Rachael McKelvey

• Say what you see: Is University Challenge biased?
• We have now entered the plastic age
• Are you kind to AI?
• New Pepsi, who dis?
• April Fools Day

Say what you see: Is University Challenge biased?
Currently on its 52^nd series and its 61^st year on air the question has finally been asked, is University Challenge biased towards the Oxbridge Institution? Spoiler alert: They’re not hiding it, but kudos to Frank Coffield emeritus professor of education at University College London for putting in that information request and campaigning for fairer entry rules for the show.

Both Cambridge and Oxford have over 30 colleges and each of them are all eligible under the entry criteria, with the current series of University Challenge featuring the lowest number of entries from across the Oxbridge institution…eight. While other Universities of multi colleges are not eligible.

Not the only complaint about University Challenge this month, with the age of a certain UCL competitor of question, even against the average age of the opposing team. I know its not very on brand, but University Challenge has always been very much say what you see…Questionable “students” from many a fine but usually Oxbridge or other legacy red brick institution.

We have now entered the plastic age
So here we are, its happened. The geology of the Trindade Islands is now made up rocks made of plastic debris…Trindade being an uninhabited volcanic island off the coast of Brazil that is a site of great significance for the protection of green turtle populations.

So while there is no one on the island purchasing and discarding said plastic, no island is immune from marine currents. The rocks found upon testing were made up of a mix of sedimentary sand and debris that was held together by melted and fused plastic from fishing nets. Once dislodged and washed ashore with the rises in temperature the plastic melts and fuses with natural beach material.

Pollution reaching geology is alarming, it’s now in the Earth’s geographical record…and history does what history has done…the stone age…stone, the ice age…ice and now we have plastic in the record.

New Pepsi, who dis?
So I’m one of those rare ones who answers the question “is Pepsi okay?” with its better! Ahead of its 125th birthday Pepsi is rebranding, again. I say again unfairly, it’s been 15 years since the last rebrand but that feels like minutes because I’m old now & I didn’t (& don’t still) love the current design, it’s just not my thing, it feels too flimsy and it’s kind of funny looking.

Fortunately for me, focus groups around the new birthday redesign strongly favoured the earlier designs from the 80’s and early 90’s with the name into the logo & the bolder look. The new design certainly delivers. First launching in North America this year but being let loose on the rest of the world in 2023, the new logo feels like a very bold design, tangibly digital and very lift and shift stick on anything anywhere which I think is the point, hello licensing options. It is very early mid 90’s soda stream vibes. 

Pepsi has always trailed Coke for market share and since the spin off of both its juice brands in recent years it’s revenue growth is entirely down to pricing strategy and increase in customers, does this new design give away any ideas of what lies ahead?

Are you kind to AI?
I think you might have had to be living under a rock to have missed the open letter from the Future of Life institute from some pretty big players in the field of AI proposing a hold on development in order to avoid “loss of control of civilisation” amongst some other things…And if you have been living under the rock is there room for one more because I’m tired.

But is now the time to invoke Roko’s basilisk just to hedge ones bets? While a thought experiment now might be the time to start thanking your AI of choice for its contribution to the world, just in case it really does go on to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who didn’t contribute to its advancement or development.

I’ve yet to ask a question or make a direct contribution to the current wave of AI bots, of which in March alone…exploded exponentially, but I figure in terms of the digital footprint my lifetime has seen, there is probably enough data to consider that I’ve made a contribution. Much like the Enron corpus you have to thank for predictive text, everything we do online creates fodder and I over contributed to group work as a kid, never again.

April Fools Day
Can we all agree its awful and just cancel it? On account of it being dreadful and now just marketing cringe. PLEASE?

It’s fair to say I also think its quite mean spirited it, in a world that is quite frankly mostly awful pranks and jokes are just well not funny and I do find them the exclusive preserve of people I don’t really like. Mostly because I am what other people would call “gullible” and what I like to think of as everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt even the people I don’t really like to be allowed to trustworthy even if I don’t trust them.

That aside it’s now just unfunny marketing jokes that then have to recounted for days and its just tiresome. Can we just call is March 32nd and be done with it?

Current watch:  Ross Edgley attempts 72 hours non-stop swimming world record – If you’ve never heard of Ross Edgley, get comfortable and prepare to be amazed. Ross’ latest adventure he attempted the longest non-stop open water swim in Loch Ness, the outcome was either win or nearly die trying. This gorgeous short film by GymShark Originals captures the challenge perfectly.

Ross Edgley is no stranger to weird and wild challenges, Triathlon carrying a 100lb tree? Nailed it. Marathon pulling a 1.4 tonne car? Nailed it. 100 miles barefoot with a 50kg backpack? Nailed it. Climbed the equivalent of Everest up a rope? You can guess. And there is more.

Current read: Fight Like A Girl by Clementine Ford – A no holds barred walk through 21^st century feminism and should be essential reading for everyone. It’s not an easy read, harrowing statistics alongside awkwardly honest anecdotes really do act as a call to arms to march on with the emotionally draining task of showing up in the world as a women and challenge the patriarchy and fighting for equality for all.

Most Impactful Listen: People I (mostly) Admire – Adding Ten Healthy Years To Your Life  – Another podcast from the Freakonomics podcast, Steve Levitt talks to Physician Peter Attia, for his second appearance on the show about longevity, in a world obsessed with living the longest but still fairly rare to focus on making sure those years are worth living. 

The hour is spent discussing the limits but also the potential for modern medicine and Peters best advice on playing the aging game, the discussion around medicine 3.0 was fascinating. The Hippocratic oath of economists also made me laugh and is something I think I shall endeavour to remember in times of strife. 

• Repopulating a city
• Friendship with Elizabeth Day & Phoebe Waller-Bridge
• Shou Zi Chew and all the cringe from Congress
• US Book Banners hit the books hard
• John Lewis: Dismantling an institution

Repopulating a city
Would you go do your job abroad with a concierge service to help repopulate a city? Venice needs you. The city is actively looking to entice digital nomads, the totally remote workers and freelancers to move to the city to help bolster city population, fill vacant properties and office and boost spending in the local economy.

With Venice looking to embrace being a city for residents, rather than a city for tourists with the new tourist tax and cruise ships no longer docking in the centre, there wouldn’t be a better time to want to live a life in Venice than now.

Oh boy do I wish something like this was possible when I was younger and would I encourage any young person I met now with even a vague hint of wanderlust to look into doing a scheme like this, absolutely. There will soon come a time where life gives you reasons it’s not feasible, even if you don’t have children.

Friendship with Elizabeth Day & Phoebe Waller-Bridge
I had the absolute pleasure of seeing Elizabeth Day in conversation with Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the absolutely gorgeous National Theatre at the Southbank Centre to celebrate the release of Elizabeths new book on Friendship, as a self-proclaimed friendaholic the book explores all things friendship, from both a philosophical and research perspective to real life case studies.

The book is in my tbr pile, but I would like some kudos for not panic buying a hardback and sticking with my pre-order of the kindle edition, because don’t need another physical books, but just from the conversation between Elizabeth and Phoebe I definitely think it’d going to hit me in the feels and while I don’t think I have a problem determining the difference between when I mean friend vs when being friendly I do wonder if the time I put into my “friendships” is as well spent as it could be.

Elizabeth went to the lengths of interviewing some of her best friends to do that audit (Phoebe did her best to deflect her questions) and while I absolutely will not be doing that with my friends I definitely think it’s something in the relationships area of my life that needs work

Shou Zi Chew and all the cringe from Congress
Well the balance of cringe has at least been restored, on this side of the pond it was the person getting questioned who set off our collective cringe glands and after seeing some of the coverage of Congress questioning TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, it was those asking the questions who set our collective cringe glands, so net effect from official government questionings this week is net nil.

Shout out to those survived over four hours of questioning and those who asked questions for over four hours but honestly. Tech experts rarely get an easy ride in front of Congress but I think this was next level mind melting…so rarely do Republicans and Democrats agree on anything but they are united in thinking that TikTok poses a threat to national security and want to ban the app entirely from the US and it felt like there was little Chew could do convince Congress otherwise when he could get a world in edgewise and when he was asked an actual question that made sense.

While the UK government has mandated that TikTok needs to be removed from government devices, I’m inclined to agree with the conclusion from the discussion between Hannah Moore and Alex Hern on Tuesdays Today in Focus podcast – Should you delete tiktok, that if you think you should delete TikTok from your phone because of security concerns then you definitely should have already deleted it based on the impact it’s having to your brain.

US Book banner hit the books hard
This week the Friday newsletter from Chartr shared some data around the attempted book bans in the US and just how far they have soared post pandemic, where they slumped by about half to less than 200 in 2020.

Over the last to year have reached a whopping 1,269 demands to ban or restrict access to resources in America’s public and school libraries last year with 2,572 unique titles being targeted for censorship with the majority of books challenged written by or about LGBTQ+ and people of colour…in 2022.

This is one to keep an eye on as the American Library Association are going to release the top 10 most challenge books on Monday 24^th April for National Library week and all this in the same week that Bloomsbury raised their profit forecasts with readers turning to fantasy books to escape reality.

John Lewis: Dismantling an institution
It was announced this week that the John Lewis Partnership are looking to explore the sale of a minority stake in the business to raise funds, if successful the business would not longer be 100% owned by its staff which it has been for 70 years. The Partnership is looking for up to £2billion in new investment and with the cost of the restructure that would be required to take Waitrose and John Lewis out of employee owned hands this is a significant moment.

It’s not secret that the retail group is struggling with inflation an falling sales with pre-tax losses of £234m to year ended January, up from a quite significant smaller loss last year of £27m. The high street is hardly the first place anyone goes for anything anymore and its chicken and egg. If you do venture the high street you want fantastic customer service but with staff shortages and cost pushes staffing is one lever to pull to close the gap but then that further disincentivises people to venture to the high street.

Current watch:  Panorama – Surviving the pay squeeze – Wages are not keeping up with inflation and it feels like a real terms pay cut, how do you absorb the price increases when there is little you can do to move the needle on your income, but why does it feel like this? The Government say one thing, but the reasons are many and go back many years. Ros Atkins goes back to the town he was born in, in Cornwall, to meet people struggling to make ends meet and explains why wages are stagnating and living standards are declining compared to other wealthy nations.

Current read: Alchemy: The Magic of Original Thinking in a World of Mind-Numbing Conformity by Rory Sutherland – Ogilvy advertiser Rory Sutherland explains why logic is one thing but how casting aside that logic is the real insight to solving any problem. A real master piece in the need to always remember behavioural science can trump any business forecast, economic outlook or governmental strategy. People are weird and its well worth remembering that. Any advocate of thinking less, is a friend of mine, I do this thing with my hands when I offer a solution my right hand moves from top to bottom to mimic the logic and thought that has gone into the solution, then my left hand does this like this outline of a cloud motion to indicate all the other stuff and I usually say ‘there is all this other stuff’. Rarely have I been so excited to read a book as I was this one.

Most Impactful Listen: Today In Focus – Should you delete TikTok – it couldn’t not be! With the UK government joining other big nations in ordering government officials to remove the TikTok app from their work devices amid security concerns Alex Hern and Hannah Moore explore how likely it is that Chinese Tech owners ByteDance would allow access to sensitive data to the Chinese government given the questionable history of how it has used data in the past. Worried at all about the impact of TikTok, this is a must listen.

• That’s going straight in the CPI basket
• Not quite what they meant when the task was “boring budget”
• Elder millennial midlife crisis
• Credit Suisse might exit the chat
• A change is not as good as a rest

That’s going straight in the CPI basket
The current CPI basket of goods and services is a whopping 743 items long, with 26 items added and 16 items removed in this update.

Apparently e-bikes are in, surveillance cameras, frozen berries and infants dresses, the new additions reflect categories where there has been significant growth in consumer spend, most people have a ring door bell, e-bikes are on the rise and frozen fruit is a real money saving alternative to fresh…I can’t comment on infants dresses!

The WHOOO’s leaving the basket are digital cameras, alcopops and non chart CDs and DVDs bought in store probably because our camera’s are now in our phones, alcohol is better represented by other items in the basket and well non chart music and film are all on streaming services.

The categories expand and contract based on nuances in the market, “postal charges” as a whole have been dropped and replaced with new items for letter and parcel handling services, which probably better help the impact of inflation faced by consumers.

As always, all the data is available for you to peruse and if you’re anything like me go ‘whose buying that’ but each to their own. I’ve just realised quite how excited I get about ONS data…which considering I spent years attempting to dodge completing ONS returns and failing spectacularly for a decade!

Not quite what they meant when they said “boring budget”
Well, there are ways to have the required pre election budget budget, that typically involve the routine announcements and keeping the status quo, but kudos to Jeremy Hunt there is also basically telling all your favourite newspapers in advance and well just being Jeremy Hunt at the despatch box.

Which admittedly in this case had its advantages, talking with peers and colleagues around the budget I was astounded how few had realised that not only was it a weird budget, some carrots but most predominantly sticks and some massive glaringly empty holes, but that it was also predicated on accepting the biggest fall in living standards since records began.

Six percent! I am not down with that, for such little return in investment in public sector services, potholes have no place of being mentioned in the house of commons, childcare reform and support is well overdue but unlikely to succeed without going further and growth in investment isn’t going to happen with a 3 year capital allowance expansion on the table, it’s just not long enough to generate anything sustainable.

Elder Millennials midlife crisis
No great surprise that millennials are now approaching middle age and it’s not what we expected, the NY Times isn’t wrong. For the avoidance of doubt nothing is as expected, it has all be a con. We grew up in a time of relative abundance and naively assumed that this might continue for our benefit. Wrong.

People joke about wanting to live in precedented times again, AGAIN? When where we as a generation ever conscious for some precedented times? We are hitting our mid lives with early adult money with parents who ultimately wanted for very little and I have no doubt my parents worked very hard but when your Dad texts you pensions advice after the budget the gist of which was all your spare money should go into your pension so you can retire early…Early? A change to retire would be nice, I don’t think there is anyone under the age of about 45 who thinks we’re actually going to get to retire much before our mid 70’s and to make matters worse the liberal in us probably on balance don’t think that’s unreasonable if we’re all now going to be living till 100, who wants to retire at 55 and still have 45 years to wait out if you don’t have the money.

I do genuinely believe that no generation has ever had it together and knows what they are doing, but I do feel our need to have a more adultier adult around is because we face a greater amount of uncertainty than our parents generation, which ironically says quite a lot about the state of everything.

Credit Suisse might exit the chat
167 year old Credit Suisse has asked SVB to hold its beer. Bank runs really are a tale as old as time…but you know what is, for want of a better phrase, more erratic than venture capitalist backed Tech companies? Billionaires.

Credit Suisse shares have plummeted and it is no enemy of a scandal, or two or three and while the UK had its eyes firmly on Jeremy Hunt, the markets had already expressed their negative opinion of the bank by coffee time by pricing in its probability of default at 38%, and while it looked like the $54bn lifeline loan from the Swiss National Banks might be enough, it is now being looked at Switzerland’s biggest bank for UBS for a takeover.

Is this the start of a run on the banks…I think we can take heart in that the dominoes are falling slowly that this isn’t a banking crisis like we’ve seen before, but I do think this will flush out some potential crisis, probably from bad decisions, in some banks.

A change is not as good as a rest
I want a rest! It has been all change, the boy is on holiday (skiing) and the chickens are on holiday at the boarding orchard for a week, where they get to be surrounded by boarding cats, green grass and fallen apples and then there is me, still doing everything as normal except without having to feed and put the chickens to bed twice a day and having anyone to talk too.

Once again I have romanticised these breaks as responsibility free, doing what I like, absolute nonsense of times…and in reality it just isn’t that. I don’t take a holiday so why would it be like a holiday? The last time I did take a holiday, I ended up in hospital and the boy had to fly home from skiing early, so that doesn’t appeal much to me either.

I have done approximately no things on my to do list, I have tried quite miserably to succeed in some things I thought would be easier without distraction, it was not. Honestly, I do not know what is wrong with me!

Current watch:  Comic Relief – The Traitors for Comic Relief – Oh my days, it may have only been 11 minutes, but it was amazing. If you even vaguely enjoyed the Traitors this parody is hilarious. Dawn French is sublime and that alone was worth a donation to Red Nose Day.

Current read: Culture is Everything: The Story And System Of A Start-Up That Became Australia’s Best Place To Work by Tristan White – The awkward first audiobook I couldn’t decided if I liked or not. This is part origin story, part handbook on how to build culture, Tristan shares the blueprint of how he super charged average performing The Physio Co into 2014’s best place to work in Australia list.

Tristan’s passion in this book is obvious, but he admits he realised his purpose was not what he thought it was when he first started out, the book is everything he has learnt on his journey, with useful references and resources (tristanwhite.com.au) so you can take what you need and implement what you can. It’s a quick read, or listen that could really make some impact.

Most Impactful Listen: Nudge – Five Ads that changed the world – I flipping love this podcast, but this episode…chefs kiss, no notes. With the tagline behavioural science made simple this episode does not disappoint. From toothpaste, to leaders and even Santa Claus, the ad’s in this show are over 50 years old and just show how advertisement has changed the world, dare to imagine the impact of some of the current adverts will have in 50 years time!

• Dormant accounts scheme pays out
• My international Women’s Day
• Do you want to live to 100?
• What bird flu means to me
• What’s going on with SVB?

Dormant Asset Scheme Pay-out
Under the Dormant Assets Scheme £76 million from dormant accounts are to be released by HRMC this week to support people with the costs of living. The money is being distributed to individuals to support getting out of debt and to social enterprise schemes to support energy saving solutions.

The main aim of the dormant assets scheme is to reunite people with lost funds, however it’s not always possible and so is transferred to the scheme to support good causes, currently limited by legislation to youth, financial inclusion, and social investment initiatives.

Currently the schemes reach is only forgotten bank accounts and building society accounts, but its remit is being extended out to include insurances, pensions and even wealth management and securities which is likely to generate £880 million into the scheme.

The scheme is an interesting one and only funds from signed up banks and building societies are eligible to the fund after the business has failed to make best efforts to find the owner. Should an owner resurface years later, the scheme is liable for the value of the funds at the time it was transferred to the scheme as it is still the legal property of the owner but I think the idea is a good one, if reasonable efforts are made and for whatever reason the owner can’t be found then using the funds to support societal improvement seems the next best thing to be done!

International Women’s Day
I did not have the best International Women’s Day, I was low key annoyed from within an hour of getting up…it was snowing (the good stuff, not the slush this week has turned into) & I love walking in the snow. I made the decision not to wear my coat and just go out in a hoodie and leggings, the cold doesn’t bother me anyway and I do a figure 8 loop round where I live on the first loop I say good morning to a guy using a broom to clear snow off his truck, on the second loop I encounter the same man who has driven to the shop who acknowledges me again and makes a comment and the comment was nothing, it wasn’t rude or impolite, it’s just he wouldn’t have said it if I was a man.

I then foolishly requested a repeat prescription from GP surgery, which then lead to my GP ringing and then texting me about my blood pressure (which is fine btw), which then lead to a phone call and being told after THREE YEARS of my blood work coming back “in the normal range” that its “not the optimal range” & that I need to keep a record of my results and aim for the number to be in the optimal range, like I haven’t spent the last three years getting private blood tests done to prove exactly this point to him to finally get the medication I need to keep me alive.

I love that IWD show cases women, but what I really think IWD should be is looking at the systems and structures that continue to support suppressing women. I don’t want to be resilient or inspirational or brave…I want the glaring holes in systems and structures and data about women acknowledged and actions taken to address those and I know it won’t make an ounce of difference in my lifetime but it will to future women and that is what it’s all about.

Do you want to live to 100?
This week I learnt that todays 5 years old born in the wealthiest countries will likely live to 100…using the phrase 80 will be the new 60. The article from National Geographic is as exciting as it is horrifying…but I am not currently 5 years old and I can’t imagine growing up with the things children have available to them today so some things I’m just not keen because they just feel so alien to me, but they won’t to 5 year old Peggy because the future is now.

I think probably what really got me thinking is just how much technology will step in and do the thing’s we really should be doing for ourselves “a bionic exoskeleton to ease her muscles in later life”, and the key to  “…longevity is to slow down, stay healthy, and spend time with the people that matter” and strong agree. Laying those foundations now is so so important, I hope society can make the move to those chances for our current 5 year olds, our generations have sort of got lost in the middle working bit, where we will just have to go that harder for longer and if we can retire then it might not be as luxurious as those before us.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I do not want to live to 100 in our current political and social state, and fortunately the genetics in my family are not stacked in my favour on that front, bar a decent set of outliers on my mums side, the exception that prove that rule!

What bird flu means to me
I listened to the Guardians Today in Focus Podcast about Avian Flu, listening to Harriet Reed talk about her life as a ranger on the Farne Islands with the birds and the seals but how in recent months, that has all changed with a new strain of bird flu, the odd dead bird turned into a mass extraction of 6000 carcasses and it just really got me thinking about how much hen keeping as changed.

This got me thinking about what bird flu has meant to me, this week I made a small snow man for my chickens so they can enjoy the snow. By the time it got to them it was ice rather than snow, but they enjoyed pecking at it just like they would if they were free to roam in the snow. I’ve kept chickens for well over a decade and in that time hen keeping has changed a lot but in recent years since bird flu it’s hard.

Long gone are the days of them roaming the garden of and evening or a weekend, they are under cover at all times to stop any passing droppings potentially contaminating our flock. They’ve also had mixed health care when we’ve needed to have them looked at because rightfully Vet’s don’t want them on premises in case they are infected, because the reality it that it has spread, to sea birds and mammals. There have also been deaths in humans who have worked closely with birds.

Our current flock have never known a free range life, they’ve never run around our garden or stood at the bottom of the fork waiting for worms to appear. It makes me sad there is a whole life they’ve not lived, but they live a full and rich life with more garden than ever, more enrichment activities than we’ve ever provided before and it’s a small price to pay to not lose them to an awful disease.

What’s going on with SVB?
Is it a symptom of the market or a tale as old as time?

Well-funded startsups meet attractive looking bank (SVB) and decide to deposit their excess funds, SVB lends out said deposits in a questionable financial decision (typically one asset class on money also loaned by one customer class) and buys safe 10-year bonds and mortgage backed securities to make moderately low yield. The macro environment changed, and the well-funded startups start needing their money back to survive.

The Fed enters the chat and raises interest rates leaving those 10-year bonds and securities losing money…so how exactly do you raise money to pay out on accounts that you’ve tied up for 10 years losing money? You sell securities which have also lost value in the interest hike and/or you have to start raising funds.

SVB sold $20bn of bonds and took a £2bn loss on that and this signalled to the market they were so desperate for cold hard cash they took a loss of £2bn just to get liquidity, which also isn’t a strong indicator to your customers, who then rightly might think their money is best off elsewhere, which then compounds the liquidity problem in a bit of a vicious circle.

More withdrawals, more strain on liquidity, more strain on liquidity, more withdrawals.

And that is the simple story of how a sudden bank run and capital crisis can leave you taken over by federal regulators and the largest failing US bank since 2008, the ripple out from this is anyone’s guess.

Current watch:  Carnival Row – Another excellent series I did not realise was back for another series…described as a Victorian “neo-noir fantasy” Carnival Row stars Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevinge and follows the plight of mythical creatures having fled their homes as a result of war to a new city where the tensions grow between citizens and its growing immigrant population. There is a love story within the twisty who done it fairy tale and its beautifully shot and is oddly reminiscent of other cult classics.

Current read: Unashamed – Harry Baker – I want to read a little bit more poetry this year, it’s writing I struggle with (unsure if it’s the aphantasia or I just don’t like it) so there was no better place to start than a Maths graduate and World Poetry Slam champion Harry Baker, he wrote a love poem about prime numbers. Unashamed is the collection of poetry he wrote during the pandemic and some of the poems he had taken on his world tour that abruptly came to an end. What a lovely collection of poetry and personal prose in between but my favourite bit was the numbers around a marathon and as someone who did run maths the entire time through her most successful marathon it was lovely to see I wasn’t the only one.

Most Impactful Listen: FT Money Clinic – How to financially survive divorce – Divorce inquiries are always busy in the first half of the year and it was oddly refreshing to see this title pop up in my feed. I have never been married but I have been in a situation where I felt a marriage certificate would have just been another piece of paper that would need paying to dissolve in order to extricate myself from the human being I was with at the time. The guests talk openly and honestly about their situations and the questions they had wished to know the answers to in hindsight and the experts are as helpful as they can be in short form generalities. This podcast is just as useful for anyone who has financially linked themselves to a partnership and wanted to leave as it is if you are also married.

• “Time’s up!” Betty Boothroyd
• What world record could you set at your job?
• National Trust Scones
• Unwritten rules of the group chat
• Women losing financial confidence

“Time’s Up!” Betty Boothroyd
What a women, the first and only women speaker of the House of Commons, a formidable politician and a Tiller Girl. Never married, despite many offers and no children and her legacy is no poorer for that.

Boothroyd had worked as a political secretary in both the UK and the States, on her fifth attempt to get elected she won the West Bromwich by-election in 1973, she was an assistant Whip, an MEP, she was on the select committee and the House of Commons Commission, she became Deputy Speaker and on to be Speaker.

And you want to know how I know about Betty Boothroyd? She was on Live and Kicking in 1997, she was so passionate about getting young people into Politics she did Saturday morning kids TV.

Her legacy is immense, she never stopped, her professional life so very big, she embodied everything to be proud of, she challenged boundaries, she believed in education for all at any age. She will be missed, but thank you Betty Boothroyd.

What world record could you set at your job?
This week Boeing engineers in St. Louis officially broke the Guinness World Record for the farthest flight by a paper aircraft by 11 meters from the original record from 2022, by throwing a paper plane a whopping 88 meters! We have all probably done those (hideous) team building exercises where you have to create the best paper plane and then your team also has to be able to produce like 10 of them in like 4 minutes or something (stupid) like that and for most of us that is as close to making paper planes at work as we will get.

There is nothing not cool about this entire story, the engineers involved are 2^nd and 3^rd generation employees who remember coming on the family fun days with their parents as kids, they studied origami and hypersonic vehicles and this took the guys and the teams month of perfection to land the record breaking distance on the third throw.

So, what would be the world record you could set at your job? This week one my reconciliation has made it to column DT and is still growing, but I don’t see largest balance sheet reconciliation as world record worthy, it’s certainly not 88 meters!

National Trust Scones
This week saw Sarah Merker eat her 244^th National Trust scone after a decade long mission to eat a scone at every single National Trust in England, Wales and Ireland (Scotland have their own NT that I did not know about until this week also).

Sarah has been chronically her adventures on Twitter @NT_Scones and her blog rating both the national trust property, the scone and highlight of the day out of 5. This was breaking BBC news in the office on someone’s phone and sparked the usual lively debate about cream and then jam or jam and then cream and peoples favourite scone moments.

It sort of makes me want to pick her Sarah’s book National Trust Book of Scones and definitely makes me want to go to our nearest National Trust for a scone or two.

Goodbye Kindle Unlimited
A week or so ago I got the message that Kindle Unlimited was increasing in price and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it theoretically should cost a lot more money than it does for what you get and in that is the rub…If I used it a whole lot more it would be so useful at even the increased price, but I don’t.

After a lot of thought I have cancelled my subscription, it was invaluable when I got it, I was at a very low energy tine in my life and then I was in my Booktok phase of enjoying trashy romance novels and while there are a few good titles in the spaces I want to read in this year, I am just not able to sustain a book a month to make it worthwhile.

I am currently not reading a lot of volume, committing to a feature that requires you to read stuff and recommend something a week, well that will kind of kill it for you, especially as there are not endless hours in the day to read.

Women losing financial confidence
Women’s financial confidence is declining at double the rate of men according to the Fidelity ahead of International Women’s Day. Despite the bounce in feeling off the back of the pandemic, where most people regardless of gender for the first time really had to consider their finances.

More women than ever feel financially independent, up 6% to 51% on 2022, but that said women often struggle to know what to do with their finances and often don’t feel like the advice is there for there. Women and the decisions they need to make around money are very different to men and their decision around money. Plenty of advice out there for men and money, less so for women. Women typically pay more for products than men, the pink tax is not imaginary, and women are typically having a harder time accessing the right financial products for them.

You can’t tackle what you don’t know and while you only need to head to the comments section on any article about women and money to see a deluge of men commenting that living within your means has no gender and that articles are just promo for the researching body to realise that the subject of women’s finance still has some way to go.

Current watch:  Outer Banks – Well I was not expecting to enjoy this, I’m not saying when trying to sell something to me that you don’t reference “sweet teen drama meets treasure island” but you know, it was the current watch of my temporary housemates that had been recommended by the teenager in their lives. I’m oddly fascinated, the soundtrack is beautiful, and North Carolina looks absolutely stunning, with some characters you love to hate, some teenage angst and those good moral basis of teen drama it grows on you.

Current read: The French Art of Not Giving a Sh*t: Cut the Crap and Live Your Life by Fabrice Midal – I feel like this book found me on a good day, the book explores the concept of noting doing what you think you’re supposed to be doing and embraces just being what you are in the moment. That meditation isn’t chasing thoughts out of your mind, but just being open to embracing life as it is right there in the moment, sit with it. The book acts as a gentle reminder to say no, give yourself a break and act compassionately to yourself. Midal offers the reader permission to embrace self and situation in a realistic way. I think the timing was so right for this book, I needed to find away to believe in myself in a very specific way, just in short bursts and his words helped do that, just for a day.

Most Impactful Listen: Today in Focus: What the salad crisis says about Britain – This podcast was fascinating, you can’t have failed to miss the empty shelves at the supermarket or the relentless reporting on said empty shelves, but what is the truth behind the shortage and why might this be a thing we just have to get used it? Michael Safe and Joanne Partridge explore the questions on everyone’s minds, is the bad weather in Europe and Egypt to blame? Is it Brexit? Or does the answer also lie a little closer to home? Spoiler alert, it’s a little from column a, b and c.