Green-lighting the Brown

“Are you a green man or a brown girl in the ring?” That’s the question invariably asked of the CEOs in property development. Ask it too low down the foodchain and you may get punched in the face, so be careful all you trainee journalists out there who read this column.

This somewhat innocuous builders’ code divines whether they like to build sustainably on already used land or have a frontier mentality, hustling to build on any piece of agricultural acreage they see fit. It sorts out the girls from the boys, so to speak. I’m aware that our dire need for more Swindons near premium service centres will involve a combination of development, and more ecovillages are a must. But we must take old and tired towns up and down the land and recycle them into the modern age. New paradigms for old Peterboroughs, and look how well that place is doing as a centre of media production. Right now the smart money is on the brown girls.

I’m pleased to say that The McClintocks have a proud tradition of taking over used land and making the most of local resources, especially in Africa, so I have always been instinctively in the brownfield camp. It doesn’t take a genius to see Britain is getting smaller (hello land erosion, goodbye Dorset country pile) and more crowded by the minute. Factor in the credit crunch chewing at liquidity and it’s best to deal with facts on the ground - negotiate with what’s already there rather than pies in the sky.

A great many well-meaning construction stakeholders forget the aesthetics of construction. At S’Bounce council meetings I always tell them to get a bespoke consultancy off an old pal - Mr Russell Harris. An architectural prime mover at the business end of the property market, Russell (pronounced Rousselle) is a passionate believer in blending function with style, as one look at the frontpage of his site would tell you.

I know from my wife Sophie’s legendary dinner parties that 'Russelldust' has always been a brown girl kinda guy, though he fraternises with a lot of green men too. Whatever the remit, this guy delivers solutions by the executive bucketload. How? You want a photovoltaic solar panel on top of your Victorian folly? Fax Harris and your dream will be catapulted from CAD simulation to super reality. Catch more of this enchanting individual while you can on the Channel 5’s riveting I Own Britain’s Best House. It’s people like Harris who should be at the frontline of the UK’s development programme, thinking, acting and looking smarter.

A message to Londoners

Although I appreciate some of you may be too caught up in the crazy antics of toothy diva Amy Winehouse, it may have escaped some of your attention that there’s a mayoral election contest unfolding in the world’s greatest city.

The Right Path Party gave its backing to my old pal Boris Johnson some months ago and I urge you to do the same (we have already made arrangements for RPP delegates). This capital has always been a drivers’ city so it needs quaint old buses and more cars on the road, do yer Ken? Mark my words, Boris will build London rich again.

(Originally published 29 April 2008)

Coming Down the Mountain

Innsbruck isn’t known for its primal rejuvenation workshops. At least not until the Right Path Party and DUFFF trundled into town last week.

The aim was to bring a group of underprivileged youngsters from inner city Birmingham – many of whom have special needs and learning difficulties – on a three-day excursion aiming to facilitate trust and re-engineer confidence through para-nodal counterintuitive communication strategies. The trip was organised in conjunction with the Birmingham Youth Service. And the youngsters were in for a special treat on the final day when my favourite rock band and close personal friends Coldplay just happened to turn up for an improvised jam session. Wonders never cease!

DAY 1 
We arrive at the Hotel Sporthotel Penz to a double surprise. Not only is it snowing – some of our youngsters have never seen the white stuff – but it turns out there’s a discount on the rooms. The parents will be delighted when they learn that their kids’ pocket money is being spent wisely this month, and we waste no time in getting everybody kitted out in their mountain apparel.

The aim of this three-day exercise was simple: primal para-nodal FLOPP reinvigoration. Of the 17 girls and 20 boys signed up for the trip, all have some kind of learning disability. Most have spent time in foster care homes or juvenile detention centres. Many, like “Nigel” (not his real name), suffer from mild psychological disorders. For Hunt Freaker, DUFFF’s Executive Coordination Strategy Chairman, it’s all about trying to rebuild confidence from day one, even before the kids hit the slopes.

“The first thing that happens,” says Hunt, “is we get them running naked through the hotel corridors. It’s just an icebreaker. But it’s also crucial because before you can rebuild confidence you first need to earn the kids’ trust.”

DAY 2

Today is the first rung on the confidence building ladder. Literally. None of these kids have skied before and some of them suffer from vertigo. However, that doesn’t dissuade Hunt from organising a “motivation workshop” at the top of the 50-metre high Bergisel Ski Jump. Not all of them come down in the elevator. “Most kids who have grown up in traumatic environments,” says Hunt, “are just waiting to break out of their shell. It’s so important that they learn to accept unusual challenges.”

For Nigel, who suffers mild concussion after a near fatal crash landing, this was certainly unusual. However, Hunt, who always advocates a “shock therapy” approach, remains philosophical, insisting that “some kids have got it and others don’t.”

DAY 3 
This is more like it as we relax in the hotel sauna. It’s hot in here, so I ask if I can leave the door ajar. This is great for ironing out yesterday’s bruises. The kids get talking to a German man named “Hans” (not his real name) while Hunt and I meet up with Chris Martin, who arrives fresh from putting the finishing touches to Coldplay’s new album.

Immediately Chris orders fondue – “I can’t stop eating the stuff” – and reveals how this delicacy was in fact the inspiration for the song Yellow, Coldplay’s most acclaimed stadium anthem: “Our guitarist had been drinking all day, and was trying to recharge his batteries, so we suggested fondue. Halfway through eating his face just collapses in the fondue. So I quickly grabbed him and pulled him up by the hair to stop him drowning. His face was covered in this fondue. And I said, ‘Jonny, you’re all yellow’.”

It’s good to see Chris again, and later on he signs autographs for the kids and sings songs, including one from the new album, on what looks like a harp made from a goat’s horn. What an Alpine star!

For me this is more than ample motivation for these disadvantaged youngsters to take home with them. Although Hunt, ever the lateral thinker, is not finished yet: “We’ll get them out on a cross country hike before the coach leaves for the airport at 5am.” Thanks to Hunt, for the first time in their lives these kids are ready for everything Handsworth, Digbeth and Balsall Heath throws at them.

(Originally published 15 February 2008)

The More Things Change

The younger generation is often portrayed as a bunch of binge-drinking layabouts. But dig down deep enough and you’re bound to uncover enough of them lying at the bottom of the pile desperate to rise up and better themselves. Or at least this was the pet theory I came to test out last week during a motivational visit to a factory in southeast London.

The first thing that strikes one upon entering Hamm Fistidd Fibres Ltd. is the professionalism of the employees as they go about their tasks. Factory work can be demoralising, and at the start of my motivational lecture in the staff canteen I ask whether any of them have ever contemplated suicide. To their credit no-one admits anything. Later on, plant director Dave Street takes me on a guided tour of the production line, which turns into a fascinating educational experience for me, not to mention inspiring. Whatever it is they do here one would never guess from the facial expressions of the guys who pull the levers up and down that this is probably the most monotonous and soul-destroying job they are ever likely to do in their lives.

Of course, it would be quite wrong to pretend that the UK manufacturing sector is what it once was. “China is our big worry,” admits plant director Dave. “The whole operation could go belly up at any minute.” But with a healthy dose of positive thinking it’s not inconceivable that, whenever that happens, these employees will be capable of adapting. Indeed, the rest of my visit turns up more than enough evidence to suggest that change is not only being embraced here, but relished.

Take Will Header, for example, a 75-year-old production line assistant who’s been here since the factory opened in 1945. No spring chicken, Will left school at the tender age of 12 without formal qualifications and soon adapted to the task of crawling through pools of radioactive waste to retrieve dead rats. However, nowadays he mostly runs errands and “makes tea for the young-uns”.

“In those days they said the radiation gave you a lovely suntan,” says Will. “The only protective clothing they gave us was swimming trunks and beach towels.” When I ask him whether he misses the rats his answer is refreshingly honest: “I’ll be dead in a couple of years.”

After a quick cuppa with Will, I meet up with the evening shift over a game of pool. When this place goes belly up, I joke, the local pubs and clubs certainly won’t be short of hustlers.

However, life on the shop floor isn’t without its hard luck stories. “Gracja” is 42 and has spent most of her adult life in institutions. She doesn’t remember her parents and shortly after escaping from a Swiss ski resort five years ago she began an affair with a man that she later discovered was a woman. It’s a heart-wrenching story, but I try to rally Gracja’s spirits by saying that unskilled workers like her will always be needed to do the jobs that nobody else wants. At least until those jobs get outsourced to China.

The day ends on an upbeat note when my PA reveals that, remarkably, I actually own this factory! Change never ceases to confound and take us by surprise. It's a positive message that won't get lost on these employees.

(Originally published 24 January 2008)

Year in Jeremy

What a year! If modern politics is about reclaiming the ground from cosy consensus with new ideas, then we’re looking at an RPP election landslide. From winning over wary voters to bringing pop stars together in Africa in the name of eco-sensitive development, here’s my month-by-month highlights. Stock up on the brain juice.

January


Hit the ground running with Newshopper press coverage for "stronger terror laws, tax relief for second home owners and compulsory sport in schools”.

February


Bring to the West’s attention on one of the major effects of global warming – the crisis in the monkey community because we insist on travelling thousands of miles to catch one in a tree decaying under the weight of C02 emissions. “Many of them have developed homosexual disorders… so let’s ramp up the zoo building programme, increase ‘tree-city’ capacity and get the worst-off some counselling,” I cried. Later, I face down scurrilous allegations that I auctioned off monkeys for cash.



March


RIP to a great friend and human rights torchbearer, John Inman, who wanted to live in a world where each and every one of us, from vaudevillian comic to asylum seeker (subject to proper completion of the relevant paperwork), is able to say confidently, “I’m free!”

April

A spot of retail therapy does the RPP coffers no harm, as I launch the RPP tartan spring range. They go down like a storm in a sporran in doorstopping around SE London as we launch our I Can’t Get No Literacy campaign too. Canvassing in kilts, you'd better believe it!


May


The film crew that I let into my life holds a lavish premiere for the documentary in a minimalist central London location. Check the trailer. Malcolm, when’s the damn programme going out?

June


Real experience = real policies. Camp out in Victoria Park in London’s Hackney for a week to flag up the absolute necessity of efficient roofing over the head of all Britons.

July

Work with my H20 cronies Green Piss to illustrate the folly of water over-use by staging a mass flushathon. Thames Water didn’t know what hit ‘em! My director of communications Rupert Chaucer tells me this idea is too good to waste on a busy news week, and times the release for drought-happy late summer. I mentioned this to MIND’s Claude Whole, who said I should advertise his position with immediate effect.


Major network synthesis was imminent, as the RPP announced its Designing Urban Futures scheme. To Hear Hunt Freaker, DUFFF executive Coordination Strategy Chairman, speak is to become a regeneration evangelist. 
And at the end of a hectic month, I see for myself the real benefits of a paranodal approach to problem solving, by getting involved in the great work at the local NHS trust’s Tahiti Ward. Then I take a holiday on a Pacific atoll.

August


How do you get substantial pledges to deliver sustainable eco-villages in Kenya in little more than a week? By going in studs up on Coldplay’s Chris Martin! The protests that greeted me on my return to Heathrow were simply not valid. 
Sensing the music industry’s ability to get the message across, I soon roll out my Ideas Bank with hot indie combo Editors.

September 


Incorporating the Mind 2007 is launched amid no little media praise, to which my response was ‘See you in Chile’. My only concern now is leading the next generation by example.

October


Take the bulls by the horns by revealing how I get ahead in the office world. Cynics call it violent confrontation, I call it Managizing Change.

November


Inner-city Krakow finds a good deal of cheer as dartist Bobby George leads a torching of its main infrastructure. With this sponsored arson, I think we made our case for investment in Eastern bloc cities pretty transparent, don’t you?

December


I see how deals are struck on the environment at the UN conference in Bali and can only wail in an excess of emotion.

Phew! Next year, we will be rolling out more optimal proposals to create plans of action about taking this country forward in phases. The RPP bandwagon will become an unstoppable biodiesel-fuelled juggernaut. You can hitch a ride by joining up at party HQ immediately. Feel free to suggest your prime McClintock Event of 2007, but otherwise let's catch up in Sappington!

(Originally published 19 December 2007)

Deal or No Deal

So there has finally been a breakthrough at the International Climate Change Talks in Bali, where I’ve been shadowing negotiations with a Green Piss delegation of single earth mothers - mostly from Totnes in Devon - at what the press pack are now referring to enigmatically as the Krypton Factor of global summits. At 5am this morning, as the UK’s Environment Minister, Hilary Benn, emerged from a sixty foot pineapple looking pie-eyed and spaz-faced, we knew something was afoot. In the event it was a false alarm: Benn was on a Mars Bar and Red Bull run. However, two hours later the pineapple finally bore fruit, as Benn came out again to announce a comprehensive roadmap of ambitious goals for a timetable of further climate change negotiations.

What this boils down to, in a nutshell, is a raft of measures designed to make concerted efforts towards facing up to the challenges of raising the awareness, of people, of the need for the sustained promotion of concrete action in tackling CO2 emissions. Although I wouldn’t wish to take credit myself for this historic agreement – basically because I wasn’t involved – I would hasten to add that I do feel personally vindicated by the knockers and detractors that said I was wasting my time going to Bali, since Java had much better rafting.

Today, as developers in the north of this idyllic Indonesian paradise frantically chop down forests and burn off peat land to make way for a huge environmental theme park, the eyes of the world are turning on Bali in the renewed hope that, finally, people will wake up tomorrow morning fully conscious of the need to promote the need for change.

And whether you’re Chris Martin from Coldplay or a humble Green Piss delegate shouldn’t detract from the fact that we’re all fare-paying passengers on the same lump of cosmic space dust. Now pass me that Red Bull before I dry heave. Diana Inquest Latest

Fresh light on Di Murder

It appears that there’s been a dramatic development at the Diana Princess of Hearts Inquest in London, as new photographic evidence this week emerged casting fresh light on the events shortly preceding the Princess’ tragic death. Although not yet widely reported I can now exclusively reveal to you the photographs thought to have been taken just minutes before the fateful car crash.

The first, a panoramic view across Paris taken from the Right Bank of the Seine, is alleged to reveal an assassin atop the Eiffel Tower aiming an unidentified weapon in the general direction of the tunnel where the Princess’ Mercedes spun out of control. In the second, a woman suspiciously eats ice cream on a park bench somewhere in the Paris metropolitan area.

I’m no expert, but like most of the evidence turned up so far at this trial, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that they don’t appear that conclusive. “Then again,” counters Al-Fayed’s legal team, “the fact that these images cannot prove a conspiracy does not prove in itself that they cannot NOT prove a conspiracy.”

That’s bound to make sense to someone. Let’s hope the legal beagles can get to the bottom of this complex case as soon as possible, if only to set so many British minds at rest.

(Originally published 16 December 2007)

Charity Case

Last Friday’s spectacular BBC Children In Need appeal helped to reinforce the crucial role that charity plays in our society. But why so many famous names? As much as I delight in the spectacle of my favourite A-listers rattling their jewellery in front of the cameras like a bunch of Christian Aid workers with collection tins, what about the local communities and grassroots activists who, when it comes to helping the underprivileged, really are thinking outside the box, both at home and abroad?

One only need venture into the back yard of any of our less fortunate European neighbours to find a huge amount of positive work being done for the disadvantaged and downtrodden, albeit on a much smaller scale than in the UK. Take Poland, for instance, where only last week I led a group of policy makers from DUFFF and the Right Path Party on a whistle-stop fact-finding mission. Here’s my events logathon:



Day 1 Just before we begin our descent into Warsaw International Airport aboard a Hercules military transport plane, DUFFF Chairman Sir Alain Shipmount throws out a kitchen at an altitude of 20,000 feet. “Charity has to keep reinventing itself in order to keep up with the times,” opines Sir Alain. I’ve heard of food drops but this really is rebooting the mind expansion software.

Day 2 The next morning we visit the outskirts of the city where a staggering 88% of unemployed people are unemployed. Luckily Sir Alain, who once patented a flute, knows all about urban regeneration. And not surprisingly his solution to reinventing the social fabric bears all the hallmarks of the mind expansion approach. “The standard of living in Warsaw isn’t up to Western European standards,” admits Sir Alain, “but then people need to rethink the meaning of the concept of poverty in order to re-empower their FAGG domain.” But how exactly?

According to Sir Alain, Warsaw has a high proportion of homeless people: “They wander around the city like headless chickens high on a cocktail of kerosene and chlamydia. They smell like stray dogs. Which is why we at DUFFF recently got them on a 26km army assault course to help boost their self-esteem.” And the result? “Remarkably,” says Sir Alain, “only about 50% died.”

Day 3 Up early for our trip to Auschwitz where Gary Moore is due to play a two-hour guitar solo in aid of Polish orphans. As we pass though the imposing entrance of the former concentration camp to the sound of “Still Got the Blues” one cannot help but feel overwhelmed by it all. Clearly it’s difficult to express such dreadful horror in words. But if you can imagine the sound of a cat being spun around in a cement mixer then you’re pretty close.

Day 4 Today it’s all about the children. Unlike the telethons favoured by the big TV networks back in the UK, here in Poland charity is largely invisible to the viewing public. “It’s refreshingly small scale,” Sir Alain notes, who’s just signed a three year deal with Sky Sports for a new series called “Pole Dancers”, in which underage prostitutes are taking control of their lives through a combination of pole dancing and extortion. According to Sir Alain, equality is key. “Why should Bob Geldolf get all the perks?” I think I know what he means.

The day ends with the Liberace of darts, Bobby George, organising a sponsored arson across inner city Krakow. I spot at least 20 buildings on fire, including the town’s only gymnasium.

“The kids really enjoyed themselves,” beams Bobby the next morning from his hospital bed, where he’s being treated for second-degree burns. “Pyromania makes people feel happy.”

Thinking optimally, managing creatively, flushing out feeble excuses, with the able assistance of DUFFF, the Right Path Party is spreading the message far and wide.

(Originally published 19 November 2007)

Managize Change

The Lib Dems’ recent succession crisis proves that politicians still have a lot to learn from the corporate sector. Never has the phrase “fit for office” seemed quite so appropriate than in the case of Ming Campbell and Co. Contrary to rumour the RPP is not ageist, just youthful in its political outlook and flexible in its approach to disability rights, brain disorders and senile dementia.

Today transparent communication is almost as important as sound political principles, whether you’re trying to prize basic information of entitlement to discounted travel out of Virgin Trains staff or facilitating a PowerPoint presentation to the Orange Democratic Movement of Kenya.

The corporate sector’s copped a lot of flak over the years. Lately, however, I’ve been leafing through the literature and frankly it’s opened my eyes. Inspired by an intriguing mix of Jungian principles and Thai cuisine, the management gurus responsible for the following tomes could teach your average politician a thing or two: 
* Trebor Ein-Farker’s Networkation Theory
* Jaroslav Boxcar’s Utter Relations Hypothesis
* Tommy Johnson’s How to Make Management Stick in a Web 2.0 World 
* and, last but not least, Humph Jenik’s Optimal Performance Roulette.

And I don’t think it would be too candid of me either to reveal my mantras, which have recently been affixed at strategic locations on the walls of the Right Path Party’s new Battersea HQ:


* “Much of this is waste. What we don’t use might kill us” – Lord Coe


* “Winning is nothing. Victory is everything” – Dennis Hopper


* “Celebrate when the cows have come home and the pigs have flown: your work is never done” – The Ballad of Sir John Harvey-Jones, Annie Lennox


* “I wasted time and now time doth waste me” – William Shatner

Last week I went about actualising my enhanced communication skills during a Sappington Bounce Parish Council meeting. The councillor for Chappy Grove ward suggested the mass planting of sugar cane for bio-fuels in the town centre. As temperate as our little Dorset suntrap is, I had to break it to him that we didn’t have the temperatures for that sort of scheme. When he didn’t listen, I kept telling him again and again until he got it. I even wrote it down on a piece of paper and cellotaped it to his forehead when he put his hands over his ears (a classic sign that you’re winning an argument). It worked a treat; now he’s concentrating on persuading farmers to grow soybeans. That’s management advisory in action – to the good of our local environment and those all-important para-global FLOPP networks.

If we transmogrify this type of local experience to the larger playing field then we uncover more than a few pearls of wisdom for the country at large. Here are some other micro-resolutions gleaned from the minutes of previous Sappington Bounce Council meetings:


* Not finding out the facts before mediating in a dispute (direct action)


* Telling people in public that they don’t know what they’re doing (primal workshop approach)


* Likewise, questioning why they’re here in the first place (counter-intuitive motivation)

* Telling them the wrong thing to do, watching them do it and then ticking them off, preferably in front of other employees (reverse psychology)

It’s not quite as you see it portrayed on The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den, but not far off the positive role those TV programmes play in promoting the values of risk assessment and internal competition. Management is the new rock and roll now, they say, with news journals like The Sindie giving away free guides and The Guardian newly converted to the fiscal joy of private equity. In actual fact management is much like politics – sign the people up to your vision and enhance the networks of mutual trustability so that when you’re forced to flatly contradict yourself and renege on your promises everyone accepts a share of the responsibility. The first thing they teach you in public relations is to treat every disaster as a blessing in disguise. Think how that message could transform the lives of the terminally ill, park dwellers and homosexuals.

At the Right Path Party, with the indispensable help of organisations such as DUFFF and Claude Whole’s corporate communications assemblage Mind Associates, we are applying this philosophical approach to imminent ecological collapse as well as to the crisis in parliamentary democracy. We are turning voters away from the big three, and proving surprisingly popular in southeast London and the Kentish hinterland. As the Liberal Democratic Party has probably realised to its cost, soon we will be coming hard on their heels and dealing with the issues that matter. It’s time Britain had some new management.

(Originally published 29 October 2007)