Northern Spin podcast goes to Blackpool, and the Phoenix

"Really good episode" says former civil servant David Higham, a man who knows his history and appreciates insight.

This week we talk about Blackpool's regeneration efforts over the years, Andy Burnham's appointment of Kate Green as his Deputy Mayor and the disgrace of Boris Johnson's honours list.

And why, despite everything, I still love Phoenix Nights.

We're on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

https://lnkd.in/eQYwV-cJ

Apple - https://lnkd.in/eX8eiNhT 

Alan Cavill, Andy Morrell, Nicola Headlam, The Manchester Metropolitan University, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, The Labour Party, Blackpool Council, The Centre for Social Justice.

All we are saying, is give kids a chance

A couple of weeks ago I volunteered to help out at Aquinas Sixth Form College with some interview training.

I sat across the table from eight different young people with all their hopes dreams and aspirations laid bare, and tried to give them a first experience of what it’s like to talk about themselves one-to-one with a complete stranger for 15 minutes or so.

These were students who the college has identified as having real potential and suggested to them that they should apply to top universities. 

Let me mention first why I did it.

Young people have had a rough ride. Most of these did their GCSE year in lockdown. They’ve bounced from one challenging time of life into a new educational setting. 

The future is full of volatility and economic uncertainty. Technology is changing so fast that it puts real pressure on what students can learn that will be useful to them.  

As I look back from my comfortable position in midlife, I’ve made a promise to myself to say yes to such requests for help. Each and every offer of a helpful word, or a guiding hand, that I had when I was young, wasn’t always grasped at. But when I did, it was valuable.

You know too that the posh kids at the top private schools will have pushy Dads coming in to talk about careers in the City and corporate life. 

But it’s also because I’m sick to the back teeth with employers complaining about the lack of skills of young people entering the workforce, but doing naff all about addressing it.

Most, if not all, of the students I spoke to had never had a job interview or been grilled by an admissions tutor at a university. But nearly all of them had part-time jobs in shops, pubs and restaurants. A couple had e-commerce microsites selling things they’ve made on platforms like Etsy and eBay. 

I think that’s amazing and is really something to shout about. So is building your resilience by talking to workmates and customers.

Each and every one of us has a story, a view of the world that is entirely unique to us.

I was keen to make them feel comfortable and establish common ground. A bit needy, I know, but I at least wanted to get them talking about what mattered to them.

As a part-time DJ I find that music is such a great unifier, whatever our personal likes.

It’s amazing how often music provides that bridge. One of the students told me her favourite artist at this year’s Parklife Festival was Joy Crookes, who burst onto the scene last year and who we played on our show a few times. I also had the conversation about Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill with the Stranger Things fans. 

Music ignites the passions, sport and literature and films do too. Sharing experiences won’t solve the world’s problems, but if it’s the simple act of listening and understanding the world from someone else’s perspective, then that’s got to be a good thing.

I don't know if it made any difference or not, but if I can leave you with one thought, it's this. Volunteer to help out with this kind of thing. Share your experience. As John Lennon sort of said, all we are saying, is give kids a chance.

(column in the Tameside Reporter and Glossop Chronicle, July 2022)

My social media fast - Twitter is toxic, Facebook is sinister, but I'm not quitting

Being off social media during Lent has definitely given me time and space for the reflections I intended. I hope I've made much better connections with true friends, prioritised what is truly important and discarded what is trivial and makes me unhappy.

That it's not the be all and end all is obvious. But it's all made me realise its inherent benefits as well as the obvious downsides. Some to do with system design, others to do with human behaviour.

I'll start with Facebook first. A really good friend who works in law enforcement describes it as the devil. It seeps into lives and corrodes from within. When in the wrong hands it is a tool for great evil. It has also been deliberately designed as a mind control tool, as we found out recently with the Cambridge Analytica revelations. But that's also because it makes us lazy. We rely on it too much to tell us who to be friends with, whose posts to follow, what to like and comment on. If it doesn't happen on Facebook it hasn't happened. So it makes you disconnected from the daily lives and concerns of people you care about, but have view of their lives seen only through this very distorted lens.

On the upside, I quite like seeing my Mum's posts about cats. I actually think it's a perfect tool for organising close groups of connected people - like in my fitness classes. I also appreciate it as a conduit for family news and sharing stories from friends abroad, who it has been harder to stay in touch with over the last few weeks. I used to be strict about Facebook friending, then I stood in an election. I started taking all kinds, but I think I'm going to tidy up and make it about real friends, old friends, friends abroad and family. And no politics.

As if to prove the point, the first post I've just seen on Facebook is a delightful post by my brother-in-law Dave Tinkler in the Lancaster Past and Present group, of a newspaper clipping of his Dad (RIP) when he was on his National Service.

The platform I've missed the least as a sucker up of time and energy levels has been Twitter. I used to love Twitter for its serendipity. I'd smugly boast that Twitter amazed me with wisdom from people I don't know, while Facebook would appall me because of people I did. I now think pretty much the opposite. People have got a bit more used to Facebook, but have got massively self-important and shouty on Twitter. I say most people, I noticed a while ago how much the algorithims were shaping your timeline now that I follow so many people. It's meant to be helpful, a filtering, but it just keeps pushing more and more angry Corbynistas, Centrist Dads, antisemites and Mancunian boosterists. The politics of the loudmouth has ruined it. You are required to work hard at your followers and timeline, which seems like further demands on time I don't want to give up.

However, Twitter is a decent platform for being part of an emerging trending news event. It's also a powerful tool for driving traffic to a website and for sharing content. I've done the odd blog on a Sunday through Lent and the page views are right down. Being able to tag people, target the marketing and share stories from events I've been involved in has always been really useful. Not utilising it would be a folly. But again, it requires time and effort to make it focused and useful.

I've just had a look at what's been going on, and I've rightly missed a few chances to punt my own events and debates and support colleagues who were speaking. I've not replied to comments about blogs, either about football or political things, but also local Marple matters. I've dropped about 12 followers.

Finally, I had one person, just one, ask me at an event why I'd been so quiet on LinkedIn lately. I've just looked and I've had 92 requests to do the linking in thing. Six from people I work with at Manchester Met, a smattering of old contacts in business, and hardly any with a personal message. It really showed up the paucity of relevance of LinkedIn. It also reminded how much more important it is to actually go out and meet people.

It isn't just me, LinkedIn really has lost its way

I have constantly struggled with LinkedIn, the Facebook for grown-ups, supposedly. There is probably no other social network that is essential to be on as a serious person in business, but there is hardly any serious business that seems to take place on LinkedIn, except recruitment.

So help me out here. Am I doing something wrong with this service? I posted a fairly existential question about LinkedIn on LinkedIn recently and at first it mysteriously disappeared. Censorship I think you can safely call it.

Then, when I edited out any reference to LinkedIn, I posted it again and from my 500+ connections I got two replies. Then I remembered why I rarely checked postings, posted, or even knew such a service existed.

The frustration started when I kept getting random people agreeing to connect, who I don't recall inviting. Maybe I invited then because I mistakenly clicked on the Gmail account button when I was trying to cross-check contact lists I have built up. That, or they spammed everyone in my email account? 

For three years now I've bemoaned the faulty user experience on desktop, tablet and app - they are so different that it feels like another service entirely. 

We went to see Allen Blue, one of the founders a couple of years ago. He was excited then about some big changes and opportunities coming down the path. Just as he did in this video on the Guardian site. All that stuff about channels - nope, me neither. Do you know what, I'm still waiting for the great leap forward. 

I keep up my profile. I see why that is important. But how it helps the world's professionals beyond helping headhunters find people jobs is still a mystery to me. 

It pretty much fails in its social mission too. I moderate a couple of Groups and have joined a few more. Who posts in Groups? Who other than recruiters and SEO hucksters really uses it as a social media platform to engage and use as a business tool?