Aquascutum: shielding a brand from financial storms

Aquascutum scarf, showing its club check
Image via Wikipedia

Aquascutum, venerable maker of stylish raincoats for over 150 years, is in administration. As this is the second time in almost as many years that it is in stormy financial waters, it may be said that they are better at shielding you from water than they are at protecting themselves. At time of typing, YGM, the Hong Kong based owners of Aquascutum’s Asian rights are exploring the possibility of buying the entire brand.

Sadly, one suspects this may result in downward pressure on quality in order to restore margins, and a general exploitation of the brand. As an owner of Aquascutum raincoats and overcoats, I would personally regret such an outcome. But are there any other possibilities? And why has Aquascutum been unable to be profitable?

The latter issue is fairly easy to understand. Aquascutum has always been an mid-to-upper market player, heavily focused on the rainwear segment. That is the model that kept in business for so many decades but it is no longer sustainable for two very simple reasons; fewer men wear raincoats regularly and the middle-market in general has been squeezed in favour of a polarisation of sales towards either niche high-end luxury brands or bargain basement low-cost retailers. This reflects the current development path of our societies in general. Aquascutum has been stuck in a no-man’s land.

It has tried various strategies to escape this trap, but they have been highly contradictory and poorly followed through. For instance, it spent a lot of money developing non-rainwear lines, but never marketed them aggressively. And it attempted to position itself as a luxury brand while having more discount outlets in its portfolio than it has proper shops, not to mention the less-than-stellar concessions it has in too many middling department stores.

It has never been able to decide what it really wants to be, diluting the brand’s identify in the eyes of consumers across the world.

A rescue strategy will have to make some fundamental decisions: do they want to take Aquascutum upmarket? Or do they want to make it a mass market brand?

In my opinion, it would find life as a mass market brand impossible. Theoretically, production could be aggressively offshored, more lines added and an attempt made to milk any latent value in the brand to the general consumer by having a small halo line of top quality products above a large range of far less impressive merchandise. This is the Burberry school of brand development. It has worked for them (more or less), but it is expensive and risky, especially with Burberry already a large presence in the same marketplace. I fear Aquascutum has simply left it too late to compete with them in this arena.

It would be better served by shrinking and focusing on a pure luxury identity. Keep production in England, focus on rainwear/outerwear/related items, drastically reduce the number of discount outlets & department store concessions, and ensure the one or two full retail locations that remain exude quality, brand pedigree and personalised service. Turnover would be a lot lower, but margins could be restored and the brand might have a fighting chance. Aquascutum now needs to be aspirational luxury to survive.

Are there any other options? Has Aquascutum simply left it too late? And is there life left in the middle class, mid-market segment generally?

Psychology of Clothes Case Study: Royal Wedding

The happy couple driving off, photo courtesy The Telegraph

Congratulations to the happy royal couple!

Everyone loves a pageant and today’s ceremonies certainly fall into that category. Even a hardened cynic can’t help but smile at the spectacle and extravagance of the day.

Now it’s time for the task of figuring out not what they wore – there are a million other sites for that, including The Telegraph – but why they wore it.

In truth, despite it making poor copy, I think almost everyone struck an appropriate and resolutely “on message” tone.

Carole Middleton, as mother of the bride, had perhaps the hardest job. Every considerate mother must appear calm and elegant while never appearing to be trying to upstage the bride. Her last-minute choice of a Catherine Walker dress was perfect for this purpose. Perhaps it is a trifle subtextually awkward that she was one of the late Diana’s favourite designers, but it nonetheless looked decidedly in tune with her role today. It is interesting to note she was initially meant to wear a different dress; I’m curious to know what aspects of that dress she disliked.

Pippa Middleton had to be pristine, yet unintimidating, as the maid-of-honour. Her deceptively simple white gown sent out all the right messages, with more than a whiff of vestal virgin about it. It lent her authority beyond her years, and a discreet sexuality, while still being superficially innocent.

Kate herself wore a Sarah Burton/Alexander McQueen wedding dress. In keeping with that house’s sense of humour, it was elegant with an underlying trace of cheekiness in using the lace and veil to evoke an almost nunnery image. Parallels with Grace Kelly and contrasts to Diana are already being drawn, but it was entirely in keeping with her intent to appear more relaxed than some previous royal brides, while still being traditional.

The men in ceremonial uniform generally looked correct, and most of those in morning dress were fine too. But men have fewer opportunities to send subversive messages on these sort of occasions, and to get it wrong. Most of the details are so prescribed that room for expression is limited. One might wonder why William chose that particular uniform to wear, from the range to which he is entitled, but I think that’s a fairly barren field to plough.

The only minor faux pas was David Beckham wearing his honour on the wrong lapel, which speaks more about the unexpectedly elevated position in the world he finds himself sometimes, than about any deliberate intent. There was some pre-wedding controversy as to whether Prime Minister David Cameron would wear a morning suit, although of course in the end he did. While it must have been tempting to send a calculated political message of “normality” by opting for a lounge suit, it would come across as both false and prideful (akin to Gordon Brown’s avoidance of formalwear at the annual Mansion House dinners). The morning suit was more in keeping with the occasion than a lounge suit would have been, although I feel compelled to note that the trousers could have been hemmed another inch and still offered a half-break. Perhaps that is his way of ceding to an everyman look, as those who’ve attended any wedding with the groom in a rented morning suit would attest… In any event, his wife Samantha also did her bit for appearing in touch with the High Street by wearing a (relatively) inexpensive Burberry dress and no hat. She still looked impressive.

Finally, leaving the main wedding party – and subtext – aside, I think my personal favourite outfit was Zara Phillips’ lovely silver dress. If I was feeling bitchy, I’d point out that Princess Eugenie chose an unfortunate silhouette, that Sally Bercow (the Speaker’s wife) showed too much flesh, and that Justine Thornton (Ed Miliband’s fiancee) looked totally out of her depth. But it’s a day of celebration, so I’ll stop there.

Although I do feel compelled to add, in Private Eye lookalike tradition, that Princess Beatrice has probably watched Conan the Barbarian a few too many times…

The Joy of Doing Nothing

I went for a drive today.

No reason. It was a sunny spring afternoon. I’d had a pleasant lunch after running some errands, read the paper and was heading home… and then found myself just going for a drive. I haven’t done that for ages. I’d forgotten how much fun it is simply driving down traffic-free backroads in the sunshine, past fields golden with rapeseed, through the little villages that are dotted across the Oxfordshire countryside, and doing nothing more taxing than listening to the radio.

I can’t say I had any great philosophical insights on my drive. If you want an discussion of the benefits of doing nothing, I’ve written about that before. But today was all about a refreshing tonic after being busy teaching yesterday.

And about whetting my appetite for the very different yet equally refreshing tonic that I’m sipping as I type.

Make sure that you find the time to enjoy doing nothing at some point today!

Not my photo; I just found it on the net. I was too busy doing nothing to take any!

The Destroyer of Worlds

Whether war, no-fly zone, or de facto rebel air wing,  allied military action continues in the skies over Libya.

In a fortuitous scheduling quirk, the BBC screened The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. This Powell & Pressburger 1943 classic is a movie I was certain I’d seen but in fact had not. The movie opens with a wartime chase culminating in the main character (named Candy, not Blimp) being thrown into a Turkish bath, before flashbacking to his younger self in 1902.

The immediate plot development is superficially that of a romantic comedy. There are one or two darker notes, but it is easy to shrug them off as reading more than intended into an innocuous scene. This is especially so for a modern viewer seeing the movie for the first time. Having the benefit an extra 68 years worth of movies, we assume ourselves to be more sophisticated than a wartime propaganda flick could possibly be.

The genius of the movie is that every nuance in the first third is entirely deliberate, as are other lines and scenes that appear to be amusing fluff. In hindsight, they become tragic foreshadowings of what happens to the world as the movie segues into the First World War. The darkness accumulates, and even an ostensibly happy post-war family scene where Candy talks about meeting his new wife has a looming bittersweet quality. Unlike his new family, who never cotton on to his mixed emotions, we are acutely aware of his deep sense of loss at never marrying his first love. This deftness of portrayal is a testament to Roger Livesey’s acting, on display throughout the movie.

Unusually for a propaganda film, two of the best speeches are given to a German character, played with conviction by Anton Walbrook. The thumbnail sketch of his family’s collapse in the interwar period is truly tragic, and all the more powerful for being delivered in an shockingly honest manner. And his later explanation to Candy of the war’s meaning lays out the realpolitik of why the principles Britain was fighting for were sacrificed to ensure victory.

The movie also lightly – but intelligently – touches on difficult areas such as the subjectivity of perception. Are the three women in different time periods played by Deborah Kerr really meant to be identical in appearance? I think not; Walbrook’s character almost says as much in a later scene. He married Candy’s true love, and does not really see her image in the portrait of the woman Candy married; Candy is absolutely convinced of their similarity, and they are both Kerr.

This clash between perception and reality is taken to its logical conclusion in the movie’s final scenes as it comes full-circle to the time-period of the opening scene. Candy reflects on his life; that “he has never changed”. But the viewer is acutely aware of a change in how we perceive him. From the reactionary, bumptious and foolish Colonel Blimp comic-strip archetype we assume him to be initially, we now understand the human qualities of the man, and the ideas and principles he embodies. As the movie’s title suggests, Blimp is now dead to us. Candy lives on.

The propaganda message of the film is thus remarkably nuanced for a wartime film, and perhaps partly explains why Churchill tried to prevent its release. In essence, it argues that Britain has to fight dirty to win WWII, and while that compromises its ideals and the very reason it fights, this is a less-worse fate than not fighting at all. It admits that the country is changing. But it also holds out a faint hope that while the essential humanity of people like Candy remains, the inhumane actions it as a nation takes during the War have a chance to be redeemed after. It argues that nations and armies behave differently – and less civilly – than people, but that while nations exist, war is necessary.

Despite preceding the Trinity nuclear tests by two years, it is both acceptance of – and remedy to – Robert Oppenheimer’s famous misquote of the Bhagavad Gita as he realised what Man had achieved: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”.

Libya is a far smaller conflict, but the movie’s resonance remains a sobering counterbalance to the fervid front pages.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is currently on Amazon.co.uk for just £3.93

Japan Earthquake: Consequences

Map of tsunami wave height; click for source

The twists and turns wrought by the Japan earthquake have gripped and troubled me. I am by nature, and to some extent profession, a contingency planner. When faced with a difficult situation, I tend to switch into a pattern-recognition and problem-solving mode, anticipating consequences in order to take advantage of them. The Japan earthquake is troubling because its medium and long term ramifications are very unsettling.

The facts are straightforward: the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that occured off the Sendai coast on 11th March was one of the most powerful ever recorded. It generated a massive and rapidly-arriving tsunami, leading to major loss of life and catastrophic damage. Several nuclear reactors at Fukushima are in danger of core containment breach, and at time of typing, there are reports of a minor containment breach at reactor 2. The Bank of Japan has pumped trillions of yen into the economy to prop it up during the crisis, and the emergency services and military appear to be doing the best they can under trying circumstances.

The consequences are much harder to define.

The loss of life is of course immensely tragic on personal, national and global levels. However, the calculating side of me is bound to point out that on that global scale (comparing it to previous natural disasters such as Haiti’s earthquake) it is not disproportionate.

Many tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of lives were undoubtedly saved by Japan’s affluence. Its wealth enabled adherence to strict building codes, making deaths from the earthquake itself relatively limited. This is a triumphant testament to technology and its careful widespread implementation.

The tsunami killed many more. It is much harder to prevent tsunami deaths. One would assume that Japan will respond by implementing more safety restrictions into its building code for coastal properties, such as mandating the orientation of buildings to permit the force of tsunami waves to pass through rather than destroy. These would be relatively straightforward regulations and I have little doubt Japan will respond well in this regard.

The economic consequences are more painful. Natural disasters are generally associated with an immediate GDP hit, followed by a rebound 6-18 months later as reconstruction kicks in. Under normal circumstances, Japan would follow this overall neutral pattern (as it did following Kobe’s earthquake). But Japan’s national debt is enormous at about 200% of GDP, and interest rates are already in the basement following decades of stagnation and the 2008 financial crisis. This limits economic room for manoeuvre and magnifies the impact of that short-term GDP hit, making it more likely to be prolonged. If Japan’s GDP is negatively affected for more than 6 months, it may trigger a global slowdown. Although it has been stagnating for 20 years, Japan is still the world’s 3rd biggest economy and a major recession would impact global demand chains.

This is particularly concerning for the UK, given that the success of the austerity programme being implemented by the coalition government is dependent on moderately strong private sector growth. Direct UK-Japan trade is in the order of about £10-20bn only, so although knock-on effects via the USA are harder to quantify, it’s possible that the fallout to the UK economy will be relatively contained. It’s simply too early to be sure about the impact on the UK beyond noting that several large insurers will bear major, but largely absorbable, losses.

Fallout of another nature is perhaps more troublesome in the long term. It’s highly unlikely that radiation from Japan will cause the UK any problems whatsoever. Even within Japan, the impact should hopefully be fairly limited, especially if the cores at Fukushima do not lose further containment. But the effect on our energy policy may be significant.

Elements of the Green movement have been swift to use the incident to buttress their more generalised anti-nuclear policies. While some environmentalists now support nuclear power as being cleaner than coal or oil, and therefore helpful in mitigating climate change, the majority still push very strongly against an expansion of fission plants. Public opinion has gradually been shifting back towards nuclear power in the decades since Chernobyl, but this progress is likely to be reversed in the emotional knee-jerk response to what we are seeing unfold in Japan. The longer it takes to control the cores, the worse that response is likely to be.

No method of power generation is risk and impact free, but nuclear is in many ways safer, cleaner and more cost-effective than other methods. It has some major drawbacks of course, not least that if all the lines of defense do collapse, then the consequence of a fully exposed core are very significant. Nuclear power stations are designed with significant depth of defense and I hope and pray that the depth is sufficient to allow the Fukushima cores to be brought under control. Newer designs of plant are more defended still (Fukushima is about 40 years old), with passive as well as active lines of retreat in case of emergency.

While it is absolutely right that nuclear plants should be designed with the precautionary principle uppermost in mind, I believe it is fundamentally wrong to construct an entire energy policy around such worst-case scenarios. Any energy policy has to be balanced not solely against the risk of incredibly unlikely catastrophe, but against the far more likely effects on the economy, and the need to securely keep the lights on.

Britain is a much more geologically stable country, and with newer reactor designs, I firmly believe that nuclear power is easily a safe enough option. It is also going to be necessary in order to maintain power grid stability in the face of our international obligations to mitigate climate change. Renewables alone simply cannot fill the gap in the short time we have. I hope there isn’t a knee-jerk response against nuclear fission’s planned expansion in this country.

Of course, a more lasting solution would be cost-effective large-scale nuclear fusion, and there is a very strong international effort to develop the technology required, which I touched upon in an earlier entry. That would be both cleaner and safer than fission.

National disasters can paradoxically bring out the best in people. All the reporting from Japan conveys images of an understandably shocked and frightened populace, but one attempting to work with authorities to rebuild their country. Having visited and worked there, I believe they will succeed.

Can’t get enough of that wonderful Duff

Whetted by Princess Ghislaine de Polignac’s recent obituary, I’m now reading the late Duff Cooper’s diaries. Ghislaine was just one of Cooper’s affairs during his time as British Ambassador to Paris, to the extent that he once found himself at a party simultaneously attended by three of his mistresses. He describes the event thus: “I was rather nervous. There was much jealousy in the air. Everyone was looking at everyone with suspicion. Like a ball in Balzac”.

An inveterate drinker, selfish womaniser and bon vivant, he was also intimately involved in many major political events between the outbreak of the First World War and the close of the Second. His lifestyle is such that the news of a sunny Spring day inspiring him to commission three new suits and dine at his club with a bottle of 1904 Pol Roger sits comfortably alongside the details of high diplomacy regarding a Treaty involving the Russians and Italians. His diary style is sharp, with flashes of dry humour. And while he has a strongly romantic and whimsical nature, it is clear that these episodes are never allowed to overwhelm him entirely.

Perhaps the very act of writing a diary helped him manage his conflicting nature. Putting down the thoughts of the day applies a filtering effect to conscious mind. We are forced to revisit our actions, justify them to ourselves, and decide if the outcomes met our ambitions. Duff Cooper’s strongly impulsive nature may have been tempered by the diary he kept so assiduously; a kind of mental laundry that allowed him to achieve balance and productivity.

Whatever motivation or benefits he found in keeping a diary, we are left with some golden lines of telegrammatic prose that serve to sketch a portrait of a charming and lively character. For example:

• of himself: “I make only one resolve for the coming year, i.e. to get rid of my reputation for drunkeness… the rumour is becoming a nuisance.”
• of an old flame: “she was the first unmarried woman – bar of course prostitutes – that I ever kissed.”
• of his future wife indulging in morphine: “I do hope she doesn’t become a morphineuse. It would spoil her looks.”
• of domestic staff: “my servant left me today to join the army. A mortal blow at my comfort. However Mother managed to procure me another.”
• of Prime Minister Asquith: “I thought him particularly unattractive… He is oblivious of young men, and lecherous of young women.”

Doubtless an amusing and enjoyable companion, he is perhaps not one that I would have wished to share too many confidences with. His diaries are ample testament to both these facts.

The Duff Cooper Diaries can be found on Amazon

Everyone loves a Royal Wedding

It seems keeping secrets is still possible in our modern world.

Until the news broke with an official statement at 10.30, no-one knew that Prince William was engaged to his long-term girlfriend Kate Middleton. That in itself is worth noting, given how frequently and easily official secrets leak out to the media.

It’s also striking just how welcome the news is to almost everyone. Let’s take a look at all the delighted vested interests:

The Royal Family – always in need of good PR, especially in recent years. They will be hoping that this results in some degree of stability to the future of the Monarchy, and there’s little doubt that William and Kate (sorry, Princess Catherine!) are a more attractive and personable couple to take centre stage in terms of the public image of the Royal Family than Charles and Camilla.

Politicians – Prime Minister David Cameron was apparently informed of the news by a surreptitiously-passed note in the middle of a Cabinet Meeting, and later made a public statement welcoming it as “a piece of unadulterated good news”. Given the necessary public spending cuts he’s having to make to reduce the deficit, and the general economic malaise despite a slow recovery, having something pleasant and fluffy like a Royal Wedding to talk about certainly helps. Politicians of all stripes enjoy a grand national event, as it gives them an opportunity to get wide media exposure with a minimum of controversy.

Businesses - It’s boom-time for the commemorative souvenier merchandising industry. There’s already the London Olympics in 2012 to gear up for, but with a Royal Wedding in 2011 too, we soon won’t be able to move for crested china cups and tea-towels. The betting industry will also be happy to have another grand event to take bets on, the Queen’s hat colour, the type of wedding dress, and more. Talking of the dress, you can rest assured that the bridal industry will be in a state of high hysteria from now until the wedding. They’ll be joined by the glossy magazine publishing industry in swooning over every new announced detail.

Republicans - those against the Monarchy will also be secretly happy about the wedding, as it will automatically give them a little bit more oxygen of publicity. Saying vaguely controversial things about the wedding and its cost will now garner more column inches.

Terrorists and protestors - those unhappy with the government, or the country itself, will be thrilled to have a new event to target. Expect stringent security around the Wedding itself, but any major terrorist event on (or around) the date of the Wedding will gain much airtime and may be much harder to stop given that resources will inevitably be pulled towards the gravity well of the Wedding itself.

The Media – lazy journalists and rolling news channels around the world will be rejoicing at the ready-made stories and headlines that will easily fill any blank space or airtime from now until next Summer. And the Wedding Day will doubtless have sky-high TV ratings. I’m sure Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress as well as other online news and discussion sites will be experiencing traffic spikes, and so page/ad views.

So, you see, everyone has a reason to be happy…

Rejoice, Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice!

Related Articles

• GUEST LIST: Will Obamas attend royal wedding? (politico.com)
• Royal wedding: David Cameron congratulates Prince William and Kate Middleton (telegraph.co.uk)
• Royal wedding: Kate Middleton’s relationship with the press (telegraph.co.uk)
• Royal Wedding Bells: Prince William, Kate Middleton to Wed (abcnews.go.com)
• Prince William, Kate Middleton ENGAGED: Royal Wedding Next Year (huffingtonpost.com)

Burma: The Orient, Democracy and Money

Image via Wikipedia

Aung San Suu Kyi is finally free after nearly two decades of intermittent house arrest.

The release of the pro-democracy, Oxford-educated, daughter of Burmese independence hero General Aung is of course to be cheered. Her long periods of house arrest by the Burmese military junta on a variety of trivial charges have been a travesty of natural justice. But will anything substantial change in Burma now that she is free?

Much depends on the terms of her release (she has historically always resisted any conditional release) and on whether any other political dissidents are also released. More fundamentally, the recent heavily-jerrymandered elections in Burma have resulted in a clear controlling interest by the junta’s representatives in the new government. But the situation will inevitably be more fluid now that Daw Suu is at relative liberty to speak out and rally popular opposition.

So why did the junta release her at all? Why not lock her up indefinitely? It’s hard to be certain, but some would cite a combination of increased confidence on their part now that the elections are out of the way, and perhaps wanting to maintain at least some degree of appearance of fairness in the eyes of their population, to make up for massacring thousands of Buddhist monks three years ago. Well maybe, but I rather suspect wider geo-political considerations.

After a lull of many decades Burma has once more found itself in a strategically vital location. It occupies a prime Indian Ocean location with the potential to act as a vital junction between Chinese and Indian trade routes. This is especially so when it comes to fossil fuels, as a recent Sino-Burmese pipeline deal shows, but has longer-term implications for other cargo movements too.

This all means Burma has the potential to become seriously rich by profiting from the vast and growing capital flows now emanating from its larger neighbours. The richer a country becomes the more likely it is that the money filters downwards, even if inequitably. Money has a strangely soothing effect on a population. Generally, it stops them arguing too much.

Countries are internally calmer if they’re richer, provided the population feels like they’ll get richer still in the future. This carminative effect of money is how China hopes to manage its own political transition; slowing down the pace of political change, managing it centrally, using money to mollify any middle-class dissent. The Burmese junta is probably hoping to pull off the same trick. By combining incoming capital flows with a set of sham elections designed to quell imminent dissent, the Burmese junta may be gambling that any opposition roused by Aung San Suu Kyi will be unable to steamroller over their regime too quickly and they can do well for themselves financially during any transitional process. I’m not convinced they’re right – popular movements often have an avalanche quality to them once a critical mass is reached – but it’s a gamble I can understand.

The idea that geographical location is crucial to a country’s economic and political prospects is not new, but gained popularity with the publication of books like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel over the last decade or so. For adherents of this theory, geographical location and technological level of development interact together in a feedback loop to determine which countries are likely to rise up in prominence and wealth and which are likely to fade.

A simplistic reading of the theory explains why the Roman Empire rose: the technology of the day was perfect for controlling an inland ocean like the Mediterranean, and a strong aggressive culture in a central location like Italywas ideally placed to exploit that technology. It also suggests a reason for countries like Spain, the Netherlands and England (and later the USA) with easy access to the Atlantic to later take over when seafaring technology permitted easy transatlantic crossings. Finally, it prophesies the rise of Pacific Rim and Indian Ocean nations, now that air travel has negated the logistical difficulties of traversing between those countries and the rest of the world.

This geographical explanation of history is ultimately an economic one: countries with the best competitive advantage at any given time to exploit free trade will do best. I would suggest that the beneficial side-effect is that eventually, an enriched middle-class will no longer just be satisfied with financial sops from a central governing authority, and will demand an increasing role in the running of a country.

Public spending cuts: bigger than you think

After all the hype and debate, today was finally George Osborne’s chance to stand up as Chancellor of the Exchequer and spell out how the UK intends to balance its books. £150 billion of borrowing every year, running at around 11% of GDP, was unsustainable and now the cuts have to be made.

I suspect he probably had mixed feelings as he stood up at the Dispatch Box to announce the detail. On one hand, no Chancellor of any party likes delivering bad news; it tends to result in lost votes, after all. And he must have felt frustrated to have been placed in this dire financial, and electorally unpopular, position immediately after the general election. It’s a very different position to the very benign macroeconomic landscape in 1997 when the reins of power last changed hands.

On the other hand, there’s nothing like being in control of the decision-making process, and the current environment does offer some rare opportunities as well as risks. The last 10+ years have seen ever-increasing public expenditure, with a corresponding enlargement of the public sector. To those who believe that the state should only do what the private sector cannot or will not, the massive and unsustainable budget deficit offers the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: rebalance the books, but also rebalance the role of the state.

It’s worth noting that the average cuts of 19% across the five-year Parliament are actually not that different – even a touch less – than the proposed 20% cuts hinted at by Labour back in March of this year, before they lost the General Election, despite the howls of protest from their benches today. The difference is not the headline figure, but the nature of the cuts and their presentation.

In this light, the Comprehensive Spending Review and today’s announcements may allow Osborne, and the coalition government the chance to alter the accepted paradigm of British political thinking, in a similar way to Attlee in the post-war period or Thatcher in the 1980s. It holds out the prospect of effecting not just an economic change, but a sociocultural one too.

The cuts are necessary to balance the books. But the method of cutting and its presentation is about rebranding the role of the state versus the role of the private sector. It is a bold attempt to redefine the social and cultural framework of the country. As President Sarkozy is finding out in France, whenever politicians attempt to alter cultural paradigms in this manner there is usually a significant backlash from entrenched vested interests in the status quo. If politicians are to succeed in their aims, they must acknowledge the resistance by consistently and clearly selling their message directly to the general public.

Politics is not all that different to advertising; those with the most effective and convincing message tend to gain market share. And the reward of gaining market share in this context is not just a few transient extra votes in one particular electoral cycle, but altering the terrain of the battleground for many cycles to come. The post-war Labour government created the welfare state, nationalised industries, and in doing so, set the terms of engagement for the next 30 years. Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, by taking on the unions and privatising industry, set the terms of engagement for the next 30 years. Tony Blair was forced to fight on her territory even while winning landslide Labour party victories in 1997 and 2001. Blair never fundamentally altered those terms of engagement during his time in office; he was too careful not to lose votes through risk-taking (with the sole exception of his military interventionism). Brown, being less attuned to the electorate’s sensitivities, may just have managed such a shift if he had won the 2010 election.

Instead, Osborne has the opportunity. It is a risky route to take; massive public unpopularity is almost guaranteed in the short-term, and if the budgetary medicine does not work to reverse the deficit by 2015, that unpopularity will be sustained, probably resulting in a change of government. But the potential reward is massive: restoring fiscal stability and a sustainable approach to government spending, and perhaps even more importantly, altering the basic sociopolitical cultural landscape for years to come.

Those on both sides of the political divide recognise this. Expect the fireworks from today’s announcements to last way beyond the 5th of November…

Incidental Knowledge

In the light of yesterday’s story about plans to permit the charging of higher fees for university tuition in England, it’s worth remembering that not all wisdom comes from formal tuition, and natural curiosity can serve us all well in the acquisition of knowledge. Financial expenditure can certainly help create structures that enhance learning opportunities and further research opportunities, but the real key to learning is having an open and curious mind.

It is perhaps ironic then, that my most recent bit of newly acquired knowledge came directly from money. Not so much by spending it, but rather by receiving a 50p coin in change when buying a latte and a sandwich for lunch. The 50p coin in question, an image of which is at the top of this article, is a 2005 commemorative issue, and certainly not rare (apparently 17.6 million are in general circulation) though this was the first time I’d noticed it in my change.

The obverse has the usual portrait of the Queen, but the reverse has the dictionary definitions of both “fifty” and “pence”, as written in Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755. The existence of the coin was fresh knowledge to me, but the definitions themselves was even more interesting. I’d never consciously thought about what part of speech numbers are, but as can be seen on the coin, they are actually adjectives rather than nouns in most situations. My cursory research into the matter suggests that when used in isolation, they may be nouns, but when they are used to describe a number of objects, they become adjectives.

This is all quite obvious when one thinks about it. But the point is, I hadn’t. And probably wouldn’t have without noticing the coin. So keep your eyes open to the world around you, and ask yourself questions. The country may have run out of money, but even what’s left can still be illuminating!

Related Articles

• Grand designs for 50p coin (bbc.co.uk)