A Donkey on the Edge

So I’m still digging around the advertising industry looking to see if I have an idea or not…

Firstly, Bill Bernbach (the guy in the picture) would have shot someone for this—I mean can you imagine the marketing team at Avis (long story, see quote in before-last post) saying We’re going to try harder for our customers, give them the best possible service. Unless they’re not wearing a new suit, in which case we’ll tell’em to go get a new suit before we’ll talk to ‘em—yeah, that’s the ticket…

Secondly, compare these two statements:

Tribal DDB (January 2004)

We plan, build and market successful businesses in the digital marketplace with stirring ideas that stimulate, respect and serve our clients’ customers and this is our driving obsession.

Pumpernickle (May 2002)

It is our belief that businesses benefit from an active participation in internet culture that contributes to and respects the many online communities and market places. Pumpernickle plans and designs projects that respect this environment.

Which is heart-warming for me, really as Tribal must have got something right, so we couldn’t be too far off the mark… Anyway, am off to put thinking cap back on. This is refreshing, I haven’t spent whole days thinking about the business in years :-)

So Billy and I went to this Alexander McQueen bash last Thursday night and drank way too much champagne and then Billy raised his paddle and bought Madonna’s tights…

Which kinda meant that we had to talk to the Christies mob who were managing the auction which in turn meant we sorta got to meet the MD of American Express Europe who we asked to support The Lecture List by signing up to one of our fabulous whitelabel lists (which is how the Guardian is going to be getting their content).

So now Billy and I are wondering if anyone’s going to ask us to pay for the tights ;-)

Just met some really nice people at a studio in the city.

They’re developing a site for a UK charity and are developing a new methodology to keep the design fresh without development getting bogged down by Bobby compliance. We had quite an interesting chat about the process. More on this later…

So the England team’s practice sessions are being spied upon by “Zoom lenses hidden in golf carts” and celebrities sunning sans clothes are violated by zoom lenses that “literally reach in and pull the image out”.

What ever happened to the good old telephoto lens?

Does it now sound too quaint, too much like talking about a card reader or a Telex machine or some other not-quite-up-to-the-minute technology? I’d settle on “long” lens—as the term refers to the focal length of the device, and a zoom lens could after all, be a 21-55mm (not very useful for pulling out celebrity nipples).

Oh, and in the seventies, there was some talk about the French government making it illegal for French film crews to use zoom lenses and being forced to use “objectifs de longueur focale variable” instead (at which point someone mentioned that it was a couple of French guys, Roger Cuvillier and Richard (Jean) Cornu. that invented it in 1949)</pedantry>

And I just unlocked my Nokia 6600 so now I can use the Orange SIM in it:-)

I used this service and it went reasonably smoothly. Haven’t seen my phone bill yet—it ain’t free—but I’m hoping it won’t be too much over a fiver…

Have just returned from voting.

The UK Labour party (Tony Blair’s party, currently in power) have created a whole new direction in politics. After abuses from the extreme left and the far right, Tony bring us the extreme centre.

Never has a party been so powerful, held such a large majority in parliament and behaved in such a risk-averse way. Yes it’s true, it did seem at one point that Labour was unelectable, but never has a Labour government hidden it’s own Labour achievements and credentials to the point of having nothing at all to say.

So I voted for the Greens today.

Well almost, I figured Ken (London’s incumbent mayor) needs a bit more time to complete long-term infrastructure works. I mean compare Victorian infrastructure investments with ours—we’ve simply stopped funding anything too complex to be completed in a single term. Not surprising really seeing as all the main recipients of public infrastructure funding were privatised by That Woman **** and goddammit my dad and his dad and his dad before him paid for all this shit out of their hard earned wage packet and she bloody well flogged off the lot and we were bloody stupid enough and lazy enough and politically uncommitted enough to let her get away with it…

Which makes me want to ad my two cents about Reagan (while I’m fired up). The view of the Eighties from the corner of 110th Street and Amsterdam Avenue was one of increased homelessness. From the day I moved in to the day I escaped to Europe in late 1988, there were more and more homeless men on my corner to the point of them knowing me by name.

Reagan achieved nothing but, poverty pain and greed…

So what I wanted to say, before this post got a little out of control, is that in the UK, elections can swing on tiny numbers. I you don’t vote today, you’re doing all of us a disservice. You can—you personally—make a difference, you’re vote actually matters, so get your ass to a polling station asap:-)

From this piece (on bbc.co.uk)

Labour is suffering heavy losses in local elections in England and Wales, with several councils changing hands. It has lost more than 200 seats and will finish in third place according to a BBC projection of results.

And oh yes, the Tories actually won a few seats.

Now I just heard a guy on Radio 4 saying he could actually feel the disapproval in the crowds and explaining how it was obvious this was a protest vote about Britain’s involvement in the war in Iraq.

I hope it isn’t.

Britain has a (small) standing army that is surprisingly active worldwide for such an inconsequential little country and most Britons see bodies returning as part of the deal. Nobody wants to see our boys get killed, especially in a conflict where they don’t belong, and out of which the politicians have laid no clear path. But there just isn’t the knee-jerk body-bag reflex that seems to prevail in the US.

I hope this vote was about a wider, more fundamental dissatisfaction with a government that has lost touch. I think the fact that this senior Labour spokesperson claims this is only about the war is yet another case of them missing the point precisely because they are so out of touch.

I hope Britons were saying that they want a party with a clear, centre-left policy that favours peace over war, the public over privatisation and that is isn’t ashamed to have created the minimum wage or signed the European Social Charter.

Pantograph is a lovely word:-) Thank you Gail

Yes way

Have just struggled through another hummaniteinenglish.com translation. A very interesting piece about the effect on left-wing parties of forgetting one’s left wing. I worry a bit, the French is pretty pompous and poorly written (imho) and the guy in charge hasn’t got the resources to do a lot of editing…

If there are any lefties out there with good English writing skills, the editor might welcome a volunteer editor/reviewer to hammer the texts back into English:-)

May is when all the councils reorganize. Mayors get elected, committees too, and in the reorganization of East Devon’s planning arm—The Development Control Committee—disaster struck!

The Law of the Land states that any committee with legal powers must be politically balanced.

That sounds like a good idea don’t it? It prevents any one political party that happens to be in power taking over complete control of everything. As all the really important business of government (whether at national or county level) is done in committees a fair assignment of seats on a proportional basis sounds democratic and probably is…

Sorry to bore you with all this but it’s important so please stay with me. The line up for the New Planning Committee of 15 members is 9 Conservatives, 5 LibDems and 1 (One!) Independent.

Ah! But if now the two local Independents, Lesley and Jed, step up to say their piece (and vote their vote) the political balance switches to 9 Con 5 LibDem and 3 (Three!) Independents.

Until this May, all members had accepted this since it seemed important for all local Members to be able to fight their corner. But this is only possible if it is unanimous (thus guaranteeing even the little man a voice) and this year (Shock! Horror!) One member (One!) voted against his own party and against this fair-play system.

So…

Today, and for the next six months at least, Lesley and Jed do not have a vote in the one area of local government that they campaigned for. I’m typing this out hoping it’s clear, but I have to tell you, to the local voters that put us in, it is anything but clear.

Still, we soldier on, reduced now from voting on local planning issues to a sort of inspired lobbying of actual voting members.

I told you there would be sad stuff as well as the good news bits.

So it goes.

Cheers!
Jed

This material ©Jed Falby 2004

One
Two (…and isn’t weird that there’s a “w” in “two”?)
Three

thanks, boingboing