“Children are not acquiring basic moral values because today’s generation of adults are such poor role models”

So reports The Times, quoting new research by the Children’s Society. 

The idea that ‘adults are poor role models’ must be the understatement of the year so far.  Children and retired people must despair at the behaviour of people from their 30s to their 50s.   

 

Kermit Love is dead, and I’m not talking about amphibian affairs.  I’m remembering the life of Kermit Love, creator of Sesame Street’s Big Bird, who has died, aged 91. The Times obituary calls him a costume designer and puppeteer, whilst the Guardian gives him the rather more marvellous moniker of ‘designer of entertainments’.  Well, as you may remember, Big Bird was over eight feet tall and was 6 years old forever, which must have made him stand out terribly in those sensitive early years at primary school (“Isn’t he tall?” “Yes but he’s six, so he’s a bit older than your Ben” “Oh, I see”).  Once, he flew to Beijing, where he was given his own seat, and charged half price as he was only six (keep up).    One can only hope that he wasn’t sat next to a Brit, who would quite possibly have ‘tutted’ throughout the journey, introducing themselves just as the plane was coming in to land.

Roman Carel is an extremely charming and likeable French entrepreneur. Therefore he did not have to wait until the cabin lights were dimmed, to introduce himself to the equally charming Pamela Hartigan. They found themselves sitting next to each other several years ago, which is a stroke of luck as it ensured that last week, I meet the woman who for 8 years ran the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Before our dinner at Home House, (where fellow guests included Image Source’s Duncan Grossart and Firefly Tonic’s Marcus Waley-Cohen) I read a recent speech of Pamela’s.  In it she quotes David Green, founder of The Hearing Company and one of her favourite ‘unreasonable people’.  Asked what motivated him, David had replied;

“My reasons are purely selfish.  I figure I have been put on this earth for a very short period of time.  I could apply my talents to making piles of money, but where would I be at the end of my lifetime?  I would much rather be remembered for having made a significant contribution to improving the world into which I came than for having made millions.”

Big Bird would have LOVED this kind of thing. 

Unreasonable people will be thick on the ground at the Intelligence Squared Festival on Climate change, co-directed by the excellent Edie Lush, and taking place on the 27th and 28th of September here in London.  The line-up is looking good, with session titles including ‘How Long Have We Got?’, ‘Green is the New Black’ and a debate led by secondary school children.  I met Nick Pisani this week, who has recently joined the team at IQ2 (clever, see?).  The former editor of Question Time has the political rolodex needed to trigger a connected and controversial conversation, so pencil those dates in your diary for two days of (increasingly) heated debate.  After all, it’s not easy being green. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A quick rush through yesterday’s inbox, reader, to flag some organisations which you may not have heard of;

BusinessSummaries  – Great summaries of business books

Editorial Intelligence – Run by excellent Julia Hobsbawm, the Daily Digest email is terrific

Policy Exchange – Well worth getting on their list for stimulating events

New York Times – sign up to their breaking news email 

Enternships – top source of graduate talent from Oxford for entrepreneurial internships

Realisers – Charles Handy spoke at recent launch.  Pass on to loved ones looking for next adventure.

Finally, Daily Networker favourite Henry Warren who runs leading charity Gemin-i sent me this cracking list of 99 web apps which I think you’ll like.

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.”

JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Carole Stone’s superb salons are back, and about time too.  Great events need great hosts and that means going beyond inviting people and leaving them to ‘get on with it’.  That’s why so many business events are so utterly terrible.  Carole is the hostess with the mostest and flies around room in her element, making introductions and pointing out links between people.  Her Covent Garden flat was bursting at the seams last night as musicians rubbed shoulders with politicians, journalists and the odd speed networker.

Speaking of being in one’s element, that’s the theme of Sir Ken Robinson’s new book, which will be out at the beginning of next year. Sir Ken remains one of the world’s leading communicators on the subject of creativity and education.  I say communicators as he is such a wonderful speaker, as well as writer.  Rather than sending his audiences to sleep, a technique I have seen a few times on the education scene, he makes them laugh. At the Edge sponsored RSA  lecture this month he was on flying form, although I wasn’t laughing half as much as I used to.  You see, it’s a little bit like when you hear a stand-up deliver a particularly great piece of observational comedy.  Even if you don’t know the subject, you can still  laugh (as I did, when I first heard Ken on the Speakers for Business web-site back in 2001).  If you DO know the topic that is being lampooned, and even if it’s you that’s the subject, it’s even funnier. You howl with laughter, shaking your head and saying;

“That’s so true. So true”

So Ken’s words were music to my ears when I heard his now legendary TED talk a year or two ago.  But time went by and some things changed…and some things didn’t…

As people (including me) forwarded the link, sniggering away at how we’re screwing things up for the world’s next generation, I’m thinking some of them may have found the humour a bit dark after a while.

Heh Heh.  Schools are so fundamentally badly designed for the 21st century!  What fun!  We’re educating our children from the outside in, rather than the inside out – HAH! We have a completely warped idea of what subjects school pupils see as ‘useful’! Stop it!

The reason that the joke eventually wears thin isn’t that it isn’t brilliantly delivered, and it isn’t that Ken isn’t cymbal-smashingly right.  It’s because more isn’t happening to indicate people waking up and listening to what he has to say.  Like taking the mickey out of someone’s badly fitting trousers for the fifth comedy night running, you’re left wondering – why don’t you (or we in this case) just SORT OURSELVES OUT? 

Luckily, from my seat, I could see the broad frames of Darius Norell and Daniel Snell.  From where I’m sitting today, they are two of the most interesting thinkers and doers around education meeting business in the UK.   Even more fortunately, I don’t think that they see the funny side of keeping things as they are.  That’s certainly the impression I got when I dropped in on one of Daniel’s Arrival Education sessions this week, hosted by Ogilvy.  He’s an incredibly gifted communicator (and I don’t bandy that phrase around), and as he spoke to the group of over 20 school pupils, I was busy thinking about how you (and I mean you) could  take his amazing set of messages (about personal responsibility, goals and careers) to millions, not dozens of  people. 

They say that one man’s fish is another man’s poisson.  And it was over tuna sandwiches this week at the Institute of Directors that a small group of us, chaired by Rebecca Harding of Delta Economics, reflected on what some would call ‘bad news all round’.

Three of the gloomier bits of the ‘economic outlook’ that we picked over included falling house prices, banks being less willing to allow entrepreneurs to remortgage their houses, and people spending less on the high-street.

As I reached for a handful of what may have been Kettle Chips,  I began to realise that by shaking my head in despair, I was actually being a bit of a hypocrite.  So, reader, my confession has to be made, several days later;

Firstly, in a country where millions of young people struggle to get on the housing ladder, falling house prices will be greeted, by them at least (and in many cases by their parents), with relief.

Secondly, I have yet to meet the entrepreneur who told me of their house-remortgaging with a great big grin on their face.  Instead, it only seems to bring stress, a lack of sleep, and a pressure on their family and colleagues.  By contrast, those who have managed to secure angel funding, for example, have enjoyed, comparatively, sunnier times.

Finally, if I told you that I had personally spent less this year than last year on the high street, I think that you’d probably see that as a good thing and I doubt you’d offer me a comforting rub on the back. 

This is not to make light of the turmoil faced by thousands of retailers, and it isn’t to be flippant about the challenges faced by estate agents.  Both of the above categories make up my very nearest and dearest.

The way I see things, the British chancellor cannot come bounding out onto the steps of the Treasury and say;

“You know what, I think we’re all spending much too much money on tat which we don’t need and which, frankly, makes us less happy in the long run”

Nor can he shrug his shoulders and point out;

“Hey, look on the bright side, it’s good news if you’re a first time buyer”

In a ‘nice weather for ducks’ sort of way.

We seem to be given the ‘news’ by too many of the wrong people and perhaps if we had a more balanced set of messages, we wouldn’t despair so readily at the ‘way things are going’. 

At the risk of this turning into a parody of Thought For The Day, if we found a way at school to let people know that stumbling on happiness was more about relationships, well being and a sense of achievement, than about owning the latest iPhone, maybe that would be a start.

After all, give a man a fish…