Rachael McKelvey

• 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.

• 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.