The Uncertainty Principle

Every Elvis has his army / Every rattlesnake its charm

With the end of the financial year on me, I have suddenly -through no fault of my own-been immersed in project management. I should have spotted this loophole in the job-description, but it is too late now. The grey beast of March has swallowed me whole.

Any enclosed community likes to create their own language. It breeds self-value and what might more foppishly called, 'bonding social capital'.

No harm in that, you might say. Professional groups have interests in common and it benefits all if they associate and bind themselves together in networks, strengthening the bonds of civil society. Don't get snooty. It is not only management consultants who have conferences after all.

However, when it comes to language, these ties are lengths of piano wire, they constrict and suffocate rather than build.

One of the first things professions do to insulate themselves is develop their own argot. This is not to facilitate communication but demonstrate their membership of an exclusive community and the value and distinctiveness of their discipline. For evidence see Human Resources, sociology, law etc.

A humble west country boy like myself can easily get lulled into affecting the language in a feeble attempt to demonstrate competence and maturity. A couple of months into managing a project and phrases I once would have snorted at now sneak into my own documents, emails and conversations.

Every now and then I catch myself off guard. An 'opportunity' has a certain a 'window', every project, its 'interfaces' and certain issues must be described 'in terms of' other processes, 'as the project moves forward'.

A friend of mine who used to work in parliament has recently moved into Public Affairs consultancy. He was genuinely surprised that people use the word 'stakeholder' seriously. Baring in mind this is someone who has worked for New Labour for some considerable time.

I was all like, 'Dude, I abandoned my opposition to 'stakeholder' years ago. It was a different me back then'.

We'll ride still fired on the beat down low

As an enthusiastic consumer of junk food, I was interested to read the cover story of the current edition of Marketing Week.

It isn't my journal of choice, but I was bored of pretending to read The Economist when waiting for a train at Euston. And if you try and browse any of the music magazines, you end up getting in the way of estate agents lunging after this week's edition of Nuts.

Anyway, Nestle Rowntree are in trouble. In marketing terms, I imagine. So much so that Nestle may consider jettisoning the Rowntree franchise in the coming year, unless a slimmed down product portfolio can turn things around.

The story in Marketing Week came from an ex-managing director, slagging off Chris White, ex-head of marketing of Nestle Rowntree. The enbittered executive was criticising the Australian marketer for bringing his fancy notions from the world of ice-cream to the cut-and-thrust chocolate market.

In the ice-cream market, products tend to last for a season, so Nestle could happily go to town on new product launches each year. This doesn't happen in the land of chocolate. Not now, not ever, but especially not now. Consumption patterns are shifting, with people eating less chocolate, but prepared to spend more money on it. At the same time, Cadbury have been consolidating their products under the Dairy Milk brand.

Instead of trimming down, Nestle Rowntree had it large. Brand Republic lists the Nestle Rowntree new products 04/05 as:

April 04: Lemon Yoghurt Kit Kat (limited edition) May 04: Low-carb Kit Kat and Rolo editions May 04: Fruity Smarties June 04: Seville Orange and Caramel Kit Kat editions September 04: Aero Caramel October 04: Christmas Pudding two-finger Kit Kat March 05: Rowntree's 'Get real' campaign removes artificial colours and preservatives March 05: Caramac four-finger Kit Kat (limited edition) April 05: Aero Bubbles May 05: Milky Bar Raisins May 05: Strawberries and Cream two-finger Kit Kat (limited edition) June 05: Red Berry and Mango and Passionfruit Kit Kat editions July 05: Wonka Range (tie-in with film release) August 05: Smarties Hexatube August 05: Texan bar revived October 05: After Eight Straws and Quality Street Pizazz

According to the article, Nestle Rowntree are now trying to get a grip, concentrating new product offers in the Kit-Kat stable. However, there are concerns at Nestle that Kit-Kat brand isn't as flexible as Dairy Milk.

I don't know what all this means for me and the way I live my life, but I do find it considerably more interesting than the recent loans-for-peerages 'scandal'.

This is the job that people die for / I hope you're ready for the next stage

"How are you?"

"Oh, fine thanks. Just busy. You know, work. You?"

"Yeah, busy."

Back in the day we used to boast about how much free time we had, now we define status by how busy we are.

There has been a well-documented and cross-nationally consistent growth of feelings of ‘busyness’ through the last part of the twentieth century. But there has also been an equally well-documented and very substantial long-term growth in leisure time in pretty much every country for which we have appropriate evidence. How can we make sense of this apparent paradox of busyness in a world of shorter working hours?

...the meaning of ‘busyness’ has changed in a systematic way. A hundred years ago, Thorstein Veblen argued that the prestige of leisure reflected its association with the daily practices of the dominant class – the owners of shares and idle money balances, and inheritors of property in general. It is possible that a similar degree of prestige is now attached to the relatively long hours of work that are a characteristic of the best-placed individuals in today’s society. Activity patterns that previously signified low social status may now suggest high social status.

Thanks, ISER.

the division of Labour / divided the neighbours

Remember that stuff that was red-hot in 1997? All that 'constitutional reform'? Yeah, crazy times.

Well it is back! And now it is hotter than ever! You see, quite a few people haven't been voting. So the PoWEr Inquiry came along to set fire to a few arses. Their report has been published, and suddenly everything is all 'double devolution', 'democratic deficit' and the like.

Like most analyses, the Power Report assumes a couple of basic truisms. Firstly, the assumption that the radicalism and high political participation in Britain in the 1960s and 70s was not an exceptional period brought about by certain socio-economic and political factors, but the gold standard of popular politics it is our duty to emulate.

Secondly, it weighs in with the argument that 'many people feel they lack information or knowledge about politics', with the underlying assumption that this is the fault of poli-so-called-tics, and not individuals making an decision not to get involved.

I'm not against the enterprise. There are a load of good proposals in there, particularly the ones designed to bulk up parliament, which are most of them. They've also put in some stuff, just for japes, like 'limits should be placed on the power of the whips'. Brilliant!

But for a report which diagnoses a major social ill, the focus is narrowly set on parliament and local government, assuming both these institutions have a larger impact on public attitudes and mores than is actually the case.

Me? I am all for active citizens and direct democracy. Come on!

You have to be careful though. Democracy is not just a product that has been poorly marketed. People will always say that the reason they don't vote, just like the reason they don't eat more healthily, is because there is insufficient information for them. In other words, it is someone else's fault. Democratic engagement is brilliant, but you can't just set up new structures, beef-up parliament a bit and expect the kids to come flocking to become citizen jurors. Citizenship requires its own set of knowledge and skills. You have to actually invest in the skills of people if you want them to participate. Otherwise, it will only ever be the chuffs, gadflies and geeks who will get involved. You know the sort, the kind that already choose to go to meetings.

More than this, the whole drive for active citizenship seems to be grounded on a civic republican model. It is back to Machiavelli (which means that someone like me is all over it). Citizens are defined by duty: rights are contingent on fulfilling responsibilities. As individual citizens get more involved in governance, risk and responsibility is shared between the citizen and the state.

So far, so splendid. But, when civil society developed in most European countries in the eighteenth century, it emerged as a distinct space in which people could debate and discuss stuff, separate from the state and not as a way of getting people more engaged in decision making. In other words, far from boosting participation in formal politics, civil society was founded on the 'the right to be left alone'. This undervalued concept is in direct conflict with the whole PoWEr agenda.

People shouldn't be disenfranchised because they lack the voice or skills to participate. But it doesn't follow that the only way to have a democratic culture is when everyone is involved in everything. High levels of political involvement usually occurs during periods of strife, flux and social tension. Maybe we should celebrate apathy a bit more, and argue that there is something noble in sitting around in your pants, eating crisps and watching Bergerac.