I have been cycling from a very young age whilst growing up in The Netherlands, the whole infrastructure there means that the cyclist has a higher priority over motorised vehicles, which everyone respects because everyone is a cyclist, yes indeed without exception. There are more bicycles than people in The Netherlands, some might even say it’s a problem with so many discarded cycles all over. This would be a nice problem to have here in the U.K.
When I moved to the U.K. in 1977, I cycled with fear and today 44 years later I still cycle on U.K. roads mostly in the countryside where I live, but still with fear, huge fear.
The issues with cycling on U.K. roads can be summarised as follows:
The people in the U.K. have been remarkable. The vast majority of us have followed the rules, have respected the Lockdown, have socially distanced and continue to do so, wear our masks, have stepped up and taken the vaccine, plus many more sacrifices, including not receiving any financial support from the government whilst large corporates are receiving millions.
Other countries around the world are struggling, struggling with infections, not being able to roll out the vaccine that fast, being too optimistic early on and on top of all that have been struck by Covid variants, e.g. South African, Brazilian, Indian variants etc.
And now the promised unlocking process in the U.K. is under threat because the U.K. government have never been tough enough on incoming infections.
Excuse me for being cynical or even critical at all. I find it astounding that the U.K. government can find billions for a HUGE infrastructure project (HS2 = High Speed Rail 2), with promises of fortunes for who? The mega rich of course, told you I was being cynical. I also heard on the news today that the U.K. have 300,000 homeless people. That’s a ⅓ of a million people and nearly 0.5% of the whole of the U.K. population.
Those billions would build an awful lot of houses for many homeless and the best we can get are a ‘housing first’ trial. If we were really serious about creating infrastructure projects, building houses would not only create more jobs throughout the whole supply chain, it would solve one of the largest social issues we are experiencing in the 21st century, Homelessness.
I guarantee you that in about 20/25 years when HS2 is due to be complete, we will still have a homeless problem in the U.K.
We mistake, economic prosperity for the rich with a moral duty to enrich every person in society, including the homeless.
This is a very strange one. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the famous Brexit event. How a group of countries that all speak different languages, have different cultures, lifestyles and have very different views thought they could join together and pretend they all live in one community was a huge ask.
The U.K. have never felt part of the EU, we’ve always described the countries on the mainland continent as Europe, we’ve never included the U.K. as Europe. It’s a very subtle thing but it has always existed.
Okay so you’re wondering why I am using the royal ‘we’, seeing as I’m a Dutchman? Well I’ve lived nearly 43 years in the U.K., so all my adult life has been outside The Netherlands. And by the way in case you didn’t know the Dutch and the Belgians have never really seen eye to eye. So leaving the EU has never been an issue for me, seeing as I do not trust Brussels and their unelected officials. In case you’re also wondering, I still have my Dutch passport, which means I’m not able to vote in the U.K. only in the EU elections and for the U.K. they will end soon I’m guessing.
So the other day I was listening to BBC Radio 5 Live, which is a talk and sports radio channel in the U.K. They mentioned that a video mocking the whole Brexit debate here in the U.K. was going viral around Europe. The video was a very badly copied clip, from an old movie by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, aka Laurel and Hardy depicting them with some other folks in a car going on a holiday or picnic. After they load the car in classic Laurel and Hardy comedy style, they stop and say goodbye to onlookers. After saying goodbye many times they drive off and the car tyre is shown as driving over a nail, which means their car suffers a flat.
You can watch the clip below, it is actually quite funny. I recreated the clip myself because I felt I could do a better job compared to the original, that was screen recorded on a mobile phone. Never mind though that badly recorded clip has at the last count (at time of writing) had over 20k+ views. It wasn’t the quality, it was the mocking of the U.K. and Brexit.
[embed]https://youtu.be/ETPN9cFUo58[/embed]
I found the different clip on YouTube and discovered it was slightly longer compared to the original and actually it told a better story. The loading of the car was quite significant in the story and the comparison to Brexit, especially the slapping of each other in the process. Exactly like what is happening in the U.K. parliament. At time of writing my clip has had over 12k+
So I decided to use the longer clip and I added one other thing, the end screen shows a sad emoji. Because although it is a funny comparison, it’s turning out to be a very sad issue here in the U.K.
There also was a major error in the caption on the video, ‘How England plans to leave the U.K.’, the error being ‘England’ of course. It’s not just ‘England’ leaving the EU, it’s the whole of the United Kingdom, which includes, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But Northern Ireland of course is the whole issue of the Brexit debate. I’m sure you have heard everyone mention the backstop and now the border in the Irish Sea.
Below is the original video clip that gave me the idea to produce mine.
Unfortunately there have been many comments on my video and some of them not so nice, so I do feel bad about posting it, because it has invoked feelings in people that might not have been the best feelings, which is not great. But the whole Brexit debate has done that and although we avoid speaking to friends and family about it, the feelings are still there. A nation divided about divorcing the EU, it’s how children must feel when their parents split up. Not everyone can get to terms with the anger on both sides of the debate, quite frankly they are as bad as each other. It’s as close to a civil war we will ever get. A civil war of words that is.
It was an experiment, I wanted to see what happened and now I know. Sometimes recreating something, maybe even copying and improving what someone else has done is a good way to get noticed, a marketing masterclass I guess. I’ve never ever had that many views on a video on my YouTube channel, I don’t even have enough subscribers to be able to monetise it. I need 1000 as a minimum and I only have just over 300.
Who knows where it will all end. One thing is for sure, millions of people in the U.K. will be very unhappy for many years to come.
The Wild West in the UK — Michael & Josh — #weeklycartoon
It has been a few interesting weeks in the UK. The UK prime minister Theresa May resigning, EU Elections and the Brexit party winning (or losing?), you name it, we have had it all. UK politics remind me of the old Wild West and cowboys fighting it out with each other and that gave us the idea for our latest cartoon.
Last Chance Saloon.
For non-uk viewers, scene explanation; Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, UK MP’s are shooting it out to see who wins the leader of the conservatives/temporary prime minster position. There are many more in the race, but I am taking a punt, that it will be these two who will be fighting it out in the last rounds. After all, Gove stabbed Johnson in the back when the last race took place. I’m assuming that their campaigns will be based on ‘No deal’ for Johnson and ‘Withdrawal Agreement’ for Gove, but It is a wild wild guess. Vince Cable (outgoing Liberal Democrat leader) is holding his yellow handkerchief out, so when it drops to the floor they can shoot! Of course his campaign is for a 2nd vote. Nigel Farage (Brexit Party leader with largest EU parliament members voted in), is sitting on the bench drinking a milkshake and of course shouting, as he regularly does; ‘Brexit means Brexit. Note that Jeremy Corbyn is missing, he’s still making up his mind up what the Labour Party policy is going to be over Brexit, so far it has been painful.
#weeklycartoon — Theresa May #Brexit — Michael & Josh
Cartoon 48/2018.
The biggest national (UK) debate is #Brexit. Sigh, it’s getting to everyone and most of all it’s weighing down heavily on the UK Prime Minster Theresa May. Her ducking and diving and trying to stop the publication of legal advice, reminded me of a cartoon we did earlier in the year. We just changed the words. Enjoy!
Freedom of Speech on LinkedIn — Michael & Josh #dailycartoon
World politics are in the news 24/7 and we all struggle to get away from the stories that invoke our emotions. Whether we like it or not politics influence the lives around us, the cost of products and services and our general wellbeing. We wish to express our opinions on social networks to perhaps create a movement, a useful debate and share what we think and feel. But some of us prefer to stay away from these discussions and object. Andrew Pain asked us if this would be a good topic for a cartoon and I agree it is.
Zafar Khan asleep at the wheel — Michael & Josh #dailycartoon
Carillionis one of the major company failures of 2018. The UK government select committee suggested that the ex FD Zafar Khan was ‘asleep at the wheel’.
Despite warnings from new staff joining Carillion the directors ignored those warnings and they failed spectacularly. Seeing as they are a major supplier to the UK government, it makes you wonder how these massive organisations can get away with it.
This cartoon shows Zafar Khan asleep on one of those driving arcade games and on the screen there’s an actual chart showing their profit declines.
Amazon is crushing the high street — Michael & Josh #dailycartoon
In the UK we heard that two big retailers in the UK have gone pop. They are the US retailer Toys R Us and also the electronics store Maplin.
It’s sad to see a further couple of big retailers go from the UK high street and I’m sure they won’t be the last either. Owing to our appetite for everything Amazon and most things online, the high street and out of town shopping malls will continue their demise. The #Amazon robots are winning the race! More coffee shops please?
This cartoon shows Amazon, the rocking horse, with a robot jockey, crushing the logos of Toys R Us and Maplin. The rocking horse is plugged into the wall, trying to show the fact that Amazon do toys (rocking horse) and electronics (plug and robot) really really well. And of course Amazon employs a lot of robots too!
Beast from the East by Michael & Josh #dailycartoon series
Here in the UK we LOVE the weather, it’s probably the biggest topic of conversation we have as humans in this country. When there’s a shift in weather fortune (usually bad weather) we go into overdrive, we even cancel trains before any weather (in this case snow) has arrived.
Early March 2018 we had a new phenomena, which only shows up every 10 years or so. He’s (or maybe it’s a she) called the Beast from the East, meaning that the weather is arriving from Russia (with love).
In addition we had storm Emma arriving from Spain, which collided with the Beast to deposit unprecedented amounts of snow in the south-west of England. Some people are still cut-off for about 10 days.
This cartoon shows the Beast from the East, a businessman on his sleight going to work being pulled by a gritter lorry and of course the message that the trains are cancelled.
I’m so astounded that my fellow men have let us down and yet again scandal has landed across the headlines with men behaving badly in the UK.
Put men on their own together, add some alcohol and rich food and the blood rushes down.
I can’t think of anything worse, an ‘Only Men’ dinner!
Who wants to go to that?
When I was employed I had to attend, back in the 90’s, a so-called sports dinner, yep, you guessed right, men only! I’ve never played rugby or football, so basically the discussion ended up being about work and the weather. I’ve never been so bored. Usually they have a comedian whose stand-up routine is very blue too.
This latest scandal reminds me of the hit series on Netflix, The Crown, where Prince Phillip attended a men’s only club, called The Thursday Club and the goings on that resulted. He had to sack his personal secretary for inappropriate behaviour that resulted in his wife divorcing him. This was in the 1950's.
Here is a quote from an article in the Independent newspaper on 16th January, 1996, written by Miles Kington who obviously attended the club.
“I think I am probably one of the last surviving members of the old Thursday Club, the gang of cronies that the Duke of Edinburgh used to gather round him in the 1950s to have a bit of fun away from his serious life at Buckingham Palace. The club was strictly all-male, but that does not mean there were not women at these gatherings. After all, as Arthur Koestler once said to me, “The extraordinary thing about men at all-male gatherings is that they talk about women non-stop, whereas at mixed functions the men talk only about male hobbies such as sport, politics and cars — never about women, even though there are many women present.”
It is ironic that nearly 60 years later a similar club still existed, The Presidents Club.
I am not doubting the huge amount of good they have done as a charity, but now they have caused the charity to close down with the inevitable result of job losses and the good causes losing out too.
I overheard on the radio that in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) has just 100,000 beds.
Between 1987/8 and 2016/17, the total number of NHS hospital beds fell by approximately 52.4 per cent — from 299,364 to 142,568. Within this total number, there are different categories of bed across which the scale of change has varied considerably. See image.
The number of overnight general and acute beds has fallen by 43.4 per cent between 1987/8 and 2016/17 — from around 180,889 to 102,269. However, within this category beds for the long-term care of older people fell more substantially. Between 1987/8 and 2009/10 — when beds for older people were recorded separately — numbers fell 60.8 per cent, from more than 53,000 to slightly less than 20,900.
The largest percentage falls have occurred in overnight mental health and learning disability beds, which fell by 72.1 and 96.4 per cent respectively between 1987/8 and 2016/17. This was underpinned by a policy shift to providing care for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities in the community rather than in institutional settings.
Considering that Mental Health will be a growing problem in years to come and that there is a time bomb in connection with a growth in older age people, I will leave it to you to decide whether the current UK government have done a good job or not when it comes to looking after the nation’s health?
From the Ninth Annual People Management and Development Barometer ReportHighlights of recent CIPD surveys
Resourcing strategies and objectives
Fifty-six per cent of survey participants reported having a formal resourcing strategy. The top three resourcing objectives were attracting and recruiting key staff (79%), enabling the achievement of the organisation’s strategic plan (59%) and meeting the future skills requirements of the organisation (47%). However over half of the organisations surveyed said the recession was having a negative impact on their resourcing budget for 2010/11. More organisations said that they would be focusing on developing talent in-house and retaining rather than recruiting talent this year compared with last year. There are some indications that efforts to reduce recruitment costs will be made as more report they are reducing reliance on recruitment agencies.
The good news is fewer organisations said they would be implementing a recruitment freeze in (22%). More
(65%) expected to continue to recruit key talent/niche areas (53%). Nevertheless the outlook appeared much
bleaker for the public sector, where particularly large proportions are anticipating recruitment freezes (51%) and
reducing the number of recruits they hire (68%).
The volume of applicants for vacancies has increased. Seventy-six per cent of employers have noticed an increase in the number of unsuitable applicants and 32% reported that there were too many suitable candidates to choose from. At the same time, 41% reported that competition for talent was greater as the pool of available talent to hire had fallen sharply. As in previous years, the majority of turnover is attributed to employees leaving voluntarily. The voluntary turnover rate reduced substantially in the manufacturing and production sector (2010 survey: 2.7%; 2009 survey: 7.7%).
Employee attitudes and the recession
In all, 19% of respondents say it is likely or very likely they could lose their job as a result of the recession, a slight increase from the previous quarters figure of 18%. There is no change in employees’ attitudes towards the labour market, with just 10% believing it would be easy or very easy to get a new job if they lost their current job. The proportion of employees saying their employer has made redundancies as a result of the economic downturn has fallen very slightly to 30%. There has also been a continuing trend by employers to cut back on training. Pay freezes also continue to be more widely reported, with 43% of respondents saying their organisation has introduced a pay freeze, up from 40% last quarter. Only 21% of respondents are currently looking for a new job with a different employer. However, over a third (37%) would ideally like to change jobs within the next year.
Key findings
Senior HR people identify the top three organisational priorities to be managing costs (73%), growing the current business (65%) and focusing on customer need (54%). The proportion of employers that expected staff levels to increase against those that expected them to decrease improved to +12 in the three months to December 2010 from –3 in the three months to December 2009. However, employers are less optimistic about the medium-term outlook. The proportion of staff that expected staff levels to increase against those that expected them to decrease is +1 in the 12 months to September 2011.
A year ago the CIPD forecast that 2010 would be a better year for jobs than either 2008 or 2009 as the UK economy gradually began to emerge from the deepest and longest recession since the Second World War. By this they meant a relative improvement, with employment falling by less and unemployment rising by less than during the recession. In the event, however, 2010 turned out to be a much better year for jobs with the number of people in work increasing and unemployment starting to fall.
Despite this they expect 2011 to see a return to falling employment and rising unemployment though we do not envisage the deterioration in labour market conditions being anything like as severe as during the recession. At the same time they expect that, as in 2010, average earnings will increase by less than price inflation resulting in a squeeze in workers’ real incomes. Our longer-term forecast in turn indicates that labour market conditions will remain weak in 2012 before starting to recover more robustly in 2013.
The most frequently cited causes of recruitment difficulties were lack of specialist skills (67%).
Between 2009 and 2010, the proportion of organisations reporting retention difficulties decreased from 69% to 55%.
Labour turnover for all UK employees averaged 14%, down from 16% in 2009.
Types of jobs and pay prospects for 2011
They feel that even if 2011 turns out to be a ‘jobs-light’ rather than a ‘jobs-loss’ or ‘jobs standstill’ year, the chances are that the bulk of any new private sector jobs will continue to reflect the experience of 2010, with part-time and temporary jobs in the majority. Moreover, the bulk of workers will feel a squeeze in their living standards, with pay rises still relatively modest against a backdrop of higher prices for many essential products and services, higher taxes, the availability of credit still tight and the likelihood of falling house prices.
Even on the relatively more optimistic OBR jobs forecast, unemployment will act as a tough constraint on pay rises which are unlikely to outstrip price inflation. 2011 will, like 2010, be a year of real pay squeeze for most workers, especially those in the public sector. A ‘jobs-light/pay-tight’ year is probably the best we can hope for, which will make for another challenging
Key human capital benchmarks
(UK averages)
Recruitment and staffing Labour turnover 16%
Organisations making 10 or more staff redundant 33%
Organisations experiencing recruitment difficulties 68%
Organisations experiencing retention problems 55%
