fair to say if I was to have my time again I’d probably take more of an economics and social sciences slant on the journey I took to get where I am, so seeing that Tim Harfords Undercover Economist column this weekend (https://www.ft.com/content/2abde970-1520-499e-b63e-45479d812b2f) was about what he would put in his Museum of Economy, I knew I had to read it the tag line reads “Museums often document economics in abstract. It doesn’t have to be that way” and as it turns out he is not wrong.

I often find myself having conversations with very successful people who with some level of unwarranted shame confess an economics related sin, usually along the lines of “I do not understand [insert some concept that impacts all our lives but that we do not talk about]

and it makes me a little sad. Harfords article about his desire for an exhibition all about money and the economy makes some valid points about how we dedicate time and learning to science and technology and natural history but rarely consider the economics, possibly because economic things are hard to put in glass cases, but they aren’t hard to make interactive get stuck in displays around, exactly like a giant hamster wheel that illustrates the grinding repetitiveness of a gig economy job as at KA-CHING! – Show me the money exhibition in the Danish National Museum.

Space junks exponential growth

Apparently SpaceX’s Starlink has been forced to perform more than 25,000 course alterations in the last six months to avoid colliding with space junk, or to give it its correct title “orbital debris” which seems mad, madder still that his is apparently double the amount of course corrections Starlink had to make in the proceeding period. Exponential growth in action, Hugh Lewis, professor of astronautics at the University of Southampton and leading expert on the impact of megaconstellations on orbital safety, said “It’s been doubling every six months, and the problem with exponential trends is that they get to very large numbers very quickly”. The numbers in the article are wonderful and Lewis estimates that by 2028 Starlink will have to make 1 million manoeuvres to avoid hitting space junk.

The European Space Agency currently tracks a fair amount of space junk, with 34,000 bits of junk on its radar over 10cm in size and while actual space junk collisions are low, with an increased desire to have more satellites out in space, SpaceX wanting to increase their numbers from 4000 to 30,000 in the coming years, this all feeds into a growing fear of the Kessler Syndrome that if there is too much junk out in space, then it could result in a chain reaction where more and more objects collide thus creating more space junk that eventually there might be so much space junk it might be possible to move and the universe will do its own course corrections.

Why adulting sucks more as an independent women
Nothing quite like a small home emergency to make me rage, the kind of rage only a women knows, the one that feels like bees in your stomach that might just swarm out of your mouth. A simple leak from an upstairs toilet, that has obviously been slow leaking for some time, that odd slight stain on the kitchen wall that I’d been meaning to investigate but hadn’t because honestly it didn’t look that bad and it could have been a whip of a dirty dogs tail. Well that turned into water leaking through my kitchen ceiling, that was coming from the toilet upstairs.

The plumbing in my house is atrocious, like you can see why they did it, but you wouldn’t do it because it doesn’t make any sense, the easy thing to do, not the right thing to do. Shoutout to my amazing local friends who alerted me to it and the man in my life who gave up his Monday to wait for a plumber who failed to turn up and ignored follow up call. My employer are wonderful and I worked from home on Tuesday to be in for said plumber to return because everyone deserves a second chance…I explained the two parts of the job, returning the toilet to functioning and then redesign the layout to take out what is causing recurring infuriating issues, so imagine my delight after putting up with the usual level of being patronised you just expect as a women with a tradesman for him to say “I’ll give you a day to discuss the cost with your husband”, the cost you haven’t told me because you don’t trust that I understand and the husband that I don’t have because men like you make me think getting married is literally the ickiest thing I could do as a women.

Just for the avoidance of doubt I would rather have an unusable toilet and a continued leak than give the money I have to work twice as hard to hard half as much as man, to a man who asks if I have to check with my husband about how much it’s going to cost. Currently considering just fixing it myself, like I’ve done previously, because interacting with tradesMEN gives me the actual ick.

Current watch: The Flight Attendant – Based on a book of the same name I accidentally inhaled the 2^nd season of this this week in the name of self care. The plot is low level bonkers, but there are people like Cassie Bowden who live and walk amongst us whose lives you can’t make up, it’s a wonderfully dark comedy drama mystery thriller that does light and shade so well, it’s so dark but so full of bright shining light it and hope. While battling addiction as a result of childhood trauma, Cassies character is loveable and troubled that you just find yourself rooting for, the whole way. The second series picks up off the back of the first series but doesn’t require you to have watched the first at all, which I also quite like, the twists are satisfying and the writing is impeccable. If you’ve ever had any brush with addiction, you might see yourself or others throughout this show.

Current read:
Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire by Kojo Koram – This is the book they should teach in history, it offers accessible and informative insight into the way the legacy of empire is the capitalist system we live in today, how systematic empirical values still echo loudly in all our central institutions. The mix of personal stories from Koram’s time in Ghana tying together history to the present gently walking the reader from imperial rule, to post-colonial corporate exploitation on a global scale. Certainly in parts makes for some uncomfortable but essential reading.

Most Impactful Listen: The News Meeting: El Niño, mortgage costs, and missing migrant boats – Tortoise is all about slow news and each week they seek to focus on more of the human stories in a hopes of offering a longer lasting understanding of what is going on in world around us. Each week the News Meeting podcasts sees three Tortoise journalist pitch a story on what they think should leads the news, then they discuss the running order they would use to share these stories. In this episode, they step away from the two big stories that dominated the news this week and focus on the impact of missing migrant boats in the Atlantic, rising mortgage rates and the impact of El Niño on the US. With Basia Cummings in the editors chair with Cat Neilan, Claudia Williams and Stephen Armstrong, this was an insightful discussion about why these things matter.