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.
I coined the phrase “Britastrophe” a while back to explain the toxic combination of Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster. Today sees the launch of the song “Britastrophe” by “Mutant Algorithm”. Download the mini album with three tracks and a free ringtone here. Here’s the trailer video:
Please GIFT the song to MP’s – both to ConservativeMPs in order to persuade them to pull back from breaking international law and to Opposition MPs on all sides, to persuade them to grow a backbone and suspend Brexit in the wake of a Britastrophe.
Please send your gift with a personal message – a template is below for your use or adaptation. Personal messages work best.
Dear xxx,
I write to you with the gift of “Britastrophe”, a song which explains the toxic combination of Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster. I ask you to exert your influence to suspend Brexit by voting against the UK Internal Markets Bill, currently passing through Parliament. The bill breaks international and domestic law and represents a new low point in our reputation as a great nation. Of course, your own reputation as an MP and that of your party goes hand in hand with this.
You will be aware that even Theresa May, Lord Howard, Sajid Javid, Norman Lamont, former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC and many others have raised serious objections to the bill as well as six former Prime Ministers on all sides of our politics from Sir John Major to Gordon Brown and even David Cameron. It has also gained international condemnation from world leaders across the globe, for its parallels with the 1933 Enabling Act. I need not remind you where that led. Our membership of the EU costs us 37 pence a day for 70+ years of peace and offers us opportunities for our children and country to be world leaders through the membership of the most successful experiment in collaboration on the planet. I write this letter as we learn that Kent is about to have a hard border in order to deliver Brexit chaos.
I ask you to restore trust and decency in politics and pull back from the brink of this Dominic Cummings inspired initiative. I am aware that MPs on all sides find the power grab by Cummings and Johnson extremely unacceptable with extremely worrying implications for democracy in the UK as Britain slides into a banana republic. Is that what you really want on your Wikipedia page as a legacy?
Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster = a Britastrophe
Silence is complicit behaviour. Will you act to suspend Brexit before it’s too late?
Yours sincerely
Your name
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Some hard facts for those who are bored rigid by Brexit and want some quick insights into what’s coming over the hill for Christmas and the New Year. Click on the images for more insights into the issues raised.
Click to read
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Write to your MP to demand a suspension of Brexit in the wake of Corona.
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At the moment, as we are still a member state of the EU, we abide legally to the rules of the EU. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one law that the UK must abide by as a member state if it wishes to conduct business on the world stage. The law also regulates the transfer of personal data in and out of the EU and EEA areas.
In the event of a No Deal Brexit (and potentially any Brexit), the UK will have removed itself from all legal process in the EU, including the GDPR. The UK is perfectly happy for everyone to continue transferring personal data to the EU, because the EU is covered by the GDPR (and possibly because the government doesn’t care whether your data becomes public or not). However, the UK will have become a ‘Third Country’ in the eyes of the EU. We operate under the UK’s Data Protection Act… but also currently abide by GDPR. What has never been tested is whether our Data Protection Act is sufficient or ‘adequate’ on its own to protect personal data (of EU citizens) to the level that the GDPR covers privacy and personal data. The EU must protect the data of its member states.
Thus, this puts every organisation that stores and transfers data, into a legal quandary.
If companies operating in the EU or EU agencies transfer personal information to the UK, and the UK misuses or makes that data public, there is no legal action that can be taken against the UK. The ramifications are wide ranging and complex. Read on.
Organisations thus may choose to stop transferring any personal data to the UK until there is clarification on the legal process.
Whilst we are here, snitch on your MP for breaking international law. Use our snitching tool.
This is the ‘adequacy decision‘. Every ‘third country’ has to go through a review process to determine whether there is an adequate level of protection within the third country’s legal system that will protect the privacy of personal data. The last adequacy decision that I know about took over 1 year. And a recent EU-US privacy shield case fell through.
“If there’s a failure to agree on any data protection arrangements, UK organisations which receive personal data from the EU (and EU organisations transferring data to the UK) will need to ensure they have additional appropriate safeguards in place. For example, Standard Contractual Clauses or Binding Corporate Rules. This poses the risk that UK companies could potentially lose business to other companies across the EU.”
It’s kind of obvious really. We want to be alone, so we are alone.
Other than adequacy decisions, data can be transferred if certain standard contractual clauses (SCCs) are added to contracts to cover the protection of personal data. But these are being tested now (see below with Facebook throwing toys out of pram about pulling out of Europe – and perhaps vital to watch how this progresses …).
Examples of who should be concerned:
A hairdresser in Cheshire has a client database which it uses for bookings and marketing. It stores this database on its office computer. It has never sent any of its client data outside the UK and has no intention of doing so. The hairdresser does not need to consider this section on international transfers.
A hotel in Cornwall takes direct bookings from individuals across the EEA, which includes their names, addresses and other personal information. It receives personal data from those individuals and sends personal data back to them. Neither transfer is restricted under the GDPR nor UK GDPR, as it is made directly with a consumer. The hotel does not need to consider this section on international transfers.
However, if either business uses a cloud IT service which stores and/or processes their data (including personal data) anywhere outside the UK (including in the EEA), it should read this section on international transfers.
Boris Johnson announced that the UK would be pushing forth with world class data sharing … This is a swipe at EU GDPR and regulations. He mentioned very little about whether big data would or wouldn’t suddenly become public data. That’s a bit scary on its own. We know that Johnson and Cummings are planning a massive dig into private data with their proposed Verify Identity scheme … See 2019July 20209 Sep 2020 : National Data Strategyand Pandemic Data Sharing.
This is taken from Computer Weekly article:
1. You signed a petition to revoke Article 50 and remain in EU (data is kept on the e-petitions for 12 months with your contact details).
2. You signed a petition against proroguing Parliament.
Currently Whitehall doesn’t have access to Parliament e-petition systems and Parliament would NOT give Whitehall your personal details.
Once we leave the GDPR system … “it’s technically feasible. The only question is how far any prime minister or their government is willing to push the boundaries of political convention and legality to get access to all that data.” Editor’s note : We know that the Government is willing to break international law so anything is possible.
So, hypothetically, you may receive an email … “You signed a petition to revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU… here’s how Brexit will serve you ….” (or worse).
What does it all mean? Whilst it’s hard to know what will actually happen or what individual organisations will do, here’s what we should be aware of …
DropBox stores your data on German servers.
Zoom recordings could be stored on German servers. Facebook information in Ireland.
It is unclear as to what extent Google Education servers, Spotify etc. are affected.
Oliver Slay has worked in IT for over 20 years (with 8 years at management level). He is a Member of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers (MIAP for 13 yrs) and currently a PhD student in Bioinformatics/Genomics at Sheffield Hallam University. His views may not represent those of these organisations.
Early image of Kent Border Patrols
Useful additional reading
Brexit No Deal Data Protection Guide This contains up-to-date Government advice.. (which may have limited information in a constantly changing and backtracking environment).
“If the EU has not made an adequacy decision in respect of the UK before the end of the transition period, you should act if you want to ensure you can continue to receive personal data from EU/EEA countries in the future. The ICO also provides more detailed guidance on what actions might be necessary.”
Any Person or Business, processing personal data concerning EU persons has to do so according to the EU’s GDPR Law.
GDPR is different to the Data Protection Act (and in my opinion, much stricter; particularly as it covers all data, not just data held on a computer).
“All Data” includes Video Images, Voice recordings, telephone answer messages; as well as the usual web-site registrations, blogs and log-ins.
Leaving the EU does not absolve one of this responsibility, as it falls under the authority of “International Public Common Law”
It therefore does not matter if the EU person is living or visiting here or elsewhere; nor does it matter if they don’t have full EU Citizen’s rights..
It is not permitted to do independent analysis of personal data about EU persons, gathered by any EU based, or other organisation.
Even if one processes personal data (or works on such systems) on behalf of an EU based entity; one has to have a Branch Office inside the EU.
This rules out a lot of business prospects for data processing, campaign management, and marketing organizations; and completely eliminates the independent free-lancer from the data market (or knowledge industry as it is also known).
The independent free-lancer or invisible service provider makes up a sizeable part of our trade with the EU. – If there are about 3 Million going each way, and earning say €66,666 p.a. each – that’s a €200,000,000,000 trade (only a proportion of which work in remote data, the rest are dependent on Freedom of Movement, or the Right to Establishment in order to ply their trade).
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In case of doubt, here are some real headlines from the Daily Mail for comparison purposes:
And, just in case you were sleeping, Brexit Reich negotiator David Frost has conceded that Britain will not be able to brand car parts made in other countries as being British to evade taxation and tariffs. It’s kind of obvious really. Just why have we been told lies for so long?
Write to your MP. Demand a suspension of Brexit in the wake of Corona.
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In this update we look at the latest facts about the economics of Brexit. The popular view is that COVID is the great destroyer of the economy. Think again and read on. The report by LSE shows that Brexit offers a much greater and more sustained shock to our economy than COVID. It also compares No Deal and what might be expected as a Brexit deal and finds no great differences in terms of the long term damage.
In the wake of the 2019 General Election result, there appears to have been a great deal of conciliation and accommodation by Remainers, in terms of the acceptance of some form of Brexit and accepting the illusion that an 80 seat majority is invincible. Yet, as the figures demonstrate, all forms of Brexit are toxic, in terms of their long term and sustainable damage to the United Kingdom. If you feel worn down by 4 years of Brexit boredom, I, above many understand this, having fought full time for several years on this topic. It does not alter the hard fact that Brexit is a shitstorm that we may still avoid, if political will is there or can be created.
The difference between a Brexit Deal and No Deal is really the difference between a slow painful death and a sudden death.
Read up on why Rejoining may be a unicorn in the long term at Fool Britannia.
Write to your MP using these facts to help you compose your letter.
Boiling Frog Blues
If you still feel that Corona is more significant than Brexit you may well be experiencing what psychologists call recency bias. This is the reason why we think that air disasters are a regular occurrence after a significant airplane crash occurs.
Speaking analytically, Corona is merely a crisis, whereas Brexit is a disaster in slow motion. We tend to confuse the two because what is called the boiled frog syndrome. The LSE report shows clearly that Brexit offers a much greater existential risk to Britain. The question remains:
How quickly and how badly to you want to die?
Brexona – Combined effect
An accountant will teach you about the concept of avoidable costs. We must endure Corona as a natural phenomenon. We don’t have to add Brexit to Corona. Combination of 11% GDP loss from Corona and a 5-8% loss from Brexit will be catastrophic. In case of doubt it only took a 3.5% GDP loss to create the 2008 Crash.
“Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster = Britastrophe”
Ground Control to Boris J
Brexit has already cost us more than The International Space Station (ISS). Brexit is set to cost £200 BILLION by the end of 2020. An ISS costs a mere £115 billion. In case the figures are causing you to be “lost in space”, that means £3030 from EVERY PERSON’S TAXES to be taken from you at some point in the future. And you get a blue passport and a hard border in Kent. Is it worth it?
Write to your MP. Ask them to pull back from the brink of a Britastrophe before it’s too late.
BoJona-20 – The toxic viral strain of Boris Johnson’s bumbling bluster combined with the twin perils of Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster aka a Britastrophe
I listened to Boris Johnson’s speech at the Tory Party Conference last week, which I dubbed BoJona-20. I noticed that BoJona-20 was virtually “content free”. The “beauty” of not including content in your talks (sic) is that there is little to take issue with, as long as you don’t get found out! 🙁 It rather seems that people listen for the jokes and are happy to accept empty promises, even though they have been fooled before. More fool them.
No 10 uses a Tombola machine to generate “BoJona-20”. They fill the machine with Post-It notes to generate random catchphrases. This is how David Bowie generated lyrics using his “cut up technique” in the 1970’s. Of course Bowie was not making decisions to determine whether people lived or died in The Laughing Gnome, so the context is different.
Having swallowed 30 minutes of garbage from BoJona-20, I was compelled to write a song to re-assemble Johnson’s garbage as a Lo-Fi groove called BOJONA-20 – an homage to garbage. Download copies of the song on Bandcamp – all proceeds go towards our continued activism to suspend Brexit.
BoJona-20 is possibly the most toxic virus on the planet. Johnson’s lies destroy trust and belief. The continuing act of lying means that nobody trusts anything that politicians say or do any more. This takes us to a new low point in politics. Just today Johnson has changed a firm deadline (again) for Brexit talks to end, so that he can bully the EU into giving more concessions. It never pays to reward bullies.
“It is the third unilateral deadline that Johnson has imposed without agreement.” Michel Barnier
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My friend and collaborator Rachel Ashley wrote a rant about the industrial scale lies from Boris Johnson. Edited slightly here for those that remain unaware of the facts:
Think this is bad? Wait until January. Still, it’s what the shitters wanted and they definitely knew what they were voting for. The reality of internal borders in Kent, 72 mile lorry queues, increased shipping costs, hassle at borders leading to rotting food and deaths from critical medicine shortages, satellite systems, radioactive isotopes, internal borders, cancellation of your bank account if you live in Europe, flight delays or possibly no flights at all between UK and Europe, portaloos in all areas where there are borders. Oh, and food shortages, possibly issues with clean water, power, problems if you deliver services and goodbye NHS. You fucking idiots. Own your Brexshit. But hey, you get your blue passport back.
Find our previous album “Britastrophe” at Bandcamp. Here’s the original song and our Indian Raga special.
Following the announcement by Boris Johnson that he is going to build 50 000 more toilets in Kent to help lorry drivers stranded in villages and towns after Brexit, we invite you to join us at Lenham village on Saturday 17 October from 11.00 – 13.00 to celebrate Kent : Operation Pisspot. See Portaloo for the invite to the event. Here are some of the greatest pictures and artists’ impressions of this magnificent development.
Lenham remodelled – Join us on Saturday
Operation Moonshit
Meanwhile, Operation COVID piss up in a brewery continues, with Johnson repeating the mistake of too little too late from February. The phrase prevention is better than a cure springs to mind. He was advised to have a circuit breaker on September 21. Here we are nearly a month later and he continues to try to entertain us rather than make the difficult decisions. A late circuit breaker is probably inevitable. By then we may have “baked in” more than 30 000 unnecessary deaths.
A Britastrophe
Just going for a “Nigel” – Breaking Wind
Nigel will be opening The Three Bellends at some point
“Relieve your bowels at Johnson’s Jobbie Junction … just off the M20”
In Lenham, the first portaloo is installed
Meanwhile our “Chief Negotiator” Sir David Frost reports that the EU still fails to understand that it is the UK that wish to leave the EU and that they, the EU, must destroy their enterprise so that England can rule the waves. How silly of them to forget that we voted for Brexit. Johnson is now on his 4th missed deadline that HE set, but of course this is someone else’s fault as well … Please tweet David Frost to correct his delusions.
AC / DC, Vegemite, Kylie, INXS, Neighbours, Tim Tams, Rolf Harris, kangaroos, boomerangs, Home and Away, barbecues, koalas, Skippy, fairy bread, meat pies, fish and chips, Nicole Kidman, Sia, Pavlova, bush tucker, Ant and Dec, Men at Work, The Saints, Nick Cave. Toni Collette, Lamingtons, Golden Gaytime, The Bee Gees, Olivia Newton John, Midnight Oil, Ned Kelly, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson, Castlemaine 4X, Margot Robbie, Fosters, Barry Humphries, Barry Crocker. Paul Hogan, Miriam Margolis, didgeridoos, Dame Edna, Tony Abbott. These are just some of the delights that await us from an Australian Brexit. Oh wait a minute …
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN AUSTRALIAN BREXIT
I’ll just repeat that …
Watch the video
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN AUSTRALIAN BREXIT
I’ll just repeat that
REALITY INTERVENTION
Our “Australian trade deal” gives five times the amount of trade to Australia compared with our trade. Remember, one of the reasons we left the EU was because we had a trade deficit with the EU. It proves the old Brexit adage “We need Australia more than they need us”
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A VEGEMITE BREXIT
According to bunter Johnson …
I’ll just repeat that
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TIM TAM BREXIT
I’ll just repeat that
The notion of an Australian Brexit was introduced into the lexicon of Brexit Bullshit Bingo early in 2020 as a euphemism for No Deal Brexit. The EU does not have a deal with Australia. We are headed for a WTO No Deal Brexit, which should please the remaining 37 % of the population who want their Brexit hard, with BBQ sauce and massive tariffs on imports and exports.
Do not be gaslit by this. There remains NO good Brexit deal. The only good Brexit is a dead Brexit. Read why No Deal and a Brexit deal are the equivalent of a sudden death or a slow death in Brexit Choices. Read why rejoining is a unicorn in the mid-long term. We must now suspend or end Brexit in the wake of COVID and an oncoming “Britastrophe“.
We must Flush Brexit down the pan … I was assembling my equipment for our Silent Brexit Protest in Kent last Friday evening … Musing upon the bizarre week of 1984 styled events, especially the spectacle of thousands of portaloos arriving in Kent to cope with 72 mile tailbacks of traffic on the main arteries (A2, A20, M20, M2, M25, M26, A299, A256, A28, A251, A249, A229, A228, A25, A26, A259, A227 etc.). Riffing on the idea of Flush Brexit, it came to me:
“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a portaloo for our event on Saturday in Lenham”
I considered scouring the town’s skips for a suitable toilet bowl, but time was short, so I decided to focus on more important matters …
On Saturday morning, whilst driving down to Lenham, w came upon a bidet bowl (forin’ innit) and cistern that had been fly-tipped on a drive of a country house just off the A249 trunk road. It was difficult to stop with lorries behind me, but I knew we were meant to Flush Brexit from my Friday night brain dump. I decided to make a detour of 7 miles by driving back up the A249 and returning to pull into the tiny hollow. We collected the bog by the side of the road. Mischief managed.
This put me in mind of the shit that is published by the Daily Mail, so here is today’s news dressed up as the Maul on Sunday:
The Sunday Maul
In case you doubt where the actual stories come from, here are a few references:
Another piece of very dirty linen has emerged from Dominic Cummings’ laundry basket. Almost 20 years ago, he had a cottage built on land adjacent to his father’s farm house, without planning permission. Consequently, he never paid council tax on it either. The Valuation Office estimates that the outstanding tax on it amounts to between £30,000 and £50,000.
Breaking the law
There is apparently a statute of limitations on planning permission which allows unauthorised building to remain untouched after a certain period. Durham Council cannot therefore have the cottage demolished. However, there is no such loophole for arrears of council tax. Nonetheless, Cummings has somehow managed to arrange that he should be let off.
This is nothing short of scandalous. Any ordinary citizen who fails to pay Council tax, particularly on a property whose existence he had deliberately hidden from the authorities, would surely be required to pay not just the full amount of tax but interest and perhaps penalties on top. Failure or refusal to pay would normally result in a jail sentence. Yet Cummings, who likes to describe this cottage as a ‘pile of cement blocks’, gets off scot-free.
Cummings’ pile of cement blocks …
Regulation 47 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 states people can be given prison sentences for not paying council tax if they have done so due to “culpable neglect”. This regulation is strictly applied. Nearly 700 people were imprisoned between 2010 and 2016 for not being able to pay their council tax, with a further 7,000 handed suspended orders threatening imprisonment. An extreme case was that of Melanie Woolcock of Porthcawl who was jailed for a £4742 Council tax debt she could not pay . She was a single mother and was caring for an elderly neighbour when she lost her job and fell behind in her council tax payments. Woodcock spent 40 days in prison before being released in view of her poverty. Comparing her degree of ‘culpable neglect’ with that of Dominic Cummings can only arouse a feeling of sickening disgust at the immunity he receives and the Government which grants it to him.
This new demonstration of his immunity from the law follows on from his notorious visit to Durham in complete disregard of COVID regulations and his trip to Barnard Castle, claiming that he was having his eyes tested. The fact that he thinks this ridiculous excuse should suffice for the authorities, the press and the British public shows the total contempt in which he holds us all. Now he is evading tax at a time when the rest of us will shortly face major tax increases. By shielding him from any penalties, Johnson, Gove and the law officers who disgrace their profession make themselves accessories to his deceptions and his illegalities.
With the wonderful people of North East for Europe – Getting our eyesight checked
There are other areas where Cummings activities raise very serious legal doubts. These will be dealt with in a coming issue where we ‘wash’ more of Cummings’ laundry.
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