Rachael McKelvey

• 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.

• So are we all moving to Threads now?
• Should we teach conspiracy theories in schools?
• What are we going to do about Inflation?
• Can you tell which muppets are predators and which are prey?
• Happy 75th Birthday to the NHS

So are we all moving the Threads now?
This week saw Meta launch is rival app to Twitter, it looks like Twitter, it acts a lot like Twitter but apparently its called Threads. As at writing there are currently 97 million Thread users registered, when it had passed the 5m sign-up mark within the first four hours of launching which has far exceeded Zuckerbergs expectation. No great surprise I have feelings.

So much of the good in my life has come from Twitter and I know it’s not the platform it was 18 months ago, let alone the many years ago I joined the platform, but even with the purchase by Musk…all the platforms are problematic, you can leave on whatever grounds you like but you can’t take the moral high ground like it makes you better than those of us who will only leave when the ship sinks. This is a hill I am willing to die on, I am part of the orchestra.

What I will miss on Twitter when the ship does sink, is all the wonderful commentators and specialists in their respective fields I’ve collected along the way, and for that reason alone I do have a Threads account by virtue of being on the gram and I am picking up their handles as they move, there is so much wonderful stuff shared on Twitter…I know there is some durge and maybe I am just lucky that I don’t see it, that it’s crowded out with substack links that dissect current issues in an interesting and accessible way.

I was in the office this week, but far from present (hi month end), so I haven’t had a chance to catch up with our marketing team to see what they think, to immediately have another platform to have to roll into social postings must be hideous.

Should we teach conspiracy theories in schools
Professor Sander van Der Linden, a scholar in social psychology at the University of Cambridge thinks that one way to combat the very real threat of conspiracy theories is to “implement this stuff in the national education curriculums” and it’s an interesting idea. I’d still place teaching kids about finances as my top curriculum change, but this I favour more than Campbells idea of how to argue, but why shouldn’t children learn relevant useful skills and I can’t think of one more relevant now than being able to identify a conspiracy theory, then at least the choice to believe is an empowered one.

The principle of van Der Lidens book Foolproof is all about the best way to fight misinformation is to under the psychology behind it. It’s currently sat in my TBR and based on its current position I might be able to get to it in *checks diary* autumn 2024, why is reading books not a paying job please? It’s all I want to do.

Back in 2014 Finland introduced an anti-fake news initiative, two years before the fated American Elections, and has since scored very highly on the Media Literacy Index on how to spot fake news, training critical thinking and how to spot propaganda is actually really useful.

What are we going to do with Inflation?
Nothing quite makes me realise we are all just making it up quite like inflation, everything they’re “trying” do isn’t working and please know they are heavily accented air quotes. Andrew Bailey makes me miss Mark Carney. With investors now seemingly betting against a likely reduction in UK interest rates, which would like see them climb to over 6% to levels not seen since the late 90’s I thought the FT interview with Economist Kate Barker stating that ‘to tackle inflation we should put taxes up for the better-off’ was really interesting.

How do you compensate for the fiscal stimulus following the financial crash without a course correction of tighter policy to reduce demand and theoretically who should have the most flex in their income to absorb a tightening? Those that are better off. As Kate, former Bank of England MPC says ““The truth is that the pain is rather badly distributed,”.

Also once again the article echoes the pretty constant theme that I come back to when we talk about inflation…the lack of planning and joined up thinking to deal with something that was quite obviously staring us right in the face. Inflation was not a surprise, we have not been ambushed by the Spanish Inquisition. The article is well worth your time with no further parroting from me.

Can you tell which muppets are predators and which are prey?
Sometimes I flipping love the internet, this week IFLScience shared an article about how the internet had worked out which muppets are predators and which are prey based solely on their eyes, the placement and the kind of eye.

The article is pure joy and the chat around it on Twitter delightful, animals with eyes on the side of their heads are typically prey, while those with eyes at the front are typically predators…making Furby’s predators, obviously. Oh poor Kermit.

Happy Birthday to the NHS
On Wednesday the NHS marked 75 years of service since its creation in 1948, treating over a million people every single day. The NHS is the first universal health system available to everyone for free at point of delivery and while I think everyone was in a celebratory mood with their own happy memory of NHS care, we all have a recent experience that feels hard to defend but that’s through no fault of the front line staff, who deserve the moon on a stick and some pay restoration.

Most of the talk in the media on the day was whether the NHS can survive the next 75 years and simply based on the numbers of staff leaving the NHS and those currently planning on its hard to see it will make it another 75 years. The quality of care in the NHS has declined in many key areas since the coalition government’s austerity measures in the early 2010s. Can’t wait to here Ed Balls and George Osbourne discuss that one at length…

I really hope the NHS makes it, I really hope it gets the investment it needs, sorts out the management problems and becomes the service everyone wants it to be.

Current watch: Fleabag – This week has been a trip down memory lane, good and bad, but I had reason to talk about the fourth wall in visual story telling and a few weeks ago I mentioned how much I love it when it happens and I was not wrong. No finer example than Fleabag, she is not talking to all of us – she is talking to you. A friend had finally seen the one women show, which is devastatingly clever and I just had to check in, for comfort and support. It’ll pass.

Current read:
One of Them: An Eton College Memoir by Musa Okwonga – I came back to this book to find a quote and ended up staying once again for the words. A very person and unflinching memoir of Musa’s time at Eton as a immigrant black kid who found himself surrounded by the white privileged elite at Eton in the 90’s. I remember on the first read thinking this isn’t the book people thought it was, it’s beautifully written, insightful and measured. In the world of racism and classism on steroids, this book asks the big questions about social and political pressures and just quite how we ended up exactly where we are.

Most Impactful Listen: How To Academy Podcast: Peter Turchin – Will the West Fall Like Rome? – Absolutely no idea why I was delighted to see this as a discussion (when is capitalism falling & when can I go live in the woods please?) Historian Peter Heather joined Luke Naylor Perrot to explore the new lessons we can learn from history, was Rome destined to fall, is it the same for the western world too as a result? An absolute masterclass in what we must learn and a timely reminder how economists always don’t give enough weight to history.

• Thames Water is drowning in debt
• In defence of erasable pens
• George Osborne and Ed Balls join Persephonica
• How old are you really?
• BlackBerry Q1 Earnings shocker

Thames Water drowning in debt
Thames Water is in trouble, this week Sarah Bentley resigned with immediate effect after 3 years in post as CEO, a reason was not given but I suspect it’s due in part that the auditors are due to sign off their accounts next week and I doubt it will be clean, it’s balance sheet is stuffed with £14bn of debt that it can’t afford to service in the light of higher and higher interest rates.

Thames Water serviced 15 million people, has a terrible track record on sewage pollution that flows into rivers now even when it’s no raining, with huge swaths of country under hosepipe ban. What Thames Water needs is quite a huge injection of cash. Last year Thames Water admitted it needed to raise £1.5bn from its shareholders but to date as only managed to generate £500mn. Rumour has it the Government are drawing up contingency plan for its collapse.

This isn’t just a Thames Water problem; this is just the first one that might collapse as a result of its operating decisions. All water utilities were privatised in 1989 with absolutely no debt on their balance sheet, today collectively the debt on the balance sheet of UK utilities companies stands at £60bn. The hope behind privatisation was that the access to a mix of debt and equity would mean the utilities could invest in infrastructure…instead they have paid millions in salaries and dividends and borrowed quite significantly to do so.

Where else can it go? Water bills went up quite considerably earlier in the year and really they need to do it again, but to what end? With headlines of million-pound salary, record bonuses, appalling environmental and customer services. If Thames Water does collapse this, my money is on Severn Trent next.

In defence of erasable pens
The Guardian this week raised some concerns over the transparency of Government as they revealed that Rishi Sunak uses erasable ink pens on official government documents. Given the current positive correlation between trust in Government and the routine need for seemingly all forms of communication needing to be shared with a Select Committee it would seem a justifiable concern that his hand-written notes “could be erased”.

Such a concern it seems that there was a need for a source close to the PM at number 10 to say he “has never used the erase function and nor would he”, so we can add erasable pens to the list of things Rishi Sunak doesn’t know how to do, including making any form of card payment and using a petrol station. Rishi Sunak truly is a man of the people.

I want to defend the erasable pen, they are my pen de jour. I make notes, oh so many notes, the odd T account and proper little scribbles and being able to quickly rub something out an re-write or amend or just forget is incredibly helpful to not burn through paper. But and it’s a big but, what I don’t do is use them on any form of legal document or work documents. Need me to sign something? I’ll grab a biro. Need me to do anything that someone else might need to walk away with? I will grab a biro. It’s basic should I use a pencil or a pen territory and while Sunaks penchant for fountain pens comes as absolutely no surprise, neither does the likelihood that he probably didn’t buy it himself so arguably he doesn’t even know he can rub out his workings. In this instance, very much hate the player, don’t hate the game.

George Osborne and Ed Balls join Persephonica
Where to even begin with Ed Balls and George Osborne, a man who tweeted his own name and arguable you could ascribe the titles ‘godfather’ of the very mess we are in today to both these men, one probably a lot more than the other, but still. This autumn they are set to delight podcast audiences with their own unique take on politics, economics, and law, having seen success of the frenemies model in The Rest of Politics & thought how do we get a piece of that?

Ed Balls stating ‘George and I want to bring economics back to life and on the agenda – with explanation and entertainment in equal measure.’ There are some great economists out there and some great economics podcast, these two are neither of those things. It’ll be hard for them to walk in the “disagreeing agreeably” footsteps of Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, it’s also hard to see what value they bring. What works for Campbell and Stewart is the relatively low profile of their part in the current political, economic, and social undoing we have found ourselves in, we don’t hold them personally liable, just collectively part of the problem. I don’t see either Balls or Osbourne pulling each other up on their quite obvious short comings in their political careers in any meaningful way and a successful podcast requires some charisma, again not a word I would particularly associate with either of them.

Whoever ends up producing that podcast has their work cut out of them, this isn’t low stakes talks with friends, this is two quite comfortable, fairly wealthy architypes of our current misfortune. All that being said, yes I will give it a listen because I am very aware of the echo chamber I live in and it will be interesting to see if they do get it right.

But in all seriousness, and I cannot stress this enough, please stop giving overpromoted middle aged white men microphones and platforms. I can guarantee the world does not need two more white dudes with a podcast, go to therapy.

How old are you really?
Age is just an arbitrary number and your birthday marks the end of the year you are celebrating being that age and I will not be told otherwise. I was 1 365 days after I was deemed to be 0, so on day 366 of my life I was being 2. I use this as a convenient excuse to never provide my actual age, simply because I don’t know, I usually have to do the maths and it’s on the basis of the current year less the year I was born, yielding the age I will be this year, regardless of whether my birthday has passed. It typically hasn’t and for more of the year than not I am actually a year younger than I state I am, but I am already living my +1 year. But it’s rude to ask someone’s age, so stop it.

The point? Well this week South Korea has formally scrapped what is known as ‘Korean age’ making the entire country a year younger over night. Historically South Koreans have included the time spent in the womb as year, so everyone is born aged 1 year old and a bit like race horses all having the same birthdays everyone gets one year added to their Korean age on New Years Day which also gives them a “calendar birthday” so you can be two years older than you technically are.

Under new legislation they will now adopt “international age” which is the one most of the rest of the world uses, it is hoped that standardising ages will “reduce social confusion and disputes” according to Lee Wan-kyu, the Minister of Government Legislation. It is anticipated that colloquially these informal birthdays will continue, but it is hoped that universal adoption of “international age” will make formal age-related requirements a little easier to manage.

BlackBerry Q1 Earnings shock
BlackBerry have reported a really solid first quarter with significantly reduced loses with quite some top line year on year improvement. Sadly not from increased handset sales off the back of “BlackBerry” the movie nor their current core business, but for slightly more boring reasons of a sale of non-core patents which added $218m to its cash reserves for the year.

BlackBerry really did miss the boat in corporate market in the early 2000’s and then through poor leadership dug in and pivoted a little too late. The finally decided to rightly capitalised on what made them great, the underlying software of their handsets with BlackBerry’s Internet of Things (IoT) providing software to 235 million vehicles and their cyber security solutions used in a surprising number of mobile banking apps.

I’d cut my right arm off for my little clicky-clacky keyboard and roller ball back, they were happy days before emojis, just used to shove it back in it’s case like a debit card and moved on with my life, now I need my phone to do everything.

Current watch: Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction – I have been putting off watching this, for lots of reasons, but I am so glad I did. This hour-long documentary looks back at Matts life as he begins to explore the origins of his addictions, even before his rock and roll life style in the early 00’s with Busted.

He revisits people and places to have those conversations in hindsight, and meets other addicts at the centre he spent four weeks in before he walked out clean and sober for his wedding. The documentary also allows him to look at the latest developments in treatment for addiction, meeting researchers from Imperial College London who are looking into the differences in the brains of those with additions and those without.

I think the thing that struck me most was the time and care taken about the impact on his wife Emma and the rest of the family at a time where relapse is most likely in the preparation for the Busted reunion tour.

Current read:
The ‘Bad’ Girl’s Guide To Better: A stealth help guide to getting your act together by Casey Beros – A line in the synopsis for this book is “A bestie in a book” and it absolutely felt like that, that no holds barred trip down memory lane with the friend you’ve known or felt you’ve known for ages. No story that can’t be shared, no shame too great. I laughed, I cringed a little at the echoes of my own shame, I got a bit teary and felt endless joy. There isn’t anything this book doesn’t cover on how to reframe and grow from some of your least proud moments, it pulls you up on the BS and perfectly reframes even the smallest of hesitations in navigating a grown-up life with some excellent use of swears along the way. I already know fake Auntie Rachael is going to be gifting this book to the young girls in my life when we get to having those conversations, sorry not sorry to all my mum friends.

Most Impactful Listen: Nudge: There’s a problem with the world’s most famous nudge – Making something easier is literally the easiest trick in the book, want someone to do something? Make it easy. Want to influence the behaviours of many to a desired outcome? Make it as easy as possible, make it so people can’t say no. The world over is full of examples of this simple trick in action, but sometimes easy isn’t always the best option. You will often find me, even in a crisis, pointing out that we can do the easy thing or the right thing, because more often than not they are not the same thing.

Phill talks through the behavioural science behind the easy option and talks with London’s most popular taxi driver Tom Huntley about the problems of making things easy.