The Weekly Distillation No.30
Coronavirus; Farming; Cities; Babies; Plant Meat; Hair Washing; Inflation; Long Covid; RTDs
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
This newsletter is written for entrepreneurial organisational leaders and aims to help map current events to longer term themes of our context and provide questions, tips and tools that can help in navigating these times.
"By the middle of February, we expect half a million deaths in this country" Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the incoming director of the US Centers For Disease Control and Prevention
"I have no ill will to Neil Lennon whatsoever, but I think his comments in this respect have been absolutely appalling." - John Swinney, Deputy First Minister of Scotland
"That's his opinion. That's the end of it." - Neil Lennon, Manager Celtic FC
"It's not more deadly but it is much more contagious and the numbers are very great." - UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson
"The crisis is real... but we reject chaos and will confront that with the power of the law." Tunisian Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi on recent youth riots
“With a new medium, it starts with euphoria and then goes to hysteria and then hopefully you get some kind of balance. It happened with the radio. This happened with TV. There was a huge amount of skepticism about reading Plato because he was writing and no one could argue versus yelling into a public square” - Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram
“I believe this genocide is on-going, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state” - US ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Coronavirus
Welcome to the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century Anno Domini. It might feel like the 21st month of Covid-19/20/21 but it’s not even been that long yet. I was perturbed this week to see on Amazon Prime the movie Songbird - def not putting that on the playlist. Way too early to be making movies like this.
In one of the more intriguing developments of Covid, the US State Department put out a “fact” sheet on 19th Jan that admitted they were not sure if Covid was a naturally occurring virus or whether it had been engineered purposefully by the Chinese and released by accident. The new administration buried this into the archives - it’s worth a read.
“The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”
What do you need to know on Covid you don’t already know?
What will it be like to live when Covid is defeated but still sticks around?
Living with long-covid for your job, or even for at least ten months…
I’ve been reflecting on lockdowns, restrictions and enforcement. In my city of Edinburgh, a 20mph maximum speed limit was introduced on most streets. However, shortly before it went live the police stated that they would not be enforcing the law. Unsurprisingly, the average speed hardly reduced at all. It raised two questions in my mind - 1) why make a law if you are not going to enforce it, can’t it just be guidance and we have less laws and 2) aren’t the police here supposed to implement what they are told to implement?
So when I see in America that inter-state travel will require a mask, I have to ask about how realistic it will be to enforce that. And if it won’t be enforced, why bother making it mandatory? It’s now law in Scotland that I can’t meet more than 1 person outside at a time. Is it enforced? Now police in England are saying they won’t enforce masks in supermarkets.
We’re into week 2 of homeschooling now and it has been fascinating to see every school make its own decisions on how many calls to make daily, how much material to provide and how much live teaching is done. We have a national education system - a simple outcome could have been to standardise the digital learning approaches. I really really don’t get why you have to log on to Teams to get all your materials and then print them off, complete them and then scan them back in - in this day and age this could be a 100% digital experience. It demonstrates the lack of innovative thinking in schooling here currently. You know your children’s eyes are getting killed from all the screentime, right? Re-opening schools is not a simple call and here’s why.
Is your back hurting? Standing desk time. I’ve done zoom calls this week from bed, from an exercise bike, whilst walking, standing using a piano stool situated on top of a desk for my laptop, at a kitchen counter and from an armchair. These are the things you do when your back hurts.
We’ll come back to vaccine passports and whether they are fair in a democratic society another day. Expect this to be big news this year. I have mixed views.
It appears lockdown may be working again, although swab tests raise questions. As I’ve said before, lockdown only works like a fire blanket - if you leave it on, great, but if you take it off quickly then all you have achieved is a temporary submission. However, there is a growing resentment at rolling legal lockdowns and there has to be a question as to whether even the reserved British will stick with this until May, a timeline that was alluded to today by the Prime Minister.
Will we have enough food & water in future?
Photo by Paul Kapischka on Unsplash
Why isn’t there a McVegan burger yet? Great question although not one I have ever asked on my route to McDonalds.
Plant-based meat is seeing prices falling, bringing it into a price bracket of being competitive with many premium meat-meats. With economies of scale and growing consumer demand, this trend should continue.
In other news, major food manufacturer Unilever is going to force its suppliers to pay their employees the living wage. This is great - but as long as Unilever also recognises that this increases costs to its suppliers and it needs to take its share of responsibility for bearing that cost burden. Oh, and they gave themselves 9 years to make the change….
On the drinks front, RTDs, or ready to drink, remain one of the fastest growing drinks categories in the world. We can’t even be bothered to mix our own drinks anymore.
We are in an asset inflation bubble
Putin’s alleged $1.2bn palace
I’ve been reading Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth on Modern Monetary Theory this past week and with every chapter I am hoping she is wrong, as it uproots everything I learned in economics classes. It’s pretty compelling so far. Inflation expectations are rising but actual CPI remains low, as does wage inflation.
But in assets it’s another story - in London the average house price just hit £500k ($687k), Bitcoin hit $26k (down $3k from the peak but still up 20% this year), the Dow hit 31,000 and even the FTSE (the unloved market of 2020) is up 5% ytd.
House prices are rising everywhere. It’s not just tax holidays and tech workers fleeing the Valley to work remotely, it’s the side effect of Quantitative Easing and pumping $9 trillion more into the global economy. A further $1.9 trillion from the US is only going to send that one way.
Technology and the Future of Work
Photo by Miłosz Klinowski on Unsplash
Cybercrime is a thing - AI can help us defeat it. CCTV in Mexico is very prevalent - but hasn’t done much to stop crime.
What happens when the social media companies and tech companies decide who they will allow and not allow on their platforms? Is there a case for separating the app (the client) and the underlying infrastructure technology (the protocol)?
And what is Government’s interest in controlling our tech?
A really interesting story of whether tech has destroyed society and who won the 25 year bet.
Amazon is buying 11 Boeing 767 planes.
Our Health & Wellbeing
Photo by Colin Maynard on Unsplash
You can rent a guy who will do nothing, just come and be present. What does this say about the state of our friendships and families?
How to keep your mind healthy and beat your daughter at chess
PwC think there will be less babies born in 2021 than in any year since records began. This is a pretty typical experience in a moment of crisis. London’s population will shrink for the first time this century.
We will however have better work-life balance.
Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia announced that Neom is building a new city, 150 miles long where you can carry out your daily life within 5 minutes walk of where you live, and travel end to end in 20 minutes.
The Long Read for the Weekend
Photo by Tomas Hertogh on Unsplash
As the US re-enters the world of multi-national institutions and asks to be let back into the Paris climate agreement, there is no doubt that climate change will be one of the big stories of the year. We often talk about who loses out of climate change, but who wins? In Scotland we have spare land, endless coasts and winds and seas for renewables, plenty of water, a moderate climate that could warm up without too much damage and we would welcome the inevitable migration that will come from Africa and South East Asia, given our demographics reflecting a population that is ageing rapidly and a birth rate that is too low.
For Russia, the warming temperatures are transforming large parts of the country that could not be farmed into massive agricultural heartlands and may make Russia one of the world’s largest exporters of food.
The Other Weekly Distillation
The trend that many drinks companies are excited about is RTDs, or Ready to Drink. Within that, the fastest growing major product in the US, and now present in the UK, has been White Claw. It’s a “hard seltzer”, effectively sparkling water with alcohol (exactly as it says on the tin). At 4.5% ABV and low cals and gluten free, it’s bound to be popular here too.
It's like nothing you’ve tasted before. - White Claw
Available in supermarkets and via Amazon, it’s on my shopping list. A good one for dry January?