Sunday 29 March 2009

A Brucie Bonus

Well, that last post turned into a blog all on its own exclusively about Brian Clough. And as much as I'm sure the great man would be honoured to have my entire week's blog output being all about him, like Chris Tarrant, I don't want to give you that. So here is the blogging equivalent of a Brucie Bonus, although it comes with the caveat that there won't be a cuddly toy or a glamorous assistant in sight. Budget cuts I'm afraid.

2. Watch out for the jargon police
So tell me, how's your blue sky thinking? What's your reaction when the boss asks if he can "touch base" with you "before the close of play". And what is your understanding of the value base of the organisation you work at? If like me you squirm when you hear this kind of management jargon uttered by managers barely out of kindergarten and often found wearing bluetooth headsets strapped to their left ear with what looks like a sticking plaster, you will probably be pleased to hear that the jargon police are wanting to discourage the use of many offending words and phrases in favour of more "plain English" alternatives.

When I initially heard this news, I thought it would be fair enough if it meant the end to such to banal, empty phrases as the ones I mentioned above. But then, a moment of fear struck me. People that work with me or who have worked with me in the past will know that I have a good line in patter when I deal with agencies on the telephone in a professional capacity. Having studied Business Studies to degree level, there are certain words and phrases I learnt which I occasionally like to slip into conversation whenever I'm dealing with an agency trying to offer some kind of good or service to me that I have no real intention of taking them up on. What were the odds, therefore, that some of these words and phrases I use would be on the banned list?

I had an e-mail forwarded to me during the week that contained the words and phrases that supposedly had been drawn up for the cull. There in all their horror were some phrases I had never heard of, some other words and phrases I had which made cringe. What is the point of the word "holistic" for example? But then staring me in the face were some words and phrases that I do use. "The big picture" had to go. But I use that saying all the time! Procurement was a big no-no. Again, this is a word I sometimes use. Worse still, synergy was no longer to be used. I've definitely used that word in my time dealing with telephone vultures. And then the cherry on top of the cake, facilitate was in the cull. This is a word I frequently use, albeit sometimes I use it at the wrong time. It is fine to use it when you are networking with some business exec by the water cooler at a seminar, but not as appropriate when your girlfriend tells you off for using it in an everyday informal conversation, which I have done at least once.

The concept of Plain English on one level is a noble one. I think we all know the English language is there to be manipulated. Just as banks and insurance companies tend to put the catches in their "amazing deals" in the small print, so small that even someone with 20:20 vision would need a magnifying glass to read the clauses, so a similar tactic is used in verbal and written communications from big business. Wherever there are any bones of contention or any disputes, you can bet that the company will respond using technical language quite deliberately so that the consumer does not understand what they are saying and consequently will be less likely to challenge their stance. It does not always work, but I think most of us will have had an experience of a business we have dealt with who have tried to fob us off in this way.

There also has to be some acceptance that some people's command of the English language is better than others, just as some people are better able to read documents than others. Therefore, Plain English has to be given complete consideration wherever the intended audience consists of people that have a learning difficulty or where the audience has not swallowed Roget's Thesaurus. By the way, did you hear about the man who ate a whole thesaurus for dinner? He was full, parched, stuffed, bloated, satiated, replete...

But the key point is that the language you use should be tailored to the audience you are dealing with. If you are in a business networking situation, using business terminology that is relevant to the products or markets you are dealing in should be commonplace. Talk of establishing a relationship that brings about mutual synergies is just a more eloquent way of saying "there's something in it for both us". Talk of "pooling our resources" is just a smarter way of saying "let's both dip our hands in our pockets". Or saying "I need to refer you to our procurement department" just means "my boss or my boss's boss makes the decisions on what we buy". These are all phrases that are perfectly acceptable when entering business-to-business negotiations, but are less appropriate when dealing with an individual consumer, or worse still when you are discussing the day's events with your loved one or your friends down the pub.

In a way, I am glad that this list has come to my attention because what it will do is make me more aware of knowing when to use certain stock phrases in my work and when I need to tone them down. A lot of business jargon, particularly phrases, are just euphemisms for other words which may have harsher sounding connotations, for example restructuring instead of redundancies. These words may have been introduced with the best of intentions, so to try to alleviate staff fears wherever a potential problem affecting everyone exists. But we should be selective in our choice of business vocabulary, remembering who we are talking to, what their needs and expectations are and also what we are trying to tell them in the course of the conversation we are having. Clarity is the most important aspect of communication and so if the words we are using are sacrificing that in order to show off, we should refrain from using them. But I tend to stick to the principle that if a word is in the dictionary, it is legitimate provided it is used in the right context, so I only hope that the jargon police's clampdown is not a complete success otherwise wordsmiths like me will be redundant, sorry, restructured.

3. The Internet is there to be manipulated
The subject of audiences is quite relevant in considering another hot topic that has emerged during the past week. I am referring to the controversy surrounding Google's Street View service that shows panoramic shots of people's streets throughout the world, but now including the United Kingdom. There are some people who have more cause than others to be unhappy about Google's latest innovations for the voyeurs amongst us. Spare a thought for an American man for example who chose the most inopportune moment to spend a penny on the side of a road that so happened to be photographed in that moment.

Personally, I would say that this is a potentially excellent innovation which unfortunately the minority of abusers could spoil for the majority, hence the outcry from your average misinformed radio phone-in caller. There have been different issues that have cropped up, such as parents who feel uncomfortable about schools being photographed that may have their children running around in the playground at the key moment. Clearly this is a sensitive issue and the media in this country only inflames hysteria so far as paedophilia is concerned to the point where people understandably become very protective.

That's a whole separate subject, but the fact of the matter is that there is as much chance of some random passer-by taking these kinds of photos undetected on their mobile phone as there is of them showing up on Google Street View. In the media, wherever a child or a vulnerable adult is photographed or features in an article in a publication there should normally be some kind of consent provided by the appropriate guardian, but I suppose this might have been more difficult for Google to accomplish, short of tracking down the parents of any children who appear in their photos and asking their permission.

Nonetheless, Google should have acted more responsibly in some respects. The problem that has occurred in some situations, as I understand it, is that people's identities can be easily determined despite Google have given assurances that it would go to maximum lengths to ensure that it would blur the faces of people that so happened to walk into shot when Googlecam captured its stills. In some situations I am sure this has led to one or two embarrassments and possibly people caught in compromising moments, left with some explaining to do. How long until the first lawsuit gets filed against Google? Or how soon will Google Street View feature in someone's divorce proceedings? I am sure it already has in the United States.

The other problem I suppose that Google Street View could bring about is that it gives the more studious wannabe burglar the opportunity to plot their escape route. In some shots, Google Street View not only photographs streets but also close-ups of people's homes, sometimes giving people shots of the insides of people's homes. A little bit of advice here would be to invest in some net curtains, that way if you do have anything valuable indoors it is not really likely to show up on the Internet. I await a future edition of Beat The Burglar with Dominic Littlewood that is completely devoted to facing up to the challenges posed by Google Street View. That's if Dom doesn't have his laptop half-inched in the meantime by some opportunist who noticed a downstairs window ajar when he logged in.

Google Street View is not all bad and I would think that the raison d'etre for the service when it was dreamt up was that photographs are there for people to recall moments and also to be informative. There must be plenty of families that have members living in a foreign country and in some cases, some members of that family have probably never met each other or seen their houses. OK, so I suppose with technology as it is now, these photos can be passed on via the media of e-mail, Facebook or mobile phone as well as the more traditional card and letter at Christmas. But Street View provides another alternative and if it is used properly, it encourages people, especially children to take advantage of the opportunity to explore the world they live in without having to leave their bedroom. I suppose the possibility of children getting to see adults carrying out compulsory bodily functions while online may put some parents off from allowing their kids to access the site, but nonetheless the potential of Google Street View as a tool is there to be tapped into.

As ever, it boils down to that age old problem of the minority of people seeing the possibility of manipulation and overstepping the mark which spoils things for the majority. The World Wide Web has been established for nearly two decades now and the legislation associated with it is still very much in its infancy. All the while the law is lax wherever the Internet is concerned, this means that potential sources of manipulation and/or computer crime are able to take advantage and the rest of the public that use the Internet for good reason are exposed to their less than honourable intentions. Google's latest innovation is potentially a great resource but it does present some challenges as well. So long as people stick to the principles of common sense, it is to be hoped the good will outweigh the bad.

4. Nothing sells like nostalgia
Wherever you look at the moment, the music news has been dominated by comeback tours and sell out concerts from artists and bands whose heyday occurred a long time ago. Just a fortnight ago, Michael Jackson announced plans for his "farewell tour" in the United Kingdom and this resulted in his shows selling out within hours, as loyal fans camped outside the O2 Arena overnight in the manner of die hard tennis fans trying to capture Centre Court tickets for the next day's play at Wimbledon. All this despite Jackson having not released any material in eight years and much of the intervening period since having been taken up by press coverage of less savoury aspects of his character and personal life.

Last week, Spandau Ballet became the latest band to reform, with talk of not just a UK tour but the possibility of releasing new material if the tour goes well. Their comeback is astonishing considering the massive falling out between the Kemp Brothers and the rest of the band a decade ago over unpaid royalties which ended up with a messy dispute in the High Court. Call me a cynic but I don't see this being a long lasting reconciliation. I am sure that in the short term, the significant amount of money a lucrative comeback tour offers was enough motivation for the band to set aside their differences, but once they are back touring together it surely will only be a matter of time before the old animosities resurface.

We thought we had seen it all until just a few days ago, it was reported that Robbie Williams could be rejoining Take That for a forthcoming tour after Williams had previously rejected his former band-mates' advances. From what I can see, this would be a marriage of convenience for Williams. Take That have enjoyed a remarkable renaissance since they reformed a couple of years ago. They have kept hold of the audience of swooning teenage girls of the mid-1990s that put them on the map in the first place and who now, like the band they idolise, have grown up, got married, got children, a mortgage and all the other trappings. But on top of that, Take That seem to have found other niche audiences. Today's teenagers like them as well, as do some grannies.

Previously there would have been no real incentive for Williams to get back with them as he has achieved plenty as his own entity. However, his last album did not sell particularly well, not helped by him having moved to the States and so in the large part he has been out of people's consciousness. Williams is back in the UK now and keen to resurrect his career, but he might find that his popularity as a solo artist will never quite be as high as it was. Even so, if Williams were to announce a UK tour next week I would still expect tickets to sell pretty rapidly. But if ever Williams was to re-unite with Take That, it would be now when he is trying to re-establish himself in the UK. His other bandmates I doubt will entertain the idea though because they know Williams would only be putting himself forward as a stepping stone.

The only comeback that could surely trump the return of Spandau Ballet, given that they have not recorded together since 1989, before the Berlin Wall came down, would be if the Stone Roses reformed. And yet even this suddenly appeared to be a reality when it was announced a couple of weeks ago that the band would reform for the summer festivals. I was never convinced by this statement because neither Ian Brown nor John Squire were quoted in the statement and both men have been vehemently against a reunion previously due to the tensions there are between the two men. Brown has a relatively successful solo career in any event, while Squire has much of his time taken up by his painting. So unfortunately us fans of the Roses will have to make do with their Greatest Hits.

Take That aside, I cannot think of many examples of reunions that have been successful or which have lasted a long time. Look at The Verve for example. Their return last year after ten years away was eagerly anticipated by many, but I was never convinced, simply because there were too many tensions between band members which forced them to split up in the first place. From what I have read, it would seem that these tensions very quickly resurfaced when the band went back on the road and the chances of the band recording any further music together looks slim. Having heard some of the songs they recorded on their comeback, they should have been a band that stayed in the 1990s and allowed their fans to remember the good times rather than their half-hearted return.

Music is always intrinsically linked to nostalgia. The songs we hear on the radio or which we play at home are the soundtracks to our lives. There are songs we associate with certain periods of life and I suppose for people of a certain age, Take That and Spandau Ballet getting back on the road reminds them of their misspent youth. And the sight of Tony Hadley showing up for the press call with a waistline that suggested the size zero diet hadn't been for him was probably the sight that the teenagers of 1983 wanted to see now they are in their 40s and have paid for life's excesses too. Hadley, like them, is human after all. I guess the upcoming tour will also show whether he can confound his critics and The Killers by being dancer too.

As always, nostalgia is what prints the tickets and fills the seats. While those that are detached from the situation just hear Back For Good, To Cut A Long Story Short or Billie Jean, the fans of those respective artists not only hear the songs but they recall the memories of what went on behind bike sheds, of the days when they took their first driving lessons or the day they left school. In short, the music makes them feel young again. It won't be until they see their former heroes close up in the flesh that the reality of the ageing process hits home on them.

5. Mock shock is getting out of hand
I have devoted some not inconsiderable blog space previously to the subject of the press finding mountains where only mole hills exist, particularly within the entertainment sector. But this cliched mock shock that our friends from the scandal sheets such as the Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Express shows no sign of abating if the headlines of the past few days are anything to go by.

Yet again, Jonathan Ross appears to have upset the Middle England do-gooders by having the audacity to be nominated for a BAFTA television award. The outraged are apparently disgusted that Ross could possibly be recognised for doing his job well in a year when he got caught up in the Andrew Sachs-gate incident which people really should be getting over by now.

What people appear to be failing to see is that Ross has been nominated for the performance on his own chat show, not for the work he has done on other people's radio programmes, so there is no reason whatsoever why he should not be nominated. His Friday night show has regularly pulled in audiences of over 4 million since he came back from his impromptu suspension in January and while Ross has watered down some of his antics, his show remains for many the perfect way of chilling out at the start of the weekend. It is for that reason why it is right that he was nominated, although the good news for his detractors is that I doubt he will win the award.

That is because in the same category of "Best Light Entertainment Programme" is Harry Hill's TV Burp and in a time where ITV's programmes have been taking a hammering amid ITV's budgetary problems, the follicly challenged, bespectacled comedian with the big collars has been proving a ratings winner with his madcap humour and wacky observations. Although I am not a fan of Hill as a rule, he seems suited to this format and his show has attracted a cult following and so his legions of fans will be pleased that I expect him to collect the gong at Ross's expense. The real question mark is how Ant and Dec's performance on I'm A Celebrity could be considered worthy as the best comedy performance in a light entertainment show. Let's hope one day someone leaves this pair of chancers in the jungle at the end of their series.

Elsewhere in the kneejerk reaction stakes this week, Sir David Jason managed to cause a stir by having a joke he made on a live radio programme censored and removed from a podcast of the show on the grounds that it could be construed as racist. The joke, which was about a Pakistani cloakroom attendant being called Mahatma Coat is pretty tame in terms of being racially offensive. OK, Sir David's geography seems to be a bit awry as I usually associate the title Mahatma with India, but I can't see how anyone would have been upset by his attempt at a joke. Frankly the problem with his gag was not that it was offensive, it was just that it was plain unfunny. Even a Christmas cracker company or the producers of My Family would have left that one on the cutting room floor. So perhaps Absolute Radio did Sir David a favour in editing out his moment of embarrassment.

It seems that the culture of pulling people up and scrutinising any comment or behaviour, however irrelevant or irreverent it is shows no sign of abating. But then I guess it serves up an alternative to the current "self-pity Britain" headlines that are served up on a daily basis in the papers, so maybe we should be thankful for that.

I wouldn't say this blog was my best but it's in the top one

Hello everyone. Hope you have a good week since we last convened. Well, I thought I would mark the release of the big screen biopic of Brian Clough's life and times as manager of Derby County and Leeds United, The Damned United, by paying homage to Ol' Big 'Ead with this week's blog title. I hope to get to the cinema to watch this movie pretty soon and as and when I do, I will review it on a later renewal of this blog. In the meantime, I will talk about a few things that have come to mind in the past week or so. But let's kick off by talking about the man in the green sweater.

1. Cloughie was a man of his times
Well as I mentioned at the top, Brian Clough's life and career has been launched back into the public gaze with the release of the movie The Damned United as of last Friday. Clough's name is one of legend due to his remarkable achievements in getting not one but two relatively unfashionable East Midlands football teams promoted to the top flight of English football and ended up winning the league title with both teams, winning back to back European Cups with Nottingham Forest as well back in the days of bushy sideburns and bubble perms.

This was an extraordinary achievement and if you were to try and think of putting that into a modern context, it would be like Reading getting promoted to the Premier League and winning the title within two years. This of course would be just a pipe dream these days owing to the inequality in the distribution of wealth in English football, so Clough's story is one which the nostalgia wallowers can swallow up and revel in because it comes from an era when the underdog stood more of a chance.

A good many people enjoy the story of an underdog, the story of a man or a group that battle against the establishment or against a closed shop and come out on top. This has been evident in just the last 24 hours with Jenson Button's victory in the Australian Grand Prix, driving in his team's debut race after they had only ensured their place on the grid three weeks ago when the team's head of operations became benefactor and stumped up the money to buy the team after Honda withdrew from the sport. I'm sure I was not alone in feeling a warm glow in seeing Button take the chequered flag and seeing his team-mate Rubens Barrichello take second place while the established order of McLaren and Ferrari failed to finish, with the exception of Lewis Hamilton. Good news stories are all too often overshadowed in Formula 1 by the internal politicking and protectionist bureaucracy that gets in the way.

And so it is that people hail Brian Clough even after all this time. Here was a man who took on the established order not once but twice and got the better of them. As ever though, I do feel that nostalgia is prone to clouding some people's memories. Clough is often hailed as the greatest manager in the history of the game and the best manager that England never had and while these epithets have some grounding in Clough's achievements, it is worth putting certain factors into perspective and also slaying one or two myths that are perpetrated.

I must be honest, my personal recollection of Brian Clough does not take in first hand experience of his heyday. As a child of 1978, I was not born when Clough won the league title with Derby County, nor was I present on this planet during Clough's less than successful spells at Leeds and in my home town, Brighton. Nottingham Forest's league success in the 1977/78 season occurred a couple of months before my arrival and I was barely toddling by the time of Forest's back-to-back European Cup victories in 1979 and 1980. Obviously I know of his achievements through being a keen student of the history of football, but I did not bear witness to any of his golden hours.

My memories of Clough came much later when I started watching football in the late 1980s. By this time, Clough was no longer the magician he had been in his early years at Nottingham Forest as the ravages of his alcohol misuse had taken effect and his behaviour became more erratic. However, I always remember his Forest teams investing in young players and several players came through their ranks to become internationals, not least Clough's own son, Nigel. Forest by then were no longer challenging for the title but were still a good cup team and could beat any team on their day. As a Manchester United supporter, I remember they used to be a perennial bogey team back then, although this was before United became the all-conquering outfit they went on to be in the 1990s largely up to the present day.

However, it is because of a match that United played against Forest that I retained a soft spot for Forest and for Clough ever since. The match took place in January 1990 when I was just 11 years old and Manchester United were drawn away to Nottingham Forest in the third round of the FA Cup. The game was live on television and at the time, Forest were hot favourites to win as United were struggling in the league and came into the match missing several players due to injury. I remember the ever lovable Jimmy Hill saying before the match that he thought United would get thrashed because they were not warming up properly! Funny how that comment sticks in the head.

So why on earth would this match that happened nearly 20 years ago leave me with an affinity for Forest and Clough? Well, Manchester United won that match against the odds that day 1-0 courtesy of a goal from a much forgotten player called Mark Robins, who is now the manager of Rotherham in League Two. But from there, they went on to win the FA Cup that season, without ever being drawn at home and that was the first of many trophies secured under Sir Alex Ferguson. But had United lost at Forest back in round three, common belief at the time was that Ferguson would have been sacked and one of the genuine rivals to Clough's claim on being the best manager in the history of the English game would never have had the chance to stake his claim.

The Damned United has attracted some controversy for its portrayal of Clough in both the book and the film. The book on which the film is based was written by David Peace, who also wrote the Red Riding novels which are currently being serialised in a dark television production. I must confess that I have never read the book but I gather that the Clough family are unhappy with how Clough has been portrayed in Peace's book.

However, I think you have to take into account that Peace's book is not intended to be regarded as a completely factual account of the events that happened during his tenure as Leeds manager. Some aspects of the book are Peace's interpretations of events and unless Peace was a fly on the wall at the time, his insight would be restricted to the eye witness account of others and his own imagination. Therefore, aspects of the book such as Clough's supposed hard drinking in the manager's office several years before he supposedly became an alcoholic should be regarded as apocryphal interpretations of the events using Peace's journalistic licence, rather than actual accounts of what happened.

For those that want more of an insight into Clough's career and into the dynamics of the relationship he had with his Assistant, Peter Taylor, and also his regression after the grips of alcoholism had taken effect, I would advise you read another critically acclaimed book which is called As Long as You Don't Kiss Me by Duncan Hamilton. Hamilton had unprecedented access to Clough in his role as a reporter on the Nottingham Evening Post for over 15 years and so Hamilton was able to see Clough at his angriest, most bullish and also more vulnerable moments. For people who are interested in Clough's life story and who want to see a balance between the realisation of his genius but also reporting on the flaws in his make-up, I really cannot recommend this book highly enough.

It is inevitable that with Clough back in the public eye due to Michael Sheen's much acclaimed portrayal of him that bar room debates will be conducted up and down the country about where Clough sits in the pantheon of best managers in the history of the English game. Many people feel that his place should be firmly at the top of the list because of how he achieved success at two different relatively unfashionable clubs. I personally disagree with placing Clough in such a lofty position, although I must confess to some obvious partiality in assessing the lead contenders.

Clough certainly should rank among the real greats but there are a few reasons I would not select him as the greatest manager of all time. First of all, the notion that Clough did not spend big bucks to propel his teams to success leaves the lingering odour of the equine waste product. The first ever £1 million player that was signed in England was Trevor Francis, who Clough signed from Birmingham City in 1979. Clough was certainly not a chequebook manager by any means but he certainly spent heavily in upgrading his team if you measure by 1970s spending standards.

Secondly, what really stood out to me from watching a television documentary about Clough the other night was how his managerial stock peaked very early. This can be partially explained by Clough's premature retirement at the age of 27, but even so, look at the timeline on Clough's career. His league title win with Derby was at the age of 36. That is certainly an astonishing achievement when you consider that the youngest Premier League manager now is Gareth Southgate who is two years older than Clough was then and Southgate is widely considered to be too wet around the ears to be managing at that level. His success at Forest came in his first five years at the club and this culminated in his second European Cup success in 1980 by which time Clough was still just 45 years old, the same age Sir Alex Ferguson was when he became manager of Manchester United.

You can't help but think that there was an unwritten chapter or two that should have followed about Clough's career, but the flawed genius that he was saw his empire collapse not once but twice at the precise moment that his teams should have built on their success. At Derby, he fell out with Derby's chairman and left the club just months after he had won the title with the Rams and then if you fast forward to the early 1980s, Forest very quickly stagnated after their European triumphs and did not win another trophy for nine years. Having read Hamilton's book that I refer to earlier, I believe the primary reason for this was Clough's falling out with Peter Taylor which saw Taylor leave the club in 1982. Clough was never the same man after that and he metamorphosed into the bitter, idiocyncratic man that I recall when I started watching football. His teams were still decent but they could never sustain the consistency required to challenge the dominant Liverpool and Everton teams of the time, not least because Clough no longer had the appetite for the game that he once had.

Every person has their own yardstick by which they measure the best manager of all time, just as everyone has their barometers in picking out the best bands of all time across different eras, or the best tennis player or best movie actor. It is hard to go wrong if you start with the "trophies won" column, sustained success is guaranteed proof of being considered among the greats. There are those that also place emphasis on managers who built empires, who inherited struggling teams and gradually turned them around and established their own culture. This is a category in which Clough certainly scores highly. What I particularly look for though are managers that have demonstrated ability in presiding over more than one generation of a great team, knowing when to phase out players who had exceeded their period of useful life and knowing when to take a gamble on a new group of players, even if that attracts criticism.

It probably will not surprise you at all to learn that in my reckoning, Sir Alex Ferguson ticks all of these boxes. He has now been manager of Manchester United for over 22 years and it is hard to imagine another manager ever again being afforded that amount of time in the hot seat at Old Trafford. Ferguson's trophy haul speaks for itself, standing currently at ten league titles, five FA Cups, two Champions League titles and three League Cup successes and that is before you mention other peripheral trophy successes such as the European Cup Winners' Cup or World Club Championship. This trophy haul included the hitherto unprecendented treble of Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup in one season back in 1999.

There are those that will say that United have had it easy because they have been able to spend money on the best players. Well, it is true they are in the luxurious position of being able to compete for signing the best players but that is no guarantee of success and in any event, it only tells half the story. Ferguson has always believed in giving young players a chance with the likes of Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham and Gary Neville all having graduated from the club's youth system. Even this season, United's success in the League Cup was achieved in no small part by the contributions from young players that have come through the ranks, such as Darron Gibson, Jonny Evans and Danny Welbeck. But when Ferguson took over, he inherited a club very different to the club United are now.

United were bottom of the old Division One when Ferguson succeeded Ron Atkinson as United manager in November 1986 and he inherited a team that had become cup specialists but which lacked the discipline or backbone to challenge in the league. A drinking culture had pervaded at Old Trafford prior to Ferguson's arrival and some players opted out of training, no doubt because they were nursing hangovers. The club also failed to invest in its youth setup until Ferguson arrived. This situation was very quickly rectified by Ferguson and this has borne fruit for United in the years that have followed.

Where Ferguson, Bob Paisley and Sir Matt Busby particularly stand out ahead of Brian Clough though is in terms of their ability in evolving their teams. The Manchester United team that Ferguson manages now is essentially the fifth or sixth phase of the team that Ferguson has led in his tenure and crucially four phases of that team in particular have been very successful. The great team that United had back in the mid-1990s with Eric Cantona, Paul Ince and Mark Hughes in it enjoyed a relatively smooth transition into the treble era team revolving around Roy Keane, David Beckham and Paul Scholes and the goals of Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole. And now look at the present day, with players such as Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo at the fore. Cantona is nineteen years older than Rooney, nearly old enough to be Rooney's father and yet Ferguson has been instrumental in getting both players in their time to be key players for United and knows what makes them tick.

Disbanding one great team and then building another is an extraordinarily difficult thing to achieve. Timing is crucial and luck plays a part too. But Ferguson has shown himself as a master at this over the years. Sir Matt Busby also scores highly in this respect given that he was forced to build a new team in the aftermath of the Munich Air Disaster in which he so nearly lost his own life. His rebuilding resulted in success though with the decorated Manchester United team of the 1960s winning league titles under the guidance of the "Holy Trinity", Charlton, Best and Law and this culminated in United becoming the first team to win the European Cup in 1968. And it is also why I would rank Bob Paisley higher than Bill Shankly in Liverpool's best ever managers. Shankly laid the foundations of the modern day Liverpool but Paisley built the wall by leading Liverpool to three of their European Cup successes and masterfully replacing players at the right time, phasing out the Kevin Keegan and Emlyn Hughes era team and replacing them with the likes of Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and Alan Hansen and bringing in an unknown Zimbabwean goalkeeper by the name of Bruce Grobbelaar to replace the outgoing Ray Clemence.

As ever, football is a game of opinions and I am certainly not knocking the achievements of Brian Clough at both Forest and Derby. However, for the reasons I have given, I feel that the three managers I have just mentioned are probably the rightful trio to sit at the top of the best managers of all time. The sustained success that each enjoyed and their ability to rebuild teams at the right time has resulted in those teams continuing to prosper, while I would argue that this was a skill Brian Clough did not demonstrate as strongly, not helped by the departure of Taylor from Nottingham Forest.

The question that is often asked is whether Brian Clough would have been successful in the Twenty-first Century game. Personally, I think he would still have had some success, but he would have needed to have refined his style of management in order to have achieved success. Clough's managerial approach was not very scientific, he was not one for building dossiers on the opposition or for making meticulous tactical preparation for each match. Clough came from the old school which was to always get his team to play to their abilities and to use his well honed oratory skills to good effect in motivating players. There are very few managers around of Clough's intellect or emotional intelligence these days, certainly none who are English. He was also a manager not averse to being physically confrontational if he felt players were not pulling their weight. Clough admitted to once having punched a young Roy Keane in the face and he managed to live to tell the tale!

But there are some aspects of Clough's management that would have had to have changed. Motivational powers are no longer sufficient in getting a team suitably prepared for winning top level football matches. The general level of fitness and conditioning in players at the top level and also the level of tactical awareness and discipline instilled by the use of systems such as Pro Zone have enabled players to be more aware of their responsibilities in getting the team to perform. Some people see a similarity in the charisma that Clough used to have and the brooding self-confidence of Jose Mourinho from the current era, but Mourinho is the master planner. He leaves no stone unturned and knows everything about the strengths and weaknesses of opponents. Clough never took an active interest in this type of preparation and that would have been costly in the modern game.

Clough would also have had to have been less of a maverick in the way he managed players from the modern era. Slapping players in the face and bellowing "You're a bloody disgrace" would not go down well among Premier League players who are constantly pampered and who consequently possess sensitive egos. Clough would have needed to cultivate more of a carrot and stick approach, developing an understanding of knowing which players respond to an arm around the shoulder and which respond to a verbal tirade. Any form of physical confrontation would be off limits now.

But there are some elements of Clough's approach that would be a breath of fresh air in the current climate. You would get no straight batting from him, he would provide an honest assessment of his team's shortcomings in post-match press conferences which would be a refreshing contrast to the usual bland, monotone cliches that the majority of Premier League managers utter to the media most of the time. He would also ensure that his teams always played good football, the perfect antithesis to many teams from the current Premier League that are set up to not lose matches rather than going all out to win them. But he would particularly make sure his teams kept their discipline on and off the pitch. Clough was the kind of manager who would impose a club fine if a player was caught with their hands in their pockets at any time other than when it was their round at the bar at the club team bonding session.

Brian Clough's colourful personality will ensure he will still be celebrated as a legend for a considerable amount of time. As with any legend, some achievements are magnified and are the stuff of urban myth. Nonetheless, Clough would enjoy the fact that people still talk about him nearly five years after his death and it is testament to his influence in the game that one legacy he leaves are a number of former proteges who have tried their hand at management. His sceptre still hangs over both Pride Park and the City Ground after all these years and every manager that passes through the gates of those grounds will always have the baggage of comparison to Clough, something they can never hope to emulate. The Damned United introduces a whole new generation to Clough's genius and for that reason alone, the Clough family should celebrate this exposure, whatever their misgivings about how Clough has been represented in both print and on screen.

Sunday 22 March 2009

Hiring and firing


Well, I'm back again to complete my work. Hope you have had good weekends. I've been enjoying some time off from work and been taking advantage of the good weather, which have been plus points. On the downside, the weekend's football hasn't been so good. Manchester United seem to be shooting themselves in the foot after losing at Fulham yesterday, ending the match with 9 men and just to compound matters, Liverpool have gone and beaten Aston Villa 5-0 today.

And to put the top hat on it, I went to watch Eastbourne Borough's match against Burton Albion yesterday and saw Eastbourne play stoically against the league leaders only to undeservedly lose 2-1 in the fourth minute of injury time. Football can be a cruel game sometimes.

Anyway, there a couple of bits and pieces I didn't get round to writing the other night. Let's change that now.

4. Job Centre investments are welcome
There have been a couple of pieces I have read in the newspapers recently that have said that the Government is planning on pumping some spending into improving Job Centres in this country and to try and help long term unemployed into finding suitable work and giving them more access to relevant training. There has some criticism from some quarters of this move, particularly as it comes at a time when Government funds are tied, not least by its increased support for failing banks. Nonetheless, in principle I think this is a good idea.

If I'm honest, I'm not the greatest fan of the Job Centre or the people that work in them. Now, fortunately I have not had any real experience of using the Job Centre myself as in my career to date I have been able to go straight from one job to another and have not had any enforced departures from my jobs hitherto. You might think therefore that I am a little unqualified to give an opinion on Job Centres given my lack of interaction with them. However, I know other people who have needed to use the Job Centre to find work and I have been less than impressed by some of the stories I have heard.

Like a number of agencies that are directly accountable to national Government, I think the Job Centres are so obsessed with meeting targets that they forget that they are dealing with human beings and not just numbers on a Government spreadsheet. In my line of work, I work for an organisation that receives a large amount of its funding from central Government and as a result I am familiar with how evidence of outcomes being achieved is what the rings the bells of the charcoal suit, sensible shoes wearing civil servants sipping mint tea around Whitehall way. The same principle applies where Job Centres are concerned. Everything is geared around ensuring unemployed people achieve their outcome, by finding paid work within a finite amount of time so that Job Centres can prove they are meeting targets and the Government can boast about these trends when the next unemployment figures come out. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said about lies, damned lies and statistics? Or for a more contemporary viewpoint, the Guinness adverts tell us that 98.6% of statistics are made up.

I have known 2 or 3 good friends over the years find themselves at the mercy of the Job Centre as they have found themselves out of work for a period of time. These are people that have had a genuine wish to get back into work as soon as they could and who are honest individuals who wouldn't dream of using loopholes in the system. And yet, they have found themselves subjected to the Job Centre's bureaucratic and faceless procedures. In one instance, a friend who was on the Job Centre's books for a period of time received a warning letter that he'd have benefits stopped and need to support himself all because in amongst the many application letters he was sending out at the time, he hadn't applied for a particular job that he'd discussed applying for with his Personal Advisor. Seems a bit draconian and petty to me, he didn't wilfully ignore the job, he had simply forgotten about it.

This is my problem with the Job Centre and its obsession with outcomes. It is so fixated with people achieving outcomes and getting them off their books, demonstrating that the applicant has achieved "move on" that it does not give any real consideration to whether it is lining people up with suitable work, work that matches the applicant's skill profile and which ties in with what their desired career path is. Now obviously there needs to be some give and take here, I understand that. If the applicant wants to be an astronaut, there are very limited opportunities available while if the applicant wants to be a tiler but is afraid of heights, the opportunities are going to be equally restricted unless they specialise in re-tiling bungalows.

However, the bigger picture here is that if you line people up with inappropriate work to get them off your books, it won't be long before that person doesn't like the work and comes back to the Job Centre faster than a boomerang. Personal Advisors need to be far more focused around supporting the individual and advising them of what will be possible and what will not be and setting up opportunities to go for work that matches that individual's career aspirations and their skills and competencies. It's not going to be a perfect circle, least of all at the moment where there simply are not many permanent jobs being advertised as some businesses have introduced a recruitment freeze. And individuals will need to lower expectations too because it is a competitive market out there. But Job Centres should do all they can to send people in the right direction and get long term unemployed job ready.

The problem that is going to be more of an issue in the next year or so is that because of compulsory redundancies in certain industries where businesses have lived beyond their means, you are going to get amongst the unemployed statistics some people that have stayed a long time in their last job and who now need to move into another environment and possibly need to be re-trained and learn new skills. People in manufacturing or construction work will find that kind of work limited and much of the work that's available will require some I.T. knowledge or skills, something which will be completely alien to some of those with more Luddite tendencies out there. Therefore, if some of the money going into Job Centres can be spent on enabling such applicants to access basic and intermediate I.T. skills training then that will be good use of money. Without it, these are going to be people on the Job Centre's books for some time unless they fancy a spot of shelf stacking at Sainsbury's.

Obviously at the end of the day, Job Centres can only do so much and the applicant has to be the person driving the process around them finding work. But Job Centres can do more to help the people they are supposed to be supporting. No-one wants to see people taking advantage of the benefits system unfairly and so if people are not showing adequate evidence of pursuing work then it is fair enough that they are penalised. But applying pressure to people who are giving it their best shot is unnecessary and Job Centres should be there to encourage and inform rather than to coerce.

Hopefully the money put into improving Job Centres can be put to good use, but some of the changes have to come from within. Personal Advisors have to take responsibility here and not just throw the rulebook at people who are one minute late for an appointment, but actually offer practical advice and support to the people on their caseload and not just throw out completely unsuitable jobs because the job was listed in a keyword search. It should be a collaborative process between Personal Advisor and applicant, built on trust and understanding. So let's see some collaboration and maybe we can get the system to work and see more people stay in work.

5. How long before Sir Alan is fired?
Well the latest fix of reality TV is about to hit our screens with the fifth series of The Apprentice airing on Wednesday night at 9:00 pm with fifteen more candidates vying for the coveted position of being Sir Alan Sugar's lapdog, sorry, apprentice. In the past this series has proved to be compulsive television for me, particularly as with my background as a Business Studies student, I like to see how many candidates show blatant disregard for the basics of business. I must say, however, that as this series approaches I do wonder whether this programme has now had its day in its present form.

The format has got rather predictable now with the same tasks pretty much coming up in one guise or another in each series. I suppose that is fair enough in a way because like an assessment centre or interview questions, each task is designed to test the candidate's ability to meet different competencies required in order to do the job. However, it does result in each series becoming pretty samey after a while, even though tasks are run in a different order in each series. And the interview section of the programme has got rather embarrassing now, with each of Sir Alan's rottweilers trying to outdo each other with seeing who can ask the most outrageous question. Not so much an interview as a cross examination and with very little consideration given to employment law when the questions are fired in a scattergun manner.

This begs the question of how long the series can go on for in its present guise. But perhaps more pertinently, how long can it go on with Sir Alan Sugar being the man who does the hiring and firing? The former AMSTRAD head honcho's fans will say that he has to be part of the programme because he is so intrinsically linked to it and no-one else could match his plain speaking, no nonsense approach. Certainly, Sugar has become the public face of the show and that is to be expected. He is, after all, the person offering a £100,000 a year job.

But against that, consider a few other things. First of all, what does Sir Alan have to offer these days? The company that bore his initials is no longer owned by him. He sold AMSTRAD to BSkyB in 2007 so that BSkyB could take control of the production of what had become AMSTRAD's core product, satellite dishes. Sure, Sir Alan is still wealthy and has a wealth of business insight and contacts, but anyone working as the apprentice now will be working for him as his own entity. Sugar's wealth these days is made from his property business. There is always money to be made in property, but it is a saturated market.

AMSTRAD's headquarters which are used for filming the show are also scheduled for closure next year. Incidentally, despite the show centring around London, the actual AMSTRAD offices where the filming takes place are in the less than glamorous location of Brentwood in Essex. Not exactly the place to be for the aspiring business highflyer. But anyway, once those offices are no longer used, where will the boardroom scenes get played out? In Sir Alan's living room? Or round the table of the local community centre?

Also, without wishing to sound ageist, Sugar and his two advisors, Margaret Mountford and Nick Hewer are knocking on now. Sugar is 62 later this year and I think both Nick and Margaret are older than him. Surely these are people at a stage of life now where they will want to wind down and have more leisure time. I can't imagine Sugar will be wanting to do this forever when he could be retiring to his Spanish villa and playing tennis or indulging in his new hobby of cycling.

It wouldn't surprise me if this series coming up is Sugar's last as the man with the itchy trigger finger. There isn't a whole lot more road he can take the programme down and whereas in the early days of the show, Sugar very rarely got it wrong with his firings, it has been noticeable how he has made some bad calls in the past series or two. He seems to have a problem in trusting feisty women, hence how Ruth Badger, Kristina Grimes and most recently Claire Young all fell at the last hurdle when they probably should have earned his apprenticeship. He also has a bit of a weak area when it comes to understanding the rudiments of marketing. Sugar used to say he had written books about marketing - chequebooks, but the fact of the matter is you would be hard pushed to remember a single AMSTRAD commercial.

Over in the States, Donald Trump, he of the comedy wig and golf course empire only lasted a couple of series before the American equivalent was pulled from the schedules. So Sir Alan has done well to make it to series five and I'm sure this series will still pull in the ratings. But I wonder whether it might be time for a new boss with a different attitude and a different job up for grabs to take the reins when series six begins. Someone like James Caan from Dragons' Den might bring a fresh approach, or possibly someone from a retail background could come at it from a different perspective.

I suppose the other problem now with The Apprentice is that there will be some who will switch off due to the thought of some upstart getting a £100,000 a year job at a time when unemployment is rife and the economy is in meltdown will be seen as immoral. However, I don't think the moralists will make much difference to the ratings, especially as the escapism served up by The Apprentice will be a welcome remedy to some viewers current travails. That said, it has been noticeable how more people enter The Apprentice now to play the celebrity game and get themselves noticed rather than because they have a great desire to work for Sir Alan. It stands to reason really, in the long run you can earn more for appearing on Celebrity Love Island or for doing after dinner speeches and seminars on the business circuit than for trying to get people to rent Sir Alan's bedsits or selling ideas for country clubs to planning committees.

The new series will start a man light with one contender pulling out at the last minute. There will still be 15 contenders in the field though, with the usual motley crew of science teachers, travelling salesmen and in one case, a former footballer. The basic principles will remain the same though. Everyone will work as a team until the task is lost and then let the backstabbing begin in the board room as Sir Alan tells the losers "they are a bloody shambles". Oh, and a man will win the competition.

Friday 20 March 2009

Writing with a spring in my step



Well hello again everyone. I hope things have been good since we last convened. If you happen to live in the south of England, you should at least have enjoyed the glorious spring weather of the past week. Wall-to-wall sunshine, clear blue skies and temperatures in the teens have all added up to surefire evidence of spring having arrived. Sadly, however, you just know that it can't last and when this kind of weather should be prevalent come May, the wind and the rain will arrive. Guess we will just have to make the most of it while it lasts. But it is noticeable how people are more cheerful when the weather is good, and with much of what is happening at the moment being bleak and miserable, that is a much needed tonic.

As with a couple of my recent blog posts, I have decided to split up the blog to talk about a few different things that have gathered in my mind on train journeys to and from work and also through walking in the glorious weather of recent days. Better get cracking then I guess.

1. Komedia's troubles are no laughing matter
For those readers of this blog who, like me, are resident in Brighton, you will probably have read in the past week or so of the Komedia's current financial travails where it potentially may have to close as a result of unsettled debts to some of its key suppliers. For those who are not resident in Brighton and don't know what the Komedia is, basically it is a community theatre in the heart of Brighton's North Laine area which over the past 10 years has grown into being a popular niche comedy and entertainments venue in the city.

The Komedia was established back in the 1990s initially as a small, backstreet theatre which opened up in a small street off of St James's Street, close to the Palace Pier. A few years later as the Komedia's popularity grew and it started to draw more mainstream support in addition to its traditional student roots, the theatre relocated to its present location in the North Laine area of Brighton and over the years it has played host to up and coming comedians from the stand-up circuit, as well as a host of live music acts.

I can well remember the North Laine area before the Komedia arrived and in fact can remember what was at the present site of the Komedia before it became an entertainments venue. It was the Jubilee Shopping Hall, which was kind of like an indoor market traders' parade, with plenty of tat for sale at knockdown tat prices. Back in my misspent youth I used to be an avid computer games player and I used to buy games for my Commodore 64 from the computer games shop there for anything up from 50 pence. Back then, North Laine was seen as one of the rundown areas of Brighton which was given a wide berth by both residents and visitors to Brighton alike.

This recollection is highlighted particularly because the North Laine area has enjoyed a renaissance in the past decade and is now one of the most thriving, bustling areas in Brighton, with a mix of small independent traders, as well as a diverse choice of pubs, cafes and restaurants covering the main streets in the vicinity and the city's main library and museum situated close by. When the Brighton Festival occurs in May, North Laine can expect to experience a healthy portion of the action. While I would stop short of attributing North Laine's rejuvenation simply being down to the Komedia moving there, it has without a doubt played a significant role in the regeneration of the area.

So this begs the question, what has gone wrong with the Komedia? Well, the key thing to remember is that the Komedia is a not-for-profit organisation. This is something of an oxymoron in some respects because, after all, every business needs to make some kind of profit to keep running. But the Komedia is not set up for profitable purposes, the only income it makes is through takings at the theatre, admission fees, people drinking at the bar. The trouble is that the venue is relatively small and so breaking even against the cost of putting on a show is always going to be a recurring challenge.

What has intensified the problem for Komedia though has been the withdrawal of Arts Council funding. Having worked in the voluntary sector for much of my professional life to date, I can appreciate the problem that this will have presented. It stands to reason that wherever an organisation is largely reliant upon a single source of funding and that funding then discontinues, the rug will be removed from under the feet of those charged with running the business.

The world of funding, particularly where charitable grants and donations are concerned is a minefield where the funding provider is constantly looking for evidence of where its money is being spent and are sticklers for issuing caveats over what they will allow their money to be spent on and what they will not. I suppose that is fair enough, I mean let's face it, if any of us gave a donation of £100,000 to a business, we would insist on knowing where the money went and would request that it went into a worthy development rather than taking the business in an inappropriate direction.

And this appears to be where the Komedia upset the Arts Council to the point that the Arts Council withdrew its funding. The Arts Council wanted its money to be spent on the Komedia showcasing cultural talent from across the spectrum of the arts, whereas Komedia has tried to stay close to its comedic roots and attract people to the venue who will drink at the bar while they are there watching a gig or a live comedian. The Arts Council have taken the view that the type of entertainment Komedia is offering does not quite fit in with the more high brow, culture vulture oriented entertainment they want their money spent on and so they withdrew their funding, not least because they also took the view that Komedia did not need their funding because it is making income from having a bar.

Sadly, this is not an atypical example of the bureaucracy that exists amongst funding panels. All too often their agendas are decided by what a few committee members with tunnel vision sitting in a room want to see, rather than what is representative of what the wider public want. And unfortunately, because of the current economic crisis, funding agencies want to award less money but for greater outputs. While larger charities with more resources at their disposal can find strategies for dealing with this, this is bound to place a gradual strain on a smaller charity, where key workers are often part-time workers or may even work on a voluntary basis, as I believe some do at the Komedia.

This is not to say Komedia's owners are exempt from blame in how they come to be in their current plight. Clearly some bad decisions have been made by their top level managers and the business model that they have been operating has been shown to be flawed. You could also say that not enough consideration had been made by management towards an "exit strategy" for if their funding was withdrawn, as it now has. Most significantly though, they need to take responsibility for the confused way in which the Komedia has been positioned. The Komedia is an independent theatre and yet is trying to win more mainstream support while it is wishing to be a promoter of cultural events but is still most well renowned for its comedy evenings, not least because of its name. Komedia has tried to be all things for all seasons and so the paying customer is not quite sure where they stand, while they have also been preturbed by excessive admission prices and bar prices.

Where Komedia goes from here is difficult to say, but it certainly would be facing a grim future if the creditors that it owes money to are not satisfied with the payment plans it has which would seem to be to pay back less than the full outstanding amount. The voluntary sector relies on a certain amount of goodwill, but as Komedia has failed to deliver in the past, it would not be surprising to hear of creditors rebuffing these proposals and insisting on being reimbursed for the full amount.

The Komedia may not be the best entertainment venue in Brighton, but it has nonetheless played an important part in the regeneration of the North Laine area over the past decade. Given that Brighton is always actively selling itself as one of the entertainment capitals of the country, it is important that it retains a range of venues that offer those that like to be entertained outside of their home with a wide choice of entertainments and activities to sample. Losing the Komedia would be a blow to such an aspiration, so it is to be hoped that a strategy can be put in place to sustain the Komedia not just in the short term but over a longer period.

It may mean that the theatre needs to tap into some of the local business expertise and establish some alliances with some wealthy backers, and it may also mean having to consider being run more like a business. If tapping into this kind expertise can develop the Komedia and introduce a more coherent strategy, then "selling out" might prove to be a necessary evil and certainly preferable to hitting the wall.

2. Cheats can never truly prosper
Being something of an athletics fan, I had mixed feelings at Dwain Chambers's recent success at the Indoor Athletics Championships in the 60 metres, where he won the gold medal. On the one hand, I admired Chambers for having the guts to stand up and be counted and compete against many fellow athletes who will have been less than pleased to see him lining up against them. On the other, Chambers has always struck me as being a difficult man to like and although in the cold light of day, he has realised the error of his ways, he has not shown complete remorse for having taken performance enhancing drugs back in 2003, which led to his ban from competition.

In a way though, Chambers's success in the 60 metres in a British record time was quite possibly the best anti-drugs message that could have been made. After all, here is an athlete who we have to assume until proven otherwise is now running "clean" and he has gone and posted his best ever time over that distance without the influence of drugs, rather than when he had taken drugs.

Chambers is now 30 years old and I am sure he has had many moments of quiet reflection over the past few years where he has had cause within the confines of his own kitchen or living room to regret his misguided actions six years ago. Sadly, there is a paranoia within athletics and particularly within sprint races where every millisecond counts in order to be first to the finishing line and athletes sometimes will take a risk in order to get the gold, not least because many athletes feel that if they are not taking something, then some of their competitors will be. This is a sad state of affairs, but we live in a culture where a win at all costs mentality is often prevalent, not least where the corrupting influence of a not insignificant sum of money is involved.

The price Chambers has to pay for his foolish decision that he made when he was 23 years old is that these days he can only be a jobbing athlete. He is banned for life from competing in the Olympics, the blue riband event of his sport. His place at the World Championships later this year has not yet been ratified by the IAAF either. Meanwhile, the lucrative Grand Prix circuit, which offers athletes the chance to win prize money and appearance money through participation in their meetings, also appears to be a no-go area for Chambers. It is hard to feel sympathy for Chambers, as he did bring this all on himself, but he has served his 2 year ban from the sport and so perhaps, with the exception of the Olympics, it is time for him to complete his rehabilitation.

The daft thing for Chambers is that he is now probably at his absolute peak as an athlete. His win in a record time at the Indoors the other week was no coincidence. Not only has he seemingly got himself remarkably fit using legitimate methods, but he is now a more astute athlete than he was back in 2003. He always had the raw pace but lacked the temperament to bring the best out of his ability. It may be because he now sees himself as having a point to prove that Chambers has stepped up a gear, or more likely, it is just the ageing process. Linford Christie won Olympic gold at the age of 32 and in fact saved his best races for when he was past the 30 mark.

I'm not suggesting Chambers could take on Usain Bolt and come out on top, as clearly Bolt is an extraordinary athlete. But I do think that Chambers's success at the Indoor Championships will surely have been a bittersweet moment for him. He will have been happy to win and certainly happy to answer his critics. But when he relaxed in the ice bath afterwards, Chambers would not have been human if a part of him did not think ruefully back to his decision to take performance enhancing drugs in 2003 because his indoor gold medal proved that what was needed to enhance his performance was already inside him, in the form of self-belief.

Victory in that race must have brought home to Chambers how he had thrown away a promising career which he had the capacity to shape himself. It was a bad decision that Chambers made and I think he has made another bad call recently in releasing an autobiography that is supposedly critical of other athletes and of athletics officials in their handling of him. At a time when Chambers is needing to win any meal ticket he can, isolating himself further by re-opening old wounds is not the most advisable tactic and could rebound on him. If Chambers really needed to write his version of events, it would have been best to leave it until after he has hung up his spikes.

3. Quality not quantity is key for universities
There has been much debate and discussion recently about the levels of people going to university and of the proposals for tuition fees for students to increase. Understandably, there is an argument that has a sound basis that says that greater tuition fees will only result in university education becoming more elitist and will prove to be inaccessible for students who might well have the academic skills and inclination but whose parents lack the bank balance or American Express gold card. Clearly the best efforts must be made to ensure that a university education is a privilege bestowed on the most talented rather than the wealthiest students, but I think realistically we all know that the classless society that supposedly exists in the UK now is complete Utopia.

It is fair to say I come from a background where I would have been born with a plastic spoon in my mouth rather than a silver one and as such if I was starting at university now rather than in 1997, I just would not stand a chance of completing the course. I was quite fortunate in that I finished university just before student maintenance grants were done away with and so I was able to get through my four years at my Alma Mater, the University of Brighton, without incurring a massive amount of student debt. It helped that I was still living at home at the time, as I recall that some of my fellow students that graduated in the hot summer of 2001 incurred debts that ate a considerable chunk out of the starting salary in their first postgraduate job. It is no coincidence that more students are living at home now while an undergraduate since tuition fees were introduced and grants abolished.

The one fundamental flaw that the Labour Government has with regards to its higher education policy is the frankly absurd notion that 50% of all students in any given year should go to university. This is just impractical and does not do anyone any favours, the universities end up being oversubscribed, students who have no real motivation to be educated sign up because it means they can put off getting a job for three years (or six if you study Architecture) and invariably it is these kinds of students who drop out of a course after one term, while the students who do want to learn end up in crowded lectures and seminars.

The problem that the Government's "50% target" has brought about is that universities have increased the admission levels on their courses but they have only managed to do this by relaxing the clearance system. I remember a couple of things from my final year at university that home how the clearance system was no longer working as an adequate filter as universities became more obsessed with quantity rather than quality.

I left university some eight years ago now (you have no idea just how old that makes me feel). But even back then it was becoming evident how the clearance system was being relaxed. I remember speaking to a lecturer near the end of my time at university and they remarked on how the Business Studies course in my year had 120 students on the course, but in the equivalent course for the first years that year, there were over 200 students. I don't know for definite, but I would estimate that the freshers for the equivalent course in this academic year will be significantly more.

The other incident that brought home to me how the relaxation of the clearance system had resulted in a drop in standards was when I came to do an assignment in my last year at uni that saw me having to mentor two first year students. The two students I was mentoring had to supply me with a CV that contained their educational achievements. Now, when I applied for university you needed 4 A-C grades at GCSE level in order to be accepted for a place. However, I recall that at least one of the CVs I perused fell short of that number and also included a grade D in their A-level Business Studies, the very subject they were studying at degree level! I found the step up from doing GNVQ Business in my first year at uni a big one and I got a distinction, so I would have thought that this would have been a massive transition for the student whose CV it was.

As well as the Government's objective of getting 50% of further education students into higher education, the Government is also looking to push through a motion to raise the compulsory school leaving age to 18 from 16. I also believe this to be a flawed move because all it will result in will be more teenagers who are demotivated and want to leave education who are forced to stay in education and therefore will disrupt the progress of those who want to learn and possibly go to university. The great thing about sixth form is that it is a halfway house between school and uni. The culture is different to school, there is no "Yes Sir" or "Yes Miss", the tutor expects to be called by their name and because the vast majority of students at sixth form are happy to be there and because they are away from the more mentally deteriorating aspects of life at school, there is very little animosity at sixth form and so this proves to be conducive to learning.

Sixth form being the halfway house it is also provides a transitional period and so teenagers can gradually evolve into adults as they become acclimatised to a less formal, rules based setting. The problem is that if you make it compulsory to stay at school until 18, this transitional period is going to be eroded and the leap up to university will be steeper, while students that no longer want to be at school/college beyond their sixteenth birthday will be a disruptive influence on those that do.

The fact of the matter is that not everyone can be an academic. In fact, there are not enough jobs to go round for those who have an academic background. Too often universities shelter their students and paint them an unrealistic picture of what life will be like after they have attended the graduation ball and after they have picked up their scroll while wearing an oversized cloak and mortarboard. Some well meaning Careers Advisor will tell students about what sort of average starting salary they can expect when they get their first graduate job. The little bit of the small print they neglect to inform their students of is that there are only a finite amount of graduate specific jobs available, for the rest it is a case of starting from the bottom and working your way up like any other employee would.

Instead of overcrowding universities with students not up to the mark or detaining schoolchildren who have enough of their kipper tie and dodgy tuck shop rolls by the time they hit sixteen, the Government should be doing more to encourage those who found academia a struggle to get into learning a trade or accessing support to set up a business. If you look at some of the most well known entrepreneurs in the media gaze, Sir Alan Sugar, Duncan Bannatyne and Sir Richard Branson are all examples of entrepreneurs who were not outstanding scholars. But all of them had the drive, graft and entrepreneurial instinct to be their own boss at a pretty young age. Even Ian Beale showed his entrepreneurial talents by running the Meal Machine in his early 20s!

It would be good if schools, colleges and job centres could establish more links with local TECs to provide young people with the support they need to contemplate running a business without going through the conventional higher education route and which could provide support in planning the key things to get a business idea off the ground, such as writing a business plan, approaching a bank with a financial projection and dealing with tax.

There does seem to have been a recent rethink by the Government which has seen apprenticeships promoted as a viable alternative. This is a step in the right direction. OK, so the manufacturing industry is in terminal decline and so there will be a shortage of opportunities in those traditional jobs. But there are plenty of manual trades that non-academic youths can be trained for and which they may be most suited to, be they builders, plumbers, mechanics or electricians. And crucially, these are all professions that can lead to the opportunity for self-employment.

Maybe it would also be an idea for students to learn trades at university. I am not suggesting that any prospective electricians get let loose on rewiring the student common room nor do I advocate the wannabe chefs serving up dinner in the cafeteria, although I dare say some of their efforts would not be worse than the dumpy mashed potato fayre that is sometimes on offer. But a university based course to train to be a plumber which also gives the student practical first hand experience of the job could prove to be beneficial.

I recently encountered someone I knew from school who did not achieve academically and had no desire to go to university. However, he is a classic example of someone that has done well through his own hard graft and perseverance and he is now a qualified electrician who is running his own business.

This just brings home to me that while university can be a fantastic experience for many, it does not lead you to a promised land with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. For those that are gifted academically and who have a good idea of where they want to go afterwards and where a specific qualification is essential, then university is right for them. But there are others whose skills lie away from academia and who should be given the best possible support in tapping into these skills at an early age.

There is too much emphasis on the quantity of intake at universities now due to Government policy and also due to simple economics. But the more that universities choose to relax their clearance systems, they will not get the cream of the crop and will instead see more and more students dropping out of courses, and possibly university altogether, after just a few weeks. A reduction in numbers and a review of the usefulness of courses on offer (wine tasting anybody?) should hopefully result in universities being a useful learning experience for the majority of students passing through them, and crucially in these times of uncertainty, the skills required to hold down a job upon graduating.


Well, that was quite a marathon. But in the words of Jimmy Cricket, "and there's more". I'll be back over the weekend to talk about a couple of other bits including Sir Alan's hunt for his latest apprentice.

Sunday 8 March 2009

School's out for silly season


Well hello again everyone. In the finest traditions of Mastermind, I intend to start what I finished the other night with some further discussion of some of the interesting and quirky things in the news these past few days.

Since I last posted some ramblings on these pages though, another story has come to the forefront of the media coverage and I feel it is only right I should talk about it. No, I'm not talking about Ashley Cole's ill advised midnight drinks and disputes with Paparazzi photographers and members of London's constabulary, but I am of course talking about Labour's King of Slime getting the custard treatment in an appropriately slimy colour.

4. Direct action could indirectly score an own goal
Well, like most people that watched the news I was amused in a juvenile schoolboy sort of way by Peter Mandelson receiving the green custard treatment. Mandelson is one of the most contemptible of all politicians swimming in the shark infested waters around Westminster, of that there is no doubt. However, whilst people will certainly remember the image of Mandelson being gunged much in the manner of a guest on Noel's House Party or Live & Kicking back in those halcyon televisual days of the 1990s, I do have my doubts over whether this type of action is the right way to get your point across.

I should point out at this point that I actually know who the phantom custard flinger was. Although I don't know Leila Deen in the sense of being a friend or acquaintance, I do recall her being at both my primary and secondary school and in fact her elder sister was in the same year as me. Apparently Leila is well renowned as a political activist with a keen interest in environmental matters, although I must confess, I had not previously heard of her involvement in this field until this story broke.

It would seem that Leila's particular bone of contention with Mr Mandelson was his support for a third runway at Heathrow Airport, which as a leading activist with the Plane Stupid pressure group, it will not surprise you to hear that Ms Deen was opposed to. Mr Mandelson was recently appointed Business Secretary by Gordon Brown, despite the fact that the King of Spin no longer sits in the House of Commons and in fact is now a member of the House of Lords. Within this role of Business Secretary, Mandelson's support of a third runway should not be surprising as he has no doubt been representing the views of many leading figures in business who I expect have lobbied him and his party. Although wannabe benefactors are supposed to not donate money to a political party in exchange for political influence, I think we all know that this does happen indirectly in certain situations.

The fact remains, however, that Lord Mandelson was not actually the person who gave the green light for the go-ahead to the fifth runway development at Heathrow. This person was in fact Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary. So in some respects, Mandelson represented a convenient scapegoat because he happens to attract a higher profile whereas for those with just a casual interest in or knowledge of the current Labour cabinet, picking Geoff Hoon out of an identity parade could prove to be a tough challenge.

Certain questions come to mind as a result of Leila Deen's "attack" on Mandelson. First of all, where on earth was the security? OK, so as it turned out, Ms Deen's weapon of choice happened to be green custard, but if security is as lax as that for Government ministers, who is to say that a top minister could not be exposed to a more dangerous weapon, such as a knife or a blade in another situation? Secondly, how on earth was Ms Deen allowed to just walk off unchallenged in the aftermath of her attack? Bearing in mind that just a couple of years ago, security at the Brighton Centre ejected an 80 year old man who was supposedly being seen to "heckle" a speaker at the Labour Party Conference, you would have expected there to be someone near to the incident who would have stopped Ms Deen in her tracks and arrested her. Ms Deen subsequently voluntarily attended a police station where she was placed under arrest. I wonder if she will get remanded in custody. Custody, custardy, geddit? Hmm, where's the cloak rooms?

Another wider question that should be asked though is do the public really take heed of pressure groups' messages after direct action has taken place? There are those who argue that it is only these kinds of actions that generate awareness in a particular cause and bring it to public consciousness. I tend to think this is a flawed argument though. Sure, people will remember the action and they might well know what the protest was about. However, for the action to be worthwhile, surely it is going to need people to motivated to go out and sign up to your campaign on the strength of the action they have witnessed. While I imagine some people's reaction to Mandelson's gunging was "couldn't happen to a nicer bloke", I doubt there were many who felt motivated to sign up to Plane Stupid or to find another means of campaigning against a third runway at Heathrow or get involved in any other form of environmental protest.

In the main I expect that most people's thoughts were something along the lines of "silly girl" or "you can't condone an assault". And this is what Plane Stupid need to wary of. If people find their protest methods old hat and over the top then it could in fact do serious damage to the credibility of their campaign. There is previous precedent in this respect in the form of Fathers For Justice.

This pressure group, you may recall, was a group formed to improve rights for fathers with regards to access and custody of their children and was at one stage championed by Sir Bob Geldof. However, the worthiness of this group's cause was seriously undermined by a series of publicity stunts by a small minority of activists. These stunts included someone throwing a purple "powder bomb" at Tony Blair whilst Parliament was sitting and some fathers dressed as superheroes scaling the exterior of the Houses of Parliament. The militant actions of a minority resulted in the group being dissolved for a period of time, before being recently reformed, although its reputation has now been permanently tarnished.

I have some sympathy with the opposition towards the third runway at Heathrow, although my sympathy is not so much with residents. I have always wondered about the mentality of people who complain about airport expansions when it was their choice to go and live near the airport, unless they really are so old that their residence pre-dates the airport. My particular concern with the expansion is less to do with the environment and more to do with safety. Heathrow is already Europe's busiest airport and adding another runway will add to the traffic flying over London. Given the sometimes inclement nature of our weather in this country, with more planes in the sky, surely this poses more danger of a crash in extreme weather conditions.

On the environmental point, I think there is a real conflict in people's attitudes. On the one hand, you have people who are more environmentally savvy and do care about the world they leave behind for their descendants. But the conflict is that people need to marry this with the ever increasing need to travel and take on a voyage of discovery. People are more hedonistic now than a generation or two ago, people want to sample different cultures and broaden their horizons and the main way they get to do this is by travelling, plus in some cases, travelling is an essential part of one's employment.

Whilst the green brigade would love everybody to stay at home more and reduce their carbon footprint, I dare say that many of the said activists have spent gap years going round India or Thailand and I doubt many chose to get to Asia on the Vladivostok Express or by going on the longest Tuk-Tuk ride in history. The bare facts are that flying enables people to get round the world far quicker than any other form of transport and given the nature of people's fast paced, live for today lifestyles, it is unrealistic to expect many to follow the Deen family's reported example of travelling to Morocco for a family holiday on a three day train ride.

Heathrow's latest runway is supposedly going to be open for business some time in 2019, although I expect like most building projects, it will eventually be opened late and well beyond the intended budget. So we are talking at least 10 years before the first commercial flights land on the new runway. In that time, I would not be remotely surprised to see significant advances in making aircraft a more environmentally friendly means of travelling. It would require work to be done on the fuel and quite possibly on the dynamics of the aircraft in order for these advances to work. After all, passengers would not want improvements to the environment to be at the cost of longer flight times.

Nonetheless, I do think it is quite feasible to see progress on this by the time Heathrow's next runway opens because normally where a designated need has been identified and it is seen that it needs attention, innovation tends to shine through in the end. People are not going to stop travelling and they are going to expect to get from A to B by aircraft at least as fast then as they do now. There simply are no realistic alternatives if people are travelling long haul to visit their Great Aunt Sheila in Australia or want to go on safari in Kenya. And people are not going to suddenly go back to spending their summers in Newquay or Bognor Regis because their conscience is pricking them.

So all in all, I don't think Leila Deen's chosen method of making a political stand will make any difference in the long run. Governments tend to make decisions affecting us all because they can with the disclaimer that "you elected us". So while I am sure in the short term, people will remember the images of Lord Mandelson's Incredible Hulk-esque face, I expect in the long run it will result in very few people being empowered to go and sign on the dotted line with Plane Stupid. You could argue that Ms Deen's actions were exactly what it says on the tin.

5. The rules are an ass
As something of a quiz fan, it probably won't surprise you to learn that I have been following the recent University Challenge controversy with some interest. In fact, I try and make sure I catch the show whenever I am at home on a Monday night. The show is appealing not just for giving you an ego boost if you unexpectedly answer the most obscure question correctly, but Jeremy Paxman is the perfect host for keeping the current generation of tax dodgers in place.

The controversy that has brewed in the last week or so has been in relation to the status of one member of the winning Corpus Christi College Team from Oxford University. The gentleman concerned supposedly broke the rules because he was no longer a student at the time when the final was filmed and had started a postgraduate job. This supposedly is at odds with the competition's rules which states that any member of the team has to still be at university by the time of the final.

While I appreciate that there are those out there who are sticklers for rules and no doubt will be saying "rules are rules" as their response to this, I personally feel that disqualifying Corpus Christi and handing victory to Manchester was a ludicrous decision and one that could have been avoided. Firstly, why on earth does the final need to be recorded several months after the earlier rounds? I was listening to Bamber Gascoigne the other day and he said that this scenario would not have happened in his time presenting the show because the series was played out continuously without gaps in the filming. If all of the rounds can be filmed within a short space of time, it completely removes the possibility of this scenario occurring.

Secondly, how did the producers of the programme not come to know about this potential problem much earlier? Surely as a pre-requisite for going on the show, the show's production team and researchers make a note of what courses the students are studying and presumably when they are scheduled to graduate. The student in question supposedly informed the production team that he was going to have graduated by the time the final came round but at the time, they did not see fit to take any further action.

This is a terrible way to decide a great series of University Challenge, especially as the final itself had been strongly contested. People out there no doubt feel that Corpus Christi gained an advantage by having an ineligible player but it is up to the BBC to make the rules clearer. In any event, the difference between the two teams was the Corpus Christi captain Gail Trimble, who scored over half the points that Corpus Christi amassed in the final.

Giving the prize to Manchester is awarding their team the most hollow of victories, much like when a Formula 1 driver gets awarded a race after the driver who took the chequered flag gets disqualified because of the most trivial technicality. If the powers-that-be really felt it necessary to challenge the result, why not just replay the final at a later date but with Corpus Christi using another player in place of the chap who had graduated. I have a strong inkling the result would be exactly the same.

I can't but think that this overreaction has been a result of the recent panic stations at the BBC where the popular press, led by the Daily Mail no less, have been jumping on any small scandal at Television Centre, however trivial or irrelevant it seems to the wider world. The BBC being the bureaucratic organisation it is has gone on the defensive and consequently it panics every time one of the papers sticks the knife in. This was an overreaction but now the BBC has created a rod for its own back with the news that in previous series, there were other teams that fielded postgraduates. A simple change of the rules and to the filming schedules needs to happen to avoid any further embarrassment.

One other thing about University Challenge. While I appreciate that the programme tries to represent the diverse range of students going to university, I would like to see more teams being represented by students doing Bachelors and Masters degrees rather than making up the numbers with students working towards PhDs. Getting to PhD is a fantastic achievement of course, especially given the time constraints associated with fitting it in to a career and sometimes a family life. However, I tend to think University Challenge should in the main test those working towards a future career and so PhD students with more worldly experience and knowledge could give their team an unfair advantage.

6. Facebook is not the root of all evil
Social networking seems to be all the rage at the moment. As well as Facebook and MySpace, we now have Twitter which seems to be the current play-thing of choice among celebrities. Some of whom have notoriety, some of whom are called Tim Lovejoy. Twitter's current popularity is something I find baffling given that essentially it is just like a Facebook status update except that you are restricted to 140 characters. Surely there needs to be more to it than that for people to migrate from Facebook to it?

Anyway, Facebook recently celebrated its fifth birthday and there have been plenty of discussions about its general usefulness recently, with some arguing it is an effective way to build networks, while the cynics are suggesting that it encourages laziness and that it results in more artificial relationships which lead to poorer social skills and communications, particularly among children and teenagers that use it.

The truth of the matter is that Facebook is not responsible for the world's ills, nor is it the cure to them either. First of all, Facebook is a fun website that people use to just kill time and to keep in contact with people. I am sure everyone on this fine planet has a mental list in the back of their head of people who they once knew, be it from school, college, university or previous employment who they would love to know what became of them. Or, they will have extended members of the family who they don't speak to often other than at weddings, Christenings, funerals or Bar Mitzvahs. Facebook provides a way of keeping in touch with people from all walks of life and it is up to you and them as to how much you choose to communicate with one another.

There are those that say that if people really wanted to stay in touch, they would have done anyway, but life is not always as straightforward as that. People go their separate ways, change jobs, meet spouses and move across the country, plus sometimes people also change their phone numbers or e-mail addresses and not everyone finds out. The great part of Facebook is tracking people down and comparing notes on how things have changed since you last hooked up.

Like all social networking sites, I think there does come a time when Facebook reaches saturation point. It was the same with Friends Reunited a few years ago, there was a period of time when membership levels snowballed but gradually everyone that you knew who was going to sign up had done so and the other people who were the subject of those "Whatever happened to..." moments were never going to sign up. Facebook has attracted more people than Friends Reunited, but that can be explained by the fact it is free and there is a much wider choice of applications that you can engage in. Nonetheless, my friend list has probably lost as many people as it has gained in the last 3 or 4 months, the result of some people having enough of Facebook's less favourable attributes.

Facebook is not perfect and I imagine that was Mark Zuckerberg's intention when he decided to throw Facebook out to the wider public domain back in 2006. The website is a commercial operation and it makes plenty of money from advertising, while further money is made from companies posting up their applications on the site. This provides the user with a diverse range of interactive options and experiences, but it also leaves the site prone to security lapses and potential viruses wherever applications are not sufficiently vetted.

The other problem with Facebook of course is the inability of some people to conform to the "site etiquette". You know the sort of thing I mean, people forever sending requests to participate in quizzes, posting pornographic images on your FunWall space, not to mention those requests to attack their zombie. People put up with this for so long, but when it gets to the stage where you have 400 requests to engage in various activities, you can understand why the less patient social networker decides to withdraw their Facebook presence.

In terms of the recent discussion about Facebook, I do not think social networking is to blame for poor communication or poor social skills, certainly not on its own anyway. There are other factors which are just as significant, such as text messaging. I would imagine a high percentage of teenagers now own a mobile phone but in general, how often is the phone used for speaking to people? I would hazard a guess that text messaging is predominantly used and text speak leads to sloppy English and less verbal communication. Also, where parents are leading hectic lives, how often do a family unit get to sit down together and engage in dialogue as a family? This surely has a bearing too.

That is not to say that there aren't certain trends with Facebook that are not disturbing, but often the worst culprits are adults. Some adults seem addicted to Facebook, to the degree that they have to update their status every hour or two, even if they updating via their mobile phone and if nothing of tremendous interest has occurred in that time. Some status updates such as learning that your Facebook friend is having a cup of tea and a biscuit or is doing the washing up is of such mind-numbing banality, that you wonder what possessed them to think anyone was interested in the first place.

Then there are those people who log into Facebook via their phone when out socialising with friends. Picture the scene. You are sitting in the pub having a pint with friends and everyone round the table is looking at their phones checking other people's status updates. Or substitute the pub for sitting down for a meal in a restaurant. Surely there has to be a cut-off point, a point where you say "let's leave the artificial communications until later". This is one of the reasons why I never use Facebook on my mobile phone. Well, that and the fact that my phone is ancient so it is not powerful enough to log into it anyway.

These are the types of people that give Facebook a bad name in some respects. You just want to sit them down and say "go for a walk, get some fresh air and turn your phone off when you do so". But some people have addictive natures, whether it is to nicotine, coffee, alcohol or the Internet. How long before the first meeting of Facebookers Anonymous is convened? I suppose it would at least give people the chance to network, and presumably send each other a friend request afterwards. They could consider staging future meetings via Facebook conferencing.

The truth is that Facebook can at times be annoying. If used wrongly it can be dangerous. You would be hard pressed to say that there are educational benefits from it unless you happen to play Lexulous on a regular basis. But, it is without doubt a guilty pleasure and I am sure that there are plenty of examples across the world of lost liaisons being retrieved and new friendships being formed and that surely is its purpose. Let's not try and pretend that it is rocket science, or anything more than a guilty pleasure, and a relatively inexpensive vice at that.