The recent news that judges will now face mandatory retirement at 75 and not at 70 is welcome. Announcing the move, Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland QC MP said: ‘Our judges, magistrates and coroners are world-renowned for their excellence, expertise and independence. It is right we hold on to them and do not cut off careers unnecessarily.’
One can understand that the UK system has been designed to avoid the slightly morbid spectacle we’ve seen on a number of occasions with the Supreme Court in the US, whereby the world watches ghoulishly as Supreme Court justices, who really are at retirement age, cling to their seats, often until death deprives them of authority. But there have been mutterings for a long time that in this era of rising life expectancy, 70 is too young an age to leave the bench.
This middle ground is to be applauded – but with a President of the United States at the age of 78, it might be wondered whether mandatory retirement itself is outmoded. And it’s not just a problem in the judiciary. We have just been through a pandemic which rightly sought to preserve the lives of our elderly. Insodoing, we implicitly declared their value to us.
But we don’t take full advantage of their wisdom. Forced retirement remains a lively issue which has been litigated both at Oxbridge universities, and at the major accountancy firms. As we move forward into the next chapter – the pandemic mercifully in our rear-view mirror – let us not forget what the grey-haired have to teach and offer us. They deserve the dignity of work as much as anyone else.
As we emerge from this period of crisis, the nature of the political debate has subtly shifted. We’re no longer thinking about how to get through the next days and weeks, but about what we’ve learned during this time of trial.
The Covid-19 pandemic has yielded a thousand stories – from the heart-breaking tales of businesses gone to the wall, to the extraordinary heroism of Captain Tom Moore, all the way to the resilience of the tech sector which has shown us glimpses of an accelerating future.
But as a vast and imaginative furlough scheme was unfolded – at a pace and with an efficiency which Finito World applauds – there have been those who have fallen through the cracks. That this was inevitable during a time of such upheaval doesn’t make the matter any less urgent.
One of these was the self-employed, who have been the sacrificial lambs of Covid-19. Consider, for instance, that you had taken the entrepreneurial step of moving to sole trader status during the tax year 2018-2019. You’d have qualified for no government support, but by a quirk of HMRC’s rules, found yourself liable to pay 150% of tax for the next two years. All that would be payable by 31st January.
Now imagine that you’ve done made that move, but you’re also a parent. The services which you’re paying for – chief among them, education – would have been closed for the majority of the year.
With kids out of school, the self-employed, lacking the structure of an employment relationship, found themselves especially vulnerable to productivity issues. The incomes of the self-employed rises and falls according to daily output in a way which isn’t true for people in regular jobs.
The government has made some of the right noises. In early February Boris Johnson sent a well-meaning letter to all parents, praising their work in picking up the slack. In a time of unparalleled – and justified – government largesse, it was not uncommon in the first part of 2021 to hear parents wonder, only half-jokingly, when their own tax rebate was coming.
Noting the anomaly, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak moved to take into account the tax return filings made in 2019-2020 to expand the help offered to the self-employed. This was admirable, but it was accompanied by noises that at some point the self-employed National Insurance contribution would rise from the current 9% to 12% in line with those in employment.
This is short-sighted. Without pension contributions, or reliable pay checks, the self-employed take on a greater degree of risk. They’re by nature entrepreneurial – the sort of people the Conservatives are meant to admire. Self-employed parents are believers in the importance of the family unit – another important plank of Conservative thought.
This isn’t just about self-employed fathers, but mothers too. The leading charity Pregnant Then Screwed was set up to fight against the discrimination women face during pregnancy and after having children. The organisation recently took the government to court, to challenge the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme.
The basis of their argument is that the calculation of the grant does not exempt periods of maternity leave when calculating average earnings, leaving around 69,200 women affected. When questioned, the Chancellor compared taking maternity leave to taking a sabbatical or ill-health. The charity lost their challenge in February 2021 and are seeking grounds for appeal.
Rishi Sunak’s style of delivery is always impressive. He is surely right to speak plainly to the electorate about the condition of the public finances. But when the government looks at how the cost of borrowing will be born going forwards it will be important – both politically and morally – for recent history to be understood.
The reality is that the complex realities of family life is an area which isn’t being sufficiently explored by the leading think tanks – a fact in itself symptomatic of an issue which has fallen through the cracks.
Mark Morrin, Principal Research Consultant at Respublica, says: ‘For years the self-employed have been encouraged to go that way, but when the crisis came they were ignored.’ He adds that this gap speaks to the fact that the Conservatives ‘used to be entrepreneurial under Thatcher,’ but that now ‘the Red Wall Tories don’t look at the world that way. You might not admire Hungary and Poland for obvious reasons, but they have more sophisticated approaches to family policy.’
Morrin’s right – the Chancellor needs to look at the nuance of this before saddling the next generation of entrepreneurs with an impossible burden.
Has poetry been demoted on the national curriculum? If so what does that mean? And do poets really know anything about work? George Achebe did a little digging
When Finito World spoke to former shadow schools minister Margaret Greenwood recently, she recalled an episode during the 1970s, before the national curriculum even came in. Greenwood was teaching a particularly difficult class in secondary school. “It was a real challenge, but then I hit on an idea. I was going to give them all poetry books to read to themselves, and I was going to say: ‘This is a quiet reading lesson’.”
It was the sort of inspiration which could be permitted to strike in those comparatively targets-free days. What’s more, it worked – though some of her fellow teachers were sceptical. “I remember one teacher looked at me askance and said ‘You’ll never get them to sit still’,” Greenwood continues. “But I went to the library and got all the poetry books and dished them out and explained that this was what we were going to be doing every Tuesday.”
The strategy took time to yield results. “It was fascinating. At first, there was a struggle and a bit of resistance. Then they got into it. We need to let teachers be the professionals they are.”
It’s a story about teaching, yes, but it’s also a tale about poetry. It posits the idea that poetry is capable of crossing boundaries, of overcoming indifference – and ultimately that a poem – even a line of poetry – can alter the course of a life.
And yet if you look at recent government policy, it seems rather to tend in the opposite direction. It began with a storm last year – in the world of poetry, a storm usually amounts to a single article in The Guardian. In this case – a measure of the seriousness of the issue – there were two articles in The Guardian.
The cause of the storm? This was to do with Ofqual’s decision to make poetry optional at the GCSE level. The ruling states that for this year students must compulsorily take a paper on Shakespeare, but that they can choose two out of three from the 19th-century novel, a modern drama or novel, and poetry. Poet and teacher Kate Clanchy summed it up: “For the first time, poetry is a choice.”
The indignation – in Clanchy’s article, and also evident in a similar piece by poet Kadish Morris – was open to some objections. In the first place, Shakespeare is nothing if not a poet – and has for five hundred years proven a pretty good ambassador for poetry. Meanwhile, much modern drama – especially TS Eliot – deals in verse, and its prose dramatists – one thinks of Pinter and Beckett – tend to be poets as well. So it wasn’t quite the dagger through the poetic heart which it was reported as.
Secondly, teachers are, of course, able to teach poetry anyhow regardless of what Ofqual says. When I spoke to a secondary teacher friend, who asked not to be named, she said, “It’s not like my children aren’t exposed to poetry; they are. All this sort of thing does is demoralise teachers.”
When Finito World approached Ofqual for an explanation, a spokesperson further explained that the changes are temporary and “designed to free up teaching time and reduce pressure on students”. In other words it’s a specifically pandemic-based change, which should be repealed once we return to normal. Even Clanchy seemed to admit this in her article: “Plenty of teachers will stick with the poems, especially if they’ve already studied them,” she wrote.
In addition to this Ofqual pointed out to us in their statement, that exam boards retain the freedom to add to the common core if they wished. Meanwhile, the Department for Education didn’t reply to our request for comment.
So is the whole thing a storm in a teacup? Well, not quite. In the first place, Clanchy surely has a point when she draws attention to a double standard: “The content of double science – the popular three-in-one science GCSE – is presumably also, as Ofqual says of poetry, difficult to deliver online, but Ofqual isn’t telling teachers they can pick between chemistry and biology next year providing they stick with the physics.”
It’s a reminder that this decision feeds into poetry’s worst fears about itself – about its sliding into irrelevance. This is probably misplaced: when we have a funeral or a wedding – that is, when we really want to say something important to one another – we tend to reach for the music and springiness of poetry ahead of prose. That will probably always be the case.
But there wasn’t a similar storm over the optional nature of drama or the Victorian novel to quite the same extent. In the first instance, in an age of theatres closing, drama writers are more concerned about their works being put on again than they are about their texts being studied. And the Victorian novel, regularly adapted for film, seems invulnerable.
Poetry is different; it feels fragile. As Alison Brackenbury, one of our greatest living poets told Finito World: “Many people only know – and value – those poems which they encountered at school, especially if they learned them by heart. If they don’t come across poetry which appeals to them in their curriculum, the one chance may be gone.”
The Chair of the Education Select Committee Robert Halfon MP also expressed his worries: “In some ways what the government has done is understandable because of Covid. There are worries that with the Fourth Industrial Revolution 28 per cent of jobs might be lost to young people by 2030, and so the curriculum has to adapt and change.”
But then Halfon pauses, thinks and delivers his verdict: ”Having said all that, poetry and literature are one and the same. In my view, you can’t promote one over the other.” He is also uncertain over whether it’s really such a temporary thing. “DfE is saying this is a temporary measure, and it’s designed to help take the strain off pupils because poetry is perceived as difficult. But temporary measures can become precedent and poetry trains your mind in a very different way. If this becomes permanent it would be very worrying.”
It can seem to some that since the hyperactive tenure of Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education, aided and abetted by Dominic Cummings that “English has been shrunk, confined and battered into rote learning and stock responses,” to use Clanchy’s phrase.
Halfon agrees: “Culture has an absolutely important role, not just in the economy but in our society and shaping our lives. It’s not just good for our learning – it’s good for our mental health, and it’s good for expanding our horizons. We don’t want to be a society of Gradgrinds where all we want is facts.”
Halfon is reminding us that just at the moment when we are all looking at our mental health, the government appears to be demoting the branch of human affairs most designed to improve it.
Christopher Hamilton-Emery, the poet and former director of the immensely successful Salt Publishing adds that the question of poetry’s status on the curriculum is relevant also to the increasingly discussed area of social mobility: “There’s a wider context to this and that’s the way kids come into contact with poetry, or orchestral music, or ballet, or opera, or theatre. In this sense, education is the gateway, the space that gives permission to children, and in this context there’s a political and egalitarian component to this debate around poetry.”
But Hamilton-Emery adds, only half-jokingly: “I also recognise that poetry is a pain in the arse. Yet it’s meant to be awkward, tricksy, resistant to authority, dissonant – things that are hard to teach and accommodate, things that can’t easily be measured or controlled. Poetry provides a critical citizenship and, I think, helps form the unity of the person and offers a living communion today and indeed through history.”
This goes to the heart of the matter – the sense that the Conservative party represents authority, and that poetry is somehow being punished for being anti-establishment. Of course, these sorts of generalisations can never be the whole truth – even if there is often some truth in them. You could probably make a case that from Philip Larkin and WB Yeats to TS Eliot and Ezra Pound, there were more ‘great’ right-wing poets in the 20th century than among their left wing counterparts.
And yet one wonders whether there is a sense in which in our technology driven, factual lives we have ceased to credit marvels and insodoing come to see poetry as somehow wishy-washy, and even insufficiently grounded in the commercial. Tishani Doshi is a world famous writer and dancer who continues to make poetry the centre of her life. She speaks revealingly of the poetry and the administration sides of her being: “I studied business administration and communications before ditching it for poetry, so I can get around economics and accountancy alright, but that’s not to say I thrill in it. I move in waves. Sometimes I’m terribly productive about everything – to-do lists and all. Other times I want to be left alone to watch the flowers.”
It is this idea that the government no longer wants us to watch the flowers which riles people so much when this kind of decision is made. But Doshi is adamant that we need a more nuanced conversation: ‘One of my first jobs was to teach an introduction to poetry and fiction class to students at Johns Hopkins University. It was a required class, most of my students were pre-med or engineering. I like to think as a result that in future dentist waiting rooms, there may be a volume of Elizabeth Bishop lying around, or that someone designing a bridge might dip into the poems of Imtiaz Dharker for inspiration.”
Halfon agrees: “My reading goes into my subconscious. It helps me when I’m writing articles – I may think of things and quote things and use metaphors. It just infuses my thoughts and the way I think. Something permeates like a beautiful stew that’s been cooking for a long time – and it always tastes much nicer on the second or third day of eating it.”
Doshi adds: “I don’t know what the UK government’s motivations for demoting poetry are, but I hope usefulness was not a factor. Everything is connected. I can’t imagine any kind of life that doesn’t need the intuition and imagination of poetry.”
WH Auden once wrote that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’, adding that it ‘survives in the valley of its being said, where executives would never want to tamper.” And yet in being so lofty it has made itself vulnerable to demotion.
Yet the poets one meets tend to be tougher than you might think – they cannot afford to be Keatsian and head in the clouds. They have to work. We’ll update on progress in a subsequent issue.
Our roundtable with readers struggling in the pandemic employment market. With Sophia Petrides, Robin Rose and Andy Inman
I work in radiography recruitment. During the pandemic, the firm which I’ve worked at for ten years – and to whom I’ve been very loyal – has taken Covid-19 as a chance to renegotiate my package, cutting my commission from 20% to 15%. I like the company and want to stay there but feel they’ve taken advantage of me. It’s also a niche area. I’m unsure what to do. Kieran, 36, Fulham
Sophia: Kieran, as you know, Covid-19 has created a ripple effect in the economy. Both private healthcare and NHS are prioritising urgent cases due to the restrictions and this is having an unexpected knock-on effect for some specialist recruitment services. I suggest you have a very open discussion with your firm to get the full picture of the direction of their business. I would suggest a compromise where you ask them to review your package again with a view to restoring your original rate.
Robin: Cutting your commission at a time like this, at first glance, looks somewhat unfair. As commission is related to additional business, it appears strange that they should wish to reduce this element of your remuneration. Perhaps they feel you are earning too much related to others in the firm? I can appreciate that you feel your sector experience is niche, but your skills are more easily transferable than you think. You may or may not have exclusion clauses in your contract that limit your approaching rivals. However, your recruitment skills would be of value in any medical sector recruitment area and there’s no shortage of jobs in this sector now. After ten years it may be time to start looking anyway.
Andy: I agree with Sophia and Robin. If you decide to stay, make sure that you’re happy with the reasons for your decision and not just taking the easy option. Being a disgruntled and unhappy employee is not a good option for either side.
I was made redundant at the age of 40 during the first pandemic. Eventually I landed a job for a start-up tech company. It’s for less money than I’m used to earning, but the company is noble and looking to tackle climate change. However, I’ve now got through to the final round of a job for a bigger institution which will pay double. I feel it might be unfair on the first company to leave, but the money from the second company would be good, as I have a daughter. What would you advise? Sally, 40, Manchester
Andy: Sally, the reward we get from employment is not just the figure that we are paid at the end of each month: being fortunate enough to work in a role and company that resonates with your inner self is rare. That said, you have responsibilities to your family and it’s important that you’re able to fulfil yours their needs. If the extra remuneration is what drives you then see the selection process out to the end, if you’re offered the job think carefully where your priorities lie. Don’t worry about the start-up; I’m sure if you move on, they will employ someone else. If you decide that there is more to work than the pay, then you may already be in the right place.
Sophia: Andy’s right. You mentioned your current employer wants to tackle climate change. If this is very important for you, then perhaps consider staying in your new role and have an honest talk with your employer regarding your renumeration and your current earning trajectory with them. Working for start-ups can be a gamble but on the other hand, if they offer performance related bonuses or share options, success can mean great financial rewards for employees.
Robin: Sally, if you’re working for less than you are able to earn, you are in effect, making a charitable donation to a start-up. Maybe there is a better way you could support them while still maximising your earning potential. You may also have to negotiate a staggered start time with your new employers.
It used to be that I did well in interviews – me and my partner used to joke that interviews were my superpower. My first few interviews I got the job. But in 2020, that skill seems to have deserted me. I am told from feedback after interviews that I am too assertive and ambitious. I am new to rejection and finding it difficult. Do you have any advice? Dominic, 34, Leeds
Robin: Dominic, your experience is not unusual. Assertiveness and ambition is valued in times of growth but seen as a threat in times of austerity. Companies prefer certainty in these uncertain times. If you give a potential employer the impression that you’re likely to move on if they can’t promote you quickly enough, they’re unlikely to invest in your learning curve. Think about how you might respond to questions like, “Where do you see yourself in three years’ time?” 0r, “Why do you feel this role is right for you?” The fact that you are sufficiently self-aware to identify the problem suggests that it will not be too long before you remedy the situation and regain your superpower in interviews.
Sophia: I’d only add that prior to your next interview, I suggest you roleplay with a trusted friend or find a professional to work with you, like a career coach. We are not always aware how we are perceived by others, in particular during challenging times, where we have a need to survive!
2020 has been hard for me. I know every time I apply for a job that there are thousands of other applicants. But now I see that there might be a 90% effective vaccine, and I wonder whether I should just wait it out and hope the economy improves. My parents say this is a lazy approach, but my heart sinks every time I apply for a job, I know deep down I’m not going to get. Do you have any advice? Greta, 22, Guildford
Andy: Greta, this year has been a shocker for many, the news of a vaccine is a rare and very welcome glimmer of light on the distant horizon! During difficult times some will thrive and others will fall by the wayside. To be amongst the winners we need to put ourselves out there, take the rejections, learn, adapt and keep moving forward. Don’t take a job rejection personally: use it as an opportunity to learn, The Roman philosopher Seneca said “Luck is when opportunity meets preparation”.
Sophia: Greta, you are not alone! Even though the future is uncertain, you cannot give up. Keep persevering. It’s easy to lose hope after rejections, but the truth is there are always more jobs and there is no good reason why you shouldn’t get one of them eventually – unless you stop applying. Perhaps seek guidance from a professional CV advisor to support you.
Robin: Greta, you’re quite correct that sending off hundreds of applications is depressing – and for the most part a waste of time in the current situation. Your parents are also correct, it could well be a couple of years before the economy recovers sufficiently to alter the job/candidate ratio even with a proven successful vaccine.
There are jobs out there that need to be filled, however. They get filled by candidates who genuinely understand their skills and experience, know who would value them and know how to market themselves. Jobs get filled by people who know how to get in front of the right people and how to handle themselves in social and interview situations. Possibly you need to identify a mentor who can help you in these difficult times. Look for someone who knows the sector you are targeting and can possibly help you with your self-development and targeted job-hunting activity.
The former foreign office minister tells us about his degree and how it impacted his life in politics
I studied PPE at Oxford, and when I’m asked what my degree taught me I always think of Harold Macmillan. Macmillan was a former prime minister, who was once Chancellor of Oxford, and he said to our College, which was St. John’s, that what freshers year taught you is when someone is talking rot. That’s always been my lodestar for what a good education means: if you know when someone’s talking rubbish, you know what’s good sense and what is not.
But political ambition predated my time at Oxford – I got the bug actually when I was about 12. Whether I regret that or not now is unclear, but everything I did at Oxford, and thereafter, was geared at getting into Parliament.
Politics and economics at Oxbridge is quite a well-trodden degree – but it’s often pointed out to me that the current prime minister wields his English language skills and classical education, and that that gives him an advantage. Well there might be truth in that, but there was an element of history in my papers too. My history tutor – who I knew for years afterwards – told me something I’ve never forgotten: “No economist ever makes a good banker. If you want to be a good banker, you have to read history.” I think there’s a lot in that, because it gives you a strategic perspective. It’s not about the numbers, and it’s not just about economic theory nationally. It’s about the ups and downs of life and societal and economic forces – and historians understand those far better than economists.
So in terms of my degree, I feel I learned enough – and I also learned a lot from the practical politics of the Oxford Union. This was at a time when the then Labour government under Jim Callaghan was falling to bits, and Thatcher was on the rise. So the 1979 elections slightly ate into my revision for finals – God knows how I got a degree at all.
It’s interesting to note that Theresa May studied geography, but I think in the end formal education isn’t what it’s all about. Whether you succeed in politics is more to do with your disposition and what you’ve done in life. The problem is I think a lot of people are going into Parliament now without any particular experience – and definitely too little international experience.
I was lucky to gain both in the oil industry. In that industry my best friend was Ian Taylor who died last year – and that friendship, together with the skill I’d acquired in the oil industry, did come in handy in particular when it came to getting rid of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. Ian was buying and selling crude oil into Benghazi and we were able to go to the then prime minister David Cameron and explain that if he didn’t follow our strategy, he’d lose the war. Gaddafi was oil, and our approach helped bring him down.
If young politicians ask my advice about appearing on television, I say it’s the wrong question. The trouble is most politicians today don’t think about Parliament first and media second. They have it absolutely the wrong way round.
What I think does matter about being a minister is time management. If you’re not careful, and you don’t administer your day, you can easily be organised by your private office: one of the golden rules of being a minister is always to make sure that you control the diary, rather than let the diary control you. So that means you need to look ahead, particularly for travel and set priorities – and make it clear to your private office that the priorities are as they are, that you will see some people but not others. You also need to explain that you want time to think – or time to call in one of the teams in the foreign office responsible for an area and get into an issue in more depth. So, planning, and not allowing yourself to be just told what to do as a process is the way to do it.
The media doesn’t help any of this. Believe it or not, I’ve never been on The Andrew Marr Show, but I think Andrew has completely lost its way. The questions have become so staid and obvious, and it’s a programme whose time is up. It’s junk because Andrew keeps asking questions to which there can be no clear answer, doesn’t delve deeper and it’s all about trying to trip up the politician. It’s a dead programme.
I did use humour quite a lot in my career – on Have I Got News For You four times in fact. That was absolutely terrifying – they can’t prepare you for that at Oxford!
Photo credit: By Chris McAndrew, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61323695
To those who had been following the dripfeed of information given to the public prior to Boris Johnson’s announcement on the 14th June, the delay to the lifting of restrictions – or ‘freedom day’ as it has become known – came as no surprise. The threat of a new Delta or ‘Indian’ variant plainly alarmed a prime minister who earlier in the month had been lambasted by Dominic Cummings for failing to lock down soon enough.
The leaks at least meant that some businesses were able to prepare for the inevitable and learn to operate at reduced capacity with social distancing measures in place for just four more weeks. But spare a thought for a sector which has been seldom discussed: the nightlife industry.
In fact, many clubs haven’t opened since March 2020. It’s also the sector which has been worst hit by lockdown restrictions and curfews. Even more worryingly, as of July 1st, the government is expecting cash-strapped venues who have had no income for nearly a year and a half to begin contributing into the very furlough scheme which has so far kept the industry standing.
It’s all extraordinarily frustrating for those in the sector, since the rules can appear inconsistent. For instance, certain parts of the nightlife sector, such as pubs, can carry on with no extra bother – other than the knowledge that it’s much better to stand with a pint than it is to sit with one. But clubs and venues who were making preparations for reopening found their efforts stymied at a mere week’s notice. It’s unacceptable to be thrown back into this state of paralysis: the extra four weeks clearly means more to the sector than the government realises.
We must remember that the term ‘nightlife industry’ encompasses not just pubs and bars, but also nightclubs and live music events. The latter two have been the most heavily impacted. It’s worth noting that an All-Party Parliamentary Group for the night-time economy produced a report back in January on the impact of Covid-19 on UK nightlife. The report highlights not only the fragility of the nightlife industry in 2021 but also the wider economic contribution which the sector provides to the UK economy.
The figures are worrying. The nightlife industry supports 1.3 million jobs and contributes around £66 billion to the UK economy, meaning its collapse would also affect all those tertiary businesses which support the sector – and are themselves reliant on it. Worse still, 81 per cent of workers in the industry have expressed a desire to leave and find more economically stable work. With over half of nightclub staff being made redundant during the pandemic, it will be interesting to see how many return once furlough contributions have stopped.
That’s not all. Grants given by the government have little impact on the overheads, and this has led to most businesses feeling that the support given is insufficient. Business rates may have frozen but rents have not and if your rents stretch into the tens, or even hundreds, of thousands, then a maximum grant of £9,000 will feel like a kick in the teeth. When nine out of 10 nightclubs have traded for six months or less during the pandemic, and when turnover has been just 20 per cent of the usual there’s only one solution – to open doors again.
That’s certainly easier said than done in the current climate. But as Liverpool’s big rave proved, big events can be managed so as to not be on a ‘super-spreader’ level. We also need to bear in mind the cultural importance our nightlife plays in our society. You could argue that since the decline of the Church, it has been the humble pub which has done the most for community spirit. Meanwhile, clubs and music festivals are a steadfast aspect of the cultural identity of youth in Britain, particularly for university students. We hear a lot today about the increase in mental health difficulties, and this is often a product of the social isolation which our nightlife is built to remove.
Boris Johnson’s justification for extending lockdowns is based on the reasonable fear that rising rates would outpace the vaccination rate. Even so, with the continued low number of deaths and hospitalisations, as well as a huge uptake in the vaccine by over 18s, it’s still arguable that the decision to delay was the wrong one. The suspicion is that this was informed by a need to push back PR-wise after his supposedly cavalier approach to lifting the first two lockdowns.
With over half of nightclubs admitting to being in rent arrears back in January, that position surely must have deteriorated: an additional month will be devastating. Further, the sheer cost of running the nightlife industry is not something that can be matched one for one by government spending. In order to preserve what’s left of the nightlife industry, the government should be flexible in bringing the opening date forward if we continue to see successes as a result of the continued vaccination programme. That’s because with every week the nightlife industry remains closed, more doors will shut for good.
Christopher Jackson talks to the addiction specialist about life in the Swiss clinic – and what it tells us about our times
Given that The Kusnacht Practice is the leading practice in the world for helping people with addiction issues, you encounter its people armed with pre-conceived notions about them. You try to imagine what the high quality of its many specialists will look like in the flesh. But reality has a way of second-guessing this – and in fact is always more interesting than what we’d pencilled in our minds.
Of course, the place is brilliantly staffed and well-resourced – as you might expect. But somehow you’re not quite prepared for Dean Gustar, the organisation’s Head of Clinical Operations, who has an earthy compassion and a depth of knowledge that impresses immediately. The sense is of a man who has lived through many experiences – and indeed he tells me that he has had his own struggles with addiction in the past.
The more time you spend with him, the more his presence at the clinic makes sense: this is a smart man, who cares deeply about his patients and understands what people are going through when it comes to addiction of all kinds – everything from gaming and alcohol, to drugs and overeating.
“Before I worked at The Kusnacht Practice I’ve never really been around wealth,” Gustar explains. “One of the things I’ve learned is that wealth can be very dangerous. It can be a very lonely place. For instance, it’s very hard for wealthy people to trust other people. And if something doesn’t feel right, they’re used to changing it quickly, with a snap of the fingers. That can make the challenge of behavioural change even more difficult for them.”
That feels like earned wisdom. Gustar has that look of unstinting compassion which you sometimes find in the healthcare sector – the look of a man who is somehow never exhausted but instead mysteriously energised by his proximity to suffering.
He continues: “And of course, their addiction isn’t really going to impact on them financially so that creates less of an incentive to change. Nobody’s going to come and repossess their house.”
Gustar lives in Zurich, about 15 minutes from The Kusnacht Practice. Born in the West Country, he also used to live in Peckham, and knows that part of the world well – the sense is of a down-to-earth Englishman somehow deposited in upmarket Switzerland. “I used to live on the Peckham Estate, and when my friends came over I used to walk them back to the station – they were in fear for their lives,” he tells me.
So at what stage do clients normally approach The Kusnacht Practice? “When people come to The Kusnacht Practice, generally the consequences are starting to build – often they may be way over their head with consequences. So it’s a very tough place to be where you begin to realise that one of your behaviours is causing damage to yourself or damage to your family or damage to others.”
In addition, patients normally come to Gustar because of a longstanding pattern of behaviour which has itself been of use – or seemed to be of use to you. “The very thing that may be causing the damage, by its nature is going to be very difficult to let go of because maybe it’s been a survival strategy for you to take drugs or drink or overeat or gamble – or whatever it might be.”
The signs are that during the pandemic these addictions have been increasing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic: “We’ve seen people whose drinking or drug use has increased as a result of feeling isolated, and not being able to partake in life as they used to,” he explains. And why is that? “Maybe some of the things that help regulate their alcohol use – visiting their parents or going on holiday or feeling productive in their work – have been lost, leading to an increase in other behaviours.”
And, of course, this is the case even when we have all been less exposed to that dangerous thing, the boozy work lunch. “It’s a good point,” says Gustar. “Some of these boozy lunches, there’s this undercurrent of relationship building, where people are engaged in drinking, and where drinking is a kind of obligation.”
But that sense of obligation, especially in beery England, can crop up with great regularity in everyday life. So how do you combat that sense of obligation? “You have to develop your own strategies for dealing with these situations. When it comes to people who care about you or people that love you, if you tell them you’re not drinking and if you feel comfortable telling them why, they should care enough about you just to accept it and support you –and maybe even look out for you in that position.”
And what about those pressure situations – a wedding, or when we see those friends who expect us to drink with them? “I think in those situations, if you’re starting to feel the pressure or people are applying the pressure. you have to come up with a strategy that can support you in that situation – and that could even be an escape plan.”
Gustar is aware of the difficulty of the task he faces with those suffering with addiction, and so he is keen to perspectivise what it means to give up an addiction. “It’s very difficult to change any behaviour. So if you do manage to change from a state of dependent drinking, why would you risk it for somebody that’s just a passing acquaintance?”
I’m reminded of Christopher Hitchens – who died of oesophageal cancer after a lifetime of too much whiskey – who remarked that he might not have drunk so much had he not had a strong constitution. He was able to file his pieces on time, and be successful. Does Gustar see high-functioning alcoholics among his CEO client base? “We do see high-functioning alcoholics and it just makes you wonder how well they would function without alcohol. But they pay a price somewhere, so it could be their relationship or their health – and they’re most likely already paying it in some respects.”
Sometimes the price can be concealed. “As we get older our ability to sustain it decreases – you can’t easily manage a dependency above the age of 55. Alcohol is just a very dangerous substance for the human body.”
And yet, if you look at the public discourse, Gustar points out, you wouldn’t think drink especially were particularly dangerous. “I mean – it’s just everywhere,” he says. There’s a kindly anger here – a note which only someone who knows the cost of our exaltation of alcohol could strike. “I’ve watched some of the debates in Parliament, and they’ve had these discussions about “When’s the pub opening? When are we going to get to the pub and drink that pint again?” And if you look at our UHNW clients, there is so much temptation in their lives. If I go to the airport, I mooch around and maybe go to a Starbuck’s. They go into a business lounge, and there’s a big bar full of free champagnes.”
To go against these trends and unpick negative behaviours plainly takes willpower – but I suggest to Gustar that willpower isn’t something that’s evenly distributed across the population. Some have it; others don’t. Gustar says: “I think it’s a bit like that Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Arkwhere the sun has to be in place and bounce off here and there and then people change. A lot of things have to be aligned at the right time.” He pauses, then confides: “But you even get people who sit in front of the doctor and the doctor says , ‘If you carry on like this you’ve only got six more months.’. And they carry on doing it. Wealth can be a very lonely place, and the wealthy have a very low tolerance for discomfort.”
Talking to Gustar is a revelation: here is a man who has taken the decision to work towards helping people. And he reminds us also that addiction is a problem more endemic in our society than we might realise – sometimes as much in the tone of parliamentary debate, and our corporate life, as it is in the pub.
By David Hawkins, co-founder of Percheron Advisory
What do we mean by the term ‘succession’? The term is most synonymous with the TV series Succession, which centres on the Roy family, the dysfunctional owners of Waystar RoyCo, a global media and hospitality empire, who end-up in a battle royal for control of the family business amid uncertainty about the health of the family’s patriarch, Logan Roy and his plans for the empire’s future. At his 80thbirthday Logan shocks his family – particularly his son Kendall who was primed to take-over the business reigns – with the news that he will not be stepping-down as planned whilst he also throws at his children the news that he is naming his third wife as successor.
Who the Logan family are based upon is an open secret – think of an octogenarian Australian media owner and his warring family – but the issues raised here via satire are key to highlighting real world family, business and wealth survival. What follows during Succession is a series of family and business conflicts, attempted hostile takeovers and family politics that makes Shakespearean narrative seem simple.
Fundamentally, a failure of clear family governance leads to family, business, asset and wealth destruction – that old chestnut “from clogs to clogs”: the first generation earns the family money, the second generation manages it and the third generation loses it. This trend turns out to be universal across cultures – think of the Vanderbilts in the West. In the East this was summed-up by Sheikh Rashid Al Maktoum: “My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel.”
What are the main risks to a smooth succession and how should the present generation react, respond and accommodate the next generation? How does the next gen become more active in the business and play their role in the family business?
1) A lack of clear governance systems and processes across the family, business and wealth management
Logan Roy’s impromptu tearing up of any coherent succession plan leads to war amongst competing family members, attempts at hostile takeovers, family members resigning and business, regulatory, security and political risks. So having family governance or a family protocol in place which formalises the family’s mission statement, its USP, why the family are in business together and what the long-term objectives are, is as vital for the family as corporate governance is for the business.
This family protocol becomes enshrined as a family constitution from which policies and processes relating to the family, the business and its wealth are then outlined in detail according to the specific family’s requirements and it is discussed, bottomed-up and amended as a dynamic document during regular meetings of a family council – a council which present generation and next generation participate and lead.
This would seem foundational to all families – yet as Smith & Williamson’s Family Business Survey 2020/21 reveals, the percentage of families that have a key piece of family governance – the family constitution – in place, is still only around 38%, of which half thought they would have to review this within two years. The Roys would have found it instructive to have a family constitution and council – and include input from the business units including non-executive directors who could have been involved with the succession discussion so turning a family decision into a corporate one. The next generation would also have had the insight into first generation decision-making and a sense of the direction of travel which would have allowed them to avoid being frozen-out so spectacularly.
Without changing TV genres abruptly, the Game of Thrones analogy symbolises the challenges faced by India’s Ambani family. When the patriarch died in 2002 like many Indian families there was no succession plan and no will. Chaos reigned. Rather than a structured approach as to which assets brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani would inherit, it was left to their mother to preside over an ‘organised demerger’ in 2005, which gave Mukesh control of oil and gas, petrochemicals, refining and manufacturing while Anil took reign over electricity, telecoms and financial services. As the Economist wrote at the time: “Why do family firms so often fail to make the generational leap? Family firms are frequently more riven with intrigue and visceral hatreds than a medieval court – and for similar reasons.”
2) Conflict and disagreement in the family destabilises the family and the business
The chief wealth destroyer, and one of the main features that family governance should work to reduce, is the exponential damage that conflict and disagreement can do to a family and its business.
When families fight, businesses lose their direction, fail to innovate and are often subsumed by their competition.
Whether it’s the ongoing dispute within the Ambani family – which even after the separation of assets was followed by defamation suits, involvement of the Indian prime minister and even Anil publicly blaming his brother for power-cuts that swept across India in 2009. In Succession, Logan Roy takes his family to the family ranch, Austerlitz, to try to patch things up – yet this sticking plaster is too little, too late.
The core of family governance is trust, communication and the prevention of disputes spiralling out of control. In the Ambani case, a Family Council could have allowed managed conversation and dialogue unifying the family around values and mission but also outlining and preparing the brothers for ownership and management of specific business units. If agreement could not be reached then the brothers could have been bought out. Disagreement would have a forum for debate so issues that do arise can be dealt with via dispute resolution and mediation processes precluding the revelation that the founder has no will, or shock announcements at the patriarch’s birthday party, or even in an interview with Oprah which seems the de rigueur approach these days for airing grievance.
What is instructive is the new family council structure that Mukesh Ambani is working on, whereby his immediate family and three children are granted equal representation to enable succession planning whilst at the same time the children have been taking on increasing responsibility within the family business.
3) The present generation is avoiding – or dreading retirement – or hanging on due to crises such as COVID-19 whilst the next generation wants to get more involved
The endemic issue that the institution of effective family governance and succession runs into is that often the founder doesn’t want to retire or be succeeded. They may resist efforts to outline a clear succession plan – or if one is introduced may impede it: e.g., one American next gen was given 75% of the family business to run. The only issue was that he didn’t know from day-day which 75% it was. Pedestrian issues such as moving into father’s office or clearing out the old retainers caused emotional eruptions from the patriarch.
This issue has been particularly relevant due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As a Barclays Private Bank family business report on Smarter Succession of October 2020 shows: 57% of the present generation are concerned about trusting the next generation’s ability to manage the business. Drilling into the figures shows a possible reason why: 42% of the over 60s want to preserve the family business across the generations compared to 18% of under 40s. So, there is a clear pretext as to why the present generation might want to stay on.
These figures highlight the lack of family governance. The next gen should be mentored and grown into the business, socialised to understand the family’s source of wealth, the importance of their involvement in the business and how they can begin to play a role in the management or board team looking at questions such as:
• The focus and direction of the business.
• Business transition and the impact of succession planning on the business.
• The corporate governance framework – including appointments to the board or any significant changes to board structure.
• The operational framework.
• The family’s attitude to ethical and moral issues that may arise in connection with business operations.
In conclusion, the message for the existing generation and next gen is: develop family governance, sincerely commit wholeheartedly to the succession plans that are developed and ensure that dispute resolution and conflict-mitigation mechanisms are in place. Sadly Logan Roy did not get the memo.
About Percheron Advisory:
Percheron Advisory works with entrepreneurs, HNW clients and business families with a focus on two key areas:
Building resilient and agile operational business frameworks so removing risks, developing robust and integrated systems and supporting new strategic directions, and;
Where appropriate, developing effective family governance structures which encourage open and transparent communication, reduce conflict and integrate the next generation into the family business.
90% of family businesses fail by the third generation, 60% of family businesses fail because of disagreement and lack of trust in the family.
Regular reviews of the family enterprises, building-up resilience and agility ensuring clear reporting, metrics and efficiencies allows for clear strategic decisions to be taken, whilst looking at family governance – that is a family constitution, family council and conflict resolution, can build a resilient family that helps drive the business and removes threats to the business that can come from conflict and disputes.
The Patron-in Chief of the Loomba Foundationrecalls a transformative meeting with Sir Richard Branson
I first met Sir Richard Branson at the Indian High Commission in London many years ago. During that meeting Richard asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a businessman and ran my own charity as well.
Richard never asked me what’s my business but enquired about the charity. I told him that my wife and I had set up the Loomba Foundation in memory of my late mother, to support and educate the children of poor widows in India. To my surprise and delight, Richard, told me that he would like to help the charity and I asked him if that was a promise. He said, “Yes”, and we shook hands on it.
True to his promise, I received a letter from Richard almost a year later telling me that Virgin Atlantic are starting to fly to India soon. He would like to invite me as his guest on their inaugural flight and promote the Loomba Foundation on the flight. A Loomba Foundation brochure was put on every seat and, in addition, a video was played before landing in Delhi in which Richard, himself, made an appeal to support our charity. Both, the brochure and video were produced by Virgin Atlantic with no cost to the Loomba Foundation.
In 2004, Richard agreed to attend and support our charity event in Delhi. The event was also attended by our President, Mrs. Cherie Blair, wife of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a delegation of 40 supporters of the Loomba Foundation from the UK. They all travelled to India on Virgin Atlantic with the generosity of Richard.
At the event, which was also attended by the Indian most senior politicians and business leaders, Richard conducted our auction to raise money for the education of the children of poor widows. In addition, he pledged to educate 500 students in five Indian states for a period of five years. It was a huge support amounting to about £500,000 and I was truly touched by his generous contribution.
It was at this moment that I requested Richard to accept my invitation to become the “Patron-in-Chief” of the Loomba Foundation, which he very kindly accepted.
Over the years, Richard has made an appeal on BBC Radio 4, giving much needed exposure and awareness about the charity. He has always supported our fundraising events by giving items for auction. Virgin Atlantic has raised thousands of Pounds through the “Change for Children” appeals on its flights worldwide. We are the only charity to have such three appeals.
In 2006, the Loomba Foundation in partnership with Sir Richard Branson’s charity Virgin Unite launched a project to support 1500 HIV orphans in five Townships surrounding Johannesburg, which wasmanaged by a local charity called Great Hearts. It was a super event where my wife and I met Richard’s wife and his lovely parents. An unforgettable encounter.
Richard is a man with vision, an entrepreneur, a successful businessman and a big-hearted philanthropist. I am hugely grateful for all his efforts, participation and contributions to help and support the work of the Loomba Foundation since 2004. We couldn’t have done it without him.
As patron-in-chief he is a great ambassador for the Loomba Foundation.
Reaching out on Twitter to chat to magicians from across the UK, one magician, Billy Reid, tells me he’s “all ears – or eyes, in this case…”.
It’s a taster, perhaps, of the secret treasures of virtual magic shows. I indulged in one during the second pandemic for a friend’s birthday, and found it was a great substitute for the pleasures of card-tricking, rabbit-bearing magicians I’d briefly stumbled upon at bars or parties. We sat huddled round a TV, surreptitiously sipping cocktails and clad in unnecessarily fancy dresses, while an on-screen magician beamed virtual mysteries beyond our imagining – guessing a random four-digit code I’d thought up, for instance.
I was prompted to revisit this chilling memory when I saw that the world’s first state-approved degree in magic had arisen in France a few weeks ago. Double Fond, a theatre in Paris specialising in magic, has already awarded 13 degrees over the past year and will offer 15 more in the next month. The degree includes performing before a “jury” and writing papers on the history of magic, “self-promotion” and the magic business. It involves 550 hours of lessons and 2,800 hours of homework. Though in the UK you can take courses in magic, there is no such officially-recognised degree in the dark arts – though Double Fond says they are keen to expand across the pond.
We’ve all witnessed the glittering splendour of magic through films like Now You See Me, or The Prestige. But the idea of magic as a hard-won career, which involves years of practice and trial-and-error, may be an eye-opener for some (in more ways than one). Even googling magic as a potential career brings up a first result of ‘jobs in the wizarding world’ from the official Harry Potter fandom page.
Even so, when I speak to professional magicians across the UK, I gain the strong impression that this is a serious and burgeoning career, and one which – if you play your cards right – is a fun and potentially very lucrative industry. It’s also a world which has been forced to undergo serious transformation during the pandemic. Their stories also reveal how little formal training there is available in this country.
The state of the magic arts in the UK
Billy Reid, a professional magician from Glasgow, says magic is “not taken seriously enough” as a career: “you say ‘magician’ and people think of rabbits, top hats and balloons. We’re still striving to be taken seriously as an art form.”
For this reason, Reid was self-taught: “I used to go to Blackpool with my mum and grandparents and visit this magic shop. I’d just spend hours there watching tricks and learning. My brother would even fall asleep on the floor.”
After practicing day-in-day-out, Reid went pro. But he says he’d still have welcomed a more formally-structured course and the chance to champion “a known certificate to prove your talent”, aside from being a part of the Magic Circle.
Richard Parsons, a Gloucestershire-based magician who has been practicing for over ten years and a member of the Magic Circle, also got into magic via unorthodox means.
Parsons already had a business as a therapist, and at one of his annual conferences, a friend (who was also a therapist) did some magic tricks for him. “I was instantly hooked, even though I wasn’t really into it as a kid,” says Parsons.
His friend didn’t tell him how the tricks were done, but sent a deck of cards and a book of tricks and said to show him next time they met. “Over the next couple of years,” says Parsons, “I did my job and magic as a hobby. I did tricks for people at parties, then started to get booked up for weddings and corporate events.”
One thing led to another and Parsons made the “business decision” to become a full-time magician. The volume of work built and, “because it’s one of those industries where the more you work the more work you get”, Parsons quickly climbed the ladder and he was soon auditioning for the elite Magic Circle.
It’s a lengthy and thorough application process: according to Parsons, you have to be nominated by two existing members, have an interview and an audition where you perform eight minutes of magic in front of three professionals. Once in, cards must be kept excruciatingly close to the chest. You can be reported to the ‘council for the magic circle’ and risk ‘expulsion’ if you break the magic code. “We have to sign a bit of paper saying we’re not going to reveal the tricks to Muggles. I don’t even tell my wife how this stuff is done,” he says.
Because of this Chinese-whispers process, which Parsons says is the very essence of learning magic, he is reticent that a magic degree would be a good idea. “I think it would have to be very carefully run and you’d have to know a bit of magic beforehand.”
It would also need to encompass the myriad elements of the magic profession. “You’ve got to have negotiation skills and be really good with people. You’ve also got to know how to perform and learn things like stage presence, controlling the audience, microphone technique, speaking skills and scripting skills.”
In fact, if Parsons has a golden nugget of advice for budding young magicians, it’s to just do it. “I get emails from teenagers all the time asking how to get into magic. I always say it’s great doing TikTok and YouTube in your bedroom, but if you want to do this job you need to learn how to interact with people, and the only way of doing that is to get out there and actually do it.”
But Parsons is also a huge advocate for taking the leap. Magic, as we’ve seen, is not always viewed with enough respect as a profession. “My main advice to young people entering careers is: if you’ve got a passion outside the norm, go for it. It’s possible to do something that you absolutely love.”
The changes: women and the virtual space
Romany Romany attributes her success as a magician to ‘persistence’.
The rise in formal training courses for magic is not the only way in which the industry is changing; a profession seemingly reliant on the face-to-face contact (the coin behind the ear, the rabbit out of a hat), the pandemic has had a massive effect on magicians’ craft.
Richard Parsons says that if performing magic shows over Zoom was at first strange, he and others soon adapted to the virtual medium, realizing that it even broadened the scope of the tricks available to them. “You can do a lot over Zoom and get away with things that you wouldn’t be able to do in real life,” he says. “The pandemic’s enabled us to develop some new material.”
Another significant change is the introduction of women to the profession: The Magic Circle only allowed female members in the 1980s, and the industry has always been a male-dominated one. Now women are stepping out of the shadows and from the limiting role as the magician’s beautiful sidekick, and into the limelight: more and more are trying their hand at the dark craft, though like many industries we still have a fairly long way to go before the industry is weighted equally between the genders.
Like many others, Romany Romany became a magician through sheer love of a hobby. She was working for British Telecom at the same time as attending evening magic classes, and decided one day to give up her well-paid corporate job to follow her dream.
Through seventeen years of sheer “persistence” (a quality I’m told yet again is crucial to success), Romany went to Las Vegas to learn magic, married a German juggler and was soon touring the world with her shows including the prestigious Penn & Teller show in America. She was the only British woman to win the world magic award in Las Vegas and the Magic Circle Magician of the Year.
She says that though more young female magicians are rising to prominence, it’s still important to work hard to differentiate yourself from the string of male magicians. “There are so many hurdles to achieving as a woman that you have to be different. I think that’s true for almost every industry: if you want to succeed, you always have to be better.”
When Romany first became a performer, for instance, she copied the male costume – black suit, top hat- the lot. When she was a stilt walker she copied the pin-striped trousers and waistcoat. “But then I thought: actually, I want to be different.” So Romany began wearing jazzy colourful dresses in the manner of a show-girl which, she says, gave her more “creative opportunity” and marked her out from her black-clad male associates.
Yet challenges still appear in mysterious forms: when Romany began learning tricks from a book she realized that many were based around male clothing. ‘Ten ways to produce an egg out of nowhere’ was based on producing an egg from a (male) breast-pocket of a jacket. And that same special magic pocket is even “tax deductible”. But this, says Romany, forced her to think of alternative methods.
Magic connects us
Richard Jones began his magic career by entertaining associates in the army
Richard Jones is the only magician to have ever won Britain’s Got Talent in 2016- and his journey, like so many others, began in an unusual setting.
He joined the army, and in the first few years was travelling all over the world, with lots of time to either “sit and read”, or “learn something new.” His army associates, he says, were the “perfect audience” for him to try new tricks on, because they were honest and quick at catching him out. If he did something that didn’t impress they would come right out and say it.
“I just got more and more fascinated by the art of deception and illusion,” says Jones, “so I started getting better and better and agreeing to do bigger shows, even though I didn’t have any formal training. But I think that’s why I’m where I am today: I learned the hard way from always being under pressure.”
The pandemic has been somewhat of a spanner in the magic works for Jones – as for most. But, like Richard Parsons, he did what magicians do best: adapted. He invested in a big tech set-up in his house with cameras and lighting and a sound desk and started virtual shows, which have been immensely popular.
“And actually, I love it. Originally, I didn’t think there’d be much value in it or that people would feel very involved. But I realized it’s the opposite.”
And Jones says that the pandemic has, in some ways, been the perfect context to bring people to magic. “What I love about magic is that you are witnessing something impossible, and it takes our attention away from anything else going on in our lives. You can’t watch a magic show without smiling.”
It’s also a great connector: “Before the lockdown I was used to seeing and meeting lots of people. So I definitely felt the effects and felt a bit isolated.” Doing virtual shows was, for Jones, an integral part of staying tethered to others.
“Magic is a great way of connecting us all,” says Jones. “What I learned from lockdown was that our generation needed to know what to prioritize in life. The pandemic highlighted that what we value most is the connection that we have with people.”
