黑洞社区

Meeting triumph and disaster 

As today is Brexit day, we kick off with the musings of European Research Group ultra Steve Baker. The Tory MP and former RAF engineer told a Westminster policy forum on infrastructure that he now expects the Conservatives to be in power for a decade. 鈥淲e will have no excuses at the end,鈥� he warned. 鈥淲e will own all the successes and all the failures.鈥� Noble stuff and bringing to mind Churchill鈥檚 dictum that 鈥渟uccess is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm鈥�. Baker has a new cause, too. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all environmentalists now.鈥� Still, I can鈥檛 see him signing up to join that well-known terrorist group Extinction Rebellion just yet.

The one and only

Baker told guests at Glaziers Hall that, when the Tories were in the coalition government, spending decisions were run through something called the Quad: prime minister David Cameron, his deputy Nick Clegg, chancellor George Osborne and chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander. 鈥淚f it hadn鈥檛 been through the Quad, then it didn鈥檛 happen,鈥� he recalls. All four are long gone and the Quad seems to have been renamed Cummings. 

Another fine mess

The deadline for filing self-assessment tax returns is today and those silly chumps who miss it face a daily fine of 拢100. According to my friends at HMRC, people have come up with some pretty outlandish reasons for not getting the paperwork delivered on time. My favourites include one chap who claimed his mother-in-law put a curse on him, another who said he was sailing his yacht and couldn鈥檛 access his post while at sea, or the bod up a Welsh mountain with no internet access. Can I also suggest leaving the EU? Brussels has been blamed for all sorts, after all.

The slow-speed line

Ad man Rory Sutherland took aim at engineers for being far too rational in promoting the benefits of HS2. The vice-chair of branding giant Ogilvy rubbished reduced journey times as a reason for stumping up 拢106bn for the high-speed line, in the process managing to bemuse British Council for Offices members at their annual dinner at the Grosvenor House hotel last week. 鈥淭hings go faster but aren鈥檛 any better,鈥� he told guests. He presented a powerful case for those who prefer their journeys slow. 鈥淎nybody who travels on trains knows that it鈥檚 the most productive part of your week. It鈥檚 like being in the office, only people don鈥檛 ask you questions.鈥� I wonder if Boris Johnson is of the same view?

Telling it like it isn鈥檛

Guests also enjoyed Sutherland鈥檚 musings on the power of advertising to shift perceptions. Successful brands make a weakness a strength, he said. He bypassed the chance to say technology firm Sonos鈥� decision 鈥� later reversed after a backlash 鈥� to force customers to shell out hundreds of pounds replacing working speakers because it won鈥檛 be issuing software updates for older devices was a masterstroke. So he picked on Shoreditch, my manor in east London, instead. 鈥淵ou rebrand a shithole as edgy, and essentially you鈥檙e off to the races.鈥� No idea what he means. My soya skinny latte is not a penny over a fiver.

Hands-on techie solutions

黑洞社区 is naturally in the highest鈥憈ech of offices 鈥� this is Shoreditch, after all. But I can never operate the stuff so I was delighted to hear that one employee at a rather large firm managed to trick a colleague into believing that the smart screens in their meeting rooms were activated by clapping your hands twice when in fact they just come on automatically a couple of seconds after you plug your laptop in. To which I say this: I knew that and was just playing along.