Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • Tahoe + more things

    Tahoe

    Another year, another macOS. Tahoe is sensibly unambitious but it has raised some ire amongst Mac users. You can tell how unambitious Tahoe was, when CNET had to do an article showing you how common app icons have changed because you otherwise probably didn’t notice. I know I didn’t.

    Tahoe is neither here nor there as a release for me. I haven’t found features that are ‘can’t live without”. The app interface changes feel different for the sake of being different, but I quickly got used to them.

    In terms of quality it still feels a bit ‘beta’-ish but I hope that the bugs get ironed out over time.

    • The pop-up window to select my accent over the ‘o’ in my given name gets blanked out for some reason.
    • When performing certain actions, the browser chrome all turns white.

    Otherwise things have been fine so far. My anti-virus of choice launched an update soon after Tahoe came out. As has my VPN client and numerous utilities and apps that I use for work, or just keeping my Mac tuned up.

    I have a Brother mono laser printer to connect up, (as my long-suffering HP unit finally gave up the ghost after a decade of service,) which might be a bit of a trial if Reddit is anything to judge by.

    Last Week on My Mac: Tahoe’s elephant – The Eclectic Light Company – this critique points out the kind of issues with Tahoe that implies it isn’t the Macintosh operating system of Steve Jobs with its historic focus on art principles and typography right from the beginning.

    China

    From ‘guochao’ to ‘zìxìn’: China’s new era of cultural confidence | Jing Daily

    Why anti-involution feels anti-Chinese? | Following the Yuan

    Dutch seizure of chipmaker followed US ultimatum over Chinese chief | FT – the judgement paints a bit more of a nuanced picture with two independent actions. It also explicitly states that the government order is not final yet (and at that point would still be open to appeals). The actual matter involved is a (significant) breach of fiduciary duty by Zhang Xuezheng and the holding company (Yuching). Cited issues were:

    • Placing of orders to another Wingtech subsidiary in China (that is in financial trouble) far exceeding demand (such that the expectation is that a significant share of the stock would need to be scrapped as it would not be able to be used in time)
    • Replacing 3 people with banking authority (including the CFO) with 3 other people, without financial background, one not an employee of Nexperia at all. All in the context where urgent US sanctions mean that independence from China is important for continued operations of the company. The court called this “Voor een onderneming van de orde van grootte van Nexperia grenst een dergelijke handelswijze aan roekeloosheid” (“For a company in the order of size of Nexerperia these actions border on being reckless”).
    • For the replacement no motivation was provided, prompting the chief financial officer and the chief legal officer from their own fiduciary duties as directors to object (and also to ask the court to investigate/intervene)
    • Stated intent to dismiss existing directors (without motivation) or asking for mandatory consultation from the workers council.

    As to the decisions:

    • Suspension of Xuezheng as director/CEO
    • Temporary appointment of a new non-executive director (with power to make final decisions)
    • Place all (except 1) share under management/safekeeping with a lawyer
    • This all motivated by (very) signifcant breach of the fiduciary duty, not based upon an Dutch government action. The application of the Entity list on Nexperia as subsidiary was a significant contextual driver though (as in the duty to minimize corporate risks).

    Consumer behaviour

    Piper Sandler Completes 50th Semi-Annual Teen Survey | Piper Sandler – teen spending down 6 percent compared to last year. Another point was that Dr Pepper was their favourite drink ahead of Coca-Cola, which makes this activist investor’s interest even more salient: tarboard builds stake in Keurig Dr Pepper after unpopular Peet’s deal | FT

    Economics

    UK risks higher inflation becoming entrenched, IMF warns | FT

    Health

    Mirador fundraising raises hopes of revival in US biotech market | FT

    Ideas

    Everything Is Television – Derek Thompson

    Japan

    Anime activism – Matt Alt’s Pure Invention – I didn’t realise that in 1978 the president Marcos of the Philippines had banned a whole genre of anime (giant robots or mecha) due to the influence of Voltes V on Filipino student activists.

    Marketing

    Post | LinkedIn – The Future of Brand Building Begins Where Commerce Meets Creativity. – or P&G applying the radio soap opera format to the 21st century

    Stopping agency burnout: the fight against ‘insidious’ work cultures and ‘inaccurate’ timesheets – Campaign found a long-hours culture continues to exist in adland, with pitching, client demands and poor role-modelling by managers part of the equation. 

    In the current climate of staff cuts, lingering threats of AI replacing the workforce and agencies dealing with economic constraints, late working – and the chance of burnout – continues to be a risk.

    Shrinking teams can potentially lead to more demands being placed on remaining employees. WPP and Interpublic each cut thousands of staff from their global workforces in the first half of 2025, on top of headcount reductions in 2024. Last year, the collective global headcount across the “big six” holding companies declined by 1.6%, the first fall since the post-pandemic rebuild. 

    WPP boosts AI marketing with $400mn Google deal | FT – I would be concerned if they weren’t using video generators like Veo and Google Gemini – which does make me wonder what Mark Read was up to?

    On the importance of good strategic writing in using AI: AI interfaces and the role of good writing | by Nick DiLallo | Oct, 2025 | UX Collective

    Media

    Apple sued over use of copyrighted books to train Apple Intelligence | Yahoo! News

    Google designated with “strategic market status” by UK Competition and Markets Authority – The Media Leader

    Exclusive | Advertisers Push Big Tech to Adopt Standards for Transparency in Ad Sales – WSJ

    How We Automated Content Marketing to Acquire Users at Scale | Spotify Engineering – Insightful blog post from Spotify’s ML team: they implemented their own pre-ranking algorithm to select the best ad variants to deploy to their advertising channels in their user acquisition campaigns. 

    Spotify’s marketing team developed a creative production pipeline that could generate and deploy ad creatives to marketing channels based on listening habits in a geographic region. The problem they encountered was that they were generating creatives from a high-cardinality dataset, and the number of variations they were uploading to their channels was overwhelming those channels’ ability to optimize ads effectively. 

    Spotify’s solution was to build a pre-ranking algorithm using XGBoost that would determine which creatives to upload to the channels. Their ML pre-ranking model outperformed a simple heuristic model, with 4%-14% lower CPRs and 11%-12% higher CTRs. The ML model utilized a rich set of features to predict sub_percentage (the percentage of contributed subscriptions from the artist) and relative_cps_ratio (the share of the artist’s cost per subscription in the marketing campaign) for premium subscriptions, whereas the heuristic model used three fixed features. The model is retrained daily based on a defined lookback window.

    Moreover, although this was deployed before ATT, the team found that ATT didn’t impact its performance, as training relied on aggregated data.

    This obviously remains a relevant issue as advertisers scale the volume of their creative production through generative tools. While this pre-dates Meta’s Andromeda initiative for pre-ranking, it’s still likely relevant for most other channels (and, depending on the volume of creative uploaded, Meta).

    Perplexity Pauses New Advertising Deals to Reassess Ambitions | AdWeek – brands are rethinking how to spend their budgets. Chan said many advertisers are moving away from performance-focused, traditional search and towards top-of-funnel brand awareness—an area Perplexity may pursue down the line.

    Online

    US Amazon Prime Membership Finally Hits 200 Million | CIRP – Amazon Prime finally hit the 200-million-member mark in the US, after several quarters of slow, but steady growth toward that milestone.

    Note: CIRP estimates the number of individual Amazon shoppers who use Amazon Prime. That includes multiple family members for many subscribers, so this estimate is higher than the number of US households that pay for an Amazon Prime membership.

    Amazon knows the difference between Prime shoppers and paid Prime member households, so as US Prime membership approaches its limit, there may be a growing focus on bringing those numbers closer together. Amazon does not want to reduce the number of Amazon Prime membership users, but it certainly would not mind having more paid memberships associated with them. We expect Amazon to continue its efforts to attract members by emphasizing the benefits of Prime, rather than policing shopping and limiting Prime membership sharing.

    CIRP estimates 200 million US Amazon customers had a Prime membership as of the September 2025 quarter. That is an increase of about 6% from 189 million US Amazon Prime members in the September 2024 quarter and up very slightly from our 198 million member estimate last quarter.

    Retailing

    Why Did Walmart Just Buy a Shopping Mall? – The New York Times – reminds me of the local mini-shops that used to be inside Kwik Saves in many towns

    Technology

    China’s ‘Darwin Monkey’ is the world’s largest brain-inspired supercomputer | Live Science

    I had been having lunch in the Google canteen with colleagues, and then came back to my desk, checked an email newsletter and this arrived: Smartphone-powered AI predicts avocado ripeness | Newsroom | Oregon State University

    Web of no web

    Palmer Luckey’s Anduril launches EagleEye military helmet with help from buddy Zuck | The Verge

    Amazon launches Echo devices designed for Alexa+ | Amazon

  • September 2025 newsletter

    September 2025 introduction – (26) pick-and-mix edition

    Where has the year gone? I am just thankful that we got a little bit of sun, given how fast and hard the autumn wind and rain came in this year. I am now at issue 26, or as a bingo caller would put it ‘pick and mix’.

    Pick'n'Mix

    When I was a child ‘pick-and-mix’ sweets were a way of getting maximum variety for the lowest amount of pocket money that I earned from chores. Woolworths were famous at the time for their pick and mix section, alongside selling vinyl records and cassettes. Woolworths disappeared from the UK high street during the 2008 financial crisis.

    For Mandarin Chinese speakers 26 is considered ‘lucky’ given that it sounds similar to ‘easy flow’ implying easy wealth.

    This month’s soundtrack has been a banging digital compilation put together by Paradisco and Disco Isn’t Dead featuring The Reflex, PBR Streetgang, Prins Thomas, J Kriv, Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66.

    Right, let’s get into it.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here

    SO

    Things I’ve written.

    Books that I have read.

    • I finished Moscow X by David McCloskey. (No plot spoilers). This is the second book my McCloskey after Damascus Station, which I read and enjoyed back in May last year. The book is like a more action-orientated American version of a LeCarré novel. The plot reminded me of LeCarré’s Single & Single and Our Kind of Traitor. McCloskey isn’t afraid to have strong female lead characters in his book.
    • Your Life is Manufactured by Tim Minshall. Minshall is a professor at Cambridge and heads up the engineering department’s manufacturing research centre. Because of his mastery of the subject area, he manages to provide an exceptionally accessible primer in terms of what manufacturing is, how it happens and what it means. More about it here.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Election-winning opacity in influencer relations 

    I have been following Taylor Lorenz‘ work since she became the beat reporter for online culture and technology at the Business Insider. Her article for Wired magazine on how the Democratic Party in the US is working with paid influencers makes for an interesting read.

    What would be the norm in the commercial world about influencer transparency where there is a paid relationship – isn’t happening in politics.

    Ok, why does this matter? The reason why I think this matters is that people who do their time in the trenches of a presidential election campaign have a clear path into a number of American agencies.

    ‘I’ve have won a victory for X candidate and can do the same for your brand’ has been a popular refrain for decades in agencies.

    I have been in the room when senior American agency people have tried to convince Chinese companies to buy their services based on their success in marketing a candidate in an election using western social media channels. There was no sense of irony when this was awkwardly delivered as a possible solution for domestic market campaigns to marketing teams in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai.

    Bad habits will be brought into agencies and sold on to clients.

    Chart of the month. 

    Kim Malcolm shared a great report done by Zappi and VaynerMedia looking at The State of Creative Effectiveness 2025. Two charts piqued my interest. The change in distinctiveness of advertising by age cohort.

    distinctiveness

    The overall emotion that an advert evokes by age cohort.

    emotion

    Causality of these effects aren’t clear. Empirically, I know that great adverts still put a smile on the faces of people of all ages and can change brand choice, even in the oldest consumers.

    I had more questions than answers. VaynerMedia thought that the answer should be cohort-specific campaigns. I am less sure, since brands tend to better within culture as a common point of truth for everyone. Also, I don’t believe in leaping to a solution until I understand the underlying ‘problem’.

    I could understand a decline in novelty as people gain decades of life experience and will have seen similar creative executions before.

    Are the adverts lacking a foundation in strong cultural insights and cues that would resonate with these older audience cohorts?

    What I did notice is a correlation with the age profile in advertising agency staff compared to the general public and the point at which the drop-off to occurs. But correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation.

    It’s concerning that advertising effectiveness declines in older audience cohorts as economic power skews older within the general population. This is likely to continue as millennials inherit wealth from their baby boomer relatives as they enter their 50s and 60s. Which makes the old marketer line about half of a consumers economic value is over by 35 seem hollow.

    Things I have watched. 

    Ghost In The Shell Arise: Border 1 and Border 2. In the GITS storyline this is a prequel to the original film. It follows how the eventual team comes together. The technology looks less fantastical and more prophetic each time I watch it. The animation is still spectacular.

    Ghost In The Shell Arise: Border 3 and Border 4. Following on from Border 1 and Border 2, this has Togusa and the Section 9 team following the same case from different ends – which eventually has Togusa joining Section 9 as its only unaugmented team member.

    I bought up as many of the films I could in Johnnie To’s filmography after he criticised Hong Kong’s national security regulation in an interview, which was likely to be the kiss of death to his film career. I finally got around to watching one of his best known films PTU and the series of Tactical Unit films that came from the same universe.

    PTU: One of the paradoxes of Hong Kong is the prevalence of triad and corruption dramas, compared to the real life which whilst not crime and corruption free is much more staid. Hong Kong is as different from its cinematic counterpart, as the UK is to Richard Curtis’ films. PTU like Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog is based around the search for a missing police pistol. PTU (police tactical unit) officers look to help out a detective from the OCTB (organised crime and triad bureau). While the film occurs over one night, it was actually shot over three years and is one of Johnnie To’s best known films. Shooting only at night, To provided the audience with a familiar, yet different, cinematic experience. The washed out colours of day time Hong Kong is replaced by vibrant signage and the sharp shadows defined by the street lighting. Officers walking with a street lamp lit Tom Lee music instrument store behind them, look like its from a John Ford scene in composition. Some of his tracking shots, due to the framing of photography and the distortions of the night give an almost Inception like feeling to the geography of Hong Kong streets, warping the horizon between buildings the night sky. PTU was successful internationally and then spawned, five further films from the same universe made in 2008 and 2009.

    Tactical Unit: The Code was a one of a series of Tactical Unit sequels to Johnnie To’s PTU. In The Code several plot lines come together. The investigation of CCTV footage of officers beating up a triad , a police officer heavily in debt due to negative equity on his mortgage and a drug deal gone wrong. All this plays out in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong. When this film was made back in 2008, it would have been considered well done, but largely unremarkable. Nowadays it couldn’t be made as it would in breach of the National Security Law. The irony is that this film is available on the iQiyi streaming service from mainland China.

    Tactical Unit: Human Nature loses some of the cinematic feel of PTU. It’s not as masterful a film , BUT, the convoluted threads of the plot and the great cast who are now completely comfortable in their characters make it work well.

    Tactical Unit: No Way Out. No Way Out starts with an impressive screne shot in Temple Street market. The film explores the Temple Street area of Kowloon and organised crime links to everything from cigarette smuggling to drugs.

    Tactical Unit: Comrade in Arms is the penultimate in the series from the PTU universe of films. You still have the main cast of Hong Kong veterans Lam Suet, Simon Yam and Maggie Shiu. Plain clothes officer Lo Sa has been demoted to wearing a uniform and both Mike Ho and Sergeant Kat’s squads are still patrolling the Kowloon side of Victoria harbour. This sees the stars leave their usual urban beat and go into the hills of the New Territories after bank robbers. Much of it occurs in daylight, which sets it apart from the night time beat of PTU. Nowadays it couldn’t be made as it would in breach of the National Security Law. The irony is that this film is available on the iQiyi streaming service from mainland China.

    Tactical Unit: Partners. Partners is unusual in that it revolves around the challenges of the ethnic minorities that make up Hong Kong from romance fraud ensnaring filipina workers to discrimination against Indians and Nepalis. While some of the show happens during late on in the day, it still captures much of the night time feeling of the universe

    2001 Nights is a 3D anime. While I admire the ambition and the technical expertise that went into the models, the characters as CGI fall down and distract from the storytelling. Also it felt weirdly like Space 1999 – and not in a good way.

    Her Vengeance is a Hong Kong category III revenge movie filmed in 1988 that 88 Films recently release on Blu Ray. It borrows from another Hong Kong film in the early 1970s and I Spit On Your Grave. Despite being an low budget exploitation film it features a number of notable Hong Kong actors, probably because it was a Golden Harvest Production.

    Casino Lisboa

    I found the film interesting because its opening was shot at Stanley Ho’s iconic Casino Lisboa in Macau. This was unusual because Hong Kong had lots of nightclubs that would have been fine for the protagonists management role without the hassle of the additional travel and government permissions. So we get a rare late 1980s snapshot of the then Portuguese colony.

    When The Last Sword Is Drawn is a classic chambara (samurai sword-play) movie. It tells the complex story of a samurai, who unable to support his family on his meagre income as a school teacher and fencing master, turns his back on his clan and leaves to find work in Kyoto. Once in Kyoto he becomes embroiled in the battle between the declining Takagawa Shogunate and the Imperial Royal Family during the 19th century. Whilst the film does contain a lot of violence, it is used as a backdrop to the humanity of the main character and battles he faces between providing for his family and doing the honourable thing.

    The plot is told through the recollections of others and finishes with the samurai’s youngest daughter getting ready to leave Japan with her husband and set up a doctor’s surgery in Manchuria (China).

    Useful tools.

    Playing Blu-Ray discs on a Mac

    I have a Blu Ray player in my home theatre that enjoy using in lieu of subscribing to Netflix, which allows to me to explore more art house content than I can stream. Macgo Mac Blu Ray Player Pro gives your Mac the software capability that Steve Jobs wouldn’t.

    One final thing, if you prefer to use Substack, you can now subscribe to this newsletter there.

    The sales pitch.

    I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency. I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or get in touch for discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    now taking bookings

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my September 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and get planning for Hallowe’en.

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

    Get in touch 

  • PHNX 2025 favourites

    Now that the awards have been announced I can share my PHNX 2025 favourites from the categories that I had a the good fortune to judge. It took me a little time to sit down and collect my thoughts. You can find the details of the Grand Prix winners here.

    Proud to be a juror again this year for Adforms PHNX awards

    My PHNX 2025 favourites come from around the world. The categories are truly global in nature and you get work from a wide range of agency sizes. Partly because of my time in Hong Kong campaigns from Cathay Pacific and HSBC stood out for me when looking at PHNX 2025. This wasn’t out of a sense of mawkish nostalgia, but because I understand the cultural context and legislative issues lurking beneath the surface looking to sink a campaign for fear of ‘soft resistance’.

    Cathay Pacific paraolympics

    While Hong Kong has historically had a strong showing at the paraolympics , its para-olympians achievements hadn’t been seen in the past. Cathay Pacific used the new opportunities that generative AI tools allowed these moments to be recreated.

    Cathay Pacific had the permission to do this advert because of its position in Hong Kong life. Cathay Pacific aka ‘CX’ is the nervous system that connects Hong Kong and Hong Kongers to the wider world. As importantly, CX also connects the Hong Kong diaspora to the home city. The airline’s loyalty card is the second most common card for Hong Kongers after the Hong Kong ID card.

    HSBC – Hong Kong move forward

    Hong Kong as a city has been through a lot:

    • The protests
    • The National Security Law and the social changes that came after it
    • COVID-19 lockdown
    • A battered economy

    All of this piled on top of the co-opetition between the city and nearby cities from Guangzhou and Shenzhen to Macau and Singapore.

    Move Forward tries to capture the Hong Kong commercial spirit, even as ‘Underneath the Lion Rock’ common identity dimmed and spread around the world.

    HSBC took this concept further by using Tony Leung Chiu-wai ‘aka Little Tony’ as a brand spokesperson. Leung as a star is universally liked by Hong Kongers, from Marvel fans to Wong Kar-wai devotees like me. Leung embodies the ‘Lion Rock spirit’. He left school at 15 due to family hardship. Worked in everyman jobs like a salesman in an electrical goods store and built his career thanks the apprenticeship / talent development system that local TV station TVB ran at the time.

    Midea white goods

    In the 1980s and early 1990s this ad wouldn’t have been notable. It would have been considered a good advert, but not great. But it’s now 2025, Gym Shark clothing and Suri dental health adverts are soul-rotting. So the joy of seeing any craft and conceptual creativity in an advert makes this Midea spot notable.

    https://youtu.be/ujpb1o-vlBU

    If Diageo made white goods, this is what their campaigns would look like.

    Limin’ with Gram

    Of my PHNX 2025 favourites, Limin with Gram was my sole pick from the UK based on the categories that I was a jury member for. It warmed the strategist in me for the way cultural insights were applied to a health-related public service announcement style campaign.

    More related content here.

  • Crime – it’s a vibe

    Along with immigration, and economic measures (like inflation, interest rates and possible growth); crime is likely to decide the next general election in the UK. The issue and the supporting data around it are complex and sometimes contradictory in nature.

    It sits right on the fault line between social democrat and populist narratives to voters.

    Riot Police

    Crime is a hardy perennial of policy subjects

    Labour’s political golden age of the late 20th century harked back to the transformation of the party that claimed to be ‘Touch on crime, tough on the causes of crime‘. While the phrase was popularised by Tony Blair at the 1993 Labour Party conference – it owes its roots to the opposition team assembled under former Labour leader John Smith.

    The phrase captured Labour’s attempt to steal the Conservative position on law and order, combining it with a preventative approach to the social ills that drive the issue including homelessness and poverty.

    Two decades later and David Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ depicted a country awash in social decay and by implication criminal behaviour.

    So it’s natural, that during a time of social disruption and stubbornly stagnant economic growth that crime will be used as a political differentiator.

    It fits into a wider perception of the UK being a country in decline. This perception was found by Ipsos to be one of the key drivers of political populism.

    Ipsos also found that the perception of crime and violence being the number one issue rose from 18% of respondents to 23% from 2023 to 2024.

    Crime is falling?

    The statistical picture on crime is complicated. To summarise:

    • Overall reported crime numbers are down. However, trying to get police to log a reported crime is much harder in previous times.
    • The ‘decline’ in reported crimes across different types of offences is very uneven. Data from the UN Office of Crime and Drugs found that the UK had seen an unprecedented increase in the rate of serious assaults from 2012 – 2022.

    As the FT put it:

    “street crime” has risen rapidly. Over the past decade, reported shoplifting has risen by over 50 per cent, robberies (including phone and car theft) by over 60 per cent and knife crime by almost 90 per cent. Public order offences have almost trebled

    • The police have become less effective crime fighters. Although police have less reported crimes to solve, less than six percent of crimes in committed in the UK resulted in a charge or summons in 2023. That compares to just under 16 percent in 2015. The UK government’s focus on increasing mass surveillance powers won’t solve the crisis in crime fighting. An example of the problems that the police face and failed to solve presented itself at the time of writing. There was a spate of phone thefts at the Creamfields festival. All the phones ended up at the same address in Barking. Cheshire police told those affected that:
      • “We have undertaken an assessment of your crime and unfortunately based on the information currently available, it is unlikely we’ll be able to solve your crime”.
      • Cheshire Police said that they couldn’t recover their devices despite knowing where they are.
      • Cheshire Police do not believe the thefts are connected to organised crime. Yet dozens of phones showed up at the same address after they were stolen…
    • Trust in the public for the police to solve crime is declining. Policing by consent was no longer happening in many areas of the UK. Issues like ‘Asian grooming gangs’ in The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse indicated poliicing issues in recommendations to pay attention to vulnerable working-class children and their families when they come forward. Two-tier policing is more likely to run along class lines than political lines.
    • While crime still lags behind the economy and health as concerns for voters. The percentage of respondents who felt that stopping or preventing crime should be the number one priority for politicians went from 14% in 2023 to 23% in 2024.
    • While Britain needs foreign direct investment, crime is adversely affecting efforts to attract investors. Foreign business people are complaining to senior politicians they meet about British street crime they’ve experienced on visits. The UK now has a global reputation for violent robberies. 40 percent of all phone thefts in Europe happen in the UK. London alone accounts for 16 percent of all phone thefts across Europe.

    Crime across generations

    According to both Ipsos and the National Centre for Social Research, the current cohort of young adults stick out with regards their beliefs and attitudes towards crime:

    • An increased belief that crime is caused by a lack of education
    • An increased openness to committing crime, particularly fraud.
    • Opposition to current frameworks for punishment.

    All of which is at odds with the fact that much crime is organised, trans-national and violent in nature.

    Similar posts to this here.

    More information

    How Labour and Reform frame crime in electoral fights | FT

    Try telling Britain it ain’t broken – POLITICO

    Do broken windows mean a broken Britain? FT

    Organised Vehicle Theft in the UK | RUSI

    Jeff Asher on manipulating crime data – Marginal REVOLUTION

    Few Britons think criminals likely to face justice for minor crimes | YouGov

    How our stolen mobile phones end up in an Algerian market | The Times and The Sunday Times

    Operation Destabilise: NCA disrupts $multi-billion Russian money laundering networks with links to, drugs, ransomware and espionage, resulting in 84 arrests – National Crime Agency

    Tax haven: how jacket thefts swept the UK – The Face

    $56M in London property tied to alleged China crime ring — Radio Free Asia

    Wearing your Rolex or Patek Philippe in Europe? Why you should be worried about London and Paris’ spikes in luxury watch theft  | South China Morning Post

    Brazen watch robberies fuel shock rise in violent thefts in London ITV News

    London Watch | renaissance chambara

    India’s business elite sounds alarm over Rolex thefts in London’s Mayfair | FT

  • Get lost in a book

    I was judging global creative advertising awards, and I came across an Irish Libraries campaign to encourage readers to Get Lost In A Book.

    At ArtisTree

    Literature and reading is as Irish as the GAA or a glass of Club Orange. Over the years I have found it easy to get lost in a book. My parents may not have bought me every toy that I wanted from the Argos catalogue, but we had a house with books and I got a library card early on. When I would stay on the family farm, I would read a book on rare coins, old editions of The Reader’s Digest, Old Moore’s almanac, paperbacks of Irish folk tales and Irish history books. Facts About Ireland captured my imagination with its pictures of Newgrange and the Tara brooch.

    Dublin Archaeology Museum: The Tara Brooch

    Decades later and after I have written this paragraph I am heading to bed to get lost in a book before falling to sleep.

    Reading as a pass-time for a good number of Irish people is something that we do. During COVID-19 in 2021, the Government of Ireland launched Ireland Reads month which encouraged people to read as it was considered to help with mental health and wellbeing. Its from this campaign that Get Lost In A Book sprang out of.

    Reading seems to be on the decline in both adults and children. Of those that do read younger male cohorts seem to read more for ‘life maxing’ than for pleasure with reading material focusing solely on the works of self-improvement ‘experts’ who have varying degrees of expertise.

    • Reading for pleasure has life long benefits.
    • The Irish government highlighted mental health and its link to wellbeing.
    • Increased vocabulary and mathematical reasoning
    • A sense of personal confidence and connectedness

    In 2006, The National Literacy Trust found that choice was a key factor in fostering life-long reading as a habit, allowing the reader to continue to get lost in a book. The problem now seems to be a surplus of choice via our smartphones and social platforms. Book recommendations here and here, more related posts here.