Cocktails and Records

Although this doesn’t apply to everyone, I’m sure that many of you have experienced ‘difficult’ board members, trustees or colleagues whose heart might be in the right place, but who have their own ‘unique’ approach to ’selling’ your organisation.

Well, spare a thought for Liberty, this countries main defender of British human rights. As a dutiful member, I went off to the 75th Anniversary conference last Saturday for a day largely devoted to intelligent and thought provoking discussion and debate about civil liberties and the governments usurping of them. Speakers as diverse as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Tony Benn, Nick Clegg and er, Jon Gaunt spoke eloquently about the impact of id cards, anti-terrorism laws, police powers, freedom of speech and constitutional reform (if only we had a constitution to reform).

Then Liberty Trustee Dame Vivienne Westwood came to the platform. Did she arouse the audience with inspired rhetoric about protecting human rights in these challenging times? Or even share some amusing anecdotes about her life in fashion? No. Instead she treated us to a spectacularly random rant which encompassed everything from climate change and The Times’ book review section not taking it seriously to the BBC failing to commission her idea for a TV show about 7 year old painters who are very talented you know, and how she doesn’t like TV anyway, or the internet either because the only good thing about the internet is that it tells the truth about things like 9/11 which was a clearly an inside job and everyone knows this but won’t admit to it and what is wrong with the world today and what is wrong with Any Questions?, that show just doesn’t make any sense does it because no one ever asks any proper questions and where do they get those stupid people from anyway?

By the end the audience were openly snickering and the panel she was sitting on (including MP Diane Abbott and journalist Kate Adie) were shifting nervously in their seats.

You could argue that this is exactly the sort of presentation you would expect from an eccentric known for bringing bondage trousers, razor blades and safety pins to the world of fashion or that the audience response was pure snobbishness from a typical liberal lefty audience. Both are probably right, but either way, Dame Vivienne’s performance made me feel pathetically grateful for my work’s motley bunch of trustees.

This morning a new magazine arrived in the work post. On a black background its cover depicted a clenched hand with a defiantly upright middle finger. The words next to it read ‘No surrender: Standing up to the NGOs’.*

This delightful offering comes from a magazine called Communicate which is clearly targeting the corporate PR market. God knows how it arrived on my desk.

The feature story inside advises people (probably like that delightful spokesperson from Tesco I mentioned earlier in the week) how to deal with tiresome Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and their annoying criticism of your company’s record on the environment, human rights, child labour etc. In the article we’re lucky enough to get an insight into the lives of the poor PR team at E.ON (owners of the infamous Kingsnorth power station in Kent) who have to deal with crazy people such as the RSPB, the Women’s Institute, Oxfam, Tearfund, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund and their concerns about global warming.

The writer advises that companies in this position should try talking (gasp!) to NGOs about their concerns, suggesting that it is better to engage with your critics then to ignore them. He also points out that it is often better for senior management to do this because surprisingly it seems, NGOs ‘understand corporate hierarchy and won’t be fobbed off by a PR department’.

Good to see that Communications magazine is really helping to bridge the gap between corporates and NGOs with that ever so subtle cover then.

* Sadly, try as I might I can’t find an image of the cover – it has to be seen to be believed.

A little while ago I blogged about a great moment in my French course when a fellow Australian announced to the class how much she admired erstwhile rubbish Australian Prime Minister John Howard. I wrote with slight tongue in cheek about my shock at actually meeting someone of my age who felt this way. All this prodding at the bleeding-heart-liberal bubble that I like to live in fades into insignificance, however, after an encounter I had last week.

To set the scene, I work in the City of London, although not, I would like to stress in the financial sector. This means that I spend my life surrounded by extremely well paid City people – I share my gym and French classes with them, see them in the pub after work, queue with them to buy the newspaper and grumble with them about late running trains. I don’t have a problem with this. I know that working say, as an analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland does not necessarily mean that you are a tosser with no conscience and a record collection full of James Blunt CDs. I have successfully managed to avoid meeting the archetypal shallow, money obsessed City cliché.

Until last week that is.

We met in his office. He was very well dressed and oozed the sort of confidence that only comes from public school and 50 years of telling yourself how fabulous you are. Within the space of an hour I was informed of the following facts:

1. Public libraries are an anachronism and have no valid reason to exist.
2. People who go to libraries are geeks anyway.
3. If you’ve actually got time to go to a concert or gig (and you’re not ‘entertaining clients’) then you are a loser who clearly isn’t working hard enough. 
4. Most cultural venues (that’s libraries, museums, arts centres, galleries, concert halls etc. etc.) do nothing more than provide respite care for weirdos.

All this was calmly stated without any trace of irony or even devilish provocation. By the end of our discussion, he was just looking at me pityingly as I (geek, loser and weirdo that I am) tried to suggest that he might be wrong.

My boss later summed up the whole encounter by saying ‘Well, at least with this knowledge you’re now able to accurately use the word ‘philistine’’

Every now and again something happens to jolt me out of the bleeding heart liberal lefty non-Daily Mail reading bubble that I live in.

It happened in my French class yesterday. There are people from various different countries in my class and we were discussing how we felt about living in London compared to our home countries. Typical responses included that there are more opportunities in the UK, we like the culture, we have family here etc. etc.

The other Australian in my class, however (and there always is one, we’re ubiquitous around here), responded with a tirade about how much she detested the Labor party and how much she liked arch conservatives John Howard and David Cameron.

I was shocked. I don’t think I have ever (knowingly) shared the same room with someone of my age who feels that way. I didn’t even know those people existed. Well, I do but I don’t speak to them. And I don’t want to; I am happy in my bubble.