Starting a blog….

The Company we keep can say a lot about us. 

How much do we think about the companies we patronise: those whose products we buy routinely, those we choose to invest with, and those whose services we use?  

Frankly, how do we find the time to worry about ethics or environmental impacts we inactively encourage while holding down a job, raising a family, and dealing with recycling on a Thursday night? I admire those who consistently focus on and campaign for change, but I also reflect that sometimes those voices and campaigners are focused on big questions and issues that can be hard for individuals to feel in control of. What about individual daily actions we can all take to play our part?

We all know about recycling, and most of us engage with it willingly or in fear of prosecution by the local council for incorrectly using our colour-coded bins. But how often do we make sustainable consumer choices based on environmental decisions before we end up with empty packaging, weighing up all the factors?

Extensive campaign or individual actions?  

I recall one colleague of mine saying recently that he and his family had given up their much-loved Pringles crisps because of the amount of unrecyclable packaging.  Commitments like that still seem to be something that only a minority initiate, and fewer stick with. But what if everyone made that simple choice? What would Pringle’s owner, Proctor and Gamble, do? Could they grab market share by proactively recognising the errors in their ways and launching truly sustainable packaging? Are they already thinking about it? Have they found the answer too complex to deploy in a company increasingly focused on brand management and probably tied up in long-term outsourced manufacturing contracts?

Campaigns for some causes and against certain companies can often attract a flash of media attention. However, the transience of human nature and the natural media cycle of stories means that unless protests are regularly renewed with increasing potency, they become a short-term nuisance and have little impact on day-to-day activity. This is often the defence of the disruptive protester who claims that there is a need to increase and escalate toward civil disobedient activities to attract attention. That, as we can currently see with the Just Stop Oil campaign, can often backfire and turn people away from the underlying message.

So what am I going to do?

Well, as a newly early retired ex-member of the rat race, it occurred to me that rather than simply being part of the post-COVID generation of economically inactive 50-somethings, perhaps now I do have time to take a closer look and share, through some irregular musings, those things I discover and the choices that I can now make, given the time to lift my head.

To do that, I intend to use my now under-deployed professional skills to examine the wealth of information, claims and hard evidence associated with companies we all engage with, knowingly or otherwise.  I want to discover what day-to-day choices and actions can make a difference to the environment, our health, equality and ethical practices. I want to find which companies are succeeding in making a difference, or at least proactively and sensibly trying to move things along rather than green-washing their products and activities. 

Having recently retired from a 30-year career as an advisor and auditor to various international companies and boards of directors, I am keen to find a way to utilise that experience. I know how to challenge and research the facts behind the strap lines. I know my way around financial statements and company annual reports. I understand how boards think about issues (or don’t think about them but worry about regulation and compliance). I know how little rigour often goes into compiling the ever-increasing mountain of non-financial metrics required by corporate disclosure regulations. 

So, where to start? Well, it would seem that the answer came to me in the shower this morning……I’ll be back in a little while to share more on that.

‘The Last Day’ inspires a new start

Finishing a book always inspires…..

Bank Holiday morning and with the family in various states of recovery, I sit alone at the breakfast table with a few chapters left of The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray. Reading a good book is a real treat, a guilty pleasure that I should really not feel that way about. But more on that another time.

This book has a familiar premise; Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walkern first introduced me to the idea of the deceleration of earth’s rotation back in 2012. So when I saw this in Waterstones it was a quick impulse purchase.

I finish it over my muesli and oat milk and, for what it is, it doesn’t disappoint. Hunter has, in my view, achieved what the unborn author inside me searches for; a set up, a world with an inbuilt capacity for a sequel or series. Hungry for more on the dystopian impacts of a freak stellar event I find myself googling for news of a sequel.

No news on that front. That’s not surprising perhaps, given this a relatively new book by a first time author; albeit a minor celebrity. Despite many online raves on the authors twitter feed and a reported 6-figure TV rights deal, I haven’t heard much about it since I stumbled on it in a pre-lockdown bookshop (remember them?)

But then something catches my eye. A post by RFM on his blog Frequently Arsed Questions. I read this well written piece and it opens my eyes to everything that is wrong with this book. I experience a mixture of enlightenment, from the very fair examination of plot holes and inadequacies in this book; and guilt over the fickle volt-face, having so recently experienced enjoyment and a thirst for more.

But the upside is that I have discovered a well written blog on subjects that interest me which I shall make time for; in lieu of reading inaccurate news stories in what seems to pass for journalism these days. Best of all it has inspired me to write again. Whilst I would recommend the book to anyone looking for a decent summer read, I shall leave the review of the book to RFM and embrace the rest of the bank holiday with new found inspiration of my own.