"England swings like a pendulum do Bobbies on bicycles, two by two."

When I was nine or ten I found a wallet on the pavement. The wallet contained a number of things including ten and five pound notes. I couldn’t see an address and so I took it to the local police station.

Some weeks later I had a visit from a local policeman. He told me that a man had claimed the wallet and asked them to thank me. It seems that he had just been paid and the money would be feeding his family for the next week or so.

Why am I telling you this? Well I’ve just listened to a little of the parliamentary debate following the Queen’s Speech. It seems to me that there is a rapidly growing gap between political rhetoric and reality. The rhetoric is cleverly constructed and so truth can be a little difficult to see at times.

Today for example whilst walking I found a lost item taking it to the nearest police station wouldn’t be that easy. My local police station in Paignton has been demolished and will soon become retirement flats. Apparently with modern communications there isn’t really the need for neighbourhood police stations.

Of course I should have seen all this coming. The changes tend to be subtle and therefore easily missed. It isn’t until you reach out for something you have always taken for granted and find it missing that the feeling of uncomfortableness grows.

Let me give you an example. Some years ago the enquiry desk closed at the police station down the road. I found this out by accident when I went to ask whether a set of keys had been found. It was a while back when British Telecom inserted a one after the zero for area codes.

There was a telephone attached to the wall outside the now closed police station door suggesting that if you needed help simply pick up the handset. I picked up the handset and a voice said “Please replace the handset and redial inserting a one after the zero.” There was no keypad which meant following that instruction impossible!

I’ve watched a distressing number of similar flights of madness since attempting to make that call. The systematic destruction over the years of so many important services hidden by clever wording depresses me. All too often it is the most vulnerable who take the greatest pain.

Phrases like “Care in the community” send a chill through me especially when retirement homes close sending distressed octogenarians seeking a new safe haven. A plethora of home-help providers pick up the discretionary services once provided by local authorities where now more and more help is needed with less money.

The draconian cuts to education provision and youth services make me so sad. The words spinning around suggesting that all this is actually for the greater good simply can’t be true. You may have read about one Devon primary school with a class of just under seventy children. The head teacher presented an excellent argument defending this new initiative.

The children were using tablet devices and the most modern computer systems and the single teacher had the support of a couple of trained assistants. I simply can’t accept that the change is actually for the greater good!

Am I a curmudgeon? I don’t think so, but worry about the fact that things are happening now that may turn out to be hugely harmful to many while an aspiring elite minority benefit at the expense of a beleaguered majority.

I guess for me I will campaign on and do my best to keep the smile……………………..

time to keep the reigns on!

Propped up on a bookshelf not far from my computer is a photograph of me aged two. I’m wearing leather reigns and my maternal grandmother is holding my shoulders. That was sixty-nine years ago and the world was a very different place.

I have a couple of memories from that time. One is of a dairy not far from my grandmother’s house and the other is of chickens (I called them dubudees!) at the bottom of the garden. I understand that young children don’t remember things at that age, but I certainly do.

Of course it might be argued that the memories came later but my grandmother died unexpectedly a few months after the photograph was taken. Some years later I pitched up at a boat show in that area of London and wandered around the local streets. You can imagine my surprise when I stumbled across the entrance to that old dairy.

The entrance was a very distinctive stone arch. The dairy is now very smart apartments, but in my mind I could still hear the horses and carts moving about! All that now seems so far away and this one-time bright-eyed child has taken a curious pilgrim trail that now has him living in Paignton.

It seems to me that we all follow a trail that has so many ‘sliding doors’. Of course they are not really sliding doors but random events that all too often have us heading off in unexpected directions. There are times when that change is a thought-out process, when the way ahead seems obvious but all too often it is a consequence of advice given. Advice perhaps, that should not have been given.

I’ve always worried about giving people advice. We all travel our own little pilgrim trail through life and listening to advice can have unexpected outcomes. That is certainly true when all too often the very thing that you were looking for was already yours for the taking.

When I was a young man there were those around me who were much older and brimming with ‘good’ advice. Popular phrases peppered my landscape, dominated by, “If I was your age again!”  Hindsight is a curious thing, but one thing is certain and that is the fact that you cannot live the time again.

There are those who make a good living as givers of advice. Let me hold my hands up here because I am a qualified business advisor. Despite the qualification I have always attempted to steer away from giving advice. I suspect that may because of my assorted qualifications in counselling and mentoring.

I am very aware that those I am working with are on their own journey and worry that my advice might make it my journey instead. Advice poorly delivered can send good people on a path that will have them scratching their heads one day in the future.

One local business is still counting the cost of a consultant’s advice. They had a good business that captured the essence of what they were about. The outcome of their consultation was less than palatable once the dust had settled.

To share a journey makes seems a good thing to me and to be fellow traveller with knowledge makes sense. I guess what I am saying is that we should all be working for the good of all rather than following some selfish agenda.

Perhaps we all need a friendly ‘grandmother’ from time to time to keep the reigns on!

Meanwhile continue to keep that friendly smile and tread lightly on the world….   

That Descartes Moment

The next time you look in the mirror ask yourself a couple of questions. Do you recognise the reflection and what can you say about the image? Actually you might start by celebrating the fact that there is a reflection!

This is your Descartes moment – there is a reflection therefore I am. Proof if you needed it that you are real rather than a figment of some dystopian dream.

But let’s go back to that image in the mirror. Take a good hard look and test your emotional response to the image you see. Do you really like yourself? Hopefully the answer is yes (with perhaps a few reservations).

That moment in front of the mirror at the dawn of each day is a good starting point. What is it about the image that makes you happy, or are you a habitually unhappy bunny?

When you move away from the mirror and get on with your day what body language message do you send to others? Is it a genuine message or is the real you hidden?

I’ve always been captivated by a Judy Garland quote that popped up in a course that I once taught. She says that we should always be a first-rate version of ourselves rather than a second-rate version of someone else.

That has an echo in Shakespeare’s Hamlet when Polonius says, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Whether Shakespeare’s words and Judy Garland’s musing build a platform for a better understanding of self has to be a matter for debate of course. Are you true to yourself and really a first-rate version of yourself? Of course in order to make sense of that you would have to really understand what makes you tick.

From time to time I run a half day course on looking at the things that do actually make you tick. Exploring your beliefs and values can be a hugely interesting and often very challenging journey. It can also be a dangerous place when you bump into things that might make you question core beliefs.

In this curious world of swirling acronyms and magical algorithms it is all too easy to become a victim. Perhaps victim is too strong a word but I am worried about personality manipulation. That gentle stroking of opinion and reinforcement of prejudice by clever algorithms should worry all of us.

Acronyms that include and exclude populate the landscape like mushrooms and toadstools in autumn. I became very aware of this via my Facebook feed and that is one of the reasons my account is now closed.

If you have the time spare do look at the manipulative methods that were used to split the UK during and after the European Union vote via social media and certain sections of the press. It really is scary stuff and can distort clear thinking.

I was going to say a little about true news and false news but my blood pressure is already too high.

Anyway the next time you look in the mirror take a very long and hard look at yourself. Are you really true to yourself in a positive way? Hopefully the answer is yes. If not then you have some very serious questions to answer.

Before you walk away do give yourself a smile and get on with the day. Hopefully as the day progresses you will still be able to keep the smile!

Sometimes it's hard to be a happy bunny

In the summer of 1976 I was a very happy bunny. It was one of the hottest summers on record and I was working as a young schoolmaster in Cheltenham. There was a sense of freedom in schools at that time and so very different from these data hungry days.

I’m not that much of a cricket fan but in the summer of 1976 I did play for our school staff team. Cheltenham is, as I am sure you know, on the edge of the Cotswolds. Ancient Cotswold villages with golden sandstone buildings became wonderful venues for our weekly cricket matches.

There is something quite magical about the sound of ‘leather on willow’ on a warm midsummer evening. My ability as a cricketer is sadly very limited and my style tended to be the boundary ball or out! I can still taste the air from that atmospheric Cotswold summer.

We too often talk about the good old days. They were good in so many ways but it would be a mistake to view the past through such a nostalgic lens. As dear old LP Hartley once said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

That hot summer long ago we spent the school holiday in Paignton visiting family. Torbay simply sparkled under the bright summer sunshine. Sailing along the coast was therapeutic and the scorched South Devon fields rather looked like sand dunes under a tropical sky. Heady stuff!

It was a time when we had numerous holiday camps dotted around South Devon and accommodation was hard to find. Luckless families toured the towns looking for vacancy notices. Roads were gridlocked and overheated cars steamed hopelessly in the heat.

By midsummer it was almost impossible to find a space to sit on the beaches and crowded trains made Paignton’s Station Square look like Paddington at rush-hour.

Of course South Devon is still a very busy place during the summer school holidays. Last summer was unusually hot but the tourism mix seems very different. Some of the changes are quite subtle whilst others almost stun.

The landscape has of course changed. So many of the large holiday camps have become housing developments and the rustle of daily newspapers has been replaced by the tap of mobile phone keypads.

Thinking back to the summer of 1976 I find it a little more difficult today to capture that quintessentially English feel that filled the air. I’m not sure why that is and for that matter whether it is of consequence.

I’d like to think that life was less complicated then. As a young schoolmaster it certainly was. I only taught for six or so years and the main daily data gathering exercise was marking the register. Scripts were handwritten and marked with flowing red or green ink. For me the biggest stress was what to do during the very long summer holiday!

Oddly enough I think that it is the schools that evidence the comparatively carefree days of 1976 and the summer of 2019. Thinking about the incredible amount of daily data collected by teachers, the worry about job loss, behavioural issues, OFSTED and the impact upon school life, I immediately see the parallels in other walks of life. That is a worry.

Add to all that the fact that I am so much older then perhaps my desire for the warm summer evenings of 1976 is nothing more than galloping nostalgia. As I write I can hear in my mind the distant sound of leather on willow and that has helped me to keep the smile………….

Is social media addiction growing?

I’ve managed to escape. It’s taken me a while and hopefully the outcome will be long lasting. I say escape but that may be overstating the event a little. It all started quite innocently many years ago.

A friend of mine was teaching at an American university and sent me a letter suggesting that I look at internet communication. The concept looked at the time like something out of science fiction and yet here we are today.

I became addicted very quickly and loved the immediacy of cyberspace communication. When you think about the apparent simplicity of connecting across boarders electronically without restriction it really is quite something to marvel at.

 Over the years I gained an enormous amount of knowledge about internet communication and the whole social media landscape. So much so that a few years ago I found myself teaching strategic social media courses to students and local business people.

So what have I escaped from? A few days ago I deactivated my Facebook account! That may sound simple enough, but like any other addiction it is a big thing for those addicted to actually stop. Many of you may be regular Facebook users and might raise an eyebrow at such an apparently ridiculous move.

For those that might not know, Facebook is an online and social media company based in sunny California. It is the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard College friends. They are all very clever bunnies and created something that now has billions of users all over the world.

Facebook sprang into life back in 2004 and I quickly became addicted. I loved the connectivity, the sharing of news, views, video and stunning photographs. It allowed me to catch up with some lovely people and share events in real time without actually being there.

The problem for me was Bacon’s Law. Bacon’s Law is a movie themed game that selects a random actor and connects them with the multi-talented Kevin Bacon in six moves or less.

You can apply the same rule to almost anyone in the world. Do give it a try and laugh. It always amuses me.

Bacon’s Law in action really is Facebook. Find friends who know friends who know friends and so on. It is amusing of course but also rather sinister and a playground for potential stalkers.

Hugely complicated algorithms drive Facebook’s connectivity and therefore offer to those who control Facebook almost unlimited access to very personal data. I became very aware of things and people popping up unexpectedly and that worried me.

I suspect that feeling of unease was reinforced when the Facebook - Cambridge Analytical data scandal hit the headlines last year. Apparently Cambridge Analytical had harvested personal data from the profile pages of Facebook members and used it for political advertising.

It never ceases to amaze me how much personal stuff we quite happily and innocently post online. Clever people do harvest that and advanced data handling can change the way we think. Reinforcing political prejudice is an obvious example and evidenced hourly during the Brexit process.

Increasingly I had become aware of targeted adverts landing on my Facebook home page. Things that I had been searching for online suddenly popped up on my Facebook. Added to that were the newsfeeds that seemed a little too honed making me wonder quite what I was being fed.

Since leaving the world of Facebook I realise how many hours a day I was spending following the daily events of others! I am using that time to catch up on some fun reading, helping me keep the smile…..

I might have been a grizzly bear!

Summer sunshine seems to bring a smile to even the most hardened of faces. This year we have been blessed with an August to remember and for that I am grateful. I like long sunny days. September has also been sympathetic and the little Indian summer period certainly lifted my spirit. Hopefully you also felt the joy of the warm sea air and colourful sunsets.

Breakfast at The Grand

The thing about a warm summer is the curious gift of inner heat that seems to last right into deepest winter. I was always a child of the summer and the cold damp winters do little for me. I suspect that in a previous life I might have been a grizzly bear. Romping around in the warm summer days before collecting enough berries to see me through the winter hibernation period.

Imagine sleeping through the shockingly cold winters and living off the fatty layers produced in summer. There would be no worries about whether there was enough money in the bank to pay ridiculously high energy bills. You would softly sleep through deep the winter until the warming sun returns for another sparkling summer. That sounds very desirable to me.

I’ve had the cost of home heating very much in mind recently. My old boiler has been a faithful friend for many years but I fear that it has started to ‘eat’ gas. My gas supplier tells me that my gas usage is higher than the national average for my house. That is a worry because I attempt to minimise the amount that is used.

As winter heads this way I know that the large energy companies will announce price increases which will terrify many. It always seems to happen in the same way that often we hear of price reductions as we head into summer. Odd that isn’t it.

One thing that really annoys me is this silly advice from the government to shop around for the best price. That sort of advice is fine if you have the ability to use a computer and can get your head around all the various tariffs. It really is a jungle and can leave even the most agile of minds spinning like a child’s top.

I happened to be at a breakfast event the other morning. This little group of likeminded people meet every two weeks at the Grand Hotel in Torquay. One of the group is a man called Andy Coleman and along with his wife Sue run DEA Torbay. I’ve always respected Andy’s opinion because he tells the truth.

He was speaking about Theresa May’s decision to put Hinkley C on hold. Hinkley C is the huge nuclear power station that is planned near Bridgwater in Somerset. He, Andy, questioned why the move toward green energy seemed to have lost favour. In the south west we are blessed with a ready supply of wind and almost endless wave power.

If you watched the BBC Panorama programme recently about the nuclear recycling plant at Sellafield in Cumbria then you might share Andy’s enthusiasm for green energy. I found it hugely worrying especially after reading an article about the wobbly Fukushima nuclear power station in Japan. Fukushima hit the news when a giant tsunami hit the coast of Japan a few years ago.

It is actually quite difficult to get a clear picture about the Fukushima situation right now but is it clear that considerable health problems continue. Listening to the comments made about our own Sellafield plant made me shiver.

From what was being said at that breakfast meeting I gather that other similar nuclear plants being built overseas are hitting design problems. That has to be a worry and whilst I have no idea as to why our new prime minister has delayed the decision I rather hope that she has all this very much in mind.

I mentioned above that my friend Andy doesn’t spin truth. The spinning of truth really annoys me because it simply confuses the innocent and protects the guilty. When it comes to energy spinning truth is ethically indefensible. For those with enough money not to worry too much about heating the home during the winter then fuel prices don’t matter. For those struggling to stay warm as the sun heads south the price is critical.

For Theresa May and her new government getting energy policy right is absolutely essential. I’ve had it up to the eyes with ‘elegant solutions’ and worry that we are not getting the full story. You have a voice and so might I suggest you start asking questions. We have elected members representing us in Parliament who would love to hear from you.

Be happy and keep the smile!

This is my column in this week's Herald Express 21st September 2016

A change in platform

I write a column each week for the Herald Express and have been posting that there. For the while, mainly because of time or the lack of it, I will simply use the online Herald Express site for my mostly pointless rhetoric....... www.heraldexpress.co.uk/franksobey