When I was five years old, I wanted to be in The Beatles, but all the jobs were taken … By the age of 12, I wanted to be a scientist and I became one. At the age of 18 I took a job with a philanthropic pharmaceutical company, working around the world and developing the first human insulin, novel medicines for herpes and to bring the first HIV / AIDS treatment to the world in record time. This means that I bring a scientific mind, curiosity and rigour to your enterprise.
By the age of 30 I had developed an interest in business leadership and began teaching MBA programmes, having completed 3.5 degrees myself. At 34, I took myself out of a paid job and, for the last 28 years, I have worked independently as a consultant, author and speaker with people at all levels all over the world, helping them to transform their enterprises. My clients seek to balance their passions, purposes and profit for a more responsible and sustainable form of capitalism in the 4th industrial age. I also help leaders digest what we call "wicked problems and opportunities", in other words, the issues that keep them awake at night, using a unique mixture of divergent and convergent thinking skills. My 28 years of consultancy experience bring a wealth of expertise and wisdom to you, in enterprises as diverse as Unilever to the United Nations.
Along the way, I have written 12 books on leadership, innovation and creativity, gaining a prize for my work from Sir Richard Branson and various accolades from Professors Charles Handy, Adrian Furnham, Tom Peters et al. Over some 50 years, I have gradually combined my three passions of science, business and music into a potent mixture which reaches the head, heart and soul of your enterprise.
In combination, your enterprise benefits from rigour, analytics and curiosity due to my science and business background, plus the emotional intelligence, creativity and improvisation skills that come from my life as a music composer and producer. As a musician I have been privileged to interview world class musicians such as Roberta Flack, John Mayall, AC / DC, members of Prince’s ensembles, Queen's production team and Meatloaf's singing partners for their insights into leadership, innovation and success.
I am a passionate advocate for better politics and better business for a better world, fighting populist politicians and short-termism in our global affairs. I am an "HR" person, i.e. a "Hippy Realist": green by ideals, but pragmatic by actions to change the world towards more sustainable behaviour.
JOHNSON & JAVID PROCLAIM FREEDOM DAY –LET COVID SPREAD FREELY !
This decade has produced several examples of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Brexit, for example, is reversing the economic recovery arduously achieved during our membership of the EU, from being the sick man of Europe in the 1970s up to 2016, by when we had become the top European recipient of foreign investment. (That is no longer the case). The handling of the Covid pandemic under Johnson’s incompetent Brexiteer regime is becoming a further case.
On his appointment as health minister, Javid announced that July 19 would be the end of the line for Covid restrictions, that this date would be “the start of an exciting new journey for our country”, and even that the nation would be healthier without the restrictions ! While the number of cases was “ticking up”, the number of deaths remained mercifully low. The number of hospital admissions had doubled by then but he saw no reason to delay beyond July 19 because no date we chose came with zero risk. Knowing we simply cannot eliminate the virus, we had to learn to live with it. This was an extraordinary statement, coming from a new appointee with a background in banking and politics but no experience of healthcare. It was contrary to the views of virtually the whole of the medical profession and NHS. Javid either did not bother to take the advice of his scientific advisers or chose to ignore it.
He and Johnson think that, with the older generation doubly vaccinated, the Covid effect will be reduced to little more than a severe cold, complacently assuming 100,000 cases per day to be acceptable. However, whilst deaths and intensive care cases have been relatively low so far, the Delta variant of the virus has had a more serious effect on the younger generations than a cold. With cases at 30,000 per day and surging , the pressure on hospitals is now approaching the levels of the earlier Covid waves, when beds and treatment were unavailable except to Covid patients. Javid apparently ignores deaths from failure to diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer through lack of facilities, which, it is estimated, matched those from Covid in the previous waves.
There are other consequences which our new health minister fails to understand. New Covid variants arise in conditions where the virus is able to spread freely, and in a partially vaccinated population will promote the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants. The Javid/Johnson policy of “living with the virus” thus opens the door to a stream of new variants, up to omega, with the likelihood that those with greater resistance to vaccines will emerge. Another aspect is the serious after-effect of Covid, known as ‘Long Covid”, on a sizeable proportion of sufferers.These may include damage to breathing, muscles, joints and other organs as well as brain fog, all for an indeterminate period and irrespective of age of the sufferers or the severity of the attack itself. The risk of Long Covid falls particularly on young people and children, who are mostly still unvaccinated.
Johnson’s retort to critics is to ask; “If not now, then when should we open up?” The obvious answer is “NOT NOW”. The vaccination programme needs more time, for all the reasons given above. Johnson’s ”Freedom Day” is a piece of ballyhoo to gain cheap publicity, welcome only to those with no concern for the health of others. His exhortation is to the public to “behave responsibly” is not credible from a man whose own career has been marked by irresponsibility, rule breaking and self-indulgence. Its purpose is to enable him place the blame of any catastrophic fourth wave on the failure by the people to follow his guidance rather than on his government’s neglect of its duty to protect them. Don’t be duped !
Wednesday September 8 2021 – from 19.00 – 21.00 – First hour is the seminar plus questions. Second hour is a digest of the issues raised by Professor Grayling and an opportunity for dialogue.
Please attend our induction event on Monday 2nd August at 8 pm on ZOOM. We will be considering scenarios to Rejoin EU.
In case you are not familiar with Scenario Planning, it can be summarised as “a history of the future”. We will consider a long time horizon of at least 10 years and then identify plausible events along that time line. These will be the PESTLE factors: political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental events. From this we construct the most likely scenarios, bearing in mind that our politics are in flux, so disruptions must be examined. I will be leading you through the process. You can read a little on the process at Scenarios although our time horizons will be longer than the example given.
So, please give some thoughts as to the likely events coming up in the next decade.
The event is free but do support us to help cover our costs in increasing our ZOOM contract. We aim to run more events and need £480 to cover a yearly upgrade on ZOOM.
Professor Grayling will speak on what we need to do to rejoin the EU sooner rather than later with some very practical suggestions for all of us to act upon.Anthony Grayling is the author of about 30 books on philosophy, biography, history of ideas, human rights and ethics, including The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), The Future of Moral Values (1997), Wittgenstein (1992), What Is Good? (2000), The Meaning of Things (2001), The Good Book (2011), The God Argument (2013), The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind (2016) and Democracy and its Crises (2017).He has been a stalwart campaigner for our continuing membership of the European Union.
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The repetitive “why” technique is good for getting to root causes which I’ve used extensively as a scientist and MBA tutor. Here is a vastly reduced form of the technique applied to the case of “Matt Hancock’s Half Hour”:
Q : Why is Matt Hancock being investigated?
A : Because he kissed a woman and grabbed her arse?
WRONG.
A : Because he made policy decisions that led to 150 000 Corona deaths?
WRONG.
A : Because Johnson needs a distraction from the growth of the COVID Delta variant?
In part, YES.
A : Because Johnson needs a distraction from the next stages of Brexit?
In part, YES.
Q : Should Hancock be sacked?
A : Yes, but, of course this lets Johnson, Gove, Redwood, Sunak, Leadsom, Patel, Raab, Baker, McVey, Francois, Truss, Whately, Duncan Smith, Mogg, Dacre, Murdoch, The Barclays, Foster, Davis, Jenrick, Zahawi, Coffey, Farage, Eustace, Hoey, Trump, Elliot, Cameron, Corbyn, May, Mc Cluskey, Fox, Field, Jenkin, Hannan, Cummings et al off the hook, not to mention their shadowy acolytes. Who did I miss? Sunak is an interesting example as many people think him benign. However, Julia Smith points out that Sunak deliberately ignored 3.5 million self employed people. A small number of these killed themselves as a result. Brexit extremism is not without its human consequences.
Q : What then is the root cause of Hancock? i.e. Why is Hancock Hancock?
A : Johnson.
Q : What then is the root cause of Johnson? i.e. Why is Johnson Johnson?
(a) 100,000 of those deaths could have been avoided but for this government’s inexcusable incompetence. That makes Johnson and Hancock Premier League mass murderers.
(b) Brexit was always for the benefit of tax dodgers and other criminals. It was never for the benefit of decent people.
(c) Johnson has a licence to be dictator until 2024.
The worst is yet to come.
Read our recent articles:
Five Years – A review of five years of Brexit “benefits”.
Career opportunities – Our application to work for the Cabinet Office to find the Brexit benefits.
There is a job going for Director, Brexit opportunities in the Cabinet Office – I was excited by the prospect of finding out what these were after five years of waiting patiently so I have applied. My application is below. I’d urge you to do the same. Here is the specification:
Dear Lord Sir David Frost,
I have been an avid follower of your work ever since The Frost Report and I was excited to see your research post for a Director of the BOU (Brexit Opportunities Unit). You need look no further, as you have found your man. To quote ELO, ‘I’ve been searchin’ for five years on my own account, meticulously comparing what we had in the EU with what we are getting, now that Brexit is out of the oven. I’d like to continue that research in the quest for the economic, social, technological, ethical, environmental and constitutional benefits of Brexit. As far as your job specification goes, I meet and exceed your requirements, in brief:
I am a skilled researcher, covering qualitative and quantitative methods, survey design and communications. With 3.5 degrees covering science, business and HR, I am quite used to dealing with the distortion of data by politicians, so I’d be more than able to extract the Brexit benefits from the background noise, if they exist. Broadly speaking, I am happy to continue with your line of “if the facts don’t fit the story, change the facts or just erase them”.
I am used to dealing with intelligent senior people across industry, politics, media and in public life. I am quite sure I could “level down” to work with imbeciles, sycophants and psychopaths as required by the role. I met the Prime Minister in 2012 shortly after the Olympics when he was dating a young woman so we have actually met.
In terms of change management, I have written 12 books on leadership and one on the question of changing minds on Brexit. Admittedly, the strategies in “Let’s Talk About BREX .. it” are directed towards the removal of illusions and fantasies about Brexit, what I call “Brexorcism”. However, these change management strategies are just as applicable to the erasure of people’s minds who voted to Remain, although it may be a lot quicker to round these people up and send them to a BCC (Brexit Concentration Camp) – in fact, I will make a proposal on this separate matter to Priti Patel shortly. I am prepared to work on this for 50 years as suggested by Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Change minds on Brexit
In terms of commanding confidence, I am a skilled practitioner of speaking truth to power. I see that lying is a precondition for doing the job and I would cope with this by using a placard saying “fake news” whenever I give a public brief to the media for greater clarity. In any case, in the post-Brexit world, the truth is an expensive luxury. I see that you, Johnson, Patel, Hancock, Raab, Duncan Smith, Francois et al. have managed to get by without needing to get dragged down by the truth. Bravo!!
As regards changing laws, I have no respect for the law, having been let down by the Police on several occasions when being attacked by Brexiteers. This means that I regard the law as unimportant in the quest to get Brexit done. Judges and the judiciary are one of the areas we must target to remove the scales of justice from people’s eyes.
I was considered to be too organised to get a job for Dominic Cummings. This demonstrates my ability to stick at something that has been a proven failure over the long term.
Dealing with the Russians at Parliament – Photograph by Bruce Tanner http://www.brucetanner.com
Crucially I have no political experience at all, a massive asset in a political world befuddled by political experts. Who needs experts (Gove, Govia). But I am good at coming up with meaningless phrases to describe the toxic cocktail of Corona crisis + Brexit disaster aka “Britastrophe“.
In the words of The Clash “I hate the army and I hate the R.A.F. I don’t wanna go fighting in the tropical heat. I hate the civil service rules. I won’t open a letter bomb for you.”
Put plainly, if Dido Harding can run the NHS, I can run the fucking Cabinet Office, FFS.
In summary, 27 years diverse experience as a business consultant, author, speaker and academic, working with companies such as Unilever, Pfizer, The UN, Virgin, BP. Find me at Linkedin.
On the suggestion of Julia Smith, may I ask for these other fringe benefits:
Free flags for my home, car etc.
Private health insurance delivered by the NHS
Cocaine discounts
Free use of the Royal Yacht Brexit McBrexitFace at weekends
Exclusive access to PPE contracts for which I am quite unsuitable @ £107 million per item
I require a minimum of two cats in the office at anyone time and a supply of fresh food for the kitties
A job for my son in strategic management
A gravy train and two year’s supply of Bisto
Yours in waiting
Peter
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Ignorance is the new intelligence
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Five years on and Brexit’s still undone. I often get quaint looks when I talk about Brexit in Kent now and some subtle or even less subtle social disapproval. For the record, I’m quite happy to be considered to be “so last year” until I am returned to the soil by my maker, or Brexit is placed in a shallow grave, whichever comes soonest. Brexit is in fact undone now that Johnson has realised he never read the contract. It will never be “done”. I told everyone that we’d be doing Brexit for the next 50 years and it begins to look that way. In five years it becomes apparent that we still don’t know what Brexit means but we are beginning to make some evaluation of what Brexit has brought us.
Economiceffects
£2.3 Trillion was lost in just one month from the city of London. Just for comparison and scale, that’s 58 years’ worth of our contribution of £39 billion to the EU wiped out in just one month. So, we would have to make up our losses due to Brexit until 2079 just from this impact alone. Let that sink in!!
Our Australia trade deal is worth 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. It would take 2000 deals like this to even make up our losses from our arrangements with the EU. At a generous estimate of our rate of deal making, we can expect to make up the losses from Brexit in trade deals by the year 3021. I know that’s bad economics as not all trade deals are worthless and some also take years not months but I think you should get the point.
£37 billion has wasted on test and trace. That’s more than what it takes to land a space mission on Mars at a mere £22.5 billion. Our contribution to the EU is £39 billion per year.
Despite promises made to fishermen on Brexit, the UK fishing industry will have been filleted by the time any new arrangements come into being with £1 Million being bled from the fisherman every DAY. Yet, we plan to spend £200 million on a Royal Yacht that the Royal family do not want or need. Brexit McBrexitFace will no doubt spend its time trawling international waters trying to net trade deals without catching anything more than scurvy.
Brexit shrank UK services exports by more than £110 billion over a four-year period. That’s 3 x our yearly contribution to the EU, much of which we get back.
Farmers have also been sold down the river with the introduction of hormone fed beef and the dumping of poor quality products into UK markets, just so that Liz Truss can claim success.
The building industry is beginning to show cracks with materials shortages and other supply chains being affected.
Food and drink exports from UK have declined by 50% since the beginning of 2021.
Coming soon, having lost EU steel import protections, our steel industry now faces a wave of cheap imports.
Hired goons distract people from Brexit shambles. Help us Re-Boot Britain by clicking the image.
Social / Welfare / Environmental
Brexit has been all consuming on Civil Service bandwidth and this means that there have been numerous areas of neglect. For example: social care, Grenfell, The Northern Ireland protocol and citizenship issues remain undone with massive consequences for lives and livelihoods. 305 000 people are caught in civil service backlogs for settled status and Johnson says he will not budge on the deadline of June 30th with impact on breaking up families and imprisonment at borders. Big issues in 2016 are still issues in 2021 due to the significant entropy of Brexit on progress across the board of Government.
“You can stay but your kids can’t”.
We are yet to see the whole impact of the end of the grace period at the borders but already all major supermarkets have imposed rationing on tinned tomatoes with food shortages predicted in the coming months and the army on standby.
And, of course, far from taking back control of £350 million per week for the NHS, Dido Harding is on the way to privatising your NHS. Was this on the side of a bus?
We did not need to do Brexit to deal with immigration. Our hostile environment has discouraged Europeans to work here. In particular we have seen a sharp decline in fruit pickers, care workers and other professions. The arguments made by Brexiteers to “grow our own” have not gathered any takers …
Instead of planting veg this year I have taken the Brexiteers advice to "grow our own". I have planted 3 doctors, 10 nurses, 5 scientists and 20 farmers in the ground. I now await the results #Brexiteers#BrexitReality#NHS#farming#ScienceResearch
— Re-Boot Britain – Rage Against The Brexit Machine (@BrexitRage) June 21, 2021
Political / Constitutional
The destruction of peace in Northern Ireland has already begun by the reckless abandonment of the Good Friday Agreement. Johnson promised there would be no border down the Irish Sea. He broke that promise, ending 30 years of peace on the island of Ireland. Kate Hoey has been cynically and dangerously stoking the fires of unrest in Northern Ireland, having promoted Brexit.
The destruction of the United Kingdom has begun with Scotland seeking independence, reunification of Ireland and independence movements beginning in Cornwall and the North East. Independence for Scotland and unity for Ireland are of course good things and entirely predictable consequences of Brexit. In extremis, England will be reduced to the People’s Republic of Thurrock by 2040!! Gibraltar has special status as a means of dealing with the fact that the majority of residents work in Spain. In 10-20 years time we can expect Gibraltar to be under Spanish control. The same goes for The Falkland Islands, The Channel Islands and The Isle of Man.
The UK is now a four nation state and a one party state with no effective opposition. It may sound hard to say this but Brexit is as much a product of a passive and fearful opposition than it is the result of a hard core of Brexit ultras and psychopaths.
Britain no longer has a special relationship with the USA as President Biden seeks to re-educate us about the realities of breaking international law. At the same time Biden has forged stronger links with Europe as a natural partner of similar size in terms of trade and other opportunities.
I invite Brexiteers to provide a list of benefits of Brexit – Five years waiting
Ethical / Legal
Protest is now being clamped down on, using COVID as an umbrella to hide under. Boris Johnson is to remove the powers of the Electoral Commission after they asked awkward questions about the redecoration of his flat.
Crony contracting continues as The Good Law Project reveals details of companies offered lucrative contracts based on personal networks rather than competence in the chosen industry. If you are to shrug and say “so what” to this, these contracts were for PPE. This means that people will have died unnecessarily because of faulty selection procedures. You may well say that the pandemic demanded a speedy response. Well the speediest response would have been to select companies with the capacity and competence to make the products rather than novices.
My own MP Mr Rehman Chishti is under investigation for having his hand in the till over property development scandals. You can help by reporting him to the bar council.
— Re-Boot Britain – Rage Against The Brexit Machine (@BrexitRage) June 21, 2021
We have still not found the identity of the Tory rapist. Is this an example for our children to look up to?
It now seems that our children are to sing a Soviet styles song in school to unite the country. I have a better suggestion – see the song below
Ignorance is strength – Post Brexit education syllabus
I could go on but I won’t. All this in just five years … and we’ve only just begun …
A collaborative effort to mark five years of Brexit carnage from Greg, Lisa, Patricia, Irina, Andrew, Adrian, Mike, Helga and the good people at Re-Boot Britain. Join us every Monday to Break Brexit Before Brexit Breaks Britain.
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