Ken Loach’s "Sorry We Missed You" @ Cannes > "a grim depiction of gig economy ‘serfdom’"

What exactly do we mean by the 'gig economy'?
Futures Forum: 'Independent workers' and the 'gig economy'
Futures Forum: The sharing economy >>> “This on-demand, or so-called gig, economy is creating exciting economies and unleashing innovation. But it is also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.

And where is it going?
Futures Forum: The gig economy is 'exciting' and has 'huge potential'... or maybe not...

The director Ken Loach certainly has a few ideas:
Cannes Film Festival: Ken Loach up for Palme d'Or prize - BBC News
Ken Loach back at Cannes festival with 'Sorry We Missed You' - YouTube

 

Sorry We Missed You new clip official from Cannes - 2/3 - YouTube

And he isn't pulling any punches:
Ken Loach: blame 'fake left' politicians like Miliband and Blair for gig economy | Film | The Guardian
Cannes: Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You — a piercing drama about a zero-hours-contract driver | Financial Times
Sorry We Missed You review: Ken Loach delivers a stirring drama on the gig economy | Sight & Sound | BFI

This review is from the business press: 

Film hailed at Cannes for grim depiction of gig economy ‘serfdom’

Veteran director Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You is a ‘wrenching tale of ... how the gig economy screws over the people it promises to save’

18 MAY 2019 - 08:29 AGENCY STAFF

Cannes — Veteran British director Ken Loach was tipped for a third Cannes win on Friday for a powerful film which puts Amazon and other tech giants in the dock over their alleged exploitation of workers.

Critics hailed Sorry We Missed You, his heart-breaking story of an overworked delivery driver as a “wrenching tale of the way we live now and how the gig economy screws over the people it promises to save”.

The film — shot in the north-eastern English city of Newcastle, like his last Palme d’Or winning film I, Daniel Blake — takes “a white van man” and turns him into a martyr of out-of-control capitalism.

Hollywood bible Variety, not normally a fan of left-wing activist directors, said “the times have caught up with Loach and they have pushed him to the top of his game. He’s 82 years old, and he is now making films that connect, with a nearly karmic sense of timing, to the social drama of our moment.”

The Guardian gave it five stars and declared that “this brilliant film will focus minds ... in modern Britain, the land of zero-hours vassalage and service-economy serfdom.”

Loach, whose arm was in a sling after putting out his shoulder, said he and scriptwriter Paul Laverty had found Amazon drivers working with broken limbs. He said the system of zero-hour contracts and false “self-employed owner-driver franchisees” used by tech giants ranging from Uber to Deliveroo, creates massive misery by “putting all the risk on the workers ... who are made to exploit themselves”.

Sorry We Missed You shows how the relentless demands of the gig economy wreck a family of grafters. For their part, the tech companies say they offer the best working conditions possible for their workforce and provide much-needed jobs in often rundown and neglected areas.

Destroying families 

“We are supposed to work to provide for our families but for millions of us, work deprives us from spending time with our loved ones,” said Laverty, Loach’s regular creative partner.

The writer said he interviewed an Amazon driver on the day its owner Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world. “His skin was grey, his eyes were red. He was absolutely exhausted,” Laverty said. “When I showed the driver the news, his jaw dropped. He realised he was one of hundreds of thousands of drivers across the world, a little drip going into the Amazon river.”

In the film, a delivery driver and his wife who cares for elderly and disabled people in their homes, work long, grueling days to hit inhumane targets.

Loach said the system is now stacked massively against working people, “who can be turned on and off like tap”, and warned that this is fueling dangerous populist anger.

He said the extreme right “rise when the soil is manured with this precarious work — that’s where people’s anger is coming from. People speak of the extreme right and left. I don’t see the extreme left. Where is it? I see the extreme right who thrive on anger and discontent. They say the person to blame is the poorest person next to you, or someone who looks different, or comes from another country. The extreme right thrives on fear. The left thrives on confidence. If you are confident you say, ‘Yes, we can change things.’ The right thrives on anxiety and insecurity.”

‘This system kills’

Debbie Honeywood, a teacher who plays the role of the van driver’s wife and one of several amateurs Loach cast, said three out of four children living in poverty in the UK have working parents.

“We know there is something badly wrong and intolerable about life now,” Loach said. “We know that healthcare and the way our old people are looked after is not right, and why, when we buy online, does everything come in a van? We cannot sustain that.”

The filmmaker said the family in his film, like most who work in the gig economy, are caught in a trap.

“There is no escape, the system has trapped them. We met people who work with broken limbs who drive with a broken leg and arm. There was one appalling case of a man who died because he couldn’t stop work for his hospital appointments because of the debt. This system kills.”

But Loach was sanguine on whether his film will change anything. His last film I, Daniel Blake on the injustice and cruelty of the British social welfare system, won the top prize at Cannes and was debated in parliament.

“But the government hasn’t given an inch. It is still as cruel. They still use hunger as a weapon. Charity food banks have increased in the last year alone by 18%. That will not change because they have to show that not being able to support yourself is a crime.”

AFP

Film hailed at Cannes for grim depiction of gig economy 'serfdom' - businesslive.co.za
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Working for Amazon in Devon, or anywhere else

Is Amazon coming to Devon?
The secret Devon Amazon warehouse they don't want you to know exists - Devon Live
Amazon tight-lipped over new Exeter distribution centre - Devon Live

Would it be a good thing? 

Not if you're a high street retailer:
Futures Forum: Save our high streets > give up Amazon – and embrace shopping on the high street again
Futures Forum: "There are no magic wands to save the high street in its current form, but allowing Amazon to continue making billions to enrich its founder and its shareholders at the expense of our public purse should not be an option."

Although it's perhaps too easy to bash the big boys - rather than being more entrepreneurial:
Futures Forum: The 'Amazon tax' won't save the High Street > 'The nature of the offer on the high street is going to change over time. There's going to be less retail, more leisure, bars, community facilities.'

The question perhaps is whether these big boys themselves are actually that 'entrepreneurial'...

These are massive corporations with massive bureaucracies:
Futures Forum: The People's Republic of Walmart: "The dichotomy between corporate capitalism and socialism-as-planning is false"

And are actually pretty authoritarian:
Futures Forum: Silicon Valley Values @ Radio 4's Analysis
Futures Forum: The promises of information technology >>> or, spinning fables of info-liberation
Futures Forum: The promises of technological innovation >>> "The rise of the techno-libertarians: the five most socially-destructive aspects of Silicon Valley"

If we consider Amazon as just a big warehouse or distribution centre, then we could probably compare it to others in the field - whether Lidl's or Ikea:
Futures Forum: An 'inter-modal freight depot' by any other name >>> also known as: a giant Lidl's warehouse on the M5
Futures Forum: The promises from the Skypark 'business park' >>> "A multinational comes along and plonks itself just out of town. Hooray, they tell us... Jobs for all!"

Which isn't actually very good for the local economy:
Futures Forum: The modern distribution centre: "Imagine the space that is used to store and display a product in a traditional shop, and then imagine great dollops of it sucked from almost every high street and supermarket in the land to a centralised facility."

Or for job security for that matter:
Futures Forum: Automation and the future of work > How secure are East Devon's new warehousing jobs?

This is from  a piece in The Week looking at the issues: 

Amazon the sweatshop

Matthew Walther
May 1, 2019

Remember the bad old days when if you wanted to buy a book or a box of crackers you had to go to B. Dalton or the supermarket? Then came Amazon. If your order total reached a certain minimum or you paid for an annual subscription, certain items could arrive at your house in only two days. Now in many major metropolitan areas the shipping time has been reduced to mere hours.

What made this logistical miracle possible? According to a recent report in The Verge, the same sort of thing that is usually responsible for these supposed triumphs of the spirit of entrepreneurial know-how: a great deal of human suffering, in this case under conditions that most of us would more readily associate with workers in the factories of the Third World than with employees of one of the world's wealthiest corporations in some of America's largest cities.

It has been apparent for years now that Amazon does not value the privacy or the dignity of its warehouse employees. The system it uses to "optimize" the performance of those responsible for bringing items from shelves to doorsteps is tyrannical. It is also, quite literally, dehumanizing. Employees are reportedly directly supervised not by other men and women but by automated computer systems. These programs allegedly track everything from how fast warehouse employees carry out various work-related tasks, such as packing items and sorting them for shipment, to how long it takes them to use the bathroom. The acronym for the latter — there is always an acronym with these people — is TOT, or "time off task."

But the situation appears to be much worse than all this. In addition to relentlessly policing their individual behavior at work, Amazon warehouse employees are reportedly collectively subject to an oppressive system of automated performance review. Whenever 75 percent of employees are meeting certain pre-assigned goals, the numbers reportedly can be increased. The majority of employees are then reportedly required to meet these new higher targets — the rest are placed in "training" programs or fired. Documents obtained by The Verge suggest that some warehouse locations lose as much as 10 percent of their staff annually because they failed to meet these arbitrary standards.

The bogus gospel of so-called "scientific management" has been with us for a century now. But unlike in the past there is seemingly no threshold employees of Amazon can possibly meet at which their performance will be deemed good enough. If efficiency goes up by x percent in a calendar year, the old standard plus x becomes the minimum that is acceptable. Employees could then be fired for working just as hard as they did a year ago when their quotas were lower. This is Sisyphean cruelty.

It is not just inhumane to treat people this way — it is anti-human, a blanket denial of the innate metaphysical dignity of rational creatures made in God's image. It is also a reminder of the fact that, so far from having made significant economic progress in this country in the last half century, we have regressed to the point that employees of our largest corporations are being denied rights that the labor movement fought for 80 years ago. How much worse will things be a decade from now? 

...

Amazon the sweatshop - The Week

And this is a response: 

If Amazon Is a "Sweatshop," Why Do so Many People Want to Work There?

Amazon has designed a system that creates a pathway into one of the world’s most valuable companies.

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Image Credit: Flickr-Scott Lewis | CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

John Tamny

“Firing people was easily the worst part of the job.” Those are the words of a great friend of mine who for decades ran a very successful financial corporation. The sleepless nights that preceded gently telling people they weren’t measuring up were agony for him.

The popular notion of indifferent-to-employee CEOs is so very divorced from reality. I’ve never met one who enjoyed being the bearer of bad news to workers who, in many instances, had dependents.

My friend ultimately devised a fix so that he could avoid what was so disagreeable. He designed a production-based compensation structure so that the employees could succeed or fail on their own. So quantitative was it that some of the highest paid employees worked the fewest hours, and vice versa. No sucking up to the boss, no necessary “face time” in the office, just production tied to compensation. And if they didn’t produce they would know this without being told. It would show up in pay. Basically, they would “fire themselves.”

A "Sweatshop" That Fosters "Suffering"?

Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells once said, “You are what your record says you are,” and this CEO essentially applied Parcells’s maxim to the workplace. He was able to sleep easier as employees self-selected out of his company as opposed to him having to tell them to leave. His employees were happy and so was he.

All this came to mind while reading Matthew Walther’s recent piece from The Week in which he accused Amazon of being a “sweatshop.” Walther laments the “human suffering” that allegedly takes place at Amazon since its warehouse workers are “collectively subject to an oppressive system of automated performance review.” It’s no insult of Walther to suggest he’s likely never run a business, and that he’s unfamiliar with the acute agony associated with letting people go.

Had he run one, and were he familiar with how awful it is to tell individuals it’s not working out, he would understand that quantitative parameters very much redound to the employee as much or more than they do the CEO. For one, they make it possible for marginal candidates to get hired in the first place. Forget connections or anything else that leads to employment; quantitative measuring exists as a path for individuals to prove their worth.

Indeed, how often have readers said something along the lines of “If I could just get my foot in the door I would show them”? Amazon has, if Walther’s analysis is to be believed, designed a system that creates a pathway into one of the world’s most valuable companies. And a path to increased pay, if its more open door leads to the arrival of productive employees.

...

If Amazon Is a "Sweatshop," Why Do so Many People Want to Work There? - Foundation for Economic Education
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Brexit: and praising Norway’s relationship with the EU as a good model for the UK...

Is it going to be no-deal or a customs union? 

Anna Soubry called out Nigel Farage on Question Time last night for claiming that a “WTO” no-deal Brexit is the only way to get out of the EU. Farage has been dismissive of “soft Brexit” plans, which could involve a customs union or staying in the EU single market, calling them a “betrayal” of the referendum vote.

But that wasn’t what he used to say. Although Farage criticises plans for a Norway-style Brexit, he used to explicitly praise Norway’s relationship with the EU as a good model for the UK...

Brexit: Nigel Farage claims no deal is the only way out of the EU on Question Time | indy100

Perhaps one reason is that it's not actually a good option anyway, as discussed these last couple of weeks:
The UK isn’t Norway, and the proposed common market 2.0 is no solution to Brexit | The Independent
The awkward truth is that a Norway Brexit almost certainly wouldn’t work | Prospect Magazine

As the New European makes clear: 

A Norway model of Brexit would fail Leavers and Remainers alike

PUBLISHED: 07:00 04 May 2019

Lara Spirit

As Britain drifts towards a possible 'Norway Brexit' LARA SPIRIT travels to the Scandinavian country to discover why this would be the worst destination of all.

As Liam Fox put it in a letter to Tory MPs earlier this month, if the UK was to end up in a customs union, “we would ourselves be traded”. He added, quoting a saying used in Brussels, “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu”.

Very well put, Dr Fox. Yet this is where the UK is apparently headed. Britain – even the international trade secretary, it seems – is finally facing the reality of Brexit. It can choose the concept of 'control' above all else – and accept the economic harm which would follow departure from the world's largest free trade bloc. Or it can leave the EU while staying closely aligned to it – avoiding the worst of the damage to the economy, but without a seat at the table, with no ability to shape and influence policy, and at the mercy of others.

The second option appears to be the direction in which the government is moving, with some version of what has been dubbed 'common market 2.0' or Norway Plus. This would leave the UK in a similar, but not identical, position to Norway – the 'plus' indicates that the UK would also need to add a comprehensive customs arrangement to maintain common external tariffs and prevent a hard border in Ireland.

A version of this arrangement – without the plus – seems to be OK for Norway, so would it work for Britain? After all, the two countries have, in some respects, shared a similar path, even if they have taken different routes.

Both were founder members of the European Free Trade Association in the 1960s, before being rebuffed in their efforts to join the European Community by France.

Both then held referendums about becoming full members in the 1970s. But while the British opted to do so, the Norwegians declined, in a plebiscite in 1972 (by 53.5% to 46.5%). Norway did so again in 1994 (this time by 52.2% to 47.8%), although the same year it did join, along with Britain and the rest of the EU, the European Economic Area. This has formed the basis of Norway's relationship with the EU ever since. Through membership of the EEA, Norway has access to the EU's single market, but the arrangement also requires Oslo to incorporate around 5,000 of the 23,000 laws currently enforced by Brussels.

There have been occasional murmurings of opposition to this status – largely from the Norwegian left – but, on the whole, the country seems relatively satisfied with the arrangement.

Ellen Bramness Arvidsson, director of Finans Norge – which represents financial services companies – said: “The Norwegian financial sector is extremely positive towards the EEA agreement because it does give us total market access. When we adhere to these rules we are a part of the internal market like members are.”

Jonas Gahr Støre, the leader of the Norwegian Labour party and a former minister for foreign affairs, described it as “a very Norwegian deal”.

“It has been a national compromise short of membership, which gives us access to the internal market and all the four freedoms – people, goods, services and capital. The exception is agriculture and fish, which remain outside. But we have access to the market and a level playing field.”

Though it was overtaken by Nordic neighbour Finland in the rankings this year, Norway has consistently bagged top spot on the World Happiness Index. The country draws admiration for its strong social democratic tradition and it has some of the world's highest living standards, helped by its North Sea oil and gas resources. Norway, then, seems pretty content with its lot, including its status as an adjunct of the EU. Could a restless, divided Britain benefit from such a pragmatic solution, then?

Kjetil Wiedswang, a commentator at Norwegian business newspaper Dagens Næringsliv, suggests not. He has been observing Britain's relationship with the EU for 30 years and says there have been repeated instances of many in Britain being tempted by the so-called 'Nordic model'. The problem, he believes, is that it is not really available for the UK.

“(When it has been suggested before) People have lined up and said, 'well OK, if you're a small, peaceful, basically conservative, protestant, oil-rich country then you should do it like us',” he said.

But Britain does not share many characteristics with Norway. It doesn't have a trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund and has more than 13 times the population. What works for Norway is not the same as what works for Britain.

A Norway deal would also not solve the issues that many thought Brexit would address. For those who believed a Leave vote in 2016 would mean no more freedom of movement, an end to being subject to laws laid down in Brussels and total freedom to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, following the Norwegian route is going to leave them sorely disappointed.

Norway accepts all four freedoms in return for access to the single market. In order to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, common market 2.0 would require a customs union too – precluding any ability to strike our own free trade deals.

And while Brexiteers will be frustrated, a Norway solution is no more enticing for us Remainers. While it might protect freedom of movement – something which deserves to be embraced, not eliminated – the arrangement would simply mean we keep some of the benefits we enjoyed as full EU members, but without a say in any of the decision-making processes.

A Norway model of Brexit would fail Leavers and Remainers alike | Latest Brexit news and top stories - The New European

As discussed here before:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and Norway saying no to the UK's Norway-plus plan
Futures Forum: Brexit: and the Norway model
Futures Forum: Brexit: and the 'fax democracy' option
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Pressures to expand the Greendale Business Park > yet another retrospective planning application approved

We need lots of industrial estates in the District:
Futures Forum: Pressures to expand business parks in East Devon >>> Greendale part two

And to help this along, one simply builds something first and then asks for planning permission after:
Futures Forum: Pressures to expand the Greendale and Hill Barton Business Parks > two retrospective planning applications approved

Because, once it's up, it's very difficult to say 'No' - as the District Council's planning committee warily decided last week:

Greendale Business Park extension approved

Saturday, May 4th, 2019 8:20am

By Daniel Clark

It's been given retrospective planning permission.

A storage compound that supports 38 jobs on land just outside Greendale Business Park has been granted retrospective planning permission.

Councillors narrowly voted in favour of allowing land at Compound East 6, at Hogsbrook Farm, to be used to storage and distribution, despite it being outside the authorised boundary of Greendale Business Park.

East Devon District Council’s development management committee agreed by six votes to five to allow the retrospective use of the land after agreeing that despite their concerns, an inspector would almost certainly allow any appeal against refusal.

But they also said they were fed up of yet another retrospective planning application for the site coming before them, with Cllr Susie Bond saying it was ‘disrespectful’ and Cllr Brian Bailey saying they had a track record that was ‘not to be admired’.

Tim Smith, speaking on behalf of applicants F W S Carter & Son, said that he fully endorsed the view by the council’s economic officer that the plans should be approved and pointed to the lack of objections. He added: “We have a high level of demand for our site that cannot be provided elsewhere in the district.”

Chris Rose, the council’s development manager, said that the area of land which is part of Hogsbrook Farm, adjacent to the Greendale Business Park. The land is currently used for B8 purposes, although without planning permission, and is bounded by a fence, with a hedge adjacent to the fence on the western boundary of the sites.

He added: “The application site lies within the open countryside, where development would not normally be permitted. Therefore, the proposals represent departures from the Local Plan and do not benefit from any local plan policy support. But there are however considered to be a number of other material considerations that weigh heavily in favour of the proposals and that justify the grant of planning permissions despite the lack of planning policy support.”

Mr Rose said that one of the sites benefits from consent for its hardstanding and fencing, there are economic benefits from retaining the businesses and jobs on the sites, the sites are the most logical area for the extension of Greendale given that it is almost at capacity and the limited visual impact from the proposals.

He added: “Given the lack of any technical objections to the applications, and subject to conditions to control the height of any storage on the site, noise, lighting and deliveries, it is considered that, on balance, both proposals are acceptable.”

But Simon Andrews, speaking on behalf of the Woodbury Salterton residents association said that permission should be refused as it is against the Villages Plan and Local Plan policy.

Anthony Arnold added that if this was approved, it would going back to the dark days of the uncontrolled expansion into the countryside. He said: “The area outside the boundary should remain open countryside. What is the point of having a Villages Plan and a Local Plan if you just ignore them? Allow this and you open the floodgates.”

Cllr Geoff Jung, who represents the Raleigh ward, said that he could not support this planning application as it is outside the current approved employment area. He added: “Authorising this will drive a bus through the Local Plan. It allows anyone to get a compound, put a tenant in, and then call for the same permission to be granted.” He said that the council were successful on defending an appeal on the eastern area of the site and that this should be refused as it doesn’t comply with the Local Plan nor the Villages Plan and is not compatible with the setting.

Cllr Ben Ingham added that it may be providing jobs, but as it is in the wrong area, it is not sustainable and allow the sites to be ‘joined up’ is against policy.

Cllr Mike Allen said that this was a difficult decision for the committee. He said it is already a brownfield site it has hard standing and is fenced, and asked people to think about what an inspector may say. He added: “I think if we refused this, it would probably be approved on appeal, but I cannot think of a reason why this should be approved.” He also said that he was continuing to explain to the Greendale Business Park on why they need to get planning permission for their developments before they start building them and that he hoped they had finally got the message.

But Cllr Helen Parr said that she felt the committee had to be realistic, adding: “Regardless of whether we want this and what is in the policy, it is developed land and all the considerations to me say that on appeal, it is allowable.”

Cllr Bailey added that Greendale’s track record with planning applications was ‘not to be admired’, but added: “I fail to see any advantages in demolishing a low level piece of hard standing with a bit of fencing.”

A proposal to reject the scheme was lost by six votes to five. Councillors then voted by six votes to five to approve the retrospective plans.

Greendale Business Park extension approved - Radio Exe
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Save our High Streets: with food shops

Sidmouth has a monthly market:
Futures Forum: Sidmouth Farmers' Market: Saturday 9th March

And it has a new community café:
Futures Forum: New Woolbrook tearoom 'to provide a community hot spot'

The Food Programme on Radio 4 today looked at three great projects doing good things for the High Street: 

Feeding the High Street: Are food shops the answer?

At a time when shops are closing across the country, we visit three food retail businesses that are bucking the trend. 

Levenshulme Market in Greater Manchester, A Small Good Thing in Bolton and Squash in Liverpool are all making a positive impact in their communities Sheila Dillon meets entrepreneur John Timpson to find out what this could tell us about the future of our high streets.

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, Feeding the High Street: Are food shops the answer?

And here they are:
Levenshulme Market
Levenshulme Market - Home | Facebook
Levenshulme Market has made it to the final three for a prestigious BBC award - Manchester Evening News

And:
A Small Good Thing - Home | Facebook
A Small Good Thing (@GoodThingVeg) | Twitter
Bolton's first plastic-free shop is hoping to turn A Small Good Thing into a big success | The Bolton News

And:
Squash - Food for Real
Squash Liverpool - Home | Facebook
New healthy food and creativity space Squash opens in Liverpool city centre - Liverpool Echo
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Climate change: "it is possible to reduce emissions while also growing the economy”

System change?
Futures Forum: Climate change: the book 'Losing Earth' ends with a full-throated, fire-and-brimstone indictment of the carbon lobby and its ongoing denial and delaying tactics

Or being entrepreneurial?
Futures Forum: Cutting CO2 vs "Make Cars Great Again"
Futures Forum: "How doing business sustainably can actually improve the bottom line."

It is after all a matter of how you see things:
Futures Forum: Are we running out of resources?
Futures Forum: Are things actually getting better?

Hugo Swire, MP for East Devon, thinks we can get through this with a little more ingenuity:
Climate change answer is in the markets and human ingenuity | Hugo Swire

Here is his piece in the Herald:

'Climate change answer is in the markets and human ingenuity'

PUBLISHED: 17:25 29 April 2019

Daniel Wilkins

Extinction rebellion protestors are right, but the solution is in ‘cleverly’ regulated markets, according to East Devon’s MP.

In his latest column, Sir Hugo Swire agrees with activists about the reality of climate change but says it is up to 'human ingenuity' in the markets to make modern industry 'part of the equation'.

He said: “The extinction rebellion protests are telling us some inconvenient truths, which of course we already know, the reality of climate change.

“But to meet their demands would involve a mobilisation of people and resources on an unprecedented scale. It would require the state to ration air travel, replace every gas boiler in the land and borrow vast sums of money to invest in wind and solar power as well as new technologies to capture what remaining carbon we would produce.

“Where I depart with the Extinction Rebellion protesters is trying to turn the clock back on technology and asking people to stop living modern lives.

“For us to solve this crisis, it is more realistic to make modern industry part of the equation. Of course Government intervention and raising awareness has a role to play but the vital component has to be human ingenuity fostered within markets regulated cleverly by the state. And it is only in healthy, entrepreneurial economies that inventions can be made – the electric vehicles, smart electricity grids, revolutionised batteries.

“Shell, for example, has spruced up its act and is now one of the biggest investors in renewable energy in the world, spending billions on solar research and development. We need to see other big corporations following suit and to meet UN targets by 2030 or 2050 the real change has to come from industry in China, India and USA.

“Although there is still so much more to do I am proud that more than £52 billion has been invested in renewable energy in the UK, and thanks to this investment and our reforms, greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by a quarter since 2010, proving the point that it is possible to reduce emissions while also growing the economy.”

Climate change: East Devon MP says the answer is in the markets and 'human ingenuity' | Latest Sidmouth and Ottery News - Sidmouth Herald
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The Risk Makers @ Archive on 4

Where each of us is today is very much a matter of luck:
Futures Forum: Good luck!

And has very little to do with how much we 'merit' it:
Futures Forum: Is 'meritocracy' really all it's made out to be?
Futures Forum: How meritocracy and populism reinforce each other's faults

The statistician David Spiegelhalter has featured on various blog-postings over the years:
Futures Forum: The national press and the IPCC report ... and Climate Change
Futures Forum: Climate change: by numbers >>> "a deeper-than-usual insight into some of the methods of climate science"
Futures Forum: Is a global population of nine billion sustainable?

He works at the stats lab at the University of Cambridge:
Statistical Laboratory
David Spiegelhalter's Personal Home Page

He's very interested in 'luck' and 'risk':
Understanding Uncertainty
#2 - Prof David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science - YouTube

And he has done some very interesting programmes for Radio 4:
BBC Radio 4 - Good Luck Professor Spiegelhalter

His latest offering being this evening at Archive on 4: 

The Risk Makers

Archive on 4

No one should take a risk without thinking about the possible future outcomes but who do you trust; your gut instinct or someone who will tell you they know what is going to happen?

The trouble with humans and the future is that we are all suckers for a good story. 

In The Risk Makers Professor David Spiegelhalter looks at the track record of experts and finds it to be only slightly better than ' a dart throwing monkey'. 

With prediction it's data from the past that forms the best guide to the future. Gambling firms and the insurance industry understand this and base their businesses on numbers not rumours. However, the rest of us are often reluctant to engage with data and what it can tell us. 

Mixing archive with fresh interviews Professor Spiegelhalter discovers there is a personality type best suited to predictions,- so called foxes- although we rarely hear from them because they are often drowned out by 'hedgehogs'. 

Beware, though, an over reliance on data; like the ancient oracles, the usefulness depends on what you ask and how you interpret the replies. 

David meets with an academic who is an expert on Greek oracles but who also advises businesses about the future, a Lord who is one of the nation's foremost political and football pundits, the man who ran GCHQ for three years and the insurance executive whose job is to imagine possible malign futures and price them. 

The Risk Makers concludes if you want to know about the future, don't trust someone who tells you they know what will happen. Trust in data- of course but mix in humans too, lots of them – just make sure there are more 'foxes' than 'hedgehogs'!

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, The Risk Makers
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High street retailers looking to landlords to help ease the financial burden

There are serious questions an even more complaints about the business rates system:
Futures Forum: Are councils failing to apply discounts on business rates?
Futures Forum: High street shops to expect rise in business rates
Futures Forum: Calling for a Royal Commission into business rates
Futures Forum: Sidmouth businesses welcome plans to cut rates, but still fear for future and rising costs

Another aspect is rent - and how that might be changing: 

Drapers Investigates: the retailer-landlord balance of power

26 MARCH 2019 

BY EMILY SUTHERLAND

As conditions on the high street heap pressure on retailers, they are looking to landlords to help ease the financial burden. Drapers investigates the changing balance of power between the two

Drapers Investigates: the retailer-landlord balance of power | Features | Drapers

The latest episode from Radio 4's In Business looks at the issues:

Behind the Facades

In Business

The relationship between landlord and tenant is an important, often unseen, dynamic that most of us don’t give much thought to. And yet, it's reshaping high streets up and down the country.

High rents are blamed for the collapse of so many retailers - they appear unsustainable yet they are the vehicle through which much of our pension wealth is invested.

In this programme, Ruth Alexander looks at different models of ownership: from the big financial institutional investors through to the original aristocratic landowner and asks how - in the turmoil created by the rapidly changing retail environment - these landlords are facing up to a new reality.

BBC Radio 4 - In Business, Behind the Facades
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How to start a food revolution > revitalizing local food culture by fostering local agriculture, encouraging environmentally friendly production, and turning consumers into co-producers

Today's edition of the Food Programme on Radio 4 took us to Scandinavia, where there's been a food revolution:

How to Start a Food Revolution: The Food Adventures of Claus Meyer

The Food Programme

Can you reinvent a food culture? Dan Saladino meets a man who did, Denmark's Claus Meyer, the co-founder of Noma, one of the world's most influential restaurants.

From there he went to Bolivia and set up a restaurant to rescue lost foods of the Andes and Amazon, and onto New York where he founded a cooking school in a neighbourhood with some of the worst levels of food related illness in America.

So what is he now doing in Newport, South Wales.

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, How to Start a Food Revolution: The Food Adventures of Claus Meyer

Here he is talking about the 'Nordic Food Revolution':



Claus Meyer, Owner of The Meyers Group: The Nordic Food Revolution 

In this wonderful, personal and thought provoking talk the Danish gastronomic entrepreneur Claus Meyer shares his dream about revitalizing local food culture by fostering local agriculture, encouraging environmentally friendly production, and turning consumers into co-producers. Claus Meyer addresses the global challenge on how we can revitalize local foods.

Claus Meyer - The Nordic Food Revolution - YouTube

He has been all over the world:
Cooking up a revolution: The chef who wants to change the world | brunch | feature | Hindustan Times

Including Newport in Wales:
Top class speakers unveiled for Wales’s premier international food conference - Wales 247

He's doing great things in New York: 

Brownsville Community Culinary Center
is committed to offering healthy, accessible cuisine to neighborhood residents through our eatery.

The Foundation’s work is focused on the following areas:
to drive social change and to combat poverty through initiatives related to food and hospitality;
to use education in food and cooking and culinary craft as instruments to inspire people to pursue careers in hospitality and the culinary arts; and
to break picky eating habits of children and, from an early age, strengthen their ability to influence sustainable and healthy food choices.
Community – Agern Restaurant

And there is a manifesto:
The New Nordic Food Manifesto | Nordic cooperation
New Nordic Food |
New Danish cuisine - Wikipedia

Here's a piece from the Telegraph from a couple of years ago: 

Meet Noma founder Claus Meyer: the man behind the Nordic food revolution

Diana Henry, cookery journalist of the year

25 APRIL 2016 

Claus Meyer represents all that is good about Nordic living. He’s just got off a plane but looks as if he’s been for a walk on some wild beach. He is glowingly healthy, tall and energetic.

A fifty-year-old French man of a similar level of success - Meyer runs an empire that encompasses hotels, restaurants, bakeries, delis and a charitable foundation – would be suave and formal. But Meyer - sporting jeans, All Stars and a crumpled but expensive cotton jacket – bounds into the room with the warmth of a Labrador and smiles broadly.

It’s possible you won’t have heard of him – Rene Redzepi, with whom he set up Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant which has grabbed the top slot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list more than once – gets much more attention, but Meyer has brought about a revolution in Nordic food of which Noma is only a part.

The reasons for his dedication to improving the food of his country are obvious and painful, though he offers them without self-pity.

“I was a very unhappy child,” he says simply. “My mum and dad fought all the time and we ate food from the microwave. The vegetables were frozen and had been cooked a decade before in Eastern Europe. Everything was cheap, and most of it was dipped in melted margarine. People in Denmark believed it was a sin to put much time into cooking or into exploring the pleasures of eating. It was because of the Puritanism handed down from the past. I would say that ninety percent of the kids growing up in Denmark in the 1970s ate like I did."

This arid culinary landscape was also due, he believes, to the industrialisation of food production. "Denmark developed big cooperatives. These inhibited the kind of diversity you get in Italy and France.

"And in Denmark we gave ourselves the worst food, we had what was left after everything else had been exported. Never in the history of Denmark was there education about food."

His parents separated when he was fourteen. His father, who he says never loved him, left, and his mother became an alcoholic. Meyer went to France to work as an au-pair in his late teens and ended up living with a fourth generation baker and traiteur and his family in Gascony. It changed him for ever.

"In France I tasted food that could have been from another planet. Besides the flavours I saw a different way of life too, a capacity for enjoying the moment. That trip to France was huge for me."

Meyer was very overweight when he arrived in France, but there, as he puts it, he ate his way out of an eating disorder. "The food in France fed me in a different way: it was spiritually nourishing as well as delicious. I wasn’t just trying to fill a hole so I didn’t eat as much. When I went back to Denmark I wanted everyone to experience it."

He started to import French ingredients, foie gras, olive oil and truffles, and became a chef, applying French techniques and recipes to Danish produce. He became a TV star – twenty per cent of the Danish public watched his cooking programmes - but in 2001 he realised he’d got it all wrong.

‘I was down at the harbor in Copenhagen, near the site on which Noma eventually opened, where all the food arrives from the other Nordic countries. I liked the space and the smell. I suddenly thought that change had to come about with our produce, not the produce of France or Italy.’

He was struck by how fellow Danes and film makers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg had created the Dogme 95 Manifesto, an approach to film making that set Denmark apart, marking it out as different from Hollywood. Meyer realised this philosophy could be applied to food, too: the Nordic countries didn’t have to follow, they could lead.

He finally decided to start a restaurant that would show the potential of the ingredients that were in his own backyard. This restaurant was Noma. Meyer approached Danish chef Rene Redzepi - then a 25-year-old sous chef who had worked at El Bulli in Spain and The French Laundry in California - to head up this new venture.

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Unfolding the potential of indigenous food cultures: Claus Meyer at TEDxCopenhagen 2012 - YouTube

Meyer knew he had to be political in order to effect real change: “To make a real cultural transformation I had to have stakeholders." So he contacted all the biggest chefs in Scandinavia, key figures in the food industry and politicians.

Working with fourteen chefs he developed the New Nordic Food Manifesto. It urges sustainability, seasonal cooking, the use of more vegetables as well as indigenous and local foods, sound animal welfare and a focus on health. It was a smart move.

"The manifesto was vague," he explains. "That way everyone would get on board and work towards change. And that change had to start with a great restaurant cooking with the food of our landscape. We had to show that beetroot could be as luxurious as truffles, that you can make a vinaigrette with buttermilk. Hundreds of restaurants took something from Noma. They realised they didn’t need to make beurre blanc or Hollandaise sauce, that there were things we could do with indigenous ingredients." There were Nordic culinary traditions – smoking, fermenting, curing – that could be built on and explored.

Meyer has been criticised for his ‘top-down’ approach, but all these years later he has had an effect, and not just in high-end dining. There is much more demand for Nordic produce in Denmark; cooking is now more vegetable-centric and sustainability very much to the fore.

Food lovers flock to eat the ‘new Nordic’ food that’s cooked in restaurants all over Scandinavia (so the tourist boards and politicians are happy) but the reach of Meyer and Redzepi has gone beyond their own back yard. There are Nordic-inspired restaurants with wooden tables, stoneware ceramics, ‘ferments’, minimalist menu speak ("beet, ash, liquorice") everywhere, from Volt in Stockholm to Septime in Paris and Lyle’s in London.

Meyer, putting food and philanthropy together, set up Gustu in Bolivia in 2013, where two Danish chefs are trying to create a kind of Andean Noma, using ingredients that are indigenous to the region while employing and training marginalized youth.

Meyer admits that his connection to Noma – he has now sold most of his share in it – has had disadvantages as well as advantages.

"People confuse the Manifesto with what Rene is doing. Rene has just taken the tenets of it. They think the manifesto laid down laws - like you can’t use tomatoes in a Nordic kitchen - but that wasn’t the case. That was something that they followed at Noma, but that was their decision - Rene’s. He is doing his own thing."

The home kitchen is what Meyer is focusing on right now, which, of course, is the whole point. If you ever wondered what the New Nordic Food Manifesto means when you’re cooking for your family, it’s in The Nordic Kitchen, his book of seasonal Scandinavian dishes. Mussel soup with barley and wild garlic, roast chicken with rhubarb: there’s no cheap bacon or marge here.

In Denmark, where they published a longer version, the book has become a culinary bible. "People use it every day," Meyer says. He smiles with pride. He is restless, a serial entrepreneur, driven, ambitious (he is about to open his first restaurant and a food hall in New York) a wealthy celebrity in a country that values humility so, despite the social programmes, he does get criticised.

But it’s hard to resent the joy he takes in what he’s achieved. No, not everyone in Scandinavia is eating mounds of vegetables they’ve dug up that morning, or fermenting their own Nordic miso. But Meyer knows what he’s done.

"A large number of important people, opinion formers with influence on people’s lives, have come to believe that the values in the New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto aren’t a trend, that they’re now the new normal. Change takes time. But I think we’ve made a good start."

How many of us can say that?

Meet the man behind the Nordic food revolution
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