First of all I live in London, I put down my roots here because of work. Commuting from the outside towns into the city takes a long time. People only tend to do that when they don’t have to come in every day or getting their kids into a good school is important for them.
Secondly it is an area distinct from the rest of the UK, this is partly down to history and the current economic reality. It is distinct in terms of population make-up and economic opportunity. London has a culture that is distinct from the rest of the UK, partly due to its population make-up. Over 30 percent of the city’s inhabitants were born in another country. From music to fashion, its like a different country:
As one women’s clothing retailer once said on a news interview ‘The further north you go; the more skin you see’.
The weekend is a huge thing outside the city. By comparison, it isn’t the big deal in London. The reason was that there were things you could enjoy every night of the week.
You can get a good cup of coffee
The city was using cashless payments way before it became universal elsewhere in the country
The line has extended into politics. London opposed Brexit. London, like other major cities it is one of the last holdouts of Labour party support in the 2019 UK general election
London posts often appear in other categories, as it fulfils multiple categories.
If there are London subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.
One of the best YouTube channels that I currently subscribe to is the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. I used to enjoy visiting the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong. I particularly enjoyed their public talks. The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan seems to run to a similar model as its Hong Kong counterpart. Its YouTube channel shares the regular public talks that they host by a wide range of experts. More Japan related content here.
Ronnie Drew on the Dublin Pub
Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners talks about the iconic nature of the Dublin pub. O’Donoghue’s was famous in Irish music and particularly famous for the short film O’Donoghue’s Opera, which Drew starred in.
Incremental metal forming
Additive manufacturing has managed to offer substitutes for short runs of moulded, cast or milled parts. Incremental metal forming offers a similar substitute for complex stamped parts. It’s an area that is is being currently developed. This has more potential than you would think due to the high cost and commitment to tool making needed if you wanted to use a process like progressive stamping.
The Boy and The Heron
The Boy and The Heron aka How do you live? is Studio Ghibli‘s latest film. I picked through the trailer with friends who are fellow Studio Ghibli fans. The Japanese movie title references a Japanese book How do you live? which features in the films universe. How do you live is a book where an Uncle documents his discussions with his nephew as the boy faces up to the challenges of childhood. In some respects How do you live? reminded of Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World – in terms of feeling, if not style.
How do you live? is as well known in Japanese circles as a children’s classic in the same way that Ursula LeGuinn’s The Wizard of Earthsea would be known to English speakers. But in English it doesn’t have the same cultural resonance, so hence the much more descriptive The Boy and The Heron. We were all relieved that the film is not a 3D CGI work like Earwig & The Witch.
Looking at the trailer it evoked memories of other Studio Ghibli films
I got to see the film at a special screening at London International Film Festival. But not going to share any spoilers until well after it goes on general release, save to say it’s well worth watching, but you knew that anyway.
Create real magic
Coca-Cola tapped into the trend for generative AI to allow consumers to remix existing advert artwork and make their own version. As far as I know Accenture was one of the main agency partners involved. This is less about the future of advertising and more about how the technology itself has become the meme, rather like all things cyber in the mid 1990s.
A la Soledad O’Brien presenting with a Leo LePorte voiced avatar on MSNBC show The Site during 1996 and 1997.
An interesting documentary from 1971 that explores the idea of ‘The Irish Race’ – it is one episode in a 10-part documentary series ‘We The Irish’. It features some of Ireland’s leading public thinkers at the time including Conor Cruise O’Brien and Seán Ó Faoláin. ‘Race’ as a term is more problematic now than back then as there were so few Irish people who weren’t white European looking as Ireland was a next exporter of people rather than welcoming inbound migrants until recent decades. Secondly, the Irish people were constantly having to establish their identity, culture, language and accomplishments in the shadow of their former colonial rulers.
Ó Faoláin an internationally famous short-story writer, a key part of the Irish arts establishment and a leading commentator and critic – a role played by the likes of Fintan O’Toole today.
The discussion about the Irish race was an essential part of decolonising the Irish identity; by emphasising Irish distinctiveness and salience rather than reinforcing racial superiority. A process that countries like Singapore and Malaysia would wrestle with in subsequent decades too.
Tracing The Irish Race
Ó Faoláin starts his discussion with the book Facts About Ireland that was published for over three decades by the Irish Government. The book itself is like a more in-depth version of the CIA World Fact Book profile on Ireland. It was available in souvenir shops up and down the country, my parents probably have my copy of the 1979 edition that I purchased from Salmon’s newsagent and post office in Portumna
O’Brien was part of the Irish elite. His father was a journalist for a Republican newspaper pre-independence and he married into the political establishment of the Irish Republic. But that shouldn’t take away from his achievements in the various facets of his career by turns was an Irish diplomat, politician, writer, historian and academic.
The series also marks a different kind of high brow factual television than we are used to seeing now.
The Case for a Hard Break With China | Foreign Affairs – U.S. theorists and policymakers ignored the potential risks of integration with an authoritarian peer. Globalization was predicated on liberal economic standards, democratic values, and U.S. cultural norms, all of which were taken for granted by economists and the foreign policy establishment – the arguments in the article are not new, what’s interesting is that they are being run in Foreign Affairs magazine and that should worry China
Tesla’s secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints | Reuters – Tesla years ago began exaggerating its vehicles’ potential driving distance – by rigging their range-estimating software. The company decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that would show drivers “rosy” projections for the distance it could travel on a full battery, according to a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts. Then, when the battery fell below 50% of its maximum charge, the algorithm would show drivers more realistic projections for their remaining driving range, this person said. To prevent drivers from getting stranded as their predicted range started declining more quickly, Teslas were designed with a “safety buffer,” allowing about 15 miles (24 km) of additional range even after the dash readout showed an empty battery, the source said – fundamentally dishonest
Six Bubble Tea Chains Plan IPOs in Bet on China Consumer Revival – Bloomberg – Firms with fast franchise growth not allowed to list onshore. Mixue, ChaBaiDao, GoodMe among firms weighing listings. Who is to say that these businesses won’t be like Luckin Coffee? If the Chinese government won’t allow them to list at home and they don’t want to list in Hong Kong, one has to wonder about the state of these businesses
A couple of things about this video. Major Australian TV network asked YouTuber ColdFusion to make this documentary. YouTubers are now competing against TV production houses for production briefs. Secondly, the video offers a positive take on how machine learning may impact healthcare.
JustoffJunction.co.uk – genius app for planning British motorway travel, the reason why you would care would be the inflated prices at motorway services stops
One of the biggest things that have impacted many British people has been overseas money that has resulted in soccer team acquisitions. There is a certain irony in someone like myself who isn’t that emotionally invested in sport writing about the impact of soccer team acquisions – but maybe my view from the outside in may get somewhere closer to the truth.
I worked on lacrosse brand Warrior’s foray into soccer and helped relaunch the New Balance offering in football. (It had previously made football boots in the 1980s and had English football team captain Bryan Robson as their spokesperson.)
I have visited major football stadiums in Ireland, the UK and Spain – but still don’t have an emotional connection to the game.
Changing landscape
Over my life I have seen football change as a pass time. Football was a decidedly working class sport with concrete floors on terraced stands with railings to lean on, clubs could pack in their fan base to watch a game standing up.
Roy of the Rovers
The sport was lionised in comics, notably football player Roy Race aka Roy of The Rovers, which ran from 1954 – 1993. It has been rebooted a couple of times, most recently by Rebellion, publisher of 2000AD and Judge Dredd.
https://flic.kr/p/2oHEYiX
Roy of the Rovers from 1977
It is no coincidence that most of the UK’s most prestigious clubs were in historic large working class population centres: Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, Leeds and Leicester.
John Moores to Delia Smith
For working class entrepreneurs, soccer team acquisitions and team ownership were a way of demonstrating their position at the acme of their community. John Moores – the scion of the Moores family who founded the Littlewoods empire based on the working class love of betting on football match outcomes. Moores then went on to set up a mail order retail company also called Littlewoods, which mixed a wide product range with payment by instalments.
From mail order Moores rolled out a network of value orientated department stores that catered to working class communities. To give you an idea of how ubiquitous Littlewoods was, everyone I knew at school had school shirts, trousers, jumpers and blazers from Littlewoods.
In 1960, Moores become a director and then sealed his place in Liverpool society by becoming chairman of Everton Football Club. From this achievement he became a freeman of the city of Liverpool in 1980 and received a knighthood ten years later.
via Wendy House
Delia Smith is as famous in the UK for her cookery as she is for her ownership of Norwich City Football Club. A school leaver without qualifications, Smith built up a reputation for cooking after the austerity of the post-war years when cooking had no longer been passed down from mother to daughter due to food rationing. This eventually garnered being published in newspapers and magazines, her own TV series, books, a sponsorship deal with Sainsbury’s and an online cooking portal.
Smith and her husband were not from Norwich, but had chosen to make their home there. They cemented their place in the community when Smith bought into the club in 1996, where she has a reputation as an impassioned owner.
“This is a message for possibly the best supporters in the world. We need a 12th man. Where are you? Where are you?”
Delia Smith broadcast on BBC Radio Norfolk during a match against Manchester City
Smith like Moores was never going to make a fortune from football.
Football is our religion
In their push for viewer subscriptions, British satellite pay TV provider Sky Sports ran an anthem advert that got to the core of the British relationships with their football team.
In the advert, actor Sean Bean reads a manifesto written by Leeds United fan, who also wrote, directed and produced the film.
Life
It can be difficult
You know that
We all need someone to rely on
Someone who’s going to be there
Someone who’s going to make you feel like you belong
Someone constant
It’s ectasy, anguish, joy and despair Part of our history Part of our country And it will be part of our future It’s theatre, art, war and love It should be predictable … but never is It’s a feeling that can’t be explained but we spend our lives explaining it It’s our religion We do not apologise for it We do not deny it They’re our team, our family and our life.
Barry Skolnick
If the football match is their service, then the football stadium is their church and their bible is the history of teams and and their gospel chapters individual player biographies. In Britain weddings, funerals and baptisms may happen in a church – but that’s about the limit of religious activities for many people.
Catalysts
Catalysts were in place for new types of soccer team acquisitions.
How to become a millionaire?
The perceived wisdom about owning a football team was encapsulated in a British joke:
How to become a millionaire? Be a billionaire and then buy yourself a football team
But that isn’t always the case. In America there was a class of investors who realised that owning sports teams with substantial media rights didn’t give regular dividends but did offer the opportunity of a big payout when exiting and selling the business on. People like the Glaser family and their experience with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took their expertise to English Premier League football. Acquiring undervalued teams, maximising the value and selling them on. This hasn’t been without controversy with fans being openly hostile to the owners.
A new type of British entrepreneur tried the same thing, the exemplar being Mike Ashley at Newcastle United.
Hot media property
Remember when I said about owning substantial media rights? The media rights themselves were a catalyst to changing the business and driving soccer team acquisitions. 1991 was a seminal year in English football with the founding of the Premier League. It was a break top flight football needed. At the time stadiums were in need of refurbishment and fans facilities were in a poor state. There were security issues at matches due to organised crowd violence. The English were only recently allowed back into European inter-league competitions after bans due to hooliganism.
The Premier League allowed clubs to tap into funds to help rebuild stadiums and make nicer facilities. Knock on effects of this included a pivot towards middle class customers and corporate entertainment which affected the atmosphere in the stadiums, but made the matches more media friendly. This meant football clubs became more brand friendly and opened new commercial doors for sponsorships.
The world is watching
The rise of the Premier League also saw the rise of international media rights. Matches were broadcast around the world. Clubs suddenly found that they had a fan base half way around the world. English football tended to be more exciting to watch due to its playing style versus European clubs. It also attracted sports betting. One of the things that most surprised me travelling in Asia was running into fans not only of Liverpool or Manchester United but also lower profile clubs like Blackburn.
The renovation of stadiums meant that clubs were ready for tourism and their merchandise sold around the world. A Manchester United football shirt appeared in even more cities than an ‘Irish’ pub. The clubs became global brands, which attracted the interest of American investors who realised the opportunity that English soccer clubs offered.
Second wave buyers
Skilful investors in English clubs don’t make money in soccer team acquisitions and running the clubs, but in selling their team. The next tranche of investors to shake up English football were foreigners resident in the UK and looking to enmesh themselves in British society some of them like Alexander Lebedev managed to buy the Evening Standard newspaper, which instantly gave him influence. However there are more opportunities to own a top flight football team due to media consolidation, AND, you probably have more chance of making more money on exiting the investment.
Roman Abramovich
The exemplar for this second wave would be Russian business man Roman Abramovich who had made is money in the post-Soviet era from energy and aluminium processing. He went on to buy Chelsea Football Club, one of the most high profile soccer team acquisitions of the early 2000s, if not the past quarter century. Under his ownership the club went under the kind of development that American owners had looked to achieve, but on a world stage. His ability to spend also distorted the transfer market for football players.
By the end of the decade, a Europe wide set of regulations were brought into effect to try and reduce the distortion that second wave buyers and their soccer team acquisitions could bring to club competition called the UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations.
Even as a high profile member of British society, Chelsea couldn’t provide the shield that Mr Abramovich needed to stave off suspension of his tier one visa allowing entry at will to the UK in 2018. It also didn’t stop the sanctions deployed against him, amongst other Kremlin-connected business people after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Third wave of soccer team acquisitions
The third wave of soccer team acquisitions are from Gulf Cooperation Council member states:
Bahrain – Bahrain is unlikely to be doing any large soccer team acquisitions, though it has bought into second tier side Paris FC. It is a regional tourist destination for people in the Middle East and has built up a finance services sector that has a regional footprint. However it has relied on financial help from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Kuwait
Oman
Qatar
Their motivations are multi-pronged in nature:
Diversification of national wealth out of extracting oil and gas into assets that will continue to deliver returns after the oil runs out. In this respect they are no different to the sovereign funds of countries like Norway or Singapore
Media ambitions, Qatar already hosts the main service provider showing life professional football across the Middle East. Soccer team acquisitions could be thought of as vertical integration. For other countries, it could be seen as hedging against Qatar’s sports media hegemony
Increasing their soft power to improve their security status. This is also why Qatar hosted FIFA World Cup in 2022
Societal influence. The House of Saud have been the guardians of some of Islam’s holiest sites for about a century. Now they are the guardians of St James’ Park through their majority ownership via the Saudi government Public Investment Fund. This may give them a contingent to draw upon during difficult times in their relationship with the UK, particularly as Saudi oil becomes less important as an energy source. (Saudi oil will still be important as a chemical feedstock for every aspect of modern life including Tesla batteries, but hydrogen and electric power via alternative energy sources will reduce the impact of an oil embargo considerably.)
The outlier
Ryan Reynolds purchase of Wrexham is an anomaly. Soccer team acquisitions to build a media juggernaut are hard to do and Reynolds has shown he is uniquely creative with Aviation Vodka and Mint Mobile. He has managed to create a media property out of a lower league football team and bring pride back to a small North Wales town that hasn’t had much going for it since I was a child.
The club was community owned and has had a modest 2 million pounds invested in it since 2011. But it made great reality television in a healthy way. How long the halo of Hollywood lasts is a bigger question, but any attention given to the former steel making and coal mining town has got to be welcome.
The North America semiconductor corridor looks at Mexico, the US and Canada as a potential production capacity eco-system for the semiconductor industry. The North America semiconductor corridor is framed in terms of increasing resilience in security. At the moment the semiconductor industry for reasons of cost and supply chain ecosystem is focused on the US Pacific coast and Asian countries from Singapore to Korea that face on to the Pacific.
In the North America semiconductor corridor also has a political advantage bringing back more high value jobs across Canada, the US and Mexico. There are considerable challenges to the North American semiconductor corridor from talent to energy and water requirements. The US CHIPS and Science Act has looked to catalyse some of the change required.
Ancient monuments to the dead
The summer solstice on Wednesday reminded me of Ireland’s stone monuments. Some like Newgrange have a calendar type element, but most of them are solely monuments to the dead. The megaliths continue to guard their secrets well despite the educated deductive reasoning of archaeologists.
Wilkie Collins radio dramas
Wilkie Collins along with Arthur Conan Doyle invented what we now know as the detective genre. This stream of Wilkie Collins dramas is better than modern productions on BBC Radio 4.
Technics SL-DZ1200
Techmoan did a review of the Technics SL-DZ1200. I am a big fan of the DZ1200 over Pioneer’s CDJ devices and they did a good rundown of the device. Hopefully, the DZ1200 will come back in a new and improved form if Technics relaunch of the SL-1200 is sufficiently successful?
Microsoft Auto PC
Auto PC
Back when I worked agency side on Microsoft I never heard about the Microsoft Auto PC experiment which seems to be Microsoft’s abortive move into in-car entertainment and information systems. This seems to be alongside the more successful personal digital assistant and nascent smartphones. It’s fascinating to see technologies like voice recognition, iRDA, compact flash (but not as a music media) and USB being incorporated because these capabilities were being put into future PDA and smartphone products.
CES launch
It was launched at CES in 1998 according to the Microsoft corporate website. It’s interesting, I still have similar problems with voice recognition.
Directions
The rudimentary directions software was similar to the turn-by-turn direction print outs that I ordered from The AA Route Planner service. during the mid-to-late 1990s for long journeys – but on your stereo screen. A similar approach was also taken by Palm app Vindigo for pedestrians about the same time. Disclosure: I worked agency side on the launch of the Vindigo London guide alongside the work I was doing on Palm PDAs at the time.
(The AA Route Planner service still exists, but it is now online rather than something you ordered over the phone and received via the mail. However you can still print out turn-by-turn directions. It’s also likely to not send you on some of the interesting routes that modern navigation apps seem to manage.)
Clarion
I feel sorry for Clarion who were Microsoft’s only hardware partner. Clarion is now owned by Faurecia SE, a French headquartered auto parts manufacturer with Chinese car manufacturer DongFeng Motor Corporation who were the local partner to Peugeot, Nissan and Honda’s efforts in the Chinese market as a key minority shareholder.
I was sparked to lead this post based on footage that I watched about a priest in South India with regards a robotic elephant. Robots in religion have taken off in both Shinto and Hindu ceremonies.
Japan
Academics have widely talked about how the Shinto-based belief system have aided Japanese societal acceptance of robots, in comparison to western society. Secondly, Japanese authors have been exploring what it means to be human and what kind of dilemmas and opportunities do robots and AI bring in a future society. Robots in religion are a natural extension of robots in society.
Buddhism leads the way
What’s less commented on is that Japan’s buddhist temples have been leading robots in religion. The reality is that many Japanese see Shinto and Buddhism as complementary in nature and get involved in both beliefs.
Japan has some unique religious challenges that are interlinked. Temples are struggling as less people are active in their religious practice, the factors for this decline is multi-factorial in nature.
A second challenge that as the population shrinks roles need to be automated. What started in factories is now impacting the food and beverage sector (vending machines and restaurant robo-serving staff), so it was only a matter of time that robots in religion would supplement the clergy.
India
In India robots in religion is about kindness and de-risking religious ceremonies. In South India elephants take part in religious ceremonies. However the conditions that elephants are kept in can be cruel in nature and even result in death. Secondly, elephants can unintentionally kill or injure people involved in a religious celebration. This report on NHK World shows how robots in religion have been adapted to Hindu needs.
Finally, the elephant robot is used in celebrations over a large geographic area and is easily transported around. Robots in religion are likely to make even more sense as India urbanises even further, as the benefits are amplified in the denser environment.
How confucianism, communism (in particular Stalin’s take on Leninism) and an accident of history has led to the nationalistic, fragile, insecure Chinese state with imperial ambitions we know today.
China’s ‘trinket town’ at heart of push for renminbi trade | Financial Times – Yiwu was one of the first cities in China to allow individual merchants to settle larger cross-border deals in renminbi. Most cities have an annual cap of $50,000. Given Yiwu’s reputation for cheap goods and flexible terms, helped by the fact that wholesalers do not pay either corporate tax or market rent, exporters have sufficient bargaining power to request settlement in renminbi. “When you have only one place to go to purchase something, the seller sets the terms on how transactions are settled,” said James Wu, a Yiwu-based furniture exporter who began demanding renminbi payments from Middle Eastern clients last year – the last quote is a great example of
Interesting video from NHK World on how temples are adapting to a lack of new attendees and priests. I am not sure whether this is down to demographic change or the secularisation of society
A Pokémon-Card Crime Spree Jolts Japan – WSJ – Japan has been staggered by a Pokémon crime spree. Stores are now paying for banklike security to ward off villains who go to extraordinary lengths, even rappelling down the side of buildings, to plunder Pokémon. Hosaka was working in senior care when he had the idea of opening a cozy card shop in the suburb of Machida where customers could mingle at tables. Instead, he says, the little cards, “have become like Rolex watches, gold, silver, platinum or used cars.” – It makes sense when you think of the cards being ‘real life NFTs’
Criminal Rolex Gangs and Traveling with Watches, Part I – WOE – crime affecting luxury consumption. Interesting that London is a crime centre is prominently name checked alongside Johannesburg, South Africa. This will impact luxury retailers, luxury travel and hospitality and auction houses
Luxury
Bay Area Lawsuit Alleges Man Spent $220,000 To Get A Watch He Never Got – there’s also the added complexity of Shreve recently losing its status as a Patek AD. The lawsuit brings some ten causes of action against Shreve, including breach of contract, intentional and negligent misrepresentation, fraudulent concealment, false promise, and unfair business practices, pursuant to California’s Unfair Competition Law – this was only a matter of time. Its the same in the UK
Ad agencies and clients clash: tension over transparency in fees, services | Ad Age – a talent shortage has left agencies without enough senior executives to service accounts. Combined, such factors contribute to what marketers see as an increasing lack of transparency. One executive who leads procurement across marketing and content for a major consumer goods company said the discounts and rebates that media agencies, in particular, get from a media buy have always been “murky,” but one area agencies have always been transparent in is breaking down their fees. The brand executive said auditors, working on behalf of the marketers, have previously been able to get agencies to disclose their margins, overheads and salaries without protest—it’s standard practice and allows clients to know they are being charged a fair price. But that’s starting to change, they said, having run into issues with getting shops to break down their fees in the recent agency review their company underwent
Media
This Year Next Year: 2023 Global Mid-Year Forecast – GroupM – calls the end of radio’s global growth story. Even taking into account streaming, WPP says that, globally, ad-supported audio has peaked. It will grow just 0.3% this year, says GroupM then “remain roughly flat over the next five years”. It’s about to join newspapers, magazines and broadcast television in a downward trajectory. GroupM also tackles the impact of AI on the industry. It reckons that within five years, the portion of “AI-enabled” advertising revenue globally will be worth $800bn. What is impossible to quantify is whether any of that is new money. Most likely, none of it. What is also impossible to quantify is just how dramatic the AI-driven reductions in cost of production will be. That sounds a relatively benign question until one realises that all those reduced costs are human jobs. GroupM identifies five key themes: Regulation (particularly around data privacy); connected TV (and an annualised 10%+ growth in the segment)’; AI “is likely to inform, or touch in some way, at least half of all advertising revenue by the end of 2023”; retail media to overtake TV by 2028; and “new business growth” (which sounds like the sort of thing an agency person would put in their predictions). Most importantly though, the GroupM outlook points to a more more significant factor. We’re at the end of a cycle that was defined by shifts between advertising channels, and then the disruption of Covid. “We are at an inflection point where the secular drivers of advertising growth above and beyond GDP growth are maturing, the pandemic upheaval is receding and the dynamic rise of digital advertising has slowed. This is the basis of our underlying forecast of mid-single-digit advertising growth over the next five years. However, the pervasive impact of AI on the world of advertising could change that.”
AI at Work: What People Are Saying | BCG – leaders love it, workers don’t. Businesses have only addressed the needs of leaders, which probably dialled up the anxiety with a sense that AI is something that happens to you and your career rather like a bad car accident
Beeper — All your chats in one app. Yes, really. – clients like Adium became less useful as Google and other services went away from common protocols and the IM giants AOL, MSN and Yahoo! disappeared. Beeper are trying to address this
