It’s hard being young

It was George Bernard Shaw, that most quotable of authors and playwrights, who said, “Youth is wasted on the young”. He had a point, but the young don’t have it easy, and while I wouldn’t mind having youth, I wouldn’t want to be young again today.

Getting an apprenticeship isn’t easy

My nephew has not had the easiest start in life. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he grew up as part of a loving family, has a doting mother and four gorgeous siblings, and a fantastic auntie and uncle who took him on all sorts of adventures (guess who that might be). But he suffered with “glue ear” when he was young, ended up having to have grommets and now has mild hearing loss; he also has mild dyslexia. So his education wasn’t the easiest. He dropped out of sixth-form college after having been badly hurt in a car accident – as an innocent pedestrian I should add.

Since when he’s had a series of jobs, none of which really offered him the career potential that he is capable of. Earlier this year, inspired by a friend of his, he decided he’d like to qualify as an electrician, and started looking for an apprenticeship.

Well, you would think, with all the politician’s talk about creating new apprenticeships, that wouldn’t be too hard. What they don’t tell us is that in order to qualify for an apprenticeship, and register at a suitable educational establishment, you have to have a job first! Yes, you have to persuade an employer to take you on, pay you a sum of money (the amount seems to vary between different colleges, but it doesn’t have to even be as much as the minimum wage in some instances) and then agree to release you one day a week for three years to enable you to get your qualification.

How does having to find a job before you can become an apprentice help create jobs?

Anyway, Mrs Meadowend emailed just about everyone we know over the summer; some of our friends responded very helpfully (you know who you are – and thank you) and my nephew secured a couple of interviews. We were all delighted when he was offered a job, as an apprentice trainee, at an electrical engineers and contractors near where we live in Buckinghamshire. The company has been very generous; they are paying him a bit more than the minimum wage and also for the day he spends at college – neither of which they are obliged to do. So he registered at our local college for his apprenticeship training just in time at the start of term in September.

Now, find somewhere to live

OK, that’s one hurdle over. Now he, his partner and adorable four-month old daughter (I know, I am her great uncle, so I would say that, but she is adorable) need to find somewhere to live nearby – they had been staying with Mrs M’s sister – nearly an hour’s drive away when the roads are clear – not really conducive to getting to work by 7:30am.

And here we encounter another problem. There’s no chance round here of them finding social housing, so they have to find somewhere to rent in the private sector. Because he’s on such a low wage, and his partner is on maternity leave, their total income entitles them to receive housing benefit.  ”That’s handy.” you might think.

However recieving housing benefit automatically disqualifies you from renting from most private landlords! You see, if you’re a private landlord there’s a good chance your insurance won’t cover you if you rent to someone with income from a “third party”. This is because councils, which are responsible for paying housing benefit, often change their mind and reduce their estimate of the rentable value of a property, and therefore reduce the benefit. So as a landlord you may have accepted a tenant in good faith, believed their income plus their housing benefit would enable them to afford your rent only to find that your tenant, through no fault of their own, suddenly becomes unable to pay the rent you’ve agreed with them. And you may have difficulty terminating their tenancy agreement. Because this has happened a lot many insurance policies now implicitly exclude those receiving housing benefit.

I guess insurance companies gratefully accept premiums and then do their utmost to avoid paying out if they can possibly find a hole through which to wriggle.

So my nephew, partner, and adorable daughter are staying with us. And may be staying with us for a while yet.

It’s no surprise that young people won’t leave home these days. Many of them can’t if they wanted to. All this while they’re still idealists, consider themselves to be immortal, and believe the world is a wonderful place if only us old people would stop screwing it up for them.

It’s hard being young – I wouldn’t want to do it again.

Is F1 really a sport?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching motor racing, and I particularly enjoy Formula 1 when the outcome of a race is being seriously contested. But this season the introduction of DRS (drag reduction system) following on from KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) in 2009 makes we wonder what’s going on, and whether F1 really is a sport.

While all sports can suffer rule changes during the off season – rugby has particularly suffered from this, and football (soccer) notably had the controversial offside rule changed a couple of years ago – changing the rules and introducing technology that gives the slower driver an advantage over the chap infront doesn’t seem like cricket to me.

IMHO winning in Formula 1 is now primarily about the cars. A good driver in a great car (Jenson Button in the Brawn car in the 2009 season for example) can dominate much of the season, but actually in the second half of that season, when the rest of the teams managed to replicate the Brawn’s diffuser, the difference evaporated and Jenson managed to win the title only because he’d established such a commanding lead in the first half of the season.

Conversely a great driver in a mediocre car just gets left behind – Rubens Barrichello proved just how good a driver he is when he was Michael Schumacher’s team-mate at Ferrari, coming runner-up twice. But in an underperforming Williams, he’s just not in contention.

Adam Parr, chairman of Williams said:

“For us to design and build the two cars that we will have on the grid on Sunday here, without putting an engine in them, without putting a driver in them, without accounting for the 70 staff that we bring to each race – without all of that those cars cost £2m.”

And as I just pointed out, Williams aren’t really in contention at the moment. How much more do Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull spend?

So really, how much of this is about sporting prowess, skill and ability, and how much is about the money, the designer and the engineering?

I’m not saying I could drive one of those cars as well as any of them out there – I know I couldn’t – but surely if they all got identical cars, whether they were designed by Adrian Newey or not, we’d all believe the results would reflect their sheer driving ability rather than the amount of money their teams can burn through.

For me, F1 at the moment is primarily about making money for Bernie Ecclestone, who hardly needs more than he’s currently got. So when it goes to Sky Sports next season, I for one won’t be watching it. I’m not putting any of my money into either Ecclestone’s or Murdoch’s pocket.

George Washington’s PC?

In early 2007 I decided my Windows XP Home PC had to go. But I hated Vista. I managed to buy one of the very last Acer Aspire desktop PCs running Windows XP Media Edition. I used it until two weeks ago. I always felt it was a good purchase and a good, reliable and decently performing computer.

But it started blue-screening sporadically, complaining about disk and memory errors.

What recession?

In the last recession I worked out three measures to determine the state of the country’s economy, and how I could tell things were picking up.

The first was the number of people on public transport during the rush hour. My logic is that no-one in their right mind would travel into London during the rush hour unless they had to. And the primary reason they have to is because they have a job. The number of empty seats, or conversely the number of people standing, on the train in the morning is a good proxy for the number of people employed and therefore the state of the economy.

Does it have to be like this?

A tweet from the inestimable Bill Thompson (@BillT) this morning about being over 50 and throwing yoghurt on his trousers prompted me to contemplate the pros and cons (mainly cons, I admit) of being in my 50s. It has to be said that it’s a bit depressing…

What was I saying? Yes, that’s the worst. I haven’t got to the point of forgetting what I’m saying mid sentence yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. I sure as hell forget what I climbed the stairs for, only to remember just as I reach the bottom step. I guess the exercise is good for me.

I am the invisible man. I work in the City of London, most of the time   

Is it worth jumping red lights?

More on cycling – if this isn’t of interest to you then I’m sorry, but I do it (almost) every day, so it figures large in universe of things I think about.

It’s widely known that cyclists (especially in London) jump red traffic lights. It’s also widely known that the Metropolitan and City of London Police forces are clamping down on this practice and issuing £30 on-the-spot fines.

The publicity surrounding this made me wonder what difference, in terms of journey time, it might make.

So I conducted an experiment, and then observed other cyclists.

New reg’s make cyclists less visible

I’ve been reading about the EU legislation that’s going to make it compulsory for cars to drive with their headlights (or day-running lights) on all the time.

And as a cyclist, it doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

From my perspective, cars are very visible. They tend to be large, shiny and moving – which is what makes them stand out to the human eye. Cyclists tend to be smaller, not shiny and not moving very fast. Pedestrians and other motorists rarely look for cyclists anyway.

So where’s the logic in making the vehicles that are already highly visible even more so, when by doing so you make the more vulnerable road users less visible (by comparison) and therefore even more vulnerable…

Cyclists aren’t helping themselves

You would have thought that the best way, as a cyclist, to avoid any form of collision is to ensure that you’re as visible as possible. That’s the prime purpose of lights on bikes – to be seen by other road users.

Well I think that. But clearly there seem to be other cyclists who believe camouflage and invisibility are their best friends!

Not only have I seen cyclists (at the last moment admittedly) in the dark dressed in black with no lights on front or back, but I’ve seen those with lights covered by their anorak, or the stuff in the basket at the front. For crying out loud, think about whether your lights can be seen.

But most exasperating of all are those cyclists with lights on their helmets! WTF? Who’s looking there?

Look both ways…

I’ve been cycling from Marylebone to my office in Finsbury Square, a distance of just under 5 miles each way, for a month now. I’m enjoying the exercise, and I don’t miss travelling on the tube. I have got wet a few times – actually a lot – but that’s OK since I have showers and a locker at work, so I can get clean, dry and change into my work clothes.

However my domestic and laundry arrangements aren’t the subject of this blog: I have something else I want to get off my chest.

There are, of course, some risks involved in cycling around London, but my conclusion after the first month may be surprising. The biggest risk isn’t lorry drivers – I think you’re OK provided you’re sensible, don’t try to squeeze through silly gaps, and stay well in sight of either their mirrors or infront of them. It’s not taxis either –

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose

Or marketing’s just the same as it always was, despite the technology.

This post is prompted by a blog post from PRGeek (Jon Silk, @prgeek) from a social media conference today. He suggests in a recent tweet “Old media: Stick a celeb in an ad. New media: Stick a celeb on the web. Social media: Stick a celeb on Twitter.”.

My point is that although the techniques of marketing change as technology advances, the objective of marketing remains the same – it’s to attract an unfair share of your audience’s attention.

In the 17th century a row of shops would be competing for passing trade, but the one that paid someone to wear a sandwich board advertising their wares, or paid the town crier to shout about their goods, would be likely to attract more business. Technological advance has introduced print advertising, commercial radio, tv and cinema advertising, billboard advertising, the web and now a plethora of social media: The means change but the objective is the same.

Clearly the audience determines the tactics, so marketing single-dealer platforms to a universe of 45 significant investment banks requires a different set of techniques to marketing anti-virus software to both retail and corporate users (for example), but the objective remains the same. And it always will.

Originally posted on Finextra, on November 12th 2009