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)

Conference Blues

Judging by this evening's first edition of the Sappington Bounce Gazette there are more exaggerated headlines in store for the Right Path Party as our annual party conference reaches its climax at the Margate Convention Centre.

Yesterday I launched a raft of sensible new policy initiatives while water-skiing along the River Medway. No fanfare, no hype, no publicity stunts, just policies, culminating that afternoon with Lionel Blair parachuting in through the ceiling of the auditorium in a pink jumpsuit to announce that he's staging Own Goal, a West End musical in the spring about the private life of ex-soccer star and confused gay man John Fashanu. What better way to illustrate our non-dom celebrity tax proposals which stand to net the Exchequer a not-insignificant 490 million pounds?

But what do the newspapers choose to write about? Not Blair and his musical. Instead we get the "controversy" surrounding the RPP's autumn conference theme tune. Granted thrash metal combo Gang Rape may not (yet) have a pop career to rival that of D:Ream, the pretty boys behind New Labour mantra "Things Can Only Get Better". But their latest foot-tapper, “Gravedigger Ass Explosion”, especially commissioned by the RPP, met with the immediate and almost unanimous approval of our conference delegates, even our discriminating front row of "Blue Rinsers".

Admittedly most of our golden gals are on artificial respirators these days, and have to be wheeled in to the conference every morning in expensive medical chairs.

But spirits were raised and the eyelids perceptibly twitching throughout Gang Rape's thrash medley – barring the one unscripted moment when lead singer Bozz Death stagedived head first into the front row.

For those of you that missed the live streaming from our RPP website, let's recap this week's big announcement.

The RPP is launching a new policy that we're calling "Inspiration for Respiration", bringing together healthcare coordination professionals, regeneration zone stakeholders and wellness rejuvenation personnel. What prompted this ingenious initiative was in-depth research, commissioned by the RPP, highlighting the fact that a staggering 400,000kw of electricity is being consumed every hour in NHS intensive care wards. By hooking up cardiovascular rowing machines, housed in fitness centres up and down the country, to artificial respirators, we can help save the environment and get our population fit and motivated again, with the knock-on effect of keeping our elderly hospital patients’ lungs pumping at reduced cost to the taxpayer. That’s a win-win message.

Incorporating the Mind: Update

On 26 November 2007 The Right Path Party will be facilitating a group of 20 young people on a mind incorporation tour of South America. Part of the tour will include a stopover in Macchu Picchu to meet the Incas. For those of you who have been struggling with our Incas factsheet (which has now been withdrawn), please note that due to a temporary short-circuit in cross-cultural communication, some figures are wildly inaccurate.

It appears that our copy editing department wasn’t made aware of the fact that the Incas use the binary number system. So instead of 100 toilet rolls, participants are advised to bring an extra four each to Inca Base Camp. Equally every tent should NOT be big enough to accommodate 1,000 people, but eight people. And finally a word of reassurance for those of you panicking about the average seasonal inland temperature for November of 100,001°C. Leave the radiation suits at home. It’s actually a more modest 33°C.

Click here for more information about the tour.

(originally published 8 October 2007)

Come Meet the Man In The Mirror

“Jeremy McClintock is a people person. And Jeremy McClintock will become the people’s politician.”

I shout that mantra into the mirror every morning, and seldom do I see my reflection flinch. That much makes me believe I am a self-fulfilling prophecy here to save Britons – especially the young – from themselves.

How to salvage people and communities from the mounting pressures of everyday life is the question that has preoccupied me ever since I formed the Right Path Party. The voice in my head has reached fever pitch this summer, with almost nightly reports of children stabbing and shooting each other because they come from the wrong postcode. Research carried out by DUFFF reveals that 23 per cent of central Ipswich is now regarded as “chronically pedic”, while gangs in Nottingham are known to rip up and urinate on perfectly-recyclable fast food waste. Politicians need to address this problem fast. What can we do for our wasted youths and what can they do for us?

The answer, for the sons and daughters of five lucky readers, is a "self-actualisation" tour of Chile.

Incorporating the Mind Tour 2007

On 26 November 2007 the Right Path Party and DUFFF are organising a once in a lifetime 11 day excursion to South America. Its aim? To inspire as many as 20 young people, drawn from a list of national regeneration zones (vetted by the Home Office), in the ways of outdoor survival techniques and cross-cultural mind fertilisations. Part of the itinerary will involve free association focus groups with jungle tribesmen. We're also keen to hear from you, our regular readers, for practical ideas that we can add to the itinerary.

This is the first time - to our knowledge - that any political party has tried this type of daring social experiment. It's a challenge for everyone involved, and it's sure going to be a steep learning curve for me. Undeterred, I intend to rise to the challenge and incorporate these kids' minds. Public figures need to travel down the engagement path that leads from telling and explaining to reassuring and transferring task ownership and skills delegation. But most importantly we must all learn to improve the way we communicate with each other, especially given how the intra-strategic facilitation networks are heaving with the geno-thetic-synbadd potential of stakeholders.

DUFFF head honcho Sir Alain Shipmount has agreed to lend us some key personnel for the tour, including the considerable faculties of their Associate Jesus, Rich Wilkes. “I started being Jesus about two years ago," recalls Rich, "and realised it was a good way of regenerating communities”. I have seen this guy spread the word through the regeneration zones of Clapham Park and Upper Venting and it’s impressive. Chile will be tough, but with a Jesus on board we can help to lighten the load.

The tour will begin on 26 November in Chile's capital Santiago. From there we trek down to Patagonia in order to meet the rural population, before heading to the Pacific for an ecological brain-storming session with Greenpiss, and then up to Macchu Picchu for a party with the Incas. Clearly there's a lot of self-discovery and personal re-evaluation to be done.

On a personal note, this tour was scoped out, costed, implemented and delivered within three working hours. And so the man in the mirror was looking decidedly optimistic this morning. As a politician I may not always succeed in winning over the hearts of young people, but with this scheme I might just change their minds.

Competition

Want to win a place on Jeremy’s Incorporating the Mind Tour? Simply email us when you have worked out the missing letters to complete the following phrase: 

Facility is f------y. 

And, no, it’s not "family"! The first five out of the hat will win a securitised passport to progress.

(Originally published 18 September 2007)

Flushing One Million Toilets

As a green campaigner, I am delighted by the response to last month’s London Flushathon in which an estimated one million Londoners flushed their toilets for the environment. Such unprecedented mass participation is far more than The Right Path Party and myself could ever have hoped for.

The event took place between 8pm and 9pm on Saturday 14 July and was jointly coordinated by Green Piss.

To read more, go to the full press release.

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who took part in the campaign. Here's hoping the water companies - finally! - will begin to take water leakage as seriously as we all do. Watch this space and keep clicking on Environment Now for future campaigns and events.

Best wishes, Jeremy McClintock.

(Originally published 30 August 2007)

Juggling Priorities

Politics is all about sound logistics, and no-one could accuse me of not having come prepared when I arrived in Sappington Bounce High Street this week aboard a Sunseeker Portofino 53 offshore cruiser. I was here to inspect the damage caused by the freak floods and incessant rains that have been sweeping across the West of England this summer, and Sunseeker International – whose spirit of adventure began more than forty years ago, and whose range of motoryachts has expanded since then, with each new addition adding something rather special to a highly competitive market – kindly donated one of its impressive craft to help with the clean up operation.

The Portofino 53 comes with built-in radar, flatscreen televisions in each cabin and a full wetbar with hot and cold water.

What a damned nuisance, then, that three days of dry weather had reduced the floodwaters to an insignificant puddle, so preventing me from navigating the high street by speedboat.

“It’s a lot worse than it looks,” says Colin Wyndham, a former champion yachtsman and now Chairman of Sappington Bounce Round Table, as we survey the damage from the bridge of the Sunseeker, which although not going anywhere provides a superb vantage point. “The Victoria Tea Rooms were under six feet of water this time last week,” Colin notes, “and the other side of town was like a duck pond.” We head off to take a look.

Unfortunately the narrow streets of Sappington Bounce weren’t designed to accommodate a 58-foot long motoryacht being towed by a Winnebago. We take a detour through Sainsbury’s car park where I count at least two overturned cars. Only now does the carnage wrought upon this delicate little hamlet when the River Piddle burst its banks a fortnight ago begin to hit home. So far the cost to local insurers is estimated at a staggering twelve million pounds.

Later on Colin discretely informs me that the overturned Volvo was in actual fact my doing (apparently it clipped the stern of the Sunseeker as we accidentally reversed into Sainsbury's exit barriers). “Let’s get things in perspective,” I tell him. “Where would this country be right now without its insurance industry?” As ever lateral thinking wins the day. And in any case it’s a well-known fact that the Winnebago has always suffered from a terrible blind spot.

If the lower end of the high street is anything to go by then that Volvo owner should be counting his blessings. Outside the Job Centre an incongruous sign reads, “Batch 22 jobseekers report to Southampton Benefits Office now.”

“Catch 22, more like,” says Colin, pointing out that much of the lower Southampton road is still waterlogged. It’s at times like these when the true insensitivity of the public services is revealed.

Nigel, a Batch 22 jobseeker, joins us for a coffee aboard the Winnebago and tells of his ambitions to be a film director. Nigel is bursting with raw talent, and illustrates perfectly well the regenerative potential of rural communities like Sappington Bounce. Have I just met the next Martin Scorsese? The fact that Nigel admits to spending 20 hours a day “or more” (?) downloading images of women’s feet from the Internet suggests not – but then doesn’t it equally testify to the unpredictable fortunes of the creative industries, where one day you're signing on in Sappington and the next busy directing your first Hollywood feature film?

Later that afternoon I introduce Nigel to Sir Alain Shipmount, Co-founder and Secretary of DUFFF, and one of the UK’s leading creative consultants. What Sir Alain doesn’t know about geno-thetic synbadd potential frankly isn’t worth knowing. Indeed, so profound is his influence over contemporary popular culture that when Chris Martin of stadium rock band Coldplay was suffering from the creative jitters last December, it was Sir Alain that he phoned first. And the outcome of the consultation? “I put him in touch with the Noise Abatement Society,” says Sir Alain, with characteristic modesty. To his credit we haven’t heard a whimper out of Chris and the boys since. Now that’s what I call successful brand management!

Finally, as if any further evidence of the interface between politics and the creative industries were needed, Sir Alain and I end the day with some impromptu canvassing for the Right Path Party, ably supported by Nigel, our budding filmmaker; Brian, a juggling Harlequin; and Bonzo Doo-Dah, Britain’s only politically-active chimpanzee (although I’m told there are currently three in Northern Ireland). It’s lateral, sure; but there’s no mistaking the power of symbolism. Bonzo successfully draws the public’s attention to hunger in Africa by making off with a child’s cheeseburger, while the juggler leaves everyone in no doubt that I’m a safe pair of hands who can keep all his balls in the air at once.

Plane Talking

A final word on the Heathrow airport protests that greeted me as I arrived back from my African Tour at the weekend. Demonstrators had latched on to Terminal 5 expansion plans in order to highlight the harmful environmental effects of air travel.

To my mind the main point being demonstrated here wasn’t so much the rights or wrongs of either party, with the aviation authorities wanting to increase passenger capacity on the one hand, and local residents and environmentalists understandably wanting to restrict noise and environmental pollution on the other. Of course, these were legitimate concerns. But there were more profound political lessons to be drawn here concerning the way in which politics in this country is presently conducted.

I’m especially keen to sound out grassroots activists these days; even if I don’t always condone their tactics, I’m the first to defend their right to express themselves, even if the protest is verging on the unlawful.

Take Ken, for instance, a local resident who had superglued his testicles to an air traffic control mast: “I’d rather lose my balls than one more night’s sleep,” Ken blurted out, clearly in a great deal of pain. As he was led away by security officials with the mast still attached, I couldn’t help but marvel at the deep-rooted passions that this controversial issue has aroused. We all want to enjoy the freedom and convenience of unlimited air travel. But what good is unlimited air travel if in the process we inflict irrevocable environmental damage?

I’m a convert to the environmental cause. And it must be said that the way in which the government has dealt with this issue has been misguided and wrong from the very outset. We don’t simply need to listen more closely to people like Ken when drafting legislation; we also need to harness such passionate views, learn as well as listen, with the aim of providing people like Ken with meaningful stakeholder experiences as we process, facilitate, strategise and coordinate the creatively integrated futures of people and communities.

Visit your nearest DUFFF agent today and sample the brain juice currently on offer.

(Originally published 24 August 2007)

Blogging On Safari

Some people just can’t make the connection between the current situation in Africa and the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK. If it’s not happening on our own front doorstep then it’s irrelevant. This is more than unfortunate – it’s a travesty. Politicians need to get wise fast to how global issues are local issues.

This week I’m staying at The Waffles Big Game Reserve in Kenya on the first leg of my Trade + Spades Tour 2007, organised in conjunction with The Right Path Party, DUFFF and Green Piss, the consciousness-raising environmental lobby group behind last month’s London Flushathon. Bloggers please note that although it’s remote out here, especially when you're on safari, I’m checking my emails regularly, so keep posting your comments to my electronic mailbag.

Day 1 Linda van de Heijden, chief gamekeeper on the reserve, heads our convoy as we journey across thirty thousand acres of wild open bush. It’s an extraordinary place for wildlife. How does Linda manage to keep the herds of tigers and elephants so conspicuously free from disease? “Progressive animal husbandry,” she says, “plus the odd bit of shotgun therapy.” UK farmers take note.

Despite being born a Springbok, this is the first time I’ve actually ridden an elephant. It’s a surprisingly comfortable ride. Lucy and Dumbo are a real credit to Linda and her fellow gamekeepers, for whom ecotourism has become a byword for sustainable development. It’s only a matter of time before that investment filters down to ordinary Kenyans.

Later that evening we meet some Maasai tribesmen who throng our tent to hear my keynote lecture, “Trade and Aid in Spades”. It’s not clear how much they understand, but without doubt there’s a meeting of minds, especially when the village elders invite me to dance around a satellite dish in a traditional tribal costume, which comprises little more than a scanty leather sarong.

Day 2 One step forward, two steps back. The politically correct brigade is at it again, alleging that an extract from last night’s speech has racist connotations. I’ll let you be the judge of that:

"When we talk about trade let’s not forget the spades. Think what a difference ten million spades could make to agriculture in Africa.”

It must be the silly season in Grub Street. I dish out an ultimatum to journalists at the dawn press conference: tune in or ship out back to the safari lodge. The fact that three quarters of them pack up and leave on the spot is a surprise – until one of our entourage points out that England is due to play Wales in a rugby international tonight. Although we didn’t pack a TV (there wasn’t enough room on the pachyderms) I get the last laugh when Derek, one of the Maasai tribesmen, invites me into his hut, where he unveils his pride and joy: a 32-inch Sony plasma screen TV with Dolby Surround Sound.

Later on we watch the game over a couple of beers. Derek, a former security guard from Leytonstone, is a perfect illustration of what I mean when I say that global issues are local issues. Like an increasing number of young people – not just from the ethnic minorities, but from right across the social spectrum – Derek is rejecting the Western European lifestyle and reconnecting with his cultural heritage. “There’s a whole different language and culture out here,” says Derek. “You can have loads of wives if you want and no one hassles you for it.”

Derek admits to presently having 14, although after the third crate of beer he revises that figure upwards to 62 (it seems he may have been getting confused here, either between his present number of wives and how many women he’s slept with, or else with the score in the rugby game – England ended up beating Wales by 62 points to 5). In any case, on this evidence globalisation is already confronting us with profound cultural challenges.

Day 3 Up before dawn to prepare for a charity football match pitting the Maasai against a celebrity team including Chris Martin (from stadium rock band Coldplay), Lenny Henry, Nick Knowles (last time he was in Kenya he was hamming it up for the cameras on Mission Africa, the BBC television series in which volunteers built an eco-resort in trying circumstances), Jamie Oliver and Yours Truly.

The objective today is to raise awareness for a forthcoming environmental awareness campaign sponsored by DUFFF and Green Piss. “Raising awareness is crucial,” admits Chris Martin (pictured) who’s broken off rehearsals with his band Foldclay in Spain especially to be here. “People need to be more aware about environmental awareness campaigns like this one.”

But in addition to this admirable ambition, according to Hunt Freaker, DUFFF’s Executive Coordination Strategy Chairman, there are other principles at stake: “The important thing, apart from the awareness, is that we enhance intercultural communication between the two teams, who stand as a microcosm of regenerative participative networks in the local-global arena.”

Unfortunately the intercultural communication has some way to go when it emerges, half an hour before kick off, that the teams have completely different understandings of the “arena” in question. For the Maasai, the “pitch” is an enormous patch of bush approximately 26 km wide, an alarming revelation that results in five of our players - including the hapless Knowles - being spontaneously struck down by a mystery virus. Down but by no means out, we decide to split the difference with the Maasai: five-a-side over ten clicks instead of 26. To their credit Chris Martin, Lenny Henry and Jamie Oliver stick with it, the latter preparing refreshments atop a cantering Dumbo the elephant. Keith Floyd never did this.

Day 4 27 hours (?!) into the match, and the intercultural communication hasn’t yet managed to establish the concept of “half-time”.

Day 5 Or “full-time”.

(originally published 9 August 2007)

Bed Pans And Broomsticks

Healthcare is always a hot issue, and this week I’ve been taking the temperature at the special invitation of Jill Duckworth, Communications Manager at the Sappington Bounce NHS Trust. Jill was so taken with my al fresco sleepover in Victoria Park last month that she invited me to repeat the experience, only this time I’d be spending three nights in the hospital’s Tahiti Ward.

Arriving first thing Monday morning with a suitcase full of bare essentials my first question is – where am I going to sleep? An awkward one this, since Jill has been rushed away unexpectedly, and it’s all systems go on the ward. Undaunted, I volunteer to crash in the intensive care unit, which turns out to be the only spare bed in the entire hospital.

It’s a long way from Tahiti, but this will do. While unpacking my golf clubs I get talking to Dave, one of the hospital porters, who challenges me to a round, before lamenting that he’s “wheeled out three stiffs already” this week. If Dave was in Iraq they’d give him a medal, but here he’s just another unsung hero on the front line of patient care.

Unlike the hospital’s valiant doctors and nurses my job description this week is far more mundane, although no less important. I begin by shadowing Glenda, a hospital cleaner with 20 years' experience, who swears blind she was born with a mop in her hand. As we begin chatting I figure Glenda must be sitting on a wealth of untapped insights. What does this hard-working hygiene consultant make of the dreaded MRSA virus?

Glenda’s response, when it finally arrives, is like a breath of fresh air: “I just mop up the shit.”

Private sector cleaning companies have copped no end of flak for the lacklustre state of this country’s hospitals, but if Glenda’s sterling work is anything to go by hygiene should be the least of our worries. It’s such a revelation to see pile after pile of human excreta being systematically intercepted and then safely disposed of. After our mid-afternoon tea break Glenda and I swap roles, with me on the mop this time, and her on the bucket. We make a good team until I accidentally catapult a pile of vomit onto the ceiling (don’t ask how!) Time to call it a day.

The next morning I emerge from my intensive care suite rested and rearing to go. Jill arrives looking flustered: it’s been a bad night. A motorway pile up on the M27 has left a couple dead and their five-year-old son in a critical condition. Since there were no intensive care beds available at Sappington, the child had to be airlifted to a hospital on the outskirts of London, some 120 miles away, even though the accident took place a mere two miles down the road. It’s a cruel irony that speaks volumes about the way in which resources are currently being stretched in the NHS.

About time we thrashed out the day’s agenda (thankfully no more mops) and a scheduled visit by a DUFFF delegation of nodal facilitators and para-meta-linguistic design strategy consultants. Although still relatively unknown to the wider public, this type of partnership is typical of the way in which the NHS is adapting to the new challenges of 21st century healthcare. In an era in which a staggering 90% of terminally ill patients are diagnosed with a terminal illness, DUFFF is helping to radically alter perceptions. “With so many people wasting away on hospital wards,” Jill says, “isn’t it about time we started thinking creatively?”

Jill's clearly been on the brain juice. This isn’t just a question of alternative therapies – although of course homeopathic treatments have never been as popular as they are today. Instead, it’s more about turning the situation around and asking: “Am I really ill?”

Take Page 3, DUFFF’s resident artist. A deaf mute anarchist since birth, Page defied the medical establishment by opting for a career as a spontaneous bowel evacuation performance artist. Riana Baker, Page’s agent, recalls how the biggest hurdle lay in convincing Page that there was nothing actually wrong with her. “It took some doing,” says Riana, “but once the circus bookings started coming in there was no stopping her.”

So what hope the patients on Tahiti Ward might be able to harness the creative potential of their illnesses? Bill is a 53-year-old window cleaner who fell off a ladder while reaching for his shammy leather, and who now may never walk again. Would he ever consider performance art as a means of overcoming his handicap? “I suppose if they gave me enough injections I could fall off the ladder again,” says Bill. “Or they could drop you onto a trampoline,” suggests Peter, a former tax inspector suffering from chronic honky instep. “They could set fire to me for all I care,” he adds sourly. “Since my wife ran off with a landscape gardener life’s not been worth living.” I pass Peter’s details on to Riana.

The day ends with an exhilarating performance by Page 3, who sprays the ward with faeces. The patients are so enthused that they even get a Mexican wave started (apologies to the lady with her arms in plaster). That’s the spirit - laughing in a shitstorm shows the true potential of cognitive therapy. Even the nurses join in. “I never imagined doing a pooh could be so artistic,” says Pam (pictured, with some of Page’s work, bottom right). Nor did I. Time to reach for that mop again.

To find out more about DUFFF visit The Right Path Party.

(Originally published 20 July 2007)

DUFFF - A Design For Life

During a recent visit to a deprived inner London estate I was struck by the invaluable work being done by the community leaders. “Don” (who prefers to remain anonymous) takes immense pride in rallying the local youth, organising “ball games” on the flyover, and generally sounding out the village elders on the estate about how to make “Trumpton” (again, anonymity rules) a place worth living in.

What struck me about Don and the rest of his crew was their ability to have fun and remain upbeat in the face of incredible odds. Tragically, Don’s mother died a year before he was born. But for Don and the gang, not only is life a game worth playing (even if you’re a poor loser), life is “the only game in town”. “It’s like a lottery,” Don observed as we were sitting at a blackjack table in the local casino at four o’clock one morning. “As long as you don’t put all your chips on black,” I chipped in. “My favourite colour,” he replied.

Lotteries aside, Trumpton is a mind-expanding case study in 21st century community relations. It provides an invaluable lesson in how community leaders like Don can provide strength and cohesion in the midst of all forms of wayward behaviour. “My light’s always on for people,” Don observes philosophically. “Anyone needs stuff, day or night, I’m the man.”

Don is the perfect example of a new breed of community worker that resists the conventional labels and categories that still define so much of our local government. Don’s not a regular “nine to five” man. Sometimes, he admits, he doesn’t get up at all. Is that so wrong? Don is a role model for his community, not because he’s bursting with qualifications, but precisely because his CV is adaptable. In fact Don admits he’s never had a CV, but that if he ever needed to he could always get hold of one. Exactly!

Designing Urban Futures Facilitation Foundation (DUFFF)

We need more “Dons” in our society. Right now Britain is crying out for them. And spending the last few weeks knocking back the brain juice in the vicinity of Don’s local turf has convinced me that his involvement in the Designing Urban Futures Facilitation Foundation (or “DUFFF” for short) would provide this new and exciting project with a real shot in the arm. So welcome aboard, “Don”!

What is DUFFF? Allow me to quote what Wan Tripp, Executive Facilitation Coordinator and Chief Communications Strategy and Policy Design Director of DUFFF, said during a press conference only last week:

“DUFFF is all about expanding the regenerative potential of participative networks, not just in the macro-sense of community expansion, but also at the micro level. This is all about facilitating the non-linear and geno-thetic-synbadd potential which links the local to the global through SPANER, and through viable intra-communication strategies, succeeds in actualizing the community’s FLOPP.”

Clearly this is a bold statement that we would do well to understand. But basically what I think Wan was crapping on about was that for far too long local communities have been held back by a mixture of overregulation and fuzzy thinking. This hasn’t just affected the people often unfortunate enough to live in them; it’s also stymied the possibilities for creatively minded individuals to prize themselves away from these urban wastelands. “Would the last person to leave Trumpton please switch off the light?” If only it were possible.

DUFFF is committed to the design of future communities. The Foundation – which includes an advisory panel comprising many of our country’s top brains (plus “Don”) – already presides over a significant financial war chest for “participative expansion and design coordination in intra-communicational mind policy regeneration software initiatives”. That’s food for thought. And over the coming months we hope to invest money in areas ranging broadly across architecture, design, needlework, ethnic pole-vaulting, flower synergy, dehydration and cigar research.

So where does DUFFF go from here?

DUFFF works in close partnership with the Right Path Party. Together we want to expand minds and regenerate windows of opportunity at the summit of creative thinking. We would like to hear from key stakeholders and community partners today – and particularly if you’re an experienced team builder, facilitator, regenerative designer, architect or 3D graphic illustrator, mind expansion software innovator, virtual geographer, ethnic pole-vault instructor, environmental activist… or just plain “Don”.

Contact us here today.

To find out more about DUFFF click on this site's links to The Right Path Party.

(Originally published 2 July 2007)

What I'm Up Against - selected press cuttings

After The Moon, our one-of-a-kind tabloid experiment, it seemed that the rest of the rest of Fleet Street, and particularly the Murdoch press, had an agenda against me. Hack after hack dogged my missions to the Balkans and elsewhere with libellous conjecture. At least the Standard finally let me say what needed to be said about the clash of civilisations, and as the last scan shows sometimes there was more mileage in going local, getting the Right Path message out there to hearts and minds. My autobiography Lines Crossed always flies out the bookshops of places like Chiselhurst.

(Click on the images for a larger view)

Park Life

I’m always willing to stock up on brain juice in order to better process the stakeholder experiences of people and communities. So in the interests of a thorough political consultation, this week I’ve been living in a tent in Victoria Park in the east London borough of Hackney, one of the most deprived boroughs in the whole of Europe.

Actually my political consultant has been on at me for ages: “Get out and live like London’s homeless,” he says. “You can’t understand how they feel unless you catch pneumonia and get hooked on smack.” Monsieur C. Whole may be a bit outré at times (calls himself a “yogi”), but his intuition and mind-expanding methods have been helping me to redefine my presentational style recently through a series of carefully-coordinated seminars which, incidentally, I would particularly recommend to landscape gardeners. Actually when I say “carefully-coordinated” that’s not strictly true, since Mr. C. doesn’t believe in clocks and is into “random ideas generation”. Not surprisingly this is helping me to rethink, not just the meaning of time, but of patience.

Anyway, more on that next week. For now, here’s my log of the week’s consultation with the grassroots.

Day 1 The day starts well with a filmed jog around the park track – I don’t set my usual blistering pace as it’s crucial at a time of shocking air pollution (my daughter suffers from gruff ingested glob-hoop) to promote the virtues of Alternative Transport. However, the day hits a sour point when Hackney Council representatives order me to pack up my tent and leave on the spurious grounds that I hadn’t sought the proper permission to pitch. “So it’s alright for the drunks and homeless to make the place their own?” I protest. I don’t like getting boisterous with public officials, but these are the appalling double standards running through the public sector that so annoy me. I end the day with yoga and meditation.

Day 2 High time I start what I set out to do here – talk to the outdoorsfolk about the stakeholder experience of park life. What are the big issues for park dwellers? One chap called "Racket" (at least that's what I heard) confides in me that his problems would be solved at a stroke if the park could grow a "money tree". I'm not sure the technology's quite there yet, Racket! People are happy to talk and appear enormously receptive to my ideas. Cynthia’s “primal soundings booth” (an ingenious Tardis-contraption conceived by a pre-Socratic mannerist artist and friend of my wife, who goes by the name of “13H7FD&W790” – check him out!) hints at a 95% approval rating for my policy of practical recycling classes for remedial schoolchildren. That’s the kind of wavelength the electorate and I are on in 2007.

However, one guy did take exception to my brainwave (too much brain juice today!) that the terminally obese could be found work flattening polyethylene terephthalate bottles by sitting on them. If people only knew how much carbon waste our plastics industry spurts into the atmosphere then they might opt for tap water. Still I took the guy’s details as this sort of open dialogue is crucial.

Day 3 Hackney Council come back with a gaggle of local hacks, saying I can carry on the experiment if my tactical mobile unit, housing a generator for the computer, portable kitchen appliances and electric shower, is taken off-site. Alright! Let’s downsize. Now I really am getting back to nature.

Day 4 Now I know how a homeless person feels. Tin opener snaps, sealing off the foie gras to feral enjoyment. Water supplies run thin, so I resort to drinking my own urine. Actually tastes very good, and makes me wonder why more homeless people don’t try it. Not mine, of course – theirs. Although naturally I’m open to offers. Finally start dozing off around midnight with visions of Doctor Who running through my head. Figure I must be dehydrated then realise it's some addict trying to make off with Cynthia's Tardis. I bluff him away in a funny Cyberman voice demanding he returns my spaceship. Now who's got the visions?

Day 5 Communications crisis. Wireless connection goes (don’t tell me a now-fashionable park in E9 isn’t a hotspot!), and then the battery on both the laptop and the mobile phone. Wander into Mare Street looking for solutions but find the patchwork of enterprises most unforgiving and the dialects too varied for my smattering of Urdu (I can order a Bombay duck but that’s about it). Luckily, I catch Rupert rocking up with a folder full of press releases and other material, so I start plugging myself back into the matrix. That’s how things can go out here, some days you just have to mark down as bad fortune.

Day 6 Wake up early to rummage through the bins as I know the others would get there before me given half a chance. Start devouring the remains of a can of White Lightning and a shish kebab before remembering that my stay with the down and outs, crack-drunks and general down-on-their-lucks is reaching natural closure. I quit the experiment, taking the chopper back to Bounce, their insights and opinions my companion. They have far too much pride and dignity to expect me to cart them off in the boot, but what I can promise them in the months to come is some concrete action and help from people who care, as I begin the process of engaging and facilitating engagement from an influential group of contemporary artists.

Let’s start thinking outside the box.

(Orginally published 21 June 2007)

Film, Et Cetera

***** The UK film premiere of The McClintock Factor will take place from 8pm on Thursday 17 May 2007 at Corsica Studios, Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB. Admission free. Click here for directions.*****

Legal Statement

***** The following statement has been prepared by Jeremy’s solicitor, Fletcher Burkhoff, of Burkhoff, Spatt and Swift Solicitors.

Following several allegations relating to incidents reported in The Sun and The Times newspapers on 12 and 13 April 2007 respectively, my client, Jeremy McClintock, would like to make the following clarifications:

1. The statement appearing in The Sun on 12 April that Mr. McClintock “likes to fondle monkeys” is categorically false. Mr. McClintock has a distinguished background in animal conservation work and is a proud supporter of monkey rights, particularly the rights of homosexual monkeys. He rejects outright The Sun’s insinuation that he has ever either touched, stroked or looked at a monkey in an inappropriate manner.

2. The Sun (12 April 2007) alleges that Mr. McClintock attended a charity auction on 13 February 2007, at the Bull’s Head Hotel, Chislehurst, where he “auctioned off several monkeys for charity”. This is categorically false. Mr. McClintock did not auction off a monkey and, furthermore, would only ever consider doing so if it were in the monkey’s best interests.

3. Mr. McClintock rejects categorically any insinuation that his charity work in the homosexual monkey arena is a cynical attempt to gain publicity for his own political organisation, The Right Path Party. Although The Sun newspaper is correct in its assertion that The Right Path Party was joint-sponsor of the aforementioned charity event, the allegation that two thousand helium-filled Right Path Party balloons were released during the auction is misleading, since the balloons were in actual fact released 30 minutes AFTER the auction had finished.

4. The allegation made by The Sun, and reprinted on 13 April 2007 in a separate article appearing in The Times, that an unfortunate incident in which a chimpanzee named Bonzo Doo-Dah quite inadvertently became attached to a Right Path Party balloon and ended up on the roof of the Bull’s Head Hotel is a malicious perversion of the facts. Furthermore, the allegation that this event was stage-managed for political purposes – since the local Fire Brigade were allegedly telephoned an hour before it happened in order “not to keep the photographers waiting” – is categorically false.

5. Finally, Mr. McClintock would like to make it known that he regards monkeys as intelligent creatures that are still evolving, which thereby explains the increasing numbers of homosexual monkeys who are coming out of their cages. Whatever the rights and wrongs of homosexuality, the monkeys can't help it.

END OF STATEMENT. *****

BP Man Comes Out Of His Shell

I've never discriminated against homosexuals, whether they be animals OR humans. They might be perverse little critters (I like to stay open-minded) but regular visitors to my blog will know that I recently paid tribute to John Inman - need I say more? However, when the news broke last week (like a priceless Mong vase) that BP CEO Lord Browne had resigned over lying in court about his homosexual affairs, I couldn't help laughing out loud, "You silly old ring fencer!" It’ll take a long while for the oil and gas firm to promote a man of the same calibre to its ranks, and all because he went weak at the knees for the odd escort (the silly old poof should never have got out of his Rolls!).

Funnily enough our paths crossed occasionally. Browne and his firm used to be one of my wife Sophie’s clients at her old PR agency, and we even ended up on the same Mediterranean cruise to Beirut once. We both loved the Paris of the East for different reasons, Browne for its shady nightlife and me for its newsworthy political mire and ethno-religious tension. There we were one evening, hobnobbing on the poop deck of The Tolerant Arab over a plate of raw pork, when all of a sudden the Israel Defence Force blew a large hole in our starboard side, resulting in a pianist falling overboard - an inconvenience which resulted in Browney and I having to fill in with an impromptu medley of Charles Aznavour and Inglebert Humperdink, him on bass, me on baritone. "Strangers in the Night", indeed.

After we docked I didn't see him for a day and a half. I put it down to his heavy work schedule. This guy was the top banana when it came to managing big oil contracts. He understood that only Western companies have the necessary nous to pump the Arabs' black gold. Browney cared passionately about exploiting those all important oil reserves till the wells ran dry, and knew how to get the stuff out of the Arab Straits to where it was needed most as fast as possible, without causing a war or provoking the likes of that dodgy old pirate Saddam.

The next day he did surface eventually, somewhat worse for wear, carrying a briefcase and sporting a purple sarong. One can only speculate about what was in the briefcase, but looking back now there was little doubt that the time he'd spent in the local bazaars hadn't been devoted to sober business lunches. In business as in life, man is a ruthless species that hunts down the object of his desire with an unrivalled passion; man cannot escape his passions. However, man would be best advised to confine those passions to secluded areas of the New Forest, rather than the seedy pimp dens of Beirut, in order to avoid the long lenses and nosey hacks from The Mail on Sunday.

For the guttersnipes on Grub Street the monicker “Lord Browne” now offers muck-raking innuendo - but don’t expect that angle from a writer of integrity like yours truly. This head honcho is in a field of one when it comes to hydrocarbons, and that’s a serious business whoever’s mincing about with the bottom line.

(Originally published 7 May 2007)

This Is My Life

***** The UK film premiere of The McClintock Factor will take place from 8pm on Thursday 17 May 2007 at Corsica Studios, Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB. Click here for directions. Please note that space is limited, so in order to reserve a seat email here and you will be added to our guest list. However, rest assured that if you turn up on the night we won't be turning you away. Admission free. *****

Two years ago an independent film production company eager to get the “low down” on my good self approached me for an interview. “We want to find out what makes McClintock tick,” the smart arses quipped. I told them that, whatever it was, it sure as hell wouldn’t be blowing up in my face, and politely – but firmly – declined.

At the time I needed a film crew sniffing through my recycling and composting bins like a hole in the head. However, it wasn’t long before I started having second thoughts. I’d been so busy covering other people’s lives for so long that I’d forgotten about the importance of my own. In September 2005, following a chance meeting with Michael Winner, I decided it was about time to give the public a taste of Big Mack. “For Lord’s sake don’t do it,” warned Mike. “You’ll be humiliated.” Coming from a man with a unique talent for humiliating himself on the big and small screens, that struck me as a bit rich. Undaunted, I got back in touch with the independent film-makers and agreed to appear in front of their cameras.

It wasn’t long before a one-off interview had become a series of weekly sparring sessions, with wily documentary filmmaker Malcolm Devereux seemingly camping day and night somewhere in the vicinity of my land. Admittedly I was standoffish at first – so much so that in the early days his preferred journalistic technique would consist of running alongside my Bentley waving a microphone as I backed out the garage, while mine would consist of discretely trying to run the annoying bastard over. However, as the months passed my suspicions eased, and I gradually came to regard Malcolm as one would an endearing gypsy squatter residing at the bottom of the garden (luckily our garden comprises several hectares of private property).

I sometimes think of my life as a game of cricket. As well as knocking seven bells out of the opposition, above all it’s about giving the spectators a good show; a show of grace under pressure that would have made W.G. proud. By all means subject the opposition to all manner of ruthless gamesmanship if you must (think “Bodyline”); but always do it in a way that fosters the illusion that one day they can compete with you on an even playing field.

This is the moral lesson that runs through every fibre of my being and will continue to inform my thinking until a better offer comes along: from charity to politics (which is just another form of charity in my book); from polo to shooting; from yachting to futures trading (which I sometimes combine with yachting), life is all about good works. Which brings me neatly onto the subject of my film.

London Premiere: Thursday 17 May 2007

I’ll be honest: I didn’t want to cede control to Malcolm and his colleagues at Films Noirs. I work in the media and am wary of the sort of "low down" tactics that the less scrupulous operators in my field can sometimes employ. As fascinating as my life undoubtedly is to other people, when you’re living the dream the magic does not always transfer to the TV format.

Nonetheless, The McClintock Factor is, I have no doubt, a televisual masterpiece. It may even scoop up a few awards - providing its producers have managed to keep the gossip and intrigue that currently surrounds my private life in some sort of perspective (and relevant parties please note here that nasty little surprises will be dealt with decisively by my “SWAT” legal team, who will be commandeering a large swathe of a West End hotel, ready to serve writs and injunctions on anyone who ever even thought of pointing a camera in my general direction).

I look forward to seeing you all at the premiere. Expect special guests. Evening wear is optional but attendance essential for RPP members.

(originally published 23 April 2007)

Words On The Street

Last week the Right Path Party debriefed its party political foot soldiers in the wake of its highly successful “Canvassing In Kilts” exercise, which took place in New Cross, South East London on Monday 26 March.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who turned out to help the party in its election push – plus a special thank you to the three young Bangladeshi men who assisted me in another kind of push. Namely, pushing my “Popemobile” around that vast council estate when the battery gave up the ghost. There was a moment when you were visibly flagging there, but no sooner did we discover that you’d been pushing me around for three hours with the handbrake on, than it was all plain sailing.

I’ve just got the evening’s stats back from our party bean counters, and they make for very encouraging reading:

Total number of households canvassed: 2030

Confirmed RPP voters: 456

That would give the RPP a 22.5% share of the vote.

Of course, the Right Path Party is a local party devoted to local issues first and foremost, and no one is pretending that such a figure could be achieved nationally. Nevertheless, it’s a nice little acorn from which a big oak tree can grow.

Communication Breakdown

As for the residents of South East London, they seemed a tad reticent. Trying to get one to express some political views was like trying to get Keith Harris to ditch the duck (only joshing, Orville!). At one point discussions dried up to such an extent that we had to get Gary, our resident leaflet shifter, to draw caricatures of the main party leaders, myself included, whereupon the voter would be asked to point – and in several cases spit! – at the one they preferred.

Needless to say this lacks true objectivity and provides a poor overall impression of local issues. Crime? The Environment? Unemployment? Trident? What was it, I wondered, that most affects these people’s lives? Then it suddenly struck me. In fact, the answer had been staring me in the face all night. In a word: Communication.

Or rather a distinct lack of it. On the evidence of my first grassroots consultation for a full year, the main political issue of our day is obvious. People in Britain’s inner-city communities are a multi-cultural hotchpotch of dialects: from Lithuanians to Jamaicans, Vietnamese to Angolans, these ethnic groupings are more diverse than the milk bar clientele in Star Wars (where Han Solo vaporises the green alien – there’s someone we need running the Met!). We Brits cherish such diversity, it’s what makes our minorities so endearing. But, dear me! how it makes communicating with them so excruciating.

If you ever get lost driving around New Cross don’t stop to ask someone the way, just switch on the GPS instead. I’m embarrassed to say this but frankly someone has to: these people need to go back to school. Otherwise there will come a time in the not too distant future when the cultural and commercial development of this country hits the buffers. And I predict significant social breakdown when it does. The lower classes may not mind descending further into a morass of incoherent gossip and waffle – as long as they can keep texting their mates and rapping Afro-Caribbean gibberish – but I personally do. It’s time someone arrested this underdevelopment.

Express Yourselves

This spring the Right Path Party will officially unveil its “I Can’t Get No Literacy” campaign aimed at reversing our national communication crisis. The campaign is set to comprise a smorgasbord of seminars and personal tuition from the basic to the advanced. There will also be regular one-off cultural events for the faint-hearted, half-hearted and positively curious amongst you, for whom the mere mention of the word communication makes you feel like an illiterate loser. That need not be the case, and the Right Path Party has teamed up with several highly experienced communication specialists committed to ensuring it isn’t.

To find out more visit the Right Path Party today.

(Originally published 10 April 2007)