Rachael McKelvey

• Milton Keynes robot delivery service really delivers!
• Inflation & the price of cucumbers
• The El Niño effect & the price of everything
• If you’re unemployed, “don’t be a job snob”, know your ABC
• Rage against MFA

Milton Keynes robot delivery service really delivers!
Milton Keynes the ‘field of dreams’ 22 million trees, 5,000 acres of parkland, 15 lakes, 11 miles of canal, 130 roundabouts, more bridges than Venice, more shoreline than Jersey, concrete cows and a robot delivery service that has increased spending in the city’s restaurants by £10m a year, reduced annual emissions by 8% and saved the average household 72 minutes per week, all that and they are just super cute.

This week the MKCitizen shared some highlights from the research conducted by Oxford Analytica about the impact Starship Technologies is making to the City and just how much of an impact it could have nationwide with the appropriate legislation and regulation.

Milton Keynes really is the city of dreams when it comes to testing driverless technologies, with extensive testing of many variations of driverless vehicles around its miles of redway pathways that connect absolutely all of the city. Now we just need the government to support the sector for it to catch up with the rest of the world.

Nothing brings me greater joy than the tiny delivery robots of Milton Keynes, if they get stuck they ask for help and they thank you for your help, they are a brilliant addition to the green metropolis that I call home for half my week.

Inflation & the price of cucumbers
There have been a few stats worth checking in on this week, the analytics around certain submersible based words and even an increase in searches for “my heart will go on” but the other has been Cucumbers, beautifully articulated by Ed Conway on Twitter this week in a thread about why Britain is facing such high inflation and how the Bank of England have got it so wrong, illustrated through the price of cucumbers.

Inflation is a relatively simple concept, it’s a term used to describe rising prices, how quickly they rise is the rate of inflation. The UK measures that rate once a month based on the recording the costs of over 700 things that people regularly buy, the total of this basket of goods is then compared to the total of the basket of goods in the same month in the prior year, the change in the prices between years is inflation. Today it costs me more of the pounds I earn than it did the pounds I earnt last year to buy things. Especially cucumbers.

It’s a story of both economics and technology, the grab for market share means the price of cucumbers has been significantly depressed for the last decade or so. It has cost you less to buy them than it did to grow them, but at the same time technology has meant more can be grown with less, which has also reduced the cost of cucumber production. Brexit entered the chat and cheap labour isn’t as freely available as it was, the war in Ukraine then entered the chat and the price of fuel, that powers all the technological advantages, has now also gone up and now we have the overall cost of production increasing, if we are able to produce them ourselves (hint: we are not, we are importing more now than ever) so now the price of cucumber is 50% more than it was 12 months ago. Nice little throw back to the podcast recommendation here for Today in Focus – What the salad crisis says about Britain

Ed makes the point really nicely about how the Bank of England got it so wrong, considering it all now looks very predictable, but we have lived in decades where you can look top down at your numbers and assume a relatively consistent inflation rate % to get your forecast position. Now more than ever we need to look bottom up, cost your expenses for the year, what are they really going to cost this year, because last year +2% isn’t going to cut it. So when your friendly Finance Manager/Business Partner (Hi, it’s me) comes to the table asking for a bottom up on your numbers for next year, we really are just trying to make sure the targets you set yourself are realistic, that you won’t get to M1 in Q3 and be making opportunity cost decisions on your budget for the remainder of the year. Please be kind to us, we are just trying to help.

The El Niño effect & the price of everything
Nothing rarely ever starts with the money, (once money is involved, always follow the money), but most things start very simply with a change in something you probably wouldn’t think about. This month the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the start of the El Niño event, which comes up in A-Level geography along with the outstanding revelation that the equator fluctuates between the tropics, why they gate keep this at GCSE geography I don’t know. El Niño is an interesting weather pattern involving a band of warm but nutrient poor ocean water along South America, it typically lasts for years and cycles over a decade. So what, who cares Rachael?

Well, coffee futures have hit a record high, with sugar and cocoa futures also gaining ground, futures contracts are basically agreements made now to buy/sell at a fixed price but the goods will be delivered and paid for later and are a way to hedge (reduce) risk, don’t tell me accounting is not cool. These mechanisms are really good tools to help predict the future, Del Monte this year came out and said that the El Niño events in 2016, 2017 an 2019 caused droughts in Kenya that impacted pineapple farms, which explains why Pineapples got a little bit more expensive. While natural phenomena are hard to price into the market, analysist are doing it already for prices we won’t be paying for a year or so yet, El Niño also increases the risk of flooding and drought, so you know insurances markets are also adjusting as I type.

If you’re unemployed, “don’t be a job snob”, know your ABC
(Permanent) Under Secretary of three departments in 2022, Mims Davies this week has said that “the unemployed cannot be job snobs” and that your true path in life is to just start with any job (A), then get a better job (B), then get a career (C) and while not you typical Tory, you’d be forgiven for thinking so given the rather Boomer Dad career advice given in the face of a 0.2 percentage point rise in unemployment to the heady (low) heights of 3.9%.

This in the same week Marks and Spenser, WH Smith and Argos alongside 199 other companies have been named and shamed for failing to pay minimum wage. Minimum wage. Facing a staggering £7m of penalties and the requirement to reimburse workers over the last decade. I can’t imagine why someone who is unemployed wouldn’t look and continue to look to seek their worth.

I was made redundant at the tail end of last year and I was in the privileged position to be funemployed for a period of time while I worked out my next move. I have a career the jury is still out whether it is the one most suited to my actuals skills and I was a little dissatisfied with the progress my “traditional career” has made in modernising itself and being inclusive…recently a colleague said we have some cool words for some obviously important stuff when I was talking with a member of my team in the office, to which I replied with the actual translation of the simple task we were talking about and had to explain that some old white dude just wanted to give it a fancy word to make it sound important, show me where the lie is? I took a while to find an organisation that aligned with my values, that looked like they would value me and that had the structures to support that and while there would have come a time where I would have had to work to earn money where I might have entertained “any job”, I just think this is terrible advice from the Under Secretary of State for DWP.

The traditional path is no longer the one most travelled, jobs aren’t for life, they are barely for seasons of your life anymore. They want more of you than ever before, get a job that values you or see your potential and can value you, then do that all over again and again and again and that will have been your career, as many times as it needs to be till you can retire, in as many different directions as it takes you. I feel its worth noting I might have been heavily influenced by listening to Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Kyle on The News Agents podcast this week and his unconventional career path because of the barriers in his way to access a career. Well worth a listen.

Rage against MFA
This week my mobile unexpectedly messed itself quite spectacularly shortly after my arrival at work on Tuesday, no worries who needs a phone anyway. I’d arrived safely at the office after driving 90 minutes cross country in biblical flooding where I encountered two nights and 5 minutes of day in that time but cool, I hadn’t died…to work it was.

Except it wasn’t, because MFA required me to generate a varying amount of numerical code that I could not access, but if I could access I then couldn’t deploy quick enough before they had changed and well this resulted in an increased workload for my colleagues. They could access what I needed, because I just asked them to download the various reports I required, which sort of defeats the entire object of zero trust policies – you can’t trust me, but I can use my power and influence to potentially abuse someone else who you do trust. Well played on making it an HR problem not a cyber security one.

As the week went on I became that guy with three phones, because what I could easily move over to my new phone was relatively painless but those that I couldn’t require me to use my old handset to access, if it wants to which depends on the way the wind is blowing. I’ve had to raise and IT ticket because no one seems to be able to tell me how to regenerate whatever needs to be regenerated in our bespoke systems. I’ve long thought the world would make more sense if it operated on a ‘my mate Kev’ vouching system, which even with all its faults would be better than carrying three phones round.

There has to be a better answer in the cyber security space than MFA surely? It’s 2023.

Current watch: Never Have I Ever – Created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher (love love love) a coming over age comedy drama based on Kaling own childhood, following the trials and tribulations of an Indian-American high school student following the sudden death of her father and making it through those tricky years of school. John McEnroe narrates 15 year old Devi Vishwakumar life, from her grief, to her first kiss, that awkward crush on the hottest boy in school, right through to that first term at college. I think the mix of character narrations and actual story telling makes this a really compelling watch and I do love it when the fourth wall gets broken. The show over the 4 series has come in for some critical acclaim as well as some critical response for its character representation, but I binge watched the final series in a few sittings and it felt like a really nice end to the show.

Current read:
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by David Ariely – This was a recommendation to get my ‘what next’ thought process going, the tag line is ‘Why do smart people make irrational decisions every day? The answers will surprise you” and while yes, also no not really. I suspect this book may be wildly enlightening for those who travel through the world relatively unaware of the biases and influences that shape the offering available to them on the daily, but even a modicum of self-awareness would give you a clue about the likely outcome of the experiments. Ariely, a behavioural economist, clearly explains the basis of the experiment and the hypothesis that it’s looking to explore in a fun and intriguing way, what grates a little is the extrapolation of findings based on college kids to the greater world, the decisions I made at University are quite different to those I would make now and vice versa, so it feels a little too like sweeping statements in that sense. Taking it all a little less seriously it is witty, accessible and interesting and I am all up for all of those things as a jumping off point for anyone who thinks they could have an interest in something they’re not sure is there thing.

Most Impactful Listen: Changes with Annie Macmanus and Josh Widdicombe – I’ve grown up with Annie my entire life on Radio 1, she is a joy to watch live behind the decks and she is a advocate for positive and inclusive change, Changes is her podcasts where she chats with writers, artists and generally fascinating people about how they have navigated changes in lives, changes from childhood, changes as a grown up and changes they would like to see in the world. I was especially drawn to this weeks guest Josh Widdicombe, who I admire greatly, maybe slightly influenced by the comfort and support his book Watching Neighbours Twice a Day…: How ’90s TV (Almost) Prepared Me For Life gave me during a medical incident last year, where I was mostly alone in A&E, Minor Injuries and Plastics department of Stoke Mandeville hospital. It felt like listening to two of my friends meet each other for the first time, I see myself in Josh’s childhood completely. We could have been weird friends for sure, what most struck me was his change he’d like to see in the world that he is living now, 50 days no drinking that very day, I am currently exploring my sobriety mostly on health grounds, but this explanation rings very true for a period of life for sure.

• “Learn to change your mind”
• Can someone tell me how I should feel about AI already?
• BOGOF, will they won’t they?
• If you need to fake data, do not use Excel
• Kellogs is ditching its degree requirement

Learn to change your mind
Professor Irene Tracey, the current vice-chancellor of Oxford University has said that students need to learn how to change their minds to ensure free speech is protected. She has presided over an incredibly “intense period” of much conflict at Oxford Union, who does enjoy a controversial speaking engagement and a good protest.

I think the thing that got me thinking was that Tracey said that when she was a student “there was more ease in having debate and discussions and argument and disagreement” and I just can’t work out if that’s true or not.

I had a conversation with a colleague recently about the current “struggle” in life and the world and why it seems so fraught, and we came back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it’s all just GCSE Business Studies baby, we’re the generations with our lower needs met and now we are battling with our higher needs and it’s all new ground, it feels just as unsafe & insecure. I found that oddly comforting.

Can someone tell me how I should feel about AI already?
In the same week a new French AI start up raised Europe’s largest-ever seed round the European Parliament voted to reign in the technology due to “significant risk of harm to the health and safety of persons”.

So are we trusting Mistral AI, the trio of former researchers from Meta and Google who founded *checks calendar* four weeks ago, without a product, with €105m from a seed round and total funding round of €240mn or is AI going to kill us all? At this point, I am not fussed either way, but I do feel like I need to pick a side.

I’ve still yet to ask ChatGPT a question, or run myself through an image generator (because I know it will assume I am Asian because chubby cheeks, so no eyes when I smile) because what AI definitely does not need is more middle class, privileged white people data so maybe I still will always be on the fence, because AI shouldn’t be allowed to extrapolate on undeniably  biased data and use it to take over the world, because that’s not right or fair.

BOGOF, will they won’t they?
If you can cast your mind back to when Boris Johnson was PM, as part of the new obesity strategy he created a ban on BOGOF offers on “unhealthy” foods, which was postponed until October 2023 due to the cost-of-living crisis.

At the start of the week Ministers were pretty keen to say there was no change of plan to that date and on Wednesday even Rishi Sunak confirmed to the Commons that no decision had actually been made. So here we are now on Saturday with the announcement that the ban will be pushed back until 2025, once again citing consistently high food prices.

Cynically, I am just choosing to believe this is definitely general election related and absolutely nothing to do with how stuffed we are for 2 more years…

If you need to fake data, do not use Excel
I was quite tickled by this tweet this week, the jist being do you know excel or do you know love? Yeah, no I know excel. I also occasionally check in on DataColada which belongs to a professor of behavioural science, an applied statistics professor and a professor of Business Administration and Marketing because they look at research that interests them and gives a real peoples perspective in their analysis and opinion.

This weeks was a belter, the first in a four part series of fraud in academic papers co-authored by a Harvard Business School Professor in which faked data has been found in studies about dishonesty. Two things, one, you couldn’t make it up, two; you do not need to be a genius to know that Excel is the worst for faking data, why would you do it, use a proper programming language. I’m currently reading a book by one of the studies authors so I am very keen to see how this plays out.

Kellogs is ditching its degree requirement
The cereal giant this week has said it no longer requires prospective hires to have a degree to apply for most of its jobs, unless it’s a degree specific role, with the hope of becoming a more inclusive employer and I am here for this.

They had successfully trailed ditching the requirement amongst their field sales team in the last year and have now taken the decision to roll it out across the wider business, Kellogs is way ahead in creating an inclusive environment, having reached their female representation at management level target ahead of schedule and having a raft of other leading employee policies already in place that most other organisations can only dream of making possible.

Nothing frustrates me more than receiving a good candidate CV who fails some arbitrary requirement that actually adds no value to the role. You can’t teach enthusiasm and a want to learn but you can pass on pretty much everything else in most roles. Less gate keeping please!

Current watch: Grand Slam Poetry Champion – Harry Baker I have watched no TV this week & it’s been quite nice, but I did take myself on a date to see the wonderful Harry Baker at Buckingham Literary Festival and what a beautiful way to spend an hour of my life.

Harry is a gift to maths, a gift to poetry and unlike me don’t wait till you see him in real life to think he is a gift to the world, he absolutely is. He is so clever with words and numbers that even if you only like one, I think you’d struggle not to enjoy him.

Current read: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut – It’s hard to tell you who Billy Pilgrim really is and I don’t think he’d be able to tell you. A biographical work of fiction, honesty and insanity sometimes really are the best of friends.

Billy is unstuck in time, having lived a horrific and joyful life he is able to move seamlessly back in his recollections, from hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse the night Dresden was destroyed, to the moments of “normality” on display in a zoo on Tralfamadore, the planet to which he has been abducted by aliens. The horror is horrific but that just makes the absurd that much more joyful. While never stated as such, it felt profoundly like the most beautiful expression of PTSD I’ve ever read, there is as much in the lines as between them.

Most Impactful Listen: Marianna in Conspiracyland – Hosted by Mirianna Spring the BBC’s Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent (cool job). This 10 part short episode series sees Spring investigates the legacy of the rise of the conspiracy movement in the UK. Having had my own problem with a conspiracy theorist in the pandemic that Thames Valley Police were very helpful in resolving, I am extremely interested in the push and pull factors of how people end up down the rabbit hole, especially in the UK. This is not Springs first look at just how it happens in the UK, her series Death by Conspiracy that came out last year was also fascinating.

• English Universal Basic Income Trials
• Embarrassing Excel mistakes
• ‘Duck’ around and find out
• Boris Johnsons weird resignation
• Can the CBI survive?

English Universal Basic Income Trials
England is set to have its first Universal Basic Income Trial, Autonmy is looking for funding to support its 2-year proposal with a trial in the North East and London. The pilot is for 30 people to be paid £1,600 per month as a basic income to understand how it will affect lives.

There is nothing expected in return for that money, <insert your own Rishi Sunak loan joke here>, the pilot wants to assess the potential benefits and any downsides of implementing UBI in the future, it could revolutionize the way we think of the welfare system and address poverty.

I’ve been wanting to have a real discussion about UBI for years now, it’s not very capitalist of me which is why I like it as discussion topic but there have been a few things in my recent lived history where you’d struggle to argue that UBI wouldn’t have made that situation better for people.

Embarrassing Excel mistakes
What’s the most embarrassing mistake excel has ever helped you make? This week it sucked to be the Austrian Social Democrats who announced the wrong leader following a #NULL error in their spreadsheet. Ouch.

Double ouch that the error wasn’t spotted internally but by a journalist who raised the query with the party’s electoral commission and the whole process took 2 days to rectify and re-announce the correct winner.

We’ve all made mistakes using excel, I once went on a second date due to a formula error, I was utterly convinced there couldn’t be a mistake because excel basically holds up the worlds financial systems, nope turns out I had made an error. Now you will find lots of little separate check calculations I add after the fact using different logic to prove the results and even still, I get it wrong sometimes.

‘Duck’ around & find out
Apple is consigning the “ducking” autocorrect to the tomes of history as it promises to no longer autocorrect the F word to the D word in its iOS 17 upgrade due in September, which while hugely frustrating in a social setting is probably an absolute life saver in the workplace.

The origin of the proposed change is probably what is most interesting here as its come from quite a powerful class of AI that learns context by tracking relationships in data, algebra for words. I find the origins of predictive text quite fascinating as it lies in the Enron Corpus, the social impact of just having that much data out in the world.

I don’t have an issue with swearing, I don’t like or condone swearing at someone, that is incredibly rude but sometimes there are just no other ways to quickly convey a sense of gravity than an appropriately placed swear word. Conscious its not for everyone and you only find out by well…ducking around. On a side note if Rachael could stop being auto corrected to Racial that would also improve my life by about 35%, thanks!

Boris Johnsons weird resignation
Oh where do we begin? Well, whenever I go abroad good things happen to bad Tories & why would this holiday be any different? To probably badly quote Martin Luther King, Jr.; “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” With Donald Trump facing 37 criminal charges & Boris Johnson resigning from Parliament, I think its safe to say the arc has been long & the bend towards justice only slight.

It seemed unlikely the Commons Privileges Committee was going to find that Johnson hadn’t mislead parliament over the Partygate scandal but based on his relationship with the truth it’s entirely plausible that he genuinely thought they would.

For someones whose career has revolved entirely on his ability to articulate himself in writing his resignation reads like a desperate ramble of a mad man claimimg the committee was a “kangeroo court” whose sole purpose was to find him guilty “regardless of the facts”. Standing down meerly hours after the publication of the absolutely stellar selection of post resignation honours he wished to hand out were announced (just imagine the ones who didn’t make it) , we can but hope those follow him swiftly out the door & straight into the bin.

Can the CBI survive?
The CBI has won a key confidence vote this week, with a whopping 93% of its membership supporting the plans to reform the organisation following sexual misconduct within the group, including two claims of rape that are currently under police investigation.

But can the CBI really survive this one? With much of its membership still suspended or ceased including 50 of its highest-profile members. I think you’d have to be an eternal optimist to see it.

How can a lobbying institution, albeit a slimmed down one with the intention of cutting it’s wage bill by a third, be successful without influence. Even Rishi Sunak refused to say if the Government will re-establish a relationship (Psst, it’s not very Tory to like the CBI, so I think that’s all but a no) which essentially leaves it sitting duck while its membership slowly fades away, probably to the BCC, which has its own problems.

Current watch:  Easy – After the finale of Succession, I needed some mental floss and you couldn’t want more than Easy, it’s an anthology series made up of 25 half hour episodes set in Chicago.

There is no requirement to watch them in order, they are all standalone episodes, there are some recurring themes and characters but that doesn’t mean you need to know their origin story.

While the accountant in me is very much a rule square, the rest of me very much enjoyed the freedom to flick about the episodes, read the plot and wonder if that’s the subject I want to ponder about today or not.

Current read:
Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict by Elizabeth Day – Oh I don’t even know where to begin with this one, I had the absolute pleasure of attending the book launch for this with a wonderful friend, we enjoyed day in London together rounded off by and evening with Elizabeth Day being interviewed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge at the Southbank Centre way back in March.

I felt compelled to listen this to this an audiobook, if you don’t listen to Days How to Fail Podcast, this is also your sign, what a wonderful book, routed primarily in her own self enquiry it is deeply personal, good and bad, but so generally useful in its findings and research about the impacts and importance of friendships.

The mental floss of performing a friendship audit helped me rationalise and reflect on events and friendships past, present and future. As a deeply private person, it helped me recognise where I probably don’t show up in friendships in ways I would expect them to understand. I definitely feel like this earns a place in the keep to hand category, dip in and out of again category.

Most Impactful Listen: Paper Cuts – A general recommendation based on two episodes, Paper Cuts is out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays hosted by Miranda Sawyer with a panel of guests discussing headlines and delving a little deeper in stories of interest. They read the newspapers so you don’t have too, which depending on the newspaper in question is more often than not quite a relief.

I’ve really enjoyed both episodes I’ve caught this week and found a genuine little more interest in a couple of stories had I read the headline I’d have probably carried on by. It’s funny and clever and helps keep up with what’s going on in the nicest way possible.

• Please recycle less but better
• Do headphones divide offices or make them functional for all?
• Why Literary festivals are more than just books
• Even NASA want better data
• I need to talk about Succession – no spoilers

Please recycle less but better
A seemingly odd request when the world is simultaneously on fire and drowning, but it’s true. An excellent piece in the Inews has called out that people will be advised to recycle less as part of the Government overhaul to waste management.

Termed “wishcycling” a lot of things that end up in the recycling bins are not in fact recyclable, we put them in there solely to make ourselves feel better but they actually cause significant problems in the recycling process. From seemingly innocuous things like small bits of foil that the splitting machines just can’t detect, much better to start a foil ball and put it in when it has reached a substantial size. Your paper takeaway coffee cup? Has plastic in it which is incredibly hard to separate, your pizza box, that is entirely cardboard? That greasy pizza ring can contaminate a surprisingly amount of other non-contaminated cardboard for recycling.

Do headphones divide offices or make them functional for all?
The Sunday Times has asked whether headphones in the workplace are “dividing colleagues” and citing the increase in usage being down to being able to listen to music and podcasts when we were working from home in the pandemic, which seems very on brand for the Times. Citing Debrett’s, the 250-year-old British guide to etiquette: “If you work in an open-plan office where there is frequent conversation and interchange of ideas between colleagues, do not wear AirPods or headphones.”

I’ve worn headphones in the office for most of my career, I don’t function at my best in an open plan office on a floor of 200+ people talking about a lot of things all at once, nor a smaller office with more than about 5 other quiet people in. I usually only have one in, in the ear away from colleagues, sometimes I am listening to something, most of the time I am just using them for noise cancelling. I never mind being interrupted by colleagues and I don’t use them to exclude dialogue and important conversations, I just use them as a tool to help me focus, much like when bosses just get to be unavailable and get to close their office doors.

Why Literary Festivals are more than just books
Don’t get my wrong, books are important but the soundbytes coming from Hays Literary Festival again this week just make me remember how important they are in the world, the enquiry and the discussion between writers and audiences is almost more important than the books themselves.

The most interesting discussion to come out of Hay Festival this week was Patrick Vallance, probably the only Government Chief Scientific Adviser anyone will ever be able to name in history, he has called for greater research into the use of psychedelics as a tool for mental health. This was prompted solely from an audience question about their 107 year old grandmother who has depression. There has been many decades of interest in psychedelics and Vallance confirmed there was a lot of enthusiasm at the moment and questioned why we don’t work it out properly.

This long read from the FT back in March has stayed with me, the story of Aly and her journey with Anorexia and psychedelics contrasted with Ekaterina’s story and the mission and values of Compass and just how hard it is to secure funding for research and trials, even when the results seem so positive because well…drugs.

Just FYI, Vallance did warn not to slip your grandmother an ecstasy tablet just in case anyone was wondering.

Even NASA wants better data
It’s been a week at work this week so it was nice to know that even NASA is like if you want us to find things we need better data. NASA this week confirmed they have not found alien life and that of the staggering number of unidentified flying object reports they receive that really only a very small amount remain truly unexplained.

Sean Kirkpatrick of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (cool job) said they receive around 50-100 new reports of sightings each month and only 2% to 5% of those fall into that truly unexplained category. Why so low? The quality of data submitted isn’t quite what they need. Eyewitness reports aren’t enough to provide conclusive proof and you absolutely know trying to capture a video of anything in the sky with any phone always basically looks like you’ve filmed it with a potato.

Next time you’re sat at work thinking this doesn’t make sense, there is no useful insight here, the data is awful. Know you are not alone, even NASA just wish people would record things better.

I need to talk about Succession
The ending was perfect, and this is a hill I am prepared to die on. You may come at with me with your bad opinions, but I can assure you that was probably never what the show was about. Everything ended exactly as it should, they all got what they earnt or deserved.

I don’t want to talk spoilers, but I do question your commitment if you’ve been there this whole time and you’ve not finished it yet, but if like me you are the first finisher amongst your friends please let me sign post some wonderful comforting podcasts that might just act as the emotional ant acid you need while you wait.

First up the HBOs Succession Podcast S4 E10 Part 2 “With Open Eyes” with Director / Producer Mark Mylod Kara Swisher and Mark Mylod talk through the last half of the episode, the characters, the intention, the styling. This was the comforting hug I didn’t realise I needed.

Up next Oh God, What Now  – Succession Finale: Goodbye to the Beastie Roys Andrew Harrison, Hannah Fearn and Alex Andreou talk ALL things finale, touching on all the important moments, including what it was like to watch it as a women, like the long winding chat down the pub I really needed.

What an achingly beautiful show through and through, right to the end. The most beautiful, awful goodbye. I’m going to miss those strings.

Current watch:  Anatomy of a Scandal – Happy to be well over a year late to the party on this one, because now I know I didn’t get caught up in the hype. David E Kelley has a special place in my heart (Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal…I could go on) and along with Melissa James Gibson they created a masterpiece based on Sarah Vaughan’s novel.

The story follows Sophie Whitehouse, the wife of a prominent Tory MP, after her life is blown apart when she learns of her husband’s affair which results in him standing trial accused of rape. The story comes full circle right back to where their relationship began.

It’s dark and clever and if you’ve ever had anything to do with Oxbridge of old, probably likely a little too close for comfort.

Current read: 8 Rules of love – How to find it, keep it and let it go by Jay Shetty – I was heavily influenced by informal yoga book club on this one and while I initially was really sceptical, it just felt like the diary of a smug married, I did really enjoy this book when it got passed the concept of romantic love.

I am probably a little more receptive to this book as I am in myself love healing era and enjoyed the roadmap to modern love with all the references to eastern philosophies, the input from other professionals and the tangible advice and practices to help with that self-reflection piece that we just don’t do. Absolutely not a book for everyone, it’ll make you think and maybe sit in discomfort, but you will probably realise something.

Most Impactful Listen: The Intelligence from The Economist – Cash out: the digital-payments revolution – Jason Palmer, who sounds like melted chocolate, and Ore Ogunbiyi talk us through the shift in global digital payments and how it is more than just a matter of convenience, cash is no longer king falling 25% pp in the last decade, thanks to digital payments. UPI in India is fascinating and it’s just nice to have some coverage that isn’t crypto based. The podcast also covers the future of Singapore’s Golden Mile and recommends 3 books that document some of history’s greatest hoaxes, what is not to love?

• WhatsApp edit function goes global
• Should schools teach arguing?
• Introverting in a room of people people
• Winnie-the-Poohs catchy new slogan
• A night by the canal

WhatsApp edit function goes global
Rumour has it you can now edit your WhatsApp messages, I’ve not tried it but apparently this week Meta announced it would start rolling out the edit functionality globally the coming weeks, “From correcting a simple misspelling to adding extra context to a message, we’re excited to bring you more control over your chats,” it said in a blog post.

But don’t get too excited, the message will append with an ‘edited’ to tell exactly everyone you’ve made a mistake, arguably less embarrassing to just delete the message and retype it.

The internet has long called for an edit function, it’s literally all Twitter users have been screaming for a decade, but there is no real rival pushing this on, not so for Meta and Whatsapp with rival apps including Telegram and Signal already full on edit function fans.

Should schools teach arguing?
When I had initially heard that Alastair Campbell said that he thought that schools should teach ‘arguing’ in classes at The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts this week I might have rolled my eyes and thought this is exactly what Alastair Campbell would think is a good idea.

I do have a lot of time for Alastair Campbell, I don’t always agree with everything he says, but actually I do listen when he speaks and that is sort of his teaching arguing in schools point. In a world that entirely operates on conflict, some are impassable but actually most are not. You can be brilliant friends with people you disagree with on a whole range of subjects and maybe in the world of polarising extremes and supposed “culture wars”, the thought about learning how to argue and disagree isn’t all that stupid at all.

He suggested the idea of calling it “arguing”, “policy” or “big issues” and while none of these sound like the best name that would get kids signing up, I definitely think there should be room on the curriculum for more how to live life stuff.

Winnie-the-Poohs catchy new statement
In the same week after nearly 100 years, a library book was finally returns, Winnie-the-Pooh is now offering advice on what to do if a gunman comes to your school.

The Guardian has reported that a book produced by local law enforcement has been given to school children in Texas. The book features the EH Shepard illustrations of my youth alongside the phrase “If there is danger, let Winnie-the-Pooh and his Crew show you what to do: Run Hide Fight”.

As of January 2022 Winnie-the-Pooh is no longer subject to copyright and is in the public domain, there is no permission or fee required to use the characters or the setting…I can’t help but think this probably isn’t what A.A Milne would have wanted.

Introverting in a room full of people people
I work with people people, people are their speciality and they are really good at peopling, by contrast I am not. I have limited abilities to people and the worst luck, so of course I had just about reached my people limit the day before the first all company meet up where I would finally get to physically see a lot of the wonderful people I work with who make me genuinely believe people are alright sometimes.

Want to know what made it worse? I had to sneak off to grab my laptop and do some work in the space where it was designated no work was required, I then had to be that guy who checked her phone all afternoon just in case there was something else I needed to move on because payday is important and doesn’t care you’d rather be doing something else and you can guarantee come payday everyone would have wished you’d done the payroll and not the something else.

All is well that ends well, but I do envy people who can just turn it all off and people.

A night by the Canal
I’m lucky to have an amazing friend Liz, who does amazing things…like running 145 miles down canals (Kennet and Avon, Grand Union, Leeds & Liverpool) and she is so good at running along canals, she even does it again the other way when its uphill when given the chance.

When she asked if I would help crew, the answer was ‘of course’ and when I volunteered for the night shift solo, she very kindly said ‘yes’. My heart is so full, I am never happier than when I am on, in or near water and the peace of the night on the British waterways is like nothing you’ve experienced before. The weather was perfect, maybe a little too warm to a little too cold for running but for crew duties, which is essentially just turning up at various points with snacks, drinks and kinds words, it was absolutely perfect.

There is also all the admins, so I get to get my clipboard on, my rubbyouty pens and do running maths. Liz finished her race and it was absolute honour to be a tiny part of that.

Current watch:  Canal Boat Diaries – I saved this entire series to watch the day of crewing, you cannot pre-sleep to stay up for 48+hours, you just have to rest. Robbie Cummings welcomes your aboard his narrow boat the Naughty Lass on his journey from Sheffield to Braunston over what can only be described as a magical autumn/winter on the water.

Robbie is very honest about boat life and the historic significance of Britains Waterways, it is my ultimate feel-good TV. Highly recommend. No better prep for 17 hours along the Grand Union.

Current read:
What They Don’t Teach You About Money: Seven Habits to Unlock Financial Independence by Claer Barrett – Claer is the FT’s consumer editor and host of the FT’s Money Clinic podcast, both her Serious Money column and the podcast are not to be missed. The minute she let the world know she was writing a book about the things she wished people knew about finances I knew it would be accessible, straight forward and genuinely useful.

While Claer has some serious knowledge to share, she does it with kindness, humour and understanding, it’s the honest conversation we should all be having about our finances, without the judgement or expectation that usually comes with having those conversations in the very few settings we currently do, either from your family or a financial adviser. This book is for all ages, those who’re just starting their money journey and those of us on our way who might feel like they’ve left it too late, I cannot stress how useful this book is.

Most Impactful Listen: Stuff you should know – What is the Bechdel Test? – Am I really recommending a podcast by two men talking about the measure of representation of women in film? Yes I am. Josh and Chuck are really good at explaining stuff you should know, they explain what the measure is, how it came to be and some of the surprising films that do and don’t pass the test, they also cover the history of why that might be the case. I really enjoyed the episode, much to even my own surprise, even though it spectacularly failed the Bechdel test!