My big new business drive

Public relations: it’s not rocket science. Nor brain surgery, nuclear physics or Chinese algebra. Between you and me it’s more like, well, common sense.

For a start, try being polite to people and answering their questions, ideally without telling them a pack of lies. It’s not that hard, is it? Unless, of course, you are one of those individuals who “does not suffer fools gladly” as they always write in obituaries (in the past tense) as code for “he was a complete and utter bastard”.

Some years ago I had a client who was, without question, the rudest man in the world. We used to try and excuse him by saying “He’s really just shy”. The more perceptive analysts and journalists would throw this claim back at us with some more colourful descriptions of what he really was, none of which is suitable for printing here.

The funny thing is that I’ve been using the same excuse about myself for decades. I don’t like talking on the telephone full stop (always a bit of a handicap for a PR man) and I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than cold call a potential client. The resulting comparative lack of business success I have always attributed to shyness rather than the real cause, which I now recognise to be simply laziness of absolutely colossal proportions.

This did not matter when I was quietly winding down to a retirement of steadily increasing poverty, made bearable by the prospect of premature death. Now, thanks to a column published in this very slot, I find myself required to keep earning until I am at least 80 to support my frighteningly young family.

“So you want some more work?” people ask encouragingly. The only snag is that my commitment to being Britain’s most honest PR man compels me to reply “No, I want more people to pay me for not doing anything.”

As a new business pitch, it’s not working too well up to now, even when I point out how much better off we would all be if we had paid our bankers for doing nothing rather than letting them pretend to be rocket scientists.

I wonder whether modern medicine and psychology can offer a gentler cure for idleness than the traditional boot up the backside?

Keith Hann is a financial PR consultant with time on his hands. www.keithhann.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Hellfire and hypocrisy: it was ever thus

For the religious zealot, nothing really matters apart from their faith. And why should it, if this life is just a fleeting trial before an eternity of bliss?

The problem is that no-one has ever come back from the other side to give a decisive thumbs-up to that theory, so the rest of us tend to have quite a low boredom threshold when the preaching starts.

So it is with the new, officially recognised religion of man-made climate change. It may hold out no promise of heaven, but it certainly threatens us with hell on earth if we do not quickly repent of our environmental sins.

The snag is the same as with longer established belief systems. Where is the evidence? Anyone with the slightest knowledge of history knows that there have been disastrous storms and floods since the beginning of recorded time, and that parts of the planet (including England) have been both warmer and colder than they are today.

The earnestness of the tree-huggers and eating-ruminants-haters is also enough to turn anyone against their case, however sound it might be. The weekend’s anti-climate chaos demonstrators (ironically all warmly wrapped up against the cold) inevitably called back memories of those face-painted harridans who used to ululate outside the Greenham Common air base, and the unwashed fanatics who tried to prevent the construction of assorted by-passes. Even though naturally sympathetic to the latter cause, I soon found myself siding with the bulldozer operators.

Then there is the sheer, monumental hypocrisy and inconsistency of the world’s politicians. Just as the more sophisticated mediaeval peasants must occasionally have wondered why the leaders of a religion that preached the virtues of poverty needed to live in palaces brimming with fine art and jewels, so the mind boggles that arresting climate change requires thousands of delegates from 192 countries to board jet aircraft to Copenhagen and be chauffeured around it in gas-guzzling limousines.

And no sooner has the Prime Minister administered a tongue-lashing to the “behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics” than up pops a committee of MPs to confirm that building a third runway at Heathrow is a cracking idea. Yes, aircraft emissions may be destroying the planet, but we have got to put the UK economy first.

As I understand it, the world is currently getting cooler rather than warmer, and is likely to continue to jog along in a reasonably bearable condition until about 2030 when, unless we completely transform our casual attitude to carbon dioxide emissions, all hell will suddenly break loose.

Compared with some of the things we are currently asked to swallow, this does not sound entirely barking. Residents of Morpeth or Cockermouth will need no reminding of how quickly benign rivers can turn into destructive torrents, and researchers assure us that the last Ice Age ended so suddenly, in a single year, that it was like a cosmic button being pressed.

Then those of us who fought against modifying our lifestyles may look pretty silly, just as we secretly dread graduates of the Alpha course mouthing “I told you so” as the archangels’ trumpets sound and the Lord returns to judge us.

I have long believed that the only sane approach to any religion is to apply the common sense test: does it do more good than harm? If it preaches consideration to others and living frugally and responsibly, it passes. If it advocates flying planes into buildings, it fails.

I am quite prepared to believe that the near seven billion people on this planet cannot all live in the style of rich Americans without putting unbearable strain on its finite resources. So, if the religion of man-made climate change helps to promote some self-restraint it may not be a wholly bad thing, whether the hellfire it preaches turns out to be real or not.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Common sense always beats compliance

The current tide of public opinion suggests that it would be good for both Parliament and the British penal system if we gave more MPs some direct experience of prison.

Up to now, in my lifetime, nearly all of them have got away with it. Notable exceptions include John Stonehouse, the former Labour Postmaster-General who blazed a trail for Reggie Perrin and the Hartlepool canoeist by faking his own death, but whose luck ran out when he was mistaken for Lord Lucan by the Australian police.

Then there was Jonathan Aitken, the sometime Conservative cabinet minister who famously promised to wield “the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play” in a libel action against The Guardian and Granada TV, and landed himself an 18-month jail sentence for perjury.

Ironically, it was Mr Aitken who made one of the most intelligent comments I have heard on the apparently never-ending Parliamentary expenses scandal, when he appeared on Radio 4 to assert that our fundamental error as a society has been to replace conscience with compliance.

Hence the sorry queue of about-to-be-ex-MPs appearing in the media to bleat that they have done nothing wrong, as it was “all in accordance with the rules”. Rather than giving a moment’s thought to whether what they were doing was bad and wrong, or would appear so to almost any reasonable person.

The same process of detachment from common sense and basic morality has afflicted the world of business. After some scandals in the 1980s (which appear mild enough, with the benefit of hindsight) a whole new industry was born called “corporate governance”. As a result, company annual reports have swelled towards the thickness and readability of telephone directories as businesses strive to demonstrate their compliance with a web of ever-more complex rules.

And has all that resulted in a moderation of directors’ expectations for pay, benefits and bonuses, or in capitalism being better run? Just inspect the smoking wreckage of what was once our banking sector and the question answers itself.

It is the same in schools, hospitals and every other walk of life. I had dinner last week with a hugely experienced headmaster who was about to waste two days on a course to prove that he knew how to spot any pervert minded to apply for a job in his school. My wife struggles to ask questions about her advanced pregnancy as every meeting with midwives and doctors is devoted to the ticking of myriad boxes to demonstrate that they have issued her with all the currently recommended warnings.

As I tried to imply last week, I do not actually blame our greedy MPs too much. Any organisation daft enough to create a system allowing expenses of up to £24,000 a year is going to receive an awful lot of claims for £23,999. While they have had so much practice in lying to the rest of us, most notably about the aims and consequences of our European Union membership, that it must be very hard indeed for them to kick the habit.

Still, there will be time for therapy and quiet reflection behind bars. In fact, the only real objection I can see to pursuing some criminal prosecutions is my doubt as to whether we have the resources to cope with the rioting that would doubtless break out if our existing prison population thought that the tone of their establishments was about to be lowered by a major influx of less than honourable members.

Meanwhile, on the outside, it is to be hoped that the disgraced of all parties will be replaced by independently-minded individuals who can see that we need much thinner rule books, many fewer box tickers and much greater reliance on those fine old mainstays of common sense, honesty and a clear conscience.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.