Joe's Jottings

Category: Personal Stuff

  • Espresso Entrepreneurs and Cargo Cult Capitalism

    moneyAn item caught my attention recently – so much so that I actually replied to the other blog!  It suggests that in order to succeed as a startup you actually need to be in Silicon Valley or a similar place.  My reply is below:

    “Bit of tough luck for us Europeans, heh?

    Most start-up entrepreneurs need a good dose of reality, I’m afraid. It’s quite likely that 99% of us will NEVER create a ‘winner takes most of it’ let alone a ‘winner takes all’ business.

    For most people, moving to SV or it’s environs simply makes you think you’re doing something of value to the startup – the money spent and disruption experienced could be better spent on achievement within the business.

    In the film industry there’s what are called ‘Cappucino Producers’ – people in Hollywood or London who are in the right place, at the right time, with the right ideas, meeting lots of people, but who never actually manage to get a project off the ground because they’re distracted with the lifestyle.

    Don’t become an Espresso Entrepreneur. “

    There’s nothing new in what I’m saying, and I’m the first to say that I doubt that I currently have the nous to put together a world-beating company that takes first place in a market place.  And I’ve failed on more than one occasion….but, hey – that gives me a different perspective. 🙂

    My current business thinking in terms of getting my new baby off the ground has been very much influenced by the book ‘A good hard kick in the ass’ by Rob Adams, in which he disabuses several common myths about startups, and in that book is focus on what he calls becoming an ‘Execution Oriented’ company rather than an ‘Output Oriented’ company.  Execution orientation refers to the tasks and processes undertaken by the company that progress the business plan and actually get viable product closer to the market place – i.e. those things likely to make money.  ‘Output Orientation’ refers to the things done that are peripheral – e.g. doing lots of market research without using the results, focusing on office furnishings, etc.

    My own thoughts are that a lot of folks seem to be buried in the minutiae of Output Orientation; involvement in tasks and activities that at first appear to be progressing the business but actually don’t add much to the execution of the business plan towards profitability.  It all looks good, you can get out and about and meet other entrepreneurs doing the same thing, and there’s a general whirl of activity – much of which will not help establish sound businesses.

    I call this ‘Cargo Cult Capitalism’.  In the years immediately following World War 2 natives on Islands that had been occupied by the US or Japan started behaving very strangely; they started building mock-ups of air strips and all the associated paraphernalia to try and bring back the aircraft that had been supplying the troops on their islands (and hence giving them lots of stuff as a by-product).   These ‘Cargo Cults’ were basically an attempt at sympathetic magic; by mirroring what they’d seen the soldiers and airmen doing, they thought that they could induce aircraft to appear and land.  Cause and effect was something of a lost cause…

    And so it is with lots of startups – folks involve mirror the public behaviour of what they feel are successful startups, whilst neglecting the behind the scenes private behaviours that actually deliver the goods.  So…perhaps it’s time to consider whether what you’re doing is actually output orientation or Cargo Cult Capitalism; and if so, just ditch the Espresso and get executing!  

     

  • Saying Sorry, Contrition, Repentance and the Scorpion

    Earlier this week I commented on the words of John Healey, the Housing Minister who said that repossession is not always a bad thing.  As has been pointed out, the 46,000 people repossessed in the last year would probably disagree, and would no doubt like a word of apology from him.  You know, the ‘s’ word.  Sorry.  And, I expect that they would want him to mean what he says – to be truly sorry for the hurt that his comments may have caused.

    There have been other recent stories where saying Sorry may not yet be enough – John Terry and Ashley Cole, for example.  Of course, that’s a matter for them and their families, but the bottom line is that today saying ‘Sorry’ has been devalued.  People throw the word off when they get caught out and it’s hard for us to know whether they genuinely mean it or not.  Saying Sorry should be the external, communicable expression of that internal shift in attitude and behaviour that, as a Christian, I would call contrition and repentance.

    An act of contrition is a prayer that expresses sorrow for sins committed.  Repentance is the next step –  it typically “includes an admission of guilt, a promise or resolve not to repeat the offense; an attempt to make restitution for the wrong, or in some way to reverse the harmful effects of the wrong where possible.” (Wikipedia)

    When we hear the expression ‘Sorry’, can’t necessarily see whether someone is contrite or not, and but we can see whether someonehas been truly repentant – they change the behaviour that caused the problem and at least make a gesture towards righting the wrong.  I’ve dropped a few clangers in my time and hope that I’ve shown enough contrition and repentance for my behaviour – only people around me can tell me that.

    Without contrition and repentance – even if you don’t have any religious beliefs – all that it means when you say ‘Sorry’ is that you’re sorry you’ve been caught, and the only Commandment you’re concerned about breaking is the mythical ‘Eleventh Commandment’ – ‘Thou Shalt Not Get Caught’.  To say Sorry without truly expressing contrition and repentance is like being a child making a promise with ‘crossed fingers’ – for those unaware of this particular bit of childhood culture, such a promise was held to be breakable at will.  What may be acceptable in a child is particularly sad and graceless in an adult.

    Which brings us back to people in the public eye.  I’d genuinely like to believe that folks who get caught behaving badly see the light and that they will, after apologising to all concerned, will perform some little act of contrition and then prove their repentance by changing their behaviour.  After all, no one is perfect and, as they say ‘shit happens’ in the best regulated lives that may lead us in to the path of temptation.  But therein lies the mark of the man (or woman) – to be able to not repeat the errors of the past again.  

    When I encounter the ‘serial offenders’ of the world who do something, apologise, claim to be contrite, publicly change their behaviour and then get caught in a similar situation a few months later I do start wondering whether there’s something more involved than just lack of will power.  Perhaps it’s character as well.  There’s a fablethat’s been repeated in many places, about a Scorpion who wants to cross a river.  He ponders this problem for a while when he sees a frog hopping along.  He asks the frog whether it would be possible to ride on his back whilst the frog swims the river. The frog points out that the scorpion is likely to sting him on the journey and kill him.  The scorpion replies that were he to do that, then he too would drown, as well as the frog.  The frog goes along with this, and the pair start the river crossing.  Half way across the scorpion stings the frog, and as they both drown the frog asks ‘Why?’  The scorpion sadly remarks ‘It’s in my nature.’  

    Fortunately, most of us are civilised human beings of good character, and not toxic arachnids with an appetite for self-destruction who also destroy the lives of those around them.

  • A 21 hour working week? Earth calling nef….

    I don’t like to admit it in public, but I kind of like my work.  I’m self-employed, in IT.  I probably do around 35 hours a week ‘client facing’ work and probably about 10 hours a week grubbing up new work, invoicing, etc.  I’ll work longer hours when needs be, and slack when I can.  I don’t regard work as the be all and end all of my life – far from it.  But I have found that when I don’t work, bad things happen, usually presaged by letters from the people who hold my mortgage, my bank manger, the utilities companies, etc.  Because when I don’t work, the money doesn’t appear.

    I have worked with people from the New Economics Foundation (nef) and have quite a bit of time for them, but this latest suggestion blows my mind, I’m afraid.  They suggest a working week of 21 hours.  Very early on in this piece they do admit that people would have a reduced income.  Yes, typically by about 40 to 50%, assuming a straight reduction.

    Don’t get me wrong – I agree with this comment made by the report’s author, Anna Coote:

    “So many of us live to work, work to earn, and earn to consume, and our consumption habits are squandering the earth’s natural resources.

    “Spending less time in paid work could help us to break this pattern. We’d have more time to be better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours.

    “We could even become better employees – less stressed, more in control, happier in our jobs and more productive.

    “It is time to break the power of the old industrial clock, take back our lives and work for a sustainable future.”

    But I’m afraid that this approach is typical of the new left – legislate and push the impact of policy on to the people.  Changes in people’s habits come from the people themselves.  I consume less than I used to, spend more time being a better citizen, and am more productive in my working life not because I work less hours but because I manage the time I do spend working more effectively.  The idea of breaking the old industrial clock is another piece of left wing thinking.  Guys, don’t know how to tell you this, but the old industrial clock has already stopped and some of the biggest issues around working conditions today are not hours based but revolve around:

    1. When and where the hours are worked –  employers are inflexible, often insisting on the 9 to 5 regime sitting at a desk when it’s not actually necessary to get the job done.
    2. The nature of the job – many job types are fleeing the UK leaving us with skilled technical service work, the professions, retail, leisure and service sector.  Most of these jobs rely on people being there to deliver.  A 21 hour working week means that to cover time when people will want to do things, 2 people will need to be employed where one was before. 
    3. The fact that the cost of living has greatly increased – people are working the hours they work because they need to to keep a roof over their heads.

    I’m not at all impressed by this report.  The report acknowledges a massive cultural shift – indeed it will be, making a MORE stressed workforce as people start wondering where the money to pay their bills is going to come from.  More people will have to be in the workforce; whilst we have 2 million unemployed, I doubt that that would cover the requirements of halving the working week for most people.  And the idea that everyone will join hands and walk happily in to tomorrow’s rainbow future of good parenting, good charitable works and a new worker’s paradise is rubbish.  Good parents are good parents because they want to be, irrespective of the hours they work.  People doing good works in the community – again, many of these do this not because they have time in abundance but because they make effective use of what time they have.

    People are not necessarily going to go and do worthy things in their communities, no matter what we may wish to believe.  As a pragmatist, I look around me and see that what most people want to do with their time off is chill out, relax, consume and make full use of the recreation industries.  I doubt taht this would change if they were given more time to do it in.

    Give people a 4 day weekend and I’m not sure that people will actually thank you for it.  Especially when the bills come in.  But Governments will love it – they get to reduce the unemployment figures at one fell stroke.  And it puts all of our finances on that much more of a knife edge – all the better to keep us in line.

  • We know where you’ve been on the Net, and we don’t need no steenkin’ cookies!

    searchglassI’m not overly paranoid about people knowing where I’ve been on the Internet; I’m aware that it’s pretty easy for a website to feed your browser ‘tracking cookies’ that can be used for marketing and advertising purposes, and these can then be picked up on other sites, thus providing a path of footsteps that you have followed online.

    Which is why I clear my cookies regularly, and set my browsers to only accept cookies from sites that I want to accept cookies from.  But I can see that in some parts of the world, your browsing history might be of great interest to Government and Law Enforcement, and I’m sure that many of the larger online retailers would love to get their paws on a good, reliable and hard to circumvent method of looking at what common interests people have.  For example, even if you’re anonymous, it can be of great use to companies to know what sorts of sites you visit, because you can then use data mining techniques to derive information on what other sites or products you might be interested in.  For example, if you’re an Amazon user, you’ll be aware of the fact you get recommendations of the ‘We see you’re interested in x.  Other people interested in x also bought y and z’. 

    Now…let’s take this a little further.  I was browsing around the other afternoon and came across this site.  Give it a try – it’s under the auspices of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  I don’t know what it came back with for you, but my ‘fingerprint’ was pretty darn rare – I guess it’s inevitable because of the various things I have installed on this  computer for work.  The site looks at the information sent by your browser to the site, and uses it to derive a ‘uniqueness’ factor – a sort of tag.  For an out of the box installation of an Operating System then I’d expect that there would be quite a few people whose finger prints are essentially the same.  But the more you tweak and configure and install stuff on your PC, the more unique it gets….to a point at which it can identify your PC uniquely, with very few errors.

    And all this without it ever putting a cookie anywhere near your PC.  Now, there are ways around this – there always are – but they’re not the sort of approaches that the average man or woman in the street would take.

    So what sort of ‘advantage’ would such a technology offer online companies, Government and the Security Services?

    Now, this is pure supposition – I have absolutely no evidence at all that this is happening or is likely to happen…but let’s pretend.  We’ll assume that a number of large online companies have collaborated on sharing this fingerprint data – basically you visit a site or even a page – or maybe even do searches for certain subjects – and your electronic fingerprint is tagged on to that fact.

    Scenario 1.  You do a search for information on equipment to help you avoid speed cameras.  Later that day you go to buy car insurance.  The insurer does a quick check on your ‘fingerprint’ against topics of interest to it – including sites offering legal advice for people caught speeding and also sites that inform or advise on speed traps.  You show up – you’re declined.

    Scenario 2.  You’re interested in computer hacking – maybe even researching a book.  You visit a number of sites of interest, look at books on Amazon and such.  A few weeks later a major ‘hack’ happens and the authorities look at the electronic fingerprints of everyone who may have researched the topic.  You will show up.  This fingerprint is then circulated around ISPs who note that it is one that is associated with your Internet account.

    Scenario 3. You’re gay in a country run by a repressive regime.  You visit web sites where the fingerprinting is being done for commercial marketing reasons.  The security services of your country get hold of this data, either by buying it or stealing it, and run a check of those fingerprints against the ones that are on file with the ISPs of that country.  You will find yourself in major trouble.

    There are ways around this technique – it’s easy to go through proxies, and possible to strip all this sort of identifying data off of the packets that go to web sites.  And people who’re genuinely worried (or have reason to avoid this sort of inspection) will no doubt be doing this.  But for the vast majority of people this simply would be yet another means of intrusion in to our private lives.

  • BBC bias in favour of globalisation?

    As is my habit, I popped in to the BBC Website this morning to catch up on what’s been happening in the world and saw this article, with the link headline from the front page of ‘Why globalisation means you are less likely to be burgled’.  Hmmm, I thought – interesting.  As I expected, the article led on the fact that globalisation has driven down the price of consumer electronics such as DVD players and computers, and has indeed reduced the chances of being burgled.  After all, is it really worth running the risk of breaking and entering someone’s house to steal a DVD player that costs £20?  I think even the most desperate criminal would suggest not.

    So far, so good – then the not so good news.  Apparently the same criminals are now taking to mugging and other crimes against the person. So, another headline that could have been drawn equally validly would be ‘Why globalisation means you are more likely to be mugged.’  I’m used to the more tabloid end of the media doing such biased headlines from stories, but to be honest this BBC selection of headlines from the story was breathtaking in it’s bias. 

    The link headline at first glance looks like Globalisation good news; the conclusions being drawn from the story are only good news if you value a £20 DVD player as being more important than the physical and mental well being of someone being attacked in a personal mugging.  is this what a BBC sub-editor truly believes, that in the name of Globalisation material goods are more important than the well being of a person?

    Of course, this IS the point of view adopted by many apologists for globalisation – after all, the cheap goods and services offered by globalisation is usually afforded at the cost of poor and frequently unsafe working and living conditions in the developing world.  To anyone unaware of what goes in to cheap goods, take a look at ‘No Logo’.   There is no doubt that globalisation has, over the last 20 years, created the consumer friendly, consumption oriented world we live in; after all, in order for large scale multi-national corporates to thrive we have to be encouraged to keep buying the crap they produce, whether we need it or not.  But we’re now beginning to see the wider cost of these cheap goods.

    For most of this time the true cost of these goods and services has been hidden from us; unless you bothered to read books like No logo or study the reports of the impact of globalisation on local economies in other parts of the world, the only impact here in the UK was cheap stuff.  The cost to people’s lifestyles in the rest of the world was hidden from us.  But in this article, the research quoted has shown that there is now an emergent threat to our own lifestyles from globalisation – an increasing possibility of violent crime.

    Not that you’d guess form that first BBC headline.

  • Social Search = global groupthink?

    GoogleA few days ago I came acrossthis item in Google’s blog – looking at what they call ‘Social Search.  This is a set of applications being developed by Google to allow image content that you and your social circle (as set up through your Google account) have posted on image sharing sites such as Flickr in searches returned by Google Images.    So the idea is that you do a search on particular images using Google Images, and prominently featured in the results set would be images that your friends have posted up on these other sites.  I assume that eventually this sort of thing will spread out to encompass other sites of user generated content – Facebook, MySpace, personal blogs, etc.  Of course, this would require some cooperation between the companies running these sites and clearly there would be financial issues involved, but technically it’s not that difficult.

    At first glance social search looks like a very cool concept.  After all, we tend to ask our friends and colleagues for advice and guidance on where to buy things or find them online.  We take their advice on what web sites are reliable, we are likely to at least look at films or books recommended by people who know our tastes, and so on.  If it did become possible to pull together information about searches carried out by groups of friends, and include information posted or recommended by our friends in search results in a prioritised manner, then the results would probably be more immediately relevant to us, and would also be at least partially validated – rather than the results being the equivalent of a cold call, they’d be closer to a personal introduction.

    However, it struck me that there’s a potential downside to this approach, especially the more integrated in to the overall search results the ‘personally linked’ social search results become.  There is a phenomenon well known in management consultancy circles called ‘Groupthink’.  It’s what happens when you get a group of people who’re closely linked in some way – members of the same close knit team or department, for example.  What can happen during decision making and problem solving sessions is that the group may come to decisions based upon internal politics and ‘norms’, rather than objective facts that are presented to them.  This effect has been seen to be responsible for poor decision making in a wide range of situations.  It struck me that there is a good chance of this effect becoming evident in search results should the ‘Social Search’ really take off. 

    For example, if someone in a social grouping is particularly ‘active’ online then their comments and recommendations might turn out to have a larger impact than other folks who’re less active online but possibly more informed about issues.  The overall effect would therefore to bias such social network search results towards the people with the largest online profile rather than those results that are possibly more accurate.  Such individuals would thus become opinion leaders and formers in particular social groups, and advertisers could easily seek out these higher profile individuals to sell directly to them, working on the principle that they will sell to their circle of contacts either directly by recommendation or indirectly through the results of social search.

    Slightly disturbing.  Whilst influencing small groups of people it’s not the end of the world, but how long before we get a situation similar to that in the Phillip Dick short story ‘The Mold of Yancy’, where the behaviour of a whole civilisation was influenced by the tastes and preferences of one man?  Far fetched?  Perhaps not.

  • Can money buy happiness?

    My answer to this question has always been ‘No, but it makes misery feel pretty good.’  However, according to a recent session at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the answer might be ‘Yes’…or then again it might be ‘No’.  I’m not entirely sure about the answer, partially because I know very few wealthy people at a level at which they’ll share their innermost secrets with me.  You know, the sort of things you worry about at 3am when you can’t sleep, when the ticking of the clock becomes the passing of your life and you wonder whether you’ll still be sane in the morning.  Of course, most of the time you do get to 7am in one piece.  I suppose that there is a part of me that really hopes that wealthy people are miserable on occasion – a quick burst of Schadenfreude on my part.

    A similar story is that of the so called ‘King of the Chavs’, Michael Carroll, who won almost £10 millions on the UK national Lottery in teh early 2000s.  After a colourful story, Carroll is now broke again and claiming £42 a week dole.  From what he says it sounds like he enjoyed the money, spent it and will now enjoy being back on the dole.  I have to say that whilst I might not agree with his lifestyle, his rather laid back transition from rich to poor reminds me of the the joke ‘I spent most of the money on wine, women and song and wasted the rest.’

    The main thing that seemed to emerge from the Davos session was that happiness is really hard to define, and given that it’s hard to measure something unless you know what it is, I guess that when even the richest and smartest folks on the planet  aren’t sure then any thoughts we have are just as valid. 

    I’ve always wanted enough money to basically keep the bank manager off my back and have a secure environment for me and my family.  Not needing to worry about spending money is nice as well.  Exactly how much money makes you happy is, I guess, a relative thing; I can probably safely assume that I’d be happy with an awful lot less money than Bill Gates, for example!  Apart from personal security and comfort, the main thing that appeals to me about having extra money is what you can do with it to impact on the lives of those around me.  I’d love to have what is often called ‘Fuck You’ money – the amount of money that you feel you require to allow you to say ‘Fuck you’ to bank manager, employer or anyone else!

    Whether I’ll ever get to having that amount of money available to me is debatable.  I may hit the jackpot with something I do – or, if I can ever be bothered to buy a ticket, I may win the lottery.  But until then I’ll just have to work on the principle that money may not buy me happiness, but it’s a better bet than being poor.

  • What happened to the Stiff Upper Lip?

    In separate interviews, we heard today that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had openly cried when discussing the death of his daughter in a media interview, and we also found Spinmeister Supreme Alastair Campbell losing his composure during another, rather mild, TV interview.  And we’re not talking about losing his composure in a ‘throwing the lapel mike to the ground, stamping on it and cursing the interviewer’ way – it was a tearful breakdown as he defended Tony Blair. 

    I quite like men (and women) to show their emotional side; I think it shows them to be human, and it takes a big person to demonstrate true emotions in public.  But this sudden outburst of emotion and angst from leading politicians makes me rather uneasy – let’s just say that the making public of these episodes so soon after Peter Andre broke down on Sky News, and only a day or so after John Terry was apparently in tears after losing his job and allegedly paying his ex-girlfriend several hundreds of thousands of pounds to not tell her story seems to indicate either a sudden outbreak of male emotional awareness or a cynical use of the media to garner sympathy.

    And I’m afraid that I’m going for the latter.  Whilst it’s perfectly understandable for anyone to cry and break down in extremis, I’m afraid that there are times when I don’t expect to see it.  This is particularly the case with Campbell; the war is history now and tears shed at this stage seem to be tears for Blair and himself rather than the human tragedy of the war.  Feeling sorry for one’s self and blubbing in public like this is just not what I expect to see from a man who has spent much of his professional life spinning the truth about political decisions.  It just comes over as a cynical ploy to garner sympathy and support, especially with the Chilcot Inquiry and the forthcoming General Election. 

    What has happened to the stiff upper lip; crying and publically displaying emotion may have become more acceptable but this doesn’t mean it’s compulsory.  I want my political leaders to be strong in public – if they want to have emotional outbursts then I’m afraid I expect them to happen in private.  Part of the job of leadership is to be aware of the emotional impact of what you’re doing, and deal with it.  If you’re involved in a decision to go to war, then crying about it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a high ‘EQ’ – it might just mean that your initial views of what war was like were immature and the reality shocked you.

    So.  To all my leaders.  Lead.  Look strong in public. Look like you know what the heck you’re doing.  Please don’t turn on the waterworks because if you do I’m likely to think you’re looking for sympathy or my vote.

  • The Way of the Weasel

    weaselThere is a super book by Scott Adams, creator of ‘Dilbert’, called ‘The Way of the Weasel’.  In a semi-lighthearted manner it deals with the less honourable methods that people in the workplace have of ‘weaseling out’ of difficult situations.  Well, it’s good to see that our elected representatives here in the UK have managed to achieve a level of Weaseldom that would be hard pressed to match even if you were a fully paid up member of the family Mustelidae.

    I refer, of course, to the gentlemen from the Labour Party – Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine – who are facing charges of false accounting under section 17 of the Theft Act 1968 which they vigorously deny.  (We shouldn’t forget the Tory peer, lord Hanningfield, who faces similar charges – however, he has had at least the sense of honour to resign from his position as leader of Essex Council in order to defend himself against the charges which he also denies.) 

    This is hopefully the ‘final act’ of the UK Parliament’s Expenses Scandal that has now dominated political life for nigh on a year.  But what have these three fellows done that makes me spend 500 words of prose on them this Sunday?  Well, their lawyers have raised the possibility that they may be able to yet again dodge any consequences of their alleged actions, even at this stage, by making use of the 1689 Bill of Rights – in particular the portion that deals with Parliamentary Privilege.  Parliamentary Privilege is best known as the legal process that protects an MP from being sued for libel or slander when speaking within the House of Commons on potentially delicate issues.  However, it has wider application, as we’re seeing here.  The position being adopted by the Labour MPs is that they feel that the whole issue should be dealt with as being a breach of the rules of the House surrounding expenses, and as such shouldn’t actually be an issue for criminal law at all but should be dealt with under Parliamentary Privilege rules.  

    There’s an old joke that goes “What’s the difference between Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance?”, the answer being “About 7 years in prison.”.  The same thing applies here – the difference between the issue being dealt with under Parliamentary Privilege or under the Criminal Law is that the Parliamentary authorities are unable to send you to prison if found guilty.  I can see why this approach is popular….

    If these men are innocent of the charges, then surely the best way to prove that innocence, even at this late stage, is to go in to open court and robustly defend all aspects of their behaviour, showing the relevant paperwork, receipts, etc. and telling us in open court why their actions are legal.  For the lawyers to go the way of ‘internal process’ in this way may well be legally possible, but will leave these men forever labelled as not being willing to face the same legal process that non-Parliamentarians facing similar accusations would have had to face.  David Cameron has expressed “disgust” at the possibility, and Nick Clegg has warned of public outrage if this path is chosen. 

    Me?  Why am I not surprised. The behaviour of so many of these people has been so apalling that one has to wonder whether or not they’ve set out to destroy the whole image of representative democracy in the UK.  But that would be TOO paranoid, even for me.

    Please guys – do the honourable thing.  Stand up, say ‘Mea Culpa’ and face the music with dignity.

  • The Lost Boys of English football

    Lost_boysI’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of football is minimal, and my interest in the game is not that great either.  However, for the last couple of weeks it’s been incredibly difficult for anyone in the UK to avoid the story of John Terry, ex-England Captain, and his personal life off the soccer pitch.  It seems to be an ongoing saga in the UK over the last decade or so – varying amounts of scandal and titillation around the private lives (often played out in public) of our leading soccer players, and how those issues affect their ability to play the game they get paid handsomely to do.

    I’m not going to rehash the stories here; what triggered me to write this was overhearing an interview with Lizzie Cundy on the TV news, in which she referred to various soccer players as ‘boys’ – which immediately hit an old hot-button of mine about infantilisation in society, so here we are!

    It really does concern me to hear of young men in their twenties and early thirties being referred to as boys (and also young women in the same age range being referred to as girls, for that matter).  Apart form the patronising nature of referring to a man who earns over 100,000 a week, is a husband and a father, and holds line management responsibility in the same way that I was referred to when I was a snot-nosed kid of 8 years old trying to blow up the garden shed, there is a whole raft of cultural and behavioural issues tied up in that word ‘boy’ that is at the heart of the current fuss about the private lives of these men.

    The problem is that when you refer to someone as a ‘boy’ it comes loaded with a load of cultural associations.  And at the core is that little phrase ‘Boys will be boys’ – just how much of a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card is that phrase?  So much of the behaviour of these people is probably predicated on the fact that they think that because ‘they’re one of the boys’ they’ll get away with all sorts of nonsense because that is what is expected.  The problem is that we’re not dealing with lovable, tousle-haired little scamps who’ve kicked a football through the greenhouse window.  We’re dealing with adults who, to be blunt, have responsibilities to family, team and country.

    Their partners, managers, fans and more often than not large sections of the popular media support this attitude until situations like this involving the allegations around John terry arise; then we start the usual round of ‘It’s disgusting, it’s terrible, it’s shocking, etc.’  I heard a couple of Chelsea fans on the news saying that Terry shouldn’t have been fired because he was the best man for the job, etc.  I expected this sort of partisan support, an was incredibly gratified that Capello was able to dismiss Terry in less than 15 minutes.  Perhaps Capello is proving to be the stern, parental, father-figure to these ‘boys’ that they sorely seem to need.

    In the Peter Pan stories, ‘The Lost Boys’ were Peter Pan’s gang – they literally were little boys that had been lost by their nannies.  Like Peter, they never grew up.  In the 1980s movie ‘The Lost Boys’, the strap-line on the film poster was ‘Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun being a vampire’.  Party all night and never grow old seems to be the teenage dream still being lived by quite a few Premiership footballers.

    Perhaps we need to start addressing our own ‘Lost Boys’ in soccer and encourage them to grow up a little.  And the starting point is to refer to them as men, not boys.