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.
Disclosure: work thing. The Feelings was put together by some of my colleagues at McCann for the Laura Hyde Foundation. The Feelings is a film put together to raise awareness of the serious difficulties that frontline workers face, and how this can affect them on an ongoing basis, particularly if they don’t seek support. Each of the characters represents some of the feelings that workers can be holding down in an effort to meet expectations of outward stoicism, appear professional or just hold it together. This can include feelings of ‘rising dread’, ‘red rage’, and ‘powerless’.
You can find out more about the mental health impact on our frontline workers here. World Mental Health day was Monday morning and as a business we’ve been looking at agency member health on an ongoing basis.
Malaysian independence
Tunku Abdul Rahman was a Malaysian statesman and lawyer who served as the first prime minister of Malaysia and the head of government of its predecessor states from 1955 to 1970. Tunku is a royal title which gives an idea of the respect that he is held. He was the first chief minister of the Federation of Malaya from 1955 to 1957. He supervised the independence process that culminated on 31 August 1957. As Malaya’s first prime minister he dominated politics there for the next 13 years. In 1963, he successfully incorporated the Federation of Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore into the state of Malaysia. However, tensions between the Malay and Chinese communities resulted in Singapore’s expulsion in 1965. His performance during race riots in Kuala Lumpur in 1969 led to his resignation the following year.
Discrimination
This opened the door a succession of economic policies that favoured Malays at the expense of ethnic Indians and Chinese Malaysians The New Economic Policy was put in place for 20 years. It was replaced by National Development Policy in 1990 and the National Vision Policy (NVP) in 2001. But all of this was to happen in the future. At the time of independence Tunku Abdul Rahman was a hero for all communities and his speeches unified rather than divided the different communities of the Malaya Federation. Cadburys put this advert together to celebrate Malaya independence and capture the memories of someone who saw Rahman speak.
The global landscape for artificial intelligence
INFER did an interesting talk that showcased which countries are punching above their weight in development around machine learning. You’d be surprised by many of the results.
Pui Yuet
Pui yuet nannies bring traditional techniques for well-heeled Hong Kong new mothers. It brings a mix of common sense, traditional Chinese medicine and folklore together to get mother and baby off to the best start.
Singaporean OnlyFans creatives
Our Grandfather Story have done some fantastic interviews with OnlyFans creatives who tell their stories. Its complicated, heart-breaking and empowering in turns.
Hallyu The Korean Wave is exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Hallyu is actually a contraction of Han ryu which literally means The Korean Wave. Han meaning Korean (so the Korean written language is called Hangul) and ryu meaning wave.
Forgotten War
The exhibition was interesting from a London audience perspective. You have to be a real history buff to know that the Korean war even happened. The olympics put Korea temporarily in western consciousness and then it submerged again. It was only since I started writing this blog that The Korean Wave started to become part of the London zeitgeist, let alone the rest of the country.
Hallyu now
K-pop group Black Pink is now number one in the UK album charts with their sophomore release and there will be at least one Korean option when you open Uber Eats. Korean films and series (usually the most transgressive ones) are popular on Netflix and in arthouse cinemas.
Korean reality
The reality of The Korean Wave is more complex. It was something that was over 50 years in the making, going back at least to the compact that Park Chung-hee made with Korean business leaders at the expense of economic inequality, human rights and labour rights. The Korean Wave was birthed by a traumatic history of authoritarian rule. The Korean Wave wouldn’t have been possible without the economic growth driven by rapid economic growth and industrialisation. This in turn created the flywheel effect as Jim Collins would put it, that helped Korea become a cultural powerhouse as well as an economic one.
The exhibition skims the surface of this complexity, but is stylish and entertaining in nature.
The exhibition is running until February next year.
Expats Shun China Over Covid Policies, Forcing Foreign Firms to Scale Back – WSJ – “companies are even questioning whether it is responsible for them to deploy foreign staff to China when the numerous restrictions mean they are unable to guarantee a basic duty of care for them and their families,” the European business lobby in China said Wednesday in its annual report on the state of business in the country. Many of the chamber’s member companies, multinationals with a longstanding presence in the country, are downsizing, localizing and hiving off their operations in China as the number of Europeans and Britons living there roughly halved from prepandemic levels to around 60,000 in recent months, according to the chamber’s estimate. – the expat infrastructure of schools, services and food built up over decades is withering as foreigners leave. And that is probably seen as a good thing by Xi Jingping, who is looking to de-westernise China
Design
So much in this video about quality, design, sustainability, carbon footprint and the fallacies supporting electric vehicles.
Japan’s biggest K-pop fans might just be senior citizens, survey shows | SoraNews24 -Japan News – Online marketplace service Mercari studied the purchasing habits of its users between September 1 2021 and August 31 2022 to find out what products are most popular for each generation. They discovered that users who reported to be over 50 years old more frequently bought K-pop merchandise than even Gen Z.Despite competing with other popular products like character merchandise, domestic idol goods, and video games, K-pop items were a big seller among every age group. It was the third-most-purchased category for teens and the second for people in their 30s, but as it turns out, it was the most purchased category for people in their fifties and seventies! – this probably tells you a lot about how ageing is changing, not only in Japan, but elsewhere
Tinder just opened a convenience store in Japan, aimed at adults only | SoraNews24 -Japan News – Japanese convenience stores are a much-loved part of everyday life in Japan, where you can get pretty much everything your heart desires at any time of the day or night. Last weekend, however, a new convenience store popped up in Tokyo’s Shibuya district offering something that others don’t usually have in-store: love and romance. Called SwipeMart, the convenience store was run by dating app Tinder, and though it was only open from 16-19 September, it was such a resounding success there are hopes the pop-up will pop up at more locations in the future. Aimed at the over-18 crowd, the convenience store had some great freebies on offer for Tinder members, ranging from a choice of either jocks, socks, or a long-sleeve T-shirt
Sensitivities Rise As Geopolitics Takes Toll On Global Communicators – Richard Edelman penned a blogpost that questioned whether “truth will win out”, amid considerable state-sponsored disinformation activity. Edelman was referring specifically to the Russia/Ukraine conflict, but his column included reference to China’s efforts to influence public opinion. Edelman China blogpost 2022 By the end of the week, that paragraph — which was sourced directly from this WSJ article — had been excised from the post.
EU to consult on making Big Tech contribute to telco network costs | Euronews – The European Union’s executive body will launch a consultation early next year on whether tech giants should bear some of the costs of Europe’s telecoms network, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Friday. Europe’s telecoms operators have long lobbied for a financial contribution from U.S. tech firm’s such as Alphabet’s Google, Meta’s Facebook and Netflix, saying that they use a huge part of the internet traffic
Vetoing Victory – Israel Is Blocking (Military) Aid To Ukraine – Oryx – Israel’s refusal to provide military aid to Ukraine or even permission for other countries to do so sharply contradicts historical aid to Israel, when much of the Western world rallied behind the country when it faced invasions of its own, launching air bridges to keep it supplied, and engaging in blood donation campaigns for Israeli soldiers. Of course, the time that Israel could count on such strong support and sympathy from the Western public is long gone, and the world is unlikely to forget Israel’s inaction and deliberate obstruction of support to Ukraine
Emirates statement on operations at London Heathrow – Emirates lays into London Heathrow’s airport chaos. The airport chaos has been labelled ‘airmageddon’, due to the restriction in numbers of passengers who can fly in and out of Heathrow in a given day of just 100,000 people. That’s 25,000 people a day lower than last year. While there is similar restrictions at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and a complete failure of their baggage system.
China
China’s Collapsing Global Image – China’s image abroad has declined significantly in the past four years, a sharp revearsal from the relative popularity it enjoyed in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe from the 1990s to the late 2010s. While previous Chinese regimes stressed humble non-intervention on the global stage, distributed generous infrastructure funding via the Belt and Road Initiative, and conducted massive soft power outreach programs through media and academia, many of these strategies have been reversed or rendered ineffective. As Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia Joshua Kurlantzick notes, “[there] are multiple reasons for China’s deteriorating global public image. China’s overall rising authoritarianism at home, its cover-up of the initial COVID-19 outbreak, and its brutal repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang have hurt its perception among many foreign publics. China’s continued zero-COVID strategy has cut it off from much of the world, undermined people-to-people relations with other states, and cast some doubt on the Chinese model of development—even among some Chinese citizens.” – worthwhile contrasting with the following research, which implies a negative but more complex and nuanced situation – China seen as better than EU in completing African projects, survey finds | South China Morning Post – Poll of more than 1,000 policymakers on the continent puts priority on physical infrastructure, speedy results and non-interference in internal political affairs. European Union charts higher on quality of products or services delivered; good working conditions; creating jobs for Africans; upholding environmental standards
HSBC installs Communist party committee in Chinese investment bank | Financial Times – I don’t think that it would be beyond the realm of possibility seeing HSBC China and Hong Kong breaking off ARM China style under the auspices of Ping An and the Chinese government. Ping An is actually a cross holding: HSBC is the largest shareholder in Ping An and vice versa. The question is can they take the bulk of the HSBC Asia businesses with them like Singapore et al as well? This could happen based on company structure and western shareholders would be left with the equivalent of an empty husk
Hong Kong Law Reform Commission proposes 5 new offences to rein in cybercrime, with tougher penalties of up to life imprisonment | South China Morning Post – Will this proposed ordinance be available as a charge, with the prosecution claiming the criminal intent is an offence involving national security?” he asked. “Could all social media become a target? Given the wide criminalisation of speech in the context of national security and sedition charges is there a risk a charge under this ordinance will be added?” Davis said he was also worried the proposed amendment would be used to reverse the outcome of an earlier decision by the Court of Appeal in 2019 which limits the reach of an ordinance that prohibits “access to a computer with criminal or dishonest intent” to cover a person using their own tech devices.
Transforming logos for Pride has lost brand impact | Marketing Week – When the mass market starts arguing over who gets the specially altered distinctive asset for the month, it’s probably time to retire the whole code-playing business forever. Monkeys cannot run the zoo – especially the zoo’s Special Surprise Tricks Unit, which designs things to influence the monkeys without them knowing anything about it. Pride month clashed with the platinum jubilee. Brands got involved with the platinum jubilee celebrations as planning got under way by local councils and British embassies by mid-May. The platinum jubilee allowed brands to reach a wider swathe of consumers than would otherwise be the case and increase their relevance to consumers lives. Celebration of pride month was seen as brands ‘deprioritising’ the platinum jubilee on one side, while platinum jubilee critics were seen as been prejudiced in nature. What struck me was the quiet of the voices in the middle ground of the Pride – platinum jubilee dispute. Perhaps its better for brands to stay out?
The West’s Struggle for Mental Health – WSJ – American psychiatrists have been studying rates of functional mental illness, such as depressive disorders and schizophrenia, since the 1840s. These studies show that the ratio of those suffering from such diseases to the mentally healthy population has been consistently rising. Ten years ago, based on the annual Healthy Minds study of college students, 1 in 5 college students was dealing with mental illness. – and depression has surged 135 percent over an 18 year period. The finding are that “The more a society is dedicated to the value of equality and the more choices it offers for individual self-determination, the higher its rates of functional mental illness.”
☕️ Candy in your coffee – this seems to be an extension of the ‘sweet flavours’ available historically from the likes of Dunkin Donuts and other coffee outlets
National security law: can Hongkongers still hold June 4 commemorative events marking anniversary of Tiananmen Square crackdown? | South China Morning Post – political scholar Steve Tsang, director of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, also said the security law was intended to ensure activities that were deemed unpatriotic could not take place in Hong Kong. “It has been enforced in a way to secure an intimidation effect,” he said. “Unless someone or members of a civil society organisation are prepared to be charged and jailed … they will not hold a public event of any sort.” Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of the semi-official Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, said a large vigil commemorating June 4 might be seen as an act that undermined China’s sovereignty and therefore was not worth the risk. Asked what kinds of June 4 events might be allowed in the future, the pro-Beijing scholar said: “Some implicit actions, in private, and in small groups, should be fine under the current political atmosphere.” Simon Young Ngai-man, associate dean of research at HKU’s law faculty, said the question centred on whether such acts signalled “seditious intent”, which might risk violating the Crimes Ordinance – an offence punishable by up to two years in prison for first-time offenders. “Note that intending to promote feelings of ill will and enmity between different classes of the population is also a seditious intent,” he said. “The precise meaning of ‘exciting disaffection’ is unclear. Does it cover any kind of criticism of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments?”
Diabetes drug leads to notable weight loss in people with obesity – study | The Guardian – interesting article that touches on multiple aspects of obesity as a chronic condition. The biggest issue is that government’s aren’t looking to treat it as the chronic condition related to an an endocrine system imbalance that it is. I worked on a rival drug to the one mentioned, which is being promoted in the US and other countries at the moment
An Oxford case study explains why SpaceX is more efficient than NASA — Space Business — Quartz – Planners behind projects that attempt to achieve a massive gain in a single leap, they posit, enmesh themselves in psychological patterns that lead to failure. They delude themselves in thinking the actual costs of the project will be much less than expected, because if the real costs were known, the projects would never be attempted. Platforms, on the other hand, grow incrementally. These aren’t just digital constructions but real world activities that share several characteristics: Repeatability, extendability, the ability to absorb new knowledge and adapt to new situations.
Microsoft Azure cross-tenant cloud security flaws concerning – Protocol – “It’s concerning. And it is a pattern,” said Rich Mogull, CEO at independent security research firm Securosis and a longtime security industry analyst. “And so the question is: Do we believe that that’s because they’re under greater scrutiny? Or is it that they have more problems? It might be a little bit of both.” At cloud security firm Orca Security, whose researchers have found two of the cross-tenant vulnerabilities in Azure services, the issues strongly suggest that Azure is not withstanding the pressure applied by researchers to the same degree as AWS and Google Cloud, according to Orca CTO Yoav Alon. – the more things change, the more they stay the same
Deadly secret: Electronic warfare shapes Russia-Ukraine war | AP News – Russian jamming of GPS receivers on drones that Ukraine uses to locate the enemy and direct artillery fire is particularly intense “on the line of contact,” he said. Ukraine has scored some successes in countering Russia’s electronic warfare efforts. It has captured important pieces of hardware — a significant intelligence coup — and destroyed at least two multi-vehicle mobile electronic warfare units.
A primary metaverse leader is leaving Microsoft at the wrong time — Quartz – Kipman’s exit came as a surprise to some AR industry insiders. Kipman has been the leading evangelist for Microsoft’s immersive computing efforts since the launch of the HoloLens AR headset in 2015, which he helped develop. In addition to the HoloLens, Microsoft offers its bleeding-edge Azure Kinect spatial computing depth camera, which captures and tracks 3D objects. The company has also developed Microsoft Mesh for shared AR interactions, supports a wide array of VR headsets via its Windows Mixed Reality platform, and boasts one of the most popular VR communities in AltspaceVR. Quietly, Microsoft has become the biggest name in the metaverse next to Meta, largely due to its focus on business enterprise users. But now that Microsoft is losing its immersive computing champion, where does the company’s metaverse path lead? And why is Kipman leaving at such a crucial moment?
If you’re reading this blog, you probably have a passing familiarity with the work of Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson’s most famous work Fear and Loathing in Last Vegas was a semi-biographical work that told the trip of Thompson and hispanic rights activist Oscar Zeta Acosta to go from east Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Oscar Zeta Acosta was an advocate for the rights of what would be now called the LatinX community in the United States. He was a lawyer by profession and respected member of his community. I don’t want to give anything further away about the story that led up the disappearance of Oscar Zeta Acosta.
Londongrad
The Economist have done a documentary on how London was so popular as a destination for laundering their money and reputation. London has built up a reputation for where oligarchs from Russia and other countries and former government officials go to invest and live.
They will often have their significant others live in London, while they act as an astronaut partner. The rationale for such an arrangement may vary. One may wish to protect your family from a badly behaving state. This would be similar to the why so many Hong Kongers had their families live in Canada from the late 1960s onward. Even Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing had his family in Vancouver.
A darker reason would be the trend toward kleptocracy which has flourished across the former Soviet bloc. The trend has become so pronounced that central and west London has been nicknamed Londongrad. Along with the oligarchs has flourished a range of professional and personal services to cater for their every need. But the oligarchs wouldn’t have come if a services framework didn’t exist in Londongrad. The legal and financial services were built up over time to benefit the aristocracy and then attract overseas capital post-war, most notably ‘Euro dollars’ from petrostates and the beneficiaries of globalisation. Londongrad built on these foundations.
To give an idea where some of the money that comes into Londongrad; look no further than the Russian frontlines in the Ukrainian war.
Samsung Bespoke
Cheil Worldwide have done a new film for Samsung’s Bespoke range of refrigerators and freezers. It’s got a huge amount of craft in the production. Check it out.
Shin Ultraman
Ultraman is getting the modernisation treatment that Godzilla had a few years ago. It’s now in the cinema in Japan and here’s the trailer. While the film might be more polished than the original, that doesn’t mean that the creators didn’t know a good thing when they saw it and kept the Showa-era vibe of the original Ultraman film typography.
Michael Caine on class
I am a big fan of Caine’s performance in The Ipcress File, a film adaptation of Len Deighton’s novel of the same name. Much of the rest of his work leaves me cold. I came across this clip where Michael Caine talks about class, which I thought was more relevant today than it was when it was originally recorded. Michael Caine has since gone on to support the party of the establishment which makes his earlier class consciousness ironic.
