So, is ‘Plan A’ a load of pants, Mr Rose?

Marks and Sparks is having a sale. Whoopie…

Well no, actually. I don’t think this is a ‘good thing’.

“Plan A is our five-year, 100-point 'eco' plan to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing our business and our world. It will see us working with our customers and our suppliers to combat climate change, reduce waste, safeguard natural resources, trade ethically and build a healthier nation.” (M&S Plan A website)

For a while I was willing to go along with their eco-hype. I agree with a lot of things that they’re doing. But the announcement today that they’re having a 20% off everything sale has undone all the good PR, as far as I’m concerned.

I know that we have to consume stuff; and choosing recyclable packaging is a good thing; and that trade (fair trade, that is) is a good thing for the developing world and for us here too. But the most pernicious problem (in the West) is that we all over-consume. Especially at Christmas. It makes me want to vomit.

Wouldn’t it be better for all of us, in the long run, if they sold fewer items of a higher quality at a slightly higher price?

I can’t help noticing that, since Plan A was introduced, the quality of M&S pants has gone right down. (I know Jeremy Paxman would agree with me! ) Sad to say, I’ve been buying the same old basic style for the past 20 years… And of course, these basics do wear out. I just wish they wouldn’t wear out so quickly these days. The fabric may be fair trade organic, but it’s not as thick (and strong) as it used to be, and the quality of the elastic would make Nora Batty turn in her grave (is she in her grave yet? Ah, Wikipedia suggests not… sorry)

[I see M&S has ‘relaunched’ its Plan A website too (old site vs new site; and why doesn’t the site URL appear in the title bar of Firefox? Strange.)]

What I really can’t bear is the vast quantity of totally unnecessary items (and their associated transportation, and packaging, and the transportation of the packaging…) that will be hauled from the shops today just because there’s 20% off. In my new local M&S yesterday (yes, I do go there – for mid-week fruit and veg shopping, because the big T killed off the local greengrocers years ago) they were ‘offering’ low-priced boxes of chocolates at the till. Over packaged; over priced; unnecessary*.

Minutes after I’d listened to two retail giants debate the ‘'Irrational' downturn in high street spending’ on Today this morning, the programme finished early to launch an emergency appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee to raise funds to help displaced and distressed people in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yet again, at Christmas time, I'm frustrated and fed up with it all. I don’t need any more unpleasantly perfumed and over-packaged hand creams, jumpers that don’t fit and have to be returned to the shops, or kitchen gizmos that gather dust.

Instead of feeding Mr Rose’s bank account today, I’m going to give my Christmas-present-fund to the appeal, and hope that my family will be happy with my home-baked cakes instead.

Bah humbug
Rant over!

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* Mr Ms_well and I do enjoy choccies now and again. We once bought a fancy heart-shaped box from Thorntons, ate the contents and kept the packet. Now for anniversaries and whatnot, we buy lower priced bags of Fair Trade chocs and put them in the recycled fancy box. Stingy, but kinder to the environment (and our pockets).

Phew! Thank goodness for that; but what sort of puppy should Obama pick?

I woke early and the Today programme on my bedside radio seemed particularly gloomy. No cheering crowds, no excited presenters. Half asleep, I thought McCain had won, and dozed for half an hour worrying about the future for global environmental politics (not to mention everything else). What a relief when the headlines came on at 7am.

My favourite line from Obama's victory speech:

"Even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century." (my emphasis)

But that aside, the most pressing decision Obama now faces is what sort of dog he should get for his daughters!

"Sasha and Malia, I love you both more than you can imagine, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House."

Much as I love my English Springer Spaniel, and he's great with people (especially kids), I don't think that would be an appropriate choice. A hound of traditional US pedigree might be advisable, but a rescue mut might be more politically sensitive. Who'd have thought that picking a puppy could be such a political decision?

And then there's the question of a name…

Waiting, waiting, waiting, for the party to begin…

Turning on the Large Hadron Collider didn’t end the world, as some people had feared. But here we are, less than two months later, poised on the brink of another potentially world-changing event. Not sure I can take the strain of “Waiting, waiting, waiting…”*

Hot news is that Barack Obama has already won one race: in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, a town of only 21 voters. Turning the town Democrat for the first time since 1968, the electorate chose Obama by 15 votes to 6.

I’m surprised to see that some fellow UK-based bloggers/editors say they’re not interested in the election. Whichever way the voting goes, it’s unavoidable that the US presidential election will have a knock-on effect – for better or worse – on global politics and economics, not to mentioned environmental issues.

So I’m keeping my fingers (and everything else) crossed for a high turn-out and the right decision…

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* First poem we had to learn in “Elocution” lessons, 30 years ago. (They really should have filled our growing minds with something more useful!)

Brand or bland? The editor’s decision is final

Thanks to Messrs Brand and Ross for knocking the Credit Crunch out of the headlines for a day or two (though I’m already bored of their story too). I don’t want to comment on the detail of the incident, but I do want to talk about the editor’s role in the palaver.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Kelvin McKenzie actually said something sensible (on Today, R4) this morning: it’s the decision of the editor – or more specifically, the editor’s line managers – that should be called to question.

I'm not saying they should be sacked, suspended or anything else, but I do think that they are the ones who need to be out there justifying their decision, not B&R (although they’ve had the sense and/or PR advice to apologise).

This wasn’t a live show; it was recorded. The editor apparently took the tape to line management for approval and someone somewhere in the chain of command decided to approve it. Now they need to stand up (or 'fess up) for their decision.

Being an editor is a tough job; they don’t tell you that in the careers guidance. But I do try to tell would-be editors that, when I get the chance. You need to be thick-skinned, and you need to be able to stick to your guns if necessary, but you also need to be quick to hold up your hands if you’re wrong. And that’s as true for editors of books and journals as it is for those in charge of national newspapers and radio shows.

On my first outing as a trainer of editors I likened the role to that of Graham Poll, the international footy ref whose error during a World Cup game led to his resignation. This certainly wasn’t the first time GP had made very public errors, but he wasn’t afraid, when necessary, to stand up to international football superstars.

Editors need to do the same. Even if it’s just a simple matter of defending your stance on a grammatical construction, or choice of illustration, or whether or not to publish the damned book at all…

You don’t often hear young people saying “I want to be an editor”, do you? But we’re actually an awful lot more powerful than people realise. Not just the big names in the national press or TV, but right down to the humble freelance book ‘editor’ who wonders whether she should strike out the author’s phrase ‘cradle-land’ and use ‘place of origin’ instead. (Go on – live a little. Let that new word fly!)

Meanwhile, I’m currently being edited myself. It’s a dull technical book I’ve been working on for 9 months; and now that the gestation period is nearly over, the editing process feels nearly as uncomfortable as Braxton Hicks contractions. Having spent 2 hours late last night responding rather tetchily to the editor’s queries, I now realise I need to rein myself in a bit and let the beleaguered editor get on with her job.

Don’t mention the R—; it’s just a BAGEL

Clearly there’s no escaping the economic downturn. Most people are now convinced we’re facing a slowdown, and first the Today programme (Radio4), then the mighty GB himself, used the R-word yesterday. These people ought to be more careful with their terminology.

Today, in fact, specifically said “… the R-word …”, which caught my ear over the cornflakes (well, porridge, actually). There must be a West Wing fan in the Today editorial team; for all WW fans know that it’s not an *R—, it’s just a ‘bagel’.

Shame on me for not knowing off the top of my head which particular episode this is from (I DO have all of them on DVD), but through the wonder of t’internet I can tell you that it’s from Season 5, Episode 1, first screened in 2003.

The context is that Pres. Bartlett (Democrat) has had to hand over the presidency to the Speaker of the House, Walken (Republican), because Bartlett’s daughter Zoey has been kidnapped. Meanwhile there’re various other crises rumbling along, not least the impending Bagel.

Josh Lyman (played by Bradley Whitford) can’t bear the idea of mentioning the R-word, and quite right too! I’m sure there’s a saying (but can’t bring it to mind) about naming a thing bringing it into existence. If there isn’t, there should be – especially in the field of economics.

I do accept that current circumstances are, to say the least, exceptional. Nevertheless, the more the media harp on about the Bagel, the worse it is likely to get.

Funny thing is, I barely remember the Bagel last time around, even though it landed me and Mr Ms_well in negative equity territory. Back then, I’d just finished a stint writing for an electronics magazine (that industry was going great guns); and I'd moved to work for one of the UK’s largest trade unions.

The economy was certainly high on our list of priority issues, but the focus was much more on the loss of manufacturing jobs in the midlands and the north. So despite the (moderate) fall in house prices in the South East, the City carried on regardless and as I recall there was less hype about the Bagel, and more concern about the ‘balance of trade’ deficit. On top of that, with high inflation, those of us who didn’t lose our jobs were getting decent pay rises – my salary increased by £15k in the five years after I graduated in 1988 (though, admittedly part of that was linked to rising up the career ladder).

Things certainly don’t seem the same this time around. For one thing, I now listen to Today – guaranteed hype-on-toast Monday to Friday – and for another, as a freelance, I’m potentially more likely to feel the effects of organisational purse-string-tightening.

No sign of that yet, so far, for me (but I’m keeping everything crossed), but just this morning I bumped into a neighbour who’s a freelance PR, off on her way to an interview for a secretarial job at our local school. She says she’s sick of working at home, but I can’t help wondering whether the downturn is making her (and others) worry unduly about their employment prospects.

C’mon folks, I agree that we’re living in uncertain times (no change there then?), but life WILL go on. The only thing that IS certain, is that panic and media hype won’t help anyone. Sorry to quote Michael Winner, but “Calm down, dears” is the only advice I’m currently willing to take.

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* R—, of course, stands for recession. Nice to be able to use an em-rule once in a while!

What feminists did for a physicist

Dame Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, interviewed on Woman’s Hour this morning, praised the feminist movement for its on-going efforts to raise awareness of her ground-breaking non-Nobel-laureate-winning work.

Bell Burnell has recently been appointed as the first female President of the Institute of Physics; and from what I heard on WH this morning, it sounds like she’ll do a fantastic job.

I already know several women who’ve studied physics because of her influence; now she’s in a position to encourage many, many more. The great thing about her comments today was that, instead of going down the “physics is exciting, it’s all about the stars and outer-space” hackneyed route, she pointed out that the great thing about physics is “there’s less to learn” – less, that is, than learning all the names of the bones in the body, or parts of a plant. There are a number of fundamental concepts and equations to grasp; the rest is about applying them.

I hadn’t ever thought of it like that; very clever way to turn children on to the subject, I reckon. After all, people so often get put off school science because it is, fundamentally, boring. The trick is to find a way to help them through the dull but necessary senior-school stuff so that they stick with it to a higher level where they really will get to learn about the fundamental principles of the universe.

It sounds like JBB has some ideas for doing just that; and it was great to hear a cheer for the feminists too. JBB might have been overlooked for the Nobel, which was given to her (male) supervisor, but the outrage of the feminist movement has probably done more to raise JBB's profile, to the extent that she reckons she’s probably better off without it!

Is DECC good news for us greenies?

Aha! Today I have a new acronym to add to my editor's checklist: DECC, the Department for Energy and Climate Change. Announced yesterday as part of the cabinet reshuffle, this new department will be led by Ed Miliband and has been welcomed by Greenpeace. Indeed, they’re so pleased about it that they’ve sent me a letter* (well, they issued a round robin to all their members, but I flatter myself they wanted to let me know personally!)

What a shame, though, that Gordon Brown didn’t bother to mention it in his round robin to Labour Party members – he was too busy justifying the resurrection of Peter Mandelson. What does that say about his underlying concerns? Is DECC a token effort? Oh boy, I hope not.

I am a tad suspicious of the motives behind this new department, though. The person who told me about the announcement mentioned the n-word (nuclear) in the very same breath…

I’m a definite fence-sitter when it comes to nuclear power.

It’s not a ‘sustainable’ option in any sense of the word, and in any case leaves us with the same problem as on-going oil usage – namely that we can easily be held to ransom by hostile countries who are sitting on the fuel sources. Wind, wave and solar we have aplenty, so let’s hunker down and develop these cleaner, safer and home-grown technologies.

On the other hand, from the politicians’ viewpoint, telling people to cut energy usage is not a vote-winner (as we’ve already begun to see with the low-cost insulation announcement); the prospect of power cuts, or worse, rationing, is even less enticing. But if people don’t get a grip on their energy usage the politicians have to come up with something, and nuclear is a low-carbon-emissions alternative.

So I’ll give two cheers to Ed Miliband and his new department; and with my editor’s hat on, let’s hope to goodness that Mr M lets his civil servants give it a proper logo and sensible acronym – unlike the powers that be who insisted on dropping the ‘department’ from Communities and Local Government.

Talking of which, I’d like to add three cheers for the appointment of Margaret Beckett as minister for Housing. Only yesterday I was reading of the woeful lack of heavyweights in government [Tribal gatherings by Decca Aitkenhead], and Mrs Beckett (I am told that’s her moniker of preference!) brings a wealth of experience to this portfolio, which is set to be one of the highest profile issues for many months to come. If the house builders cause her any trouble, she can always call in the caravan manufacturers!

* Send Mr M a letter via Greenpeace’s campaign to encourage ‘green collar’ jobs and stop the development of the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station. See also an informative take on the news on the Greenpeace blog.

Gaining ‘respect’ through consumerism has landed us in a Moral Maze

I try really hard NOT to listen to The Moral Maze (Radio 4, 8pm Wednesdays) – some of the panelists drive me nuts (esp. Melanie Philips) – but I caught a few moments of it last night that were worth listening to. (Catch the repeat on Saturday at 22.15-23.00)

The questions posed by chair, Michael Buerk include: “What’s wrong with self-interest? … What’s wrong with being rich? … How can we reconcile our loftier ideals with the realities of human nature?”

Prof John Milbank put his finger on the issue, though we didn’t hear nearly enough of his thoughts, which included: “Capitalism has an inherent tendency to monopoly… towards huge divisions in society … [we are currently seeing] systemic immoral behaviour …”

Most significantly, he wondered why people are behaving in this way (purchasing goods they can’t really afford); then answered his own question:

“… People are motivated by respect and the avoidance of shame, so they go by whatever is regarded as 'excellent' in the society in which they live. It’s only since the 18th century that we’ve seen it as ‘excellent’ and ‘acceptable’ to earn as much money as possible in any way you like. … [as a society] we are telling people how to get ‘respect’ [i.e. by being good consumers].”

RESPECT; a little word that comes with a cart-load of baggage. (Isn’t that what the knife-wielding teenage gang-leaders are after too?)

A powerful analysis, I think, especially for the UK/USA, where “keeping up with the Joneses” is deeply ingrained in our society, and where only the very strong (and eccentric?) manage to buck consumerist trends. (Even being a vegetarian is regarded as ‘cranky’ in a society where meat-eating is synonymous with wealth and status.)

As you might expect, evolutionary psychologist, Michael Price, stated that humans are capable of both competing AND cooperating; and we’re now seeing a situation where long-term cooperative initiatives are being undermined by a few uber-competitive individuals. But he failed to volunteer a ‘solution’ (fair enough; he’s a scientist – he tells us what the situation is, not what to do about it).

Meanwhile, the guy from the Adam Smith Institute twisted and turned and got up everyone’s noses.

Thoughts for the day:

Will Self: “Economics is the pseudo-science that describes a set of magical relations.”

Michael Buerk’s final point summed up: “I’m self-interested; you’re greedy.”

Wedding bells in a church of your choice

The Church of England moves in mysterious ways, that’s for certain. Apparently, they’ve finally come round to the idea (19 years too late, in my case) that they should allow people to get married in the church of their choice, not just the one that’s nearest to their current abode. This will be good news for some; and it means my very own Archbishop’s Special Licence will be a bit of national history, not just something for the family ‘archive’.

Church weddings have been going out of fashion for decades, but once the government ‘deregulated’ the marriage business in 1994 – leaving people free to celebrate their nuptials in, of all places, motorway service stations, hot-air balloons, and even the bottom of the sea – the C of E option looked even more dated.

Today, amid much rejoicing – i.e. the Bishop of Reading holding a special wedding breakfast accompanied by a gospel choir singing wedding favourites (deep joy!) – the C of E finally launched the Church of England Marriage Measure which means that you can get married outside your ‘home’ parish, providing the church of your choice has some sort of family connection.

And blow me, they’ve also launched a website dedicated to helping people get the church wedding of their dreams! There, you can read the “Seven steps to a heavenly wedding” (I kid you not); and meet a happy smiling and female vicar (via the magic of the interweb).

My, how things have changed since I walked down the aisle…

Neither of us were (are) church-goers; in fact Mr Ms_well.words is about as anti organised religion as it’s possible to get. But despite my atheism, I’m a former C of E head chorister, and I really wanted to have a wedding filled with good old-fashioned English psalmody. It didn’t turn out quite as I’d envisaged.

In 1989, we were living in London; my family in Yorkshire, his in Herts; and my aging granny too ill to travel but determined to get to the wedding one way or another.

The picturesque (and extremely popular) church near to my former home was fully booked, and in any case, wouldn’t marry us because we were not parishioners – in fact neither was my mother, it turned out. Once we investigated, we found out that her home was just over the parish boundary, and actually her local church was at the far end of her road; an old soot-blackened Victorian pile like so many others littering the City.

I’d read in a wedding magazine that it was possible to obtain an Archbishop's Special Licence to marry outside your own parish, so we contacted this local church to asked whether they would do the deed. I never did get to meet the vicar (a Curate dealt with our ‘case’), which is a shame because he later became rather famous in the national press for various misdemeanors! Plans went ahead over the phone, without us stepping foot in the actual building.

When I finally did go there, it was a bit of a shock. The grim and gritty (but authentic and definitely Northern) church outside had been stripped of its charm on the inside and ‘renovated’ to suit the Evangelicals who had moved in (complete with Sunday night ‘Rock’ events).

So, no angelic choir singing psalms; no vast organ pumping out Mendelssohn’s finest; no WEDDING BELLS…

By that time, we’d already gone to the trouble of getting the licence, signed and sealed by Archbishop R Runcie, so it was too late to change our minds. (Mr Ms_well.words had to go to Westminster Abbey in person to obtain it!)

Small wonder there was thunder and lightning during the Service…

Ever since, I’ve been meaning to get the Special Licence properly framed (instead of it being folded up in the bottom of a box of wedding snaps). Now it’s a piece of history, I’d better fish it out and put it somewhere safe.

Silly bankers - What the Dickens* is going on?

With the financial crisis worsening by the minute and HBOS the next big name bank to be facing meltdown, it's probably not the right time to tell the bankers to take an hour off and read a book.

But if they did have a few hours to spare (and let's face it, a fair few of them will in the coming months), what do we recommend they should read?

Forget the self-help manuals and the get-rich-quick tomes. Go for a bit of Dickens, I'd tell 'em:

Start with Martin Chuzzlewit; and if you've got half an ounce of empathy in that greed-addled brain of yours, you'll quickly see that the Big CD foresaw exactly the kind of crisis you've now got yourself into. Witness Martin and poor sop Mark Tapley off on a fool's errand to make their fortune in - of all things - the US real estate sector!

And witness Montague Tigg and his ne'er-do-well business partners as they fleece the populace with their Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company.

If that all sounds like heavy going (and it honestly isn't - it's excellent, entertaining stuff) then pop down to the library (yes, they do still exist, but only just) and borrow a GCSE-level history book, flick through the index for "South Sea Bubble" and "Tulip" … And maybe you'll finally get the message!

* Any editors out there may by now have realised that I deliberately used a cap D for Dickens.