My blog

Category: Features

  • Indians Head London Property Rankings

    Dinesh Dhamija

    When he paid £138 million for Aberconway House in Mayfair last week, Adar Poonawalla joined a growing list of Indian billionaires with trophy assets in central London.

    He is now within a bicycle rickshaw ride of fellow Indian billionaire Ravi Ruia, who paid £113 million for Hanover Lodge in Regent’s Park earlier this year, and GP Hinduja’s redevelopment of the 1,100-room Old War Office in Whitehall, for which he paid £350 million in 2016 and has transformed into a world-class hotel and apartments.

    Ownership of ultra-prestigious London real estate goes in waves. In the late 20th century, the Middle Eastern Sheikhs made their nests in Mayfair. In the early 20th century, it was the turn of the Russian oligarchs. Adar Poonawalla’s purchase brings the number of Indian billionaires with a London pad to at least a dozen, including Lakshmi Mittal and Sri Prakash Lohia, each with top-of-the-scale mansions.

    After concentrating their property investments at home during the pandemic, Indian High Net Worth Individuals have returned to global markets, with the UK as the most popular destination, followed by the UAE and the United States. Some buy for a second home, others as a route to citizenship, others to educate their children.

    Adar Poonawalla is flush with Serum Institute of India’s successful drug revenue: it manufactured India’s most important pandemic vaccine Covidshield. Started by his father Cyrus in 1966, Serum Institute pioneered vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, and measles, saving tens of millions of lives. Adar took over management in 2011 and rented Aberconway House in 2021, finally deciding to buy it outright from wealthy Polish heiress Dominika Kulczyk this December.

    I predict that 2024 will see a further influx of Indian wealth into the British capital, as more prime London real estate comes up for sale. If anyone really wants to make a splash, they should buy The Holme – the extraordinary Regent’s Park mansion which resembles The White House in Washington DC – currently on sale for £250 million.

    It’s been on the market since last February, so you could probably knock a few million off the asking price. But with 40 bedrooms, eight garages, a tennis court, sauna, whirlpool, grand dining room and library, besides the ornamental lake and four-acre gardens, it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to maintain.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be out soon.

     

  • Paul Joyce: My Brush with Still Life

    Paul Joyce

     

    Art has always been distinguished by separate genres within its compass, but it was as late as 1669 that these were actually categorised into distinct genres. An art- theoretician called Andre Felibien ranked them in this order of importance: 1) History Painting; (2) Portraiture; (3) Genre painting; (4) Landscapes; (5) Still Lives.

     

    Of course, the final, casually dismissed category of Still Lives, has formed part of Art’s history from the earliest depictions made by man on the walls of caves, all the way up to the doodlings of David Hockney on his iPad. In the era before Christ, and indeed right up to the Middle Ages, the painting of objects such as fruit, as well as food of other kinds including dead animals, was not just an attempt to arrest the ravages of time. For example, in Egyptian art the placing of depictions of objects in a tomb was considered a practical aid in the journey of the soul towards heaven. It was thought the images would transform into actual nourishment to help the deceased on their travels.

    Paul Joyce, Avocado Study

    Again, in Roman art, large murals in the villas of the rich showing the bounty of nature, along with the inhabitants of those very productive fields, namely birds and small animals, demonstrated the superiority of an upper elite class and their ability to feast of the best. Pliny the Elder wrote of one artist who came to be called “ a painter of vulgar objects” as he depicted shops, animals and food. But he made it clear that the results were extremely popular and far outsold work of artists in other genres.

     

    Paul Joyce, Avocado No. 2

     

    The fact that Still Live painting is relatively easy to distinguish and therefore categorise, meant that for centuries it was associated with academic principals of depiction, with styles and subject matter being handed down from generation to generation.  An Academy, after all, is fundamentally an organ of the Establishment, usually conservative and anti-liberal. The Adademie Francaise up until the Nineteenth Century still had strict guidelines distinguishing subject matter in art, with historical, biblical or religious pictures occupying the highest category and with Still Lives (again) relegated to the outer darkness.

     

    Paul Joyce, Fruit Study

     

    However, the arrival of the Impressionists blew all previous assumptions out of the water. They were more concerned with the emotional impact of colour on the viewer and their choice of subject matter was as wide as any previously written hierarchy. The greatest exponent of this rapid emergence of new approaches to ways of seeing the world was undoubtably Van Gogh. His series of Sunflower paintings took the humble Still Life to heights of greatness he himself, dead by the age of 37, could never have imagined.  All of us struggling in his footsteps owe him an immeasurable debt of gratitude.

     

     

    So, my current attempts to come to terms with this lowest form of art is part inspired by Vincent, of course, but also very much by the “painter’s painter” Paul Cezanne as well. Cezanne famously stated that he wanted “to astonish Paris with an apple”. Well, mine is to attempt to amaze Brighton with an avocado. The images reproduced here are very much the start of a journey to investigate one of the most influential, successful and popular genres in the history of Art.  Nature can provide us with so much, particularly in terms of structures, forms and especially colours.  It is no accident that most of the best artist’s pigments come directly from actual elements culled from within our natural environment.

     

    I have come to understand even more than before, as I embark on this voyage of discovery, that the marked differences between the application of paint both by brush and palette knife produce totally different results. Using a conventional cotton canvas, a brush will drag across the dimpled cotton texture, frequently leaving details of the individual bristles. Whereas a knife will glide over the surface, allowing colours to mix together, sometimes in an almost magical way. This together with an attempt to use that sensuality that paint has in its very essence, itself attempts to mirror how tactile and toothsome still lives can be.  If I can literally make some viewer’s mouths water, I will feel that I have at least in part succeeded. But this of course I shall never know, unless some concerned reader tells me so.

     

    The writer is a celebrated artist and photographer

     

  • Dinesh Dhamija: India Will Take Off Like China in the 90s

    Dinesh Dhamija

    I love reading sharp economic analysis. You can always tell when someone has mastered their subject and can deploy statistics like small bombs – bang, bang, bang and the argument is over.

    One such piece appeared this week on Reuters.com, written by the energy analyst John Kemp. He compared the current rise of India with that of China in the 1990s and early 2000s.

    Of course, there are many differences, as he admits. India is a democracy, China a communist dictatorship. China’s cities are further north, so they need more energy for heating. China had a stronger manufacturing base; many Indians speak English.

    But the similarities are remarkable:

    India’s median population age is now 27.9, which China reached in 1998.
    35 per cent of India’s population lives in urban areas, just as it did in China in 2000.
    GDP per capita at purchasing power parity is $7,100, which China reached in 2007.
    Energy consumption is now above 26 gigajoules per person, just like China in the mid-1990s.
    What Kemp deduces from these parallels is that India will now enjoy two decades of rapid and sustained economic growth, just as China forged ahead in the years before and after the millennium, following the liberalising measures of the 1980s and 1990s.

    There is a “large rural population ready to migrate to urban areas in pursuit of better paid work and a large potential to industrialise by catching up with more advanced economies,” he points out.

    Kemp believes that India is on the brink of ‘take-off’, the point where urbanisation, industrialisation, household incomes and energy consumption increase most rapidly, usually for several decades at a time.

    The implications of this 20-year-long transformation are astonishing. The country will see a huge increase in demand for energy, goods and services, for travel, food and drink, technology and healthcare… anything that is sold in the West will be wanted in the subcontinent.

    As I describe in my book The Indian Century, it will provide the opportunity of a lifetime for a new generation of entrepreneurs.

    Strikingly, there are few other such economies anywhere else in the world. At a predicted 6 per cent per annum, next year India will grow faster than China (4-5 per cent), twice as fast as the global average (3 per cent) and four times as fast as advanced economies such as the EU and the United States (1.5 per cent).

    From an emerging markets point of view, India is becoming the only game in town.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be published in early 2024

     

  • Cameron Kerr on the restaurant chain that beat the Covid crisis

    Cameron Kerr

    When the world economy ground to a halt in 2020, the hospitality sector was amongst those by far the worst hit.

    Restaurants, pubs and bars can’t operate through Zoom meetings, and unlike a supermarket we don’t go there to take our food home with us. So in March 2020, the only option for the hospitality sector was to go into hibernation.

    Workers were furloughed, premises closed up and lights turned off, waiting for vaccines that at the time were estimated to be 18 months away… which experts thought was actually a worryingly fast rollout.

    So when French dining chain Côte went into administration during 2020, the news may have seemed predictable.

    What may have been more surprising to some, is that its’ financial savior, Partners Group, was able to save 94 out of 98 of the chain’s restaurants.

    In 2023 that number had reduced to 82 restaurants, but for comparison, Byron Burgers, a restaurant chain founded in 2007 – the same year as Côte – had 70 restaurants across the UK at its’ peak.

    Once considered ‘the darling of the better burger scene’ according to Restaurant Online, a series of setbacks including three insolvency procedures has left its total number of remaining restaurants in single figures.

    So why has Côte – a chain focused on steak frites and beef bourguignon – stood the test of time, and not a brand specialising in crowd pleasing burgers?

    “We’re quite generous in our interpretation of dining. We’ve got a big menu and intentionally so,” former Côte CEO Alex Scrimgeour told The Telegraph in 2015.

    “We’re not setting the world on fire and trying to do anything too crazy in a culinary sense.

    “We’re trying to deliver very simple, high quality food that you would expect to pay quite a lot more for if eating in an independent restaurant.”

    Browsing the menu for my local Côte branch, I find a steak tartare starter priced at just £10.25, confit duck à l’orange for £18.50, and even that beef bourguignon comes in at under £20.

    This is 2023, when a London pub can charge you £20 for fish and chips – a dish once considered a cheap and nourishing Friday night takeaway.

    So to see dishes with the kinds of names you’d expect to hear when watching Masterchef: The Professionals, followed by the number £18.50, is a surprising sight.

    Perhaps this best demonstrates the gap in the market that Côte has been able to fill.

    Byron Burgers has plenty of competition that springs to mind: Honest Burgers, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Shake Shack, every major chain pub that offers a food menu (and a lot of pubs these days operate more as restaurants).

    That’s before we get to the usually cheaper, fast-food alternatives.

    Burger King, McDonald’s, Five Guys, your local kebab shop.

    If you want burgers, you are spoilt for choice – but french food?

    Café Rouge, another French food competitor, had to publicly deny that it was in receivership earlier this year, after a columnist for the Sunday Times wrote that the chain was “struggling” and “the last few outlets are on the verge of closing forever”.

    Gordon Ramsay’s French restaurant ‘Petrus’ in London offers an A La Carte menu at £120 per person.

    But Ramsay’s expertise has found its way to Côte for a far cheaper price.

    Last year as part of a brand refresh Steve Allen, the former head chef of Gordon Ramsay’s at Claridges, took over the role of head chef at Côte.

    Allen rose from Junior Sous Chef, to Head Chef and then Executive Chef during his time at Claridge’s, and worked on Gordon Ramsay books including ‘Secrets’ and ‘World Kitchen’.

    When Allen introduced a new spring menu for Côte this year, he told reporters: “I have been cooking French cuisine since the age of 13 and this menu is a reflection of everything I love about French food in the Spring. Our main focus is and always will be about the taste of our food at Cote. Simple, yet complex and delicious.”

    More than three years on from the pandemic and lockdowns when Partners Group rescued Côte, the French restaurant chain has a new head chef and has carried out a refurbishment of its’ restaurants.

    The refurb aimed to create ‘contemporary and elegant French-inspired’ interiors, accompanying a new in-house butchery and development kitchen.

    The company reported a turnover of £144.9 million for the 2022 financial year, a flat turnover compared to 2019 – but money that was made amid the backdrop of the Omicron variant and the cost of living crisis.

    Commenting on the figures, executive chair, Jane Holbrook, seemed optimistic about the future:

    “We’ve built our foundations for growth and are very well supported by Partners Group.  We are excited about our recent progress and have embarked on a brand renaissance supported by a brilliant team.”

     

    Cameron Kerr is a freelance journalist

     

  • News: Charity warns thousands of children will be homeless this Christmas – as it raises £850,000 to combat the issue

    Finito World

     

    A homelessness charity has warned that thousands of British children face a “bleak Christmas” with a record number of youngsters set to spend it without a secure place to call home.

    Recent figures revealed that the number of children in the UK currently living in temporary accommodation has soared to 139,000.

    Now CEO Sleepout has called for those in power to “put the brakes” on the country’s rapidly worsening homeless problem.

    The charity has raised a record £850,000 this year to be distributed to over 100 different causes working to help those most in need. Since launching a decade ago, CEO Sleepout has raised over £4.2m.

    Yet despite unwavering public support, the charity’s CEO Bianca Robinson said the problem is only getting worse and has become a “national shame”.

    “The number of children without a safe and secure roof over their heads this Christmas could easily fill the London Olympic Stadium twice over – that’s a disgrace and something we must all address,” she said.

    “Nobody in this country should have to spend Christmas in this situation, and that’s especially the case with children.”

    She’s now urged the public to donate the cost of a selection box to try and help as many families and vulnerable people as possible ahead of what has already been a bitterly cold winter.

    “We’ve staged 16 different sleepouts this year, and the support and determination of everybody involved has been simply awe-inspiring,” added Bianca.

    “Some of our 850 participants literally slept out in deadly storms to raise this money, so it is disheartening to see that despite all their efforts, rates of homelessness are reaching record highs.

    “Heading into 2024, that trajectory must change. We would love a world where our charity didn’t need to exist, and that the support our most vulnerable needed was already in place.

    “Unfortunately, that doesn’t look like it is going to change, so these families and children will still be forced to rely on the generosity of the public to help them get through Christmas and beyond.”

    CEO Sleepout is now issuing a final fundraising drive ahead of winter, which is almost the hardest time of year for those sleeping rough.

    Office of National Statistics (ONS) data last year showed revealed 741 homeless people died – a figure that’s over 50 per cent higher than when CEO Sleepout launched in 2013.

    To donate, please visit www.ceosleepout.co.uk/get-involved/donate/

     

     

     

  • Tim Clark on the Future of Education

    Tim Clark

     

     

    “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is a failure”.

    Commonly, but probably wrongly, attributed to Einstein

     

     

    The Challenge

    How do we prepare young people for the future and “future proof” our education system?

    In 2017, the shocking assertion was made that, “around 85 per cent of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet”.  [“The next era of human/machine partnerships” published by Dell Technologies and the Institute for the Future] As a consequence of revolutionary changes in the jobs market, the same report controversially highlights the need for far more “in-the-moment” learning so that, “the ability to gain new knowledge will be valued higher than the knowledge people already have”. Transferable skills and the appropriate mindset will, therefore, be paramount.

    The Historical Context

    Sadly, the history of technical, vocational and practical education in this country has been one of neglect and missed opportunities.  In 1918, the Fisher Act (which raised the school leaving age from 12 to 14) recommended the introduction of “continuation schools” for those who left school at 14: pupils would be required to attend for 320 hours each year whilst holding down jobs. Many provisions of the Act were, however, cut owing to the post war depression. In 1926, the report by Sir W.H. Hadow, had, as its ideal, “the awakening and guiding of the practical intelligence, for the better and more skilled service of the community in all its multiple business and complex affairs……It has been amply shown that for many children the attainment of skill in some form of practical work in science, handwork or the domestic arts may be a stimulus to higher intellectual effort”. The need for a broader curriculum was repeated by the Norwood Committee in 1941:

    “At the primary stage the main preoccupation lies with basic habits, skills and aptitudes of mind…. It is the business of secondary education, first, to provide opportunity for a special cast of mind to manifest itself, if not already manifested in the primary stage, and, secondly, to develop special interests and aptitudes to the full by means of a curriculum and a life best calculated to this end.”

    Despite the dated language, the demand for a curriculum that recognised both that all pupils are different but also that all could and should benefit from schooling, is manifest. Such reports, of course, envisaged the use of “selection” and the provision of different types of school for pupils of different abilities and aptitudes. It is one of the tragedies of post-war education that very few technical schools were built so that in most areas the existence of only two types of secondary school, grammar and secondary modern, reinforced the idea of pass or fail rather than of “selection” for the most appropriate type of school.

    There is, however, absolutely no need to return to the idea of providing different types of school: wide ability schools should simply be able to offer courses that are appropriate for all their intake. This was recognised by the seminal Butler Act of 1944 (which raised the leaving age from 14 to 15 and to 16 as soon as was “practicable” – eventually enacted in 1973) which did not insist on selection but simply required Local Authorities to ensure that schools were “sufficient in number, character and equipment to afford for all pupils opportunities for education offering such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes”. Although most LA’s did opt for selection, the Act was permissive and allowed for both selective and comprehensive systems.

    The Current Government’s Action

    In recent years, the prime manifestation of the government’s commitment to skills has been through the development of the apprenticeship programme and this commitment has, without doubt, been impressive. To date, 691 “standards” (ie approved apprenticeships) have been offered, ranging from 12-18 month Level 2 (GCSE standard) qualifications, through to Level 7, degree level qualifications, lasting up to six years. The various routes or disciplines include agriculture, catering and hospitality, construction, digital, education, engineering and manufacturing, health (up to and including becoming a fully qualified doctor), legal, finance and transport.

    Unlike traditional school/college-based courses, apprenticeships permit students to learn on the job in the workplace, to earn a salary but to also spend at least 20% of their working hours training or studying. To complete the course, apprentices must undertake both ongoing assessments and end-point assessments. One major and very positive organisational change is that from 2024 students will be able to apply for an apprenticeship through UCAS, the charity currently responsible for undergraduate degree applications. This “one-stop-shop” will help youngsters to compare the full range of occupations, training and education opportunities open to them. It will also help to build parity of esteem between technical, vocational and academic career paths. John Cope, Executive director at UCAS and board member of IfATE [Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education] has commented that, “AT UCAS, we know over 50% of those who set up their account with us are interested in doing an apprenticeship, while data from IfATE shows 84% of those who become an apprentice feel they made the right choice. This new partnership will boost numbers and make sure more people are making the right choice.”

    Two Areas for Consideration

    The current and recent governments’ drive to increase practical, technical and vocational opportunities is to be much applauded. Two aspects of current policy should, however, be challenged. Firstly, to start an apprenticeship, students must be at least 16 years old: much less is currently being offered to broaden the curriculum pre-16. Secondly, there is amongst some, a misunderstanding of the term “skills”.

    1.     Pre-16 Education

    The insistence on waiting until 16 before a pupil can commence most practical courses is unhelpful, not least because for most who embark on some form of apprenticeship, this only becomes an option after they have “failed” traditional academic subjects at GCSE. Every year, over one quarter of teenagers fail to attain basic passes at GCSE (a Level 4) with many of them knowing one or two years before they even get into the exam room that they are not going to be successful. What incentive is there for a young person to work hard, to behave or even to attend if they know at the end of the course, they will achieve little? As I have argued many times before, this is definitely not a call for “prizes for all” but it is a simple recognition that by having a broader Key Stage 4 (14-16 years old) curriculum we shall be able to engage far more youngsters in their learning, see many more achieve worthwhile outcomes (rather than a string of poor GCSE grades) and, most importantly, prepare them much more effectively for the uncertain and ever changing world of employment. The other, often overlooked, consequence of moving away from the one size fits all GCSE approach is that we could also raise standards in traditional academic subjects as programmes of study and examinations could be targeted more to those who are academically able.

    “We are not indulging in the fallacy of supposing that there are two types of pupil, the able and “academic” and the less able and “practical”; but we do strongly believe that many, though not all, of our average and less than average pupils may find through practical activities a sense of achievement which can energize the rest of their work.

     

     

    The pride and pleasure of a measurable achievement is considerable.

    There can be, too, an intense creative satisfaction in making and doing which is especially important for those who do not easily achieve expression in words.”

    “Half Our Future”, 1963, Sir John Newsom, a report into the education of 13-16 year olds “of average and less than average ability”

     

    2.     What Are “Skills”?

     

    The whole skills vs knowledge debate is one of the most puerile and unnecessary arguments in education. Education must be based on knowledge otherwise we are in the realms of fiction or make believe, but knowledge is only really important when it leads to understanding and when the student has the skills necessary to use and apply the knowledge. Unfortunately, for some, “skills” are seen purely as practical, hands-on skills, whereas every subject, including (and perhaps, especially) the traditional academic subjects such as literature and history, require skills – the skills of comprehension, application, manipulation and evaluation. A minister stated a few years ago that he was “in favour of Shakespeare and skills”, completely missing the point that the skills required to study Shakespeare are equally important to, but different from, the skills required to programme a computer. Society and the economy require a wide range of skills and examinations should be geared even more to the application and use of knowledge rather than the pure Gradgrindian retention of facts (although the process of changing the nature of examinations has been evident for some time).

     

     

    “Knowledge is essential for learning. It underpins all higher order skills. If we want our pupils to be able to analyse and evaluate, we must first ensure they know and understand what they are analysing or evaluating.”

    During the weekly subject quizzes at Michaela School, the questions pupils are asked “force them to think about, apply and manipulate their knowledge.”

    Katherine Birbalsingh, “The Power of Culture”, Headmistress of Michaela School

     

    The continuation of traditional academic subjects, at least to a basic level, is also essential to avoid a utilitarian approach to education and to ensure that every young person has at least some understanding of the country and world in which we live. Every child should also, regardless of background or ability, be exposed to high culture: Shakespeare, Dickens, Mozart and Monet should not be the preserve of the rich or academically able.

    The need for a broader range of skills was reinforced by the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs” report published in 2020. It argues that by 2025, the top fifteen skills needed globally include:

    1. Analytical thinking and innovation,

    3. Complex problem-solving,

    4. Critical thinking and analysis

    9. Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility [“soft” skills]

    “Soft skills” are life skills that are not subject specific, but which are essential for young people to become active and valuable members of society. Skills such as resilience, stress tolerance, teamwork, leadership, creativity, enterprise, critical thinking, problem solving and the ability to be flexible should be taught from the sandpit onwards and, again, are successfully inculcated through traditional academic subjects as well as through sport, music, drama, school trips and activities such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. They are most successfully ingrained when they are part of the whole school ethos – what used to be termed the “hidden curriculum” – whereby pupils are immersed in an environment which challenges (but equally, supports) and which develops character as well as specific knowledge and skills.

    This need for the development of broader, more generic and transferable skills was also identified by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of University of Oxford in 2013. Their research into “The Future of employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” considers the impact of AI, technological developments, computerisation and sophisticated algorithms on employment. “Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers [interestingly, earlier technological advances tended to impact on skilled workers] will relocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerisation – i.e. tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.”

    As I argued in “Better Schools – The Future of the Country”, the introduction of a non-academic leaving certificate at 16 or 18, which records and evaluates attendance, punctuality, behaviour, attitude, application and commitment to extra-curricular activities and to school life, would raise the importance of such soft, but crucially important, skills. It would also remind youngsters that they, and no one else, are accountable for their attitude, behaviour and work ethic. What could be better preparation for adult life than the teaching personal responsibility?

     

    Tim Clark has had a very distinguished career in education. He was a teacher for 32 years and a Head for 18, firstly of a grammar school which he led to be “outstanding” in all areas and to be one of the highest performing schools in the East Midlands. Latterly, he took over an out-of-control academy in the London Borough of Hackney, sited on one of the largest and most deprived council estates in the country. In the words of Ofsted, he “transformed” the academy and left it as a well-disciplined, high performing school of first choice. In 2019 he moved into education consultancy and professional development training, working with schools across the UK and abroad, most recently in Nigeria and Spain. He stood for parliament against David Blunkett in 2005 and remains an active member of the Party.

  • Dinesh Dhamija: India has a new Greta Thunberg

    Dinesh Dhamija

     

    Prasiddhi Singh from Tamil Nadu, who will attend the Dubai COP28 climate summit this week with the Indian delegation, is just 11 years old and already has a Foundation which has planted tens of thousands of trees and earned the praise of Narendra Modi.

     

    As a keynote speaker at the Harvard World Model United Nations and on TedX, she has astonished audiences with her maturity and wisdom. “Trees never eat their fruit nor rivers drink their water,” she says. “Rather than looking up to the government and leaders, we should focus on the actions we can take to make a change.”

     

    When the COP28 begins later this week, Prasiddhi’s energetic optimism will contrast with lethargic inaction elsewhere.

     

    There will be no US President Biden. No Chinese President Xi.

     

    There will also be some embarrassing silences. What new fossil fuel deals does the COP28 president (and chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) Sultan al-Jaber hope to sign during the event? What does UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have to say about backtracking from previous climate pledges on emissions and oil drilling?

     

    India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, will arrive at COP28 with a tailwind of achievement in renewable energy generation, goodwill from his successful chairing of the G20 talks in Delhi, and a package of ambitious emissions-reduction plans.

    India has pledged to build 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030, tripling the current level and making up half of the country’s energy mix. Alongside are green hydrogen projects, low-cost finance for energy transition, plans for carbon capture and storage technology, and steps to phase out old and inefficient coal plants.

    “Government policies and incentives have positioned India as a rapidly growing clean energy market,” says Sandiip Bhammer at venture capital fund Green Frontier Capital. “India is committed to a low carbon future.”

    As a solar energy entrepreneur, with a 270-hectare photovoltaic park in development in Romania, I’m very pleased to see India taking the lead on renewable energy and emissions reductions. There are always short-term political temptations to shy away from climate action and energy transformation. Doing something new is never easy.

    But the alternative is potentially catastrophic. It is unconscionable that so few world leaders are prepared to act for the good of future generations, pandering to the fossil fuel lobbies that donate to their parties and ignoring the evidence of their own eyes.

    If we want the 11 years olds of today to inherit a world worth living in, we need to pay attention to what people like Prasiddhi Singh are saying.

     

    Dinesh Dhamija founded, built and sold online travel agency ebookers, before serving as a Member of the European Parliament. His latest book, The Indian Century, will be published imminently.

  • Book review: Amy: In Her Words

    Christopher Jackson discusses the great singer Amy Winehouse would have been 40 this year

     

    The case of Amy Winehouse is so tragic that we could be forgiven for not wishing to revisit it: the druggy freneticism of her short unhappy life is something one is as much inclined to turn away from as to look at. But as a major anniversary rolls round – Winehouse would have been 40 this year, and in her prime – there is the widespread realisation that there is still a market for our morbid fascination with her unhappy fate.

    In the case of the new coffee-table book Amy: In Her Words, the proceeds are going to Amy’s Place, a rehab centre which obviously does good work, according to two testimonials by addicts who have been treated there. But inevitably, given Winehouse’s short life, it is all a bit of a scraping of the barrel.

    The title itself can’t help but be underwhelming. Of course, what we care about is Amy Winehouse’s life in music, and so there is an element of loss and even deflation about this project at the outset. We are reduced to her words now, when it is her voice we would love to hear.

    Even so, it would be very churlish to deny that Winehouse could have a wonderful way with language. We have to remember that what we now consider the completed achievement constitutes what in another life would have been just a very promising start. Had Winehouse lived she would probably have been on her ninth album by now, and we’d know more about what she was capable of. Instead, due to her early death, we sometimes find ourselves allotting maturity to what she did, because it’s all we’ll ever have.

    She was so young – and yet this book shows that a certain wisdom and self-awareness was lodged in her all along, as if in compensation for the likelihood of her early death. “Good words to describe me: loud, bold, melodramatic,” runs one entry.

    But there was always something remarkable about Winehouse, which means we’ll always want to learn more. Winehouse was physically very slight, even before she became bulimic. But the voice itself could do anything: there was always something preternatural about its sheer extent and force coming out of such a vulnerable frame.

    It might be that the great voices seem complete very young. Bob Dylan was a great singer by the age of 22 partly because he sounded like he had access to the wisdom of an octogenarian. The same might be said of Billie Holiday – like Winehouse, an alcoholic who died young – who sounds in a song like ‘Strange Fruit’ as though she has come into the world with an innate knowledge of how things are which would somehow not have changed had she lived to be 100.

    The lyrics don’t matter all that much in Winehouse for the simple reason that the voice is so good that it obliterates all before it. However, she did have a verve with language which shows that she had been paying attention to the linguistic possibilities showcased in Britpop, especially in bands like Blur and Pulp. The content of the lyrics can be dark and depressing since they reflect a life which we wish had been otherwise, but songs like ‘Rehab’, ‘You Know I’m No Good’ and ‘Back to Black’ all have spirited lyrics which mean we can’t dismiss out of hand the notion of a collection of her words.

    Nevertheless, there is a caveat. In those three songs I have mentioned, there are two depressing factors. The first is her self-loathing, leading to an apparently logical insistence on the continuation of drug abuse. It is impossible to listen to ‘Rehab’ without thinking the singer has got the matter precisely wrong and that rehab is really the best place for her. It’s a magnificent track, but in the line about her preferring to listen to Ray Charles than to go to rehab, one wants to be pedantic and remind her that she could just as easily listen to Ray Charles in rehab: if she’d done that she’d still be around today. “Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen,” as the great Clive James put it.

    The second unfortunate aspect of the words is the description of her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil who is by any standards one of the least appealing plus ones in the history of popular music. Phenomenally vain, there remains the sense that Fielder-Civil took Winehouse for granted, using her as a sort of bank for drug money and not minding about the effect their shared addictions had on her. In the documentary Amy, he sometimes seems to be acting the pantomime villain, until one realises that he really is this way – assuming the complicity of the viewer out of a pure ignorance and arrogance which stood out even in that pointlessly hedonistic decade the so-called Noughties.

    This is what injures these songs from the lyrical perspective and marks out their immaturity: the subject of the song seems so plainly overvalued that we wonder about the validity of Winehouse’s overall perception of life. The scene in Jamaica and Spain in ‘You Know I’m No Good’ for example can in no way have been a ‘sweet reunion’, since it unfortunately was a reunion with Blake. One can sense through the misguided protestations of the lyric that his interest in her carpet burn is transactional and that the singer has fatally misjudged everything about the situation.

    Perhaps we simply know too much about her life. We know nothing of Shakespeare’s life, and it may be that the Dark Lady treated the playwright as badly as Fielder-Civil treated Winehouse. But sometimes it helps not to know, and there must be few Winehouse fans who delight in the notion of Fielder-Civil. We wish she were singing about someone else, but she’s always singing about him.

    Even so, this book reminds us that she could be very funny. There is a brief journal entry berating herself for her eating habits: “No fucking carbs, bitch.” There is also an amusing story in this book of Winehouse in court. When accused wrongly of assaulting a dancer, she showed a leg to the judge and said: “Could someone with feet this small be intimidating?” But every page of sweet drawings, or little notes to self, all of which tapers off by the release of her first album Frank in 2003, is full of an understandable yearning on the part of her bereaved parents who have compiled the book that she were still here.

    This is a book then about the girlhood of someone who dramatically lost all sense of innocence very quickly due to excessive drug and alcohol intake. Why does addiction lead to a loss of innocence, which is really a loss of self? It’s because we cease to dream and wonder which is what children do; instead we’re caught in a loop, unable to look ahead and no longer open to enchantment about what life may yet contain.

    The fact that we wish it could all have been so different for Amy Winehouse can make us forget that sometimes, in precious instances, it was. That was when she was sober in the vocal booth – and then she showed herself to be one of the great singers of any era.

    In certain instances, we talk of God-given talent and sometimes what we are noticing is a huge juxtaposition between a person’s daily life and what, all of a sudden, they can be capable of. The classic example of this is Mozart, though his life has been somewhat Hollywoodised by the Peter Schaffer film Amadeus (1984). It is impossible to shake the sense that something wonderful was bestowed on Winehouse – a complete musical soul which in a remarkably short space of time rushed to maturity, en route to its own destruction.

    The great example of this is her rendition of ‘Valerie’, her version of the Mark Ronson song which had originally appeared on the 2006 Zutons album Tired of Hanging Around. Here, Winehouse shows us what she might have been capable of had she lived: there would have been extensive proof across a large catalogue that she had few obvious peers in the interpretation of song.

    It’s worth remembering that ‘Valerie’ was initially written from the male perspective and so there’s something inherently fun and joyous about Winehouse singing it; the song acquires a certain Sapphic feel just by virtue of her doing it at all. This is important because too many cover versions lack a decent reason for their existence: one needs to know why one isn’t singing a new song, but redoing an old one. Winehouse knew that by taking on this track she would shine a new light on it.

    I am especially fond of the song because, written in 2006, it can transport us back in time to an era just before the widespread adoption of the mobile phone and WhatsApp. The Internet had been invented, yes, but we were still communicating over written email. In this song, the singer – Ronson/Winehouse – goes to the US and meets a vivacious ginger-haired girl who he falls for. He returns to the UK – the song is actually based in Liverpool – and looking out over the sea which separates them, thinks back on his time with her and asks her questions about how she is, whether she’s changed the colour of her hair, and whether she’s got over her legal problems. Today, we’d be in contact, sending photographs of ourselves across the Atlantic.

    The song is fixed in a moment in time when that wasn’t possible, and the heart would ache imagining what someone who we’d left for good was doing. The way Winehouse sings the word ‘hair’ – ‘did you change the colour of your hair?’ – in the first verse is sublime, doting on the physical detail she loved about the vanished girl, but playfully too as if the primary emotion of recollecting her is joy in spite of absence. The same trick is then repeated on the word ‘lawyer’ on verse two – its light-heartedness suggests the girl’s troubles are already surmounted, if only because she’s singing this song to her on the other side of the world.

    The song makes you think of a certain togetherness which the imagination could create when it sought to overcome distance; by association it makes us think of the secret distances between us in the interconnected world we now have.

    It is the good nature of the song and the generosity of Winehouse’s performance which marks ‘Valerie’ out and makes us mourn her all the more. Most songs written by men who have been separated from their women take a jealous turn: the song will usually say something to the effect of: “I bet you’re with some other man and I’m jealous enough to write this song about my predicament.”

    Such songs reflect how many people feel, but they’re essentially selfish. ‘Valerie’ isn’t like that at all: it roots for the girl no matter what she’s doing. It wants her well-being and her friendship come what may. It’s an extremely good song, but it took Winehouse to turn into a great record.

    In wishing she had lived longer, we can forget that she lived at all – and that we wouldn’t wish for more if she hadn’t hit such heights. ‘Valerie’, most of Back to Black, some of Frank, the incredible skirling vocal in the bridge to her cover of Carol King’s ‘Will You Love me Tomorrow?’ – most of us have outlived Winehouse by many years and never found such glory within ourselves.

    In the end, the attempt to resurrect Winehouse in this book, and in the upcoming film Back to Black starring Marisa Abela, bump up against the fact that she resurrects herself every day the world over on iTunes and Spotify. That’s the good news about her: the music is where her life always was, and where it will always be.

  • Meet the Mentor: Q&A with Finito senior mentor Tom Pauk

    Mentoring is part of what we do at Finito. Kicking off a new series, Tom Pauk answers our questions about mental health, his career, and the mentor-mentee relationship

     

    Tell us about your career before you joined Finito.

     

    After studying drama, my efforts to become an actor ended with a whimper rather than a bang, and I retrained as a solicitor. The career that followed was a “game of two halves”, half-time marked by the global financial crisis of 2007-08. In the first half, at City law firm Allen & Overy, then in-house at American bank Citigroup, I’d specialised in large cross-border lending transactions. In the second, I helped restructure loans borrowers had taken out in more prosperous times but were now struggling to repay. After leaving the bank in 2017, I began mentoring young men in prison, returned to Allen & Overy, now in a role mentoring lawyers in the early stages of their careers, and began writing plays. My professional life, it seems, had come full circle!

     

    Did you feel your education prepared you for the workplace?

     

    A degree in drama could not have prepared me better for the cut and thrust of commercial law, an above-all collaborative endeavour with a diverse cast list of characters, long “rehearsals” with unfeasible deadlines we somehow always managed to meet. At the conclusion of an especially high-profile deal there was the added satisfaction of reading the “reviews” in the financial press. The practise of law is essentially an exercise in problem-solving. In my case, a love of modern languages and playing the violin had also prepared me for the intellectual rigour of law, and I was even able to use my mother tongue Hungarian in transactions with Hungarian clients. So to anyone reading this wondering whether a knowledge of an obscure language might prove useful one day, the answer is a resounding Yes!

     

    Did you benefit from mentorship during your career?

     

    When I’d started out, mentoring was still very much in its infancy. Fortunately, I was able to benefit from the law firm equivalent, the “seat” system, under which trainee solicitors move from one department (or seat) to another every few months to build up expertise in different areas of a firm’s practise. Each seat is supervised by a senior lawyer — part mentor, supervisor and critical friend — overseeing a trainee’s professional development. Over the course of my training contract I was exposed to a variety of mentoring styles, which then shaped my own approach when I assumed the role. But I continue to benefit from ongoing, less formal mentoring in the shape of the extraordinary people I encounter and who inspire me with their wisdom. So in actual fact I’ve never really stopped being mentored.

     

    What are the most common misconceptions about a career in the law?

     

    I think there’s a general (mis)perception that law is a dry, bookish occupation, and that lawyers are aloof from the rest of society, be they pin-striped solicitors in their ivory towers or wigged-up barristers bowing obsequiously in courtrooms. In fact lawyers are widely dispersed throughout society, in the public sector (civil service, local authorities, regulatory bodies), in companies and banks, charities and NGOs. If you’re a young person considering a career in law you’ll be able to select from a wide range of specialisations that play to your unique skills and interests.

     

    Mental health is a particular passion of yours. Can you describe how your interest in that area came about?

     

    There were occasions, especially early on in my career, when my mental health was impacted under the pressure of work. Symptoms included poor sleep, high anxiety and irritability, and a compulsion for checking work emails 24/7. Back then, there was a stigma around discussing one’s mental health, let alone seeking help when you needed it. Worse, it was regarded as a sign of weakness, possibly even career-limiting, to self-disclose. So one’s natural instinct was simply to keep quiet and soldier on. Thankfully, we’ve evolved to a more enlightened view of wellbeing in the workplace, with a plethora of interventions designed to promote a healthy mind as well as body, including mental health first aiders, mindfulness, and discouraging staff from checking work emails after hours. Eight years ago, the memory of my own experience led me to train as a volunteer at a mental health charity. At The Listening Place I’ve seen vividly for myself how poor mental health can quickly escalate into crisis, and how being truly listened to can be life-saving. Literally.

     

    Work-life balance is something you’ve been vocal about. What are the most common pitfalls people fall into there?

     

    Most people understand the importance of achieving a sensible work-life balance, at least intellectually,  And it’s hard to argue against. But here’s the challenge: we’re not necessarily aware of the pendulum as it is swinging in the wrong direction. Whether it’s staying ever-later in the office, checking, or worse, responding to emails at weekends  (“because it’s already tomorrow in Tokyo”), before we know it life is work and work is life. Of course we tell ourselves that it’s only temporary, that as soon as we’ve broken the back of whatever it is we’ll take our foot off the accelerator. But it isn’t that simple, for we may unwittingly have recalibrated our benchmark of what a normal working day is. We’ve trapped ourselves into believing our own indispensability (“If I don’t do it no-one else will). We assume that working harder improves performance, demonstrates commitment to our employer and enhances our prospects for promotion. I’d counsel anyone reading this to challenge these assumptions and to listen out closely for the whirring of your inner pendulum!

     

    You obviously have a passion for mentoring. What are the most common challenges you’re seeing among your current crop of mentees?

     

    I’m certainly seeing the longer-term impact of the pandemic. This is the generation whose educations, family and social lives were disrupted by successive lockdowns. And I’m in awe of just how well they’d adapted to remote ways of studying and working. Another challenge is the sheer number of high-calibre applicants vying for limited places on the graduate recruitment schemes of investment banks, accountancy firms and corporations. Training contracts in City law firms are similarly over-subscribed, and with increasing candidates achieving top grades there’s now a far greater reliance on critical reasoning and situational judgement tests, presentations, written assignments and long assessment days. However I’m also sensing some really positive new trends, with mentees less motivated by achieving huge salaries than they are by finding a fulfilling career. And finally, one positive legacy of the pandemic: Finito mentees are often engaged in volunteering activities, whether it’s repurposing old computers and teaching older people how to use them, mentoring disadvantaged kids, or stacking boxes in foodbanks. Something, finally, to celebrate in challenging times.

     

    Do you vary your process for each mentee, or do you have a particular approach which you use with each candidate?

     

    Mentoring is a transformative tool for supporting the development of a mentee, and because no two mentees are the same the mentoring process does inevitably vary. Having said that, there are common features in my approach.  In the first place, it’s not about the mentor. Our prime responsibility as mentors is to listen attentively at all times to our mentees. Listening actively (as distinct from merely hearing) is a skill that one develops with practice. And it’s crucial we’re responsive to the stated needs of our mentees rather than clinging stubbornly to our own agendas. One unique aspect of mentoring is our willingness to share our own knowledge and experience to support the development of our mentees. A word of caution however, because this has nothing to do with being directive. What we’re aiming to do is empower our mentees to think and act for themselves. Finally, mentoring is a two-way street. At its most fruitful the relationship between mentor and mentee is one in which sharing and learning opportunities arise for both participants. I’m forever learning from my mentees.

     

    What do you know now in your career which you wish you’d known at its start?

     

    Hindsight being a wonderful thing of course, here’s three things I tell my mentees. Firstly, it’s important to pace yourself, especially when starting out in a new role and you’re trying to make a good impression. Keep something of yourself in reserve for when you really need it. Secondly, don’t plot out your entire career from the get-go. Life has a mischievous habit of opening new doors and leading you in new directions. And thirdly, know where you add most value, and focus your energies accordingly.

     

    Do you have any new challenges on the horizon?

     

    I’m excited to have just been appointed to the board of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, whose endowment supports people tackling the root causes of conflict and injustice. Along with my governance responsibilities, I’ll also be involved in grant-making decisions, an area entirely new to me.

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Beautiful Charity: an interview with The Twinning Project CEO Hilton Freund

    Twinning Project CEO Hilton Freund is changing the lives of UK prisoners by giving them employability opportunities in football, writes Christopher Jackson

     

    The great and the good of football are filing into Downing Street: representatives of the charitable foundations of the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal – clubs famous the world over. At Number 10 they’re eager to disabuse you of your mobile phone the moment you arrive but it isn’t personal. Myles Stacey OBE, the special advisor who takes us up to the meeting room, points to a cubby-hole next to the Cabinet room and says: “Ministers have to put their phone in there before a Cabinet meeting so you’re not being singled out!”

    That means the discussion upstairs isn’t recorded, but it’s a remarkable occasion, convened by the likeable Hilton Freund, the Chief Executive of the Twinning Project, an organisation which uses football to help rehabilitate prisoners into jobs.

    Around the table on that day, the possibility of football as a force for good in local communities is repeatedly brought home. The central fixture of your local area used to be your church – now it’s the football stadium. I note time and again in the contributions an admirable sense of responsibility towards those who have been unfortunate enough to choose a life of crime.

    Afterwards, I ask Freund how is involvement in The Twinning Project began. “I have known [Twinning Project founder] David Dein a long time. David was the former vice chairman of Arsenal and he was vice chairman of the FA: he currently still advises FIFA and UEFA on a number of initiatives. After David left Arsenal FC he began public speaking and doing motivational talks. He started primarily in schools and then moved into the prison environment: he just felt that football could do more to create employability opportunities. He reached out to me in 2018 and asked me get involved.”

    Dein’s initial approach to Freund came in early 2018; by October 2018 the Twinning Project had launched. So did Freund come on board as a CEO figure? “Not at first. Once we launched, we quickly recognised that some of the non-premier league clubs would need financial support in order to do this. We knew we had a responsibility to raise funds to help them, so we set up our own charity which was incorporated in mid- 2019: at that point I became the official CEO.”

    Thinking back to the Downing Street event I recall how many of the clubs’ foundation heads complained about the perception that the whole of football is rolling in money. This may be the case when it comes to the eye-popping player salaries we all read about, but it doesn’t mean that the charitable arms of those clubs have ready access to cash. Was all this factored in at the inception of The Twinning Project or did it come as a surprise? “We were acutely aware of it very early on,” explains Freund. “There is a clear division between the club and the community trust or the foundation: the money that swills around the premier league doesn’t become a pot with which to carry out football-based provisions in the community.”

    So how is the Twinning Project funded? “We are a sports-based intervention into criminal justice. We have received little from the Ministry of Justice. We have secured some funding from local police and crime commissioners and from some local charities. But mainly we’ve sought to raise funds through some big events, such as an audience with David Dein and Arsene Wenger. We are a national charity so what we find is we prefer our events to raise unrestricted money and unrestricted funds: these are what helps cover my overheads which are significant.”

    Those overheads tell you about the scale the organisation which Dein and Freund have built in a brief period of time: “I’ve got staff all over the country who are essentially project managers. If you can imagine, I’ve got a guy in Manchester and he looks after 20 clubs and 20 prisons. I’ve got a similar guy in London who looks after 20 clubs and 20 prisons. They all need taking care of.”

    Does Freund have access to the players’ help ? “Access to the players is actually limited,” Freund says. “Access to the club ownership is easier than access to the players.” Why is that? “The players are restricted: they have got a number of initiatives that the clubs have themselves which tend to take priority.  What we don’t want to do is compromise our relationship with our football club partners because it’s putting pressure on them to make players available. To date, although our relationships are rich and very warm with football, we are very careful about how we activate our player engagement.”

    So what exactly does the Twinning Project do? “The idea of football in prison is not new. It’s been happening for years that football clubs go into prisons, but it’s been spasmodic: what we wanted to do is to offer a sustained consistent delivery. What we were seeing was football club representatives going into prison, having a kick around and then leaving and not going back for six months or a year. That’s why we approached The Football Association to create the FA Level 1 coaching qualification which can be delivered in the prison environment.”

    So where can that journey take prisoners? “On completion of the course, prisoners can achieve Level 1 certification which puts them on the ladder to further football-based education should they choose to go that route.  It’s the first step to education, but the important thing is they’re beginning to upskill and engage with a football club at the same time: they are actually on a big interview as well. So when they are released from prison, the football clubs have experience of working with those prisoners, making them that much more employable by those organisations.”

    What’s fascinating is the variety of roles which prisoners end up doing. Freund lists the possibilities and you can see how passionate he is about the potential range of positive outcomes: “I’ve got guys working as coaches – but I’ve also got guys working as stewards on match day, baristas in the coffee bar, as barmen in the club, or in maintenance roles.  70 per cent of prisoners leave prison without a job. It should be no surprise that 65 per cent reoffend in the first year. But if they have got some work and the stability which comes from engagement with a big brand like Everton, Manchester City, Arsenal, Plymouth Argyle, you are less likely to reoffend.”

    For Freund then, employability is the key metric in driving down reoffending. “Those in criminal justice will tell you there is a couple of things that prevent people from reoffending. The first one is their age. For people in their late teens and early twenties, when you are in a gang, going to prison is deemed a badge of honour. The second thing that prevents people going back is a stable relationship: if you have a wife and children, or supportive parents, you’re that much less inclined to want to go back in. Sadly, a lot of people are victims of inter-generational criminal activity.  If your mother or father has been to prison there is a very good chance you are going to prison too. But lack of a job upon release is another – and that’s what we’re committed to tackling.”

    Do any of the prisoners go through Freund’s programme and decide that football isn’t for them, but then go into some other form of business? Freund answers in the affirmative. “I have got a great example of a young man at Lincoln City who wasn’t into football but he was in prison when Lincoln City visited: he is now studying accountancy though the Lincoln City Foundation. We recognise that not everybody loves playing football but everybody understands the power of football brands: we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that this is not just a football-based provision.”

    This makes me wonder whether Freund would consider broadening the Twinning Project to include other sports? “My sweet spot is football,” he replies. “Nigel Wray, the owner of Saracens Rugby Club, sits on my board of trustees – we have entertained the idea of engaging with rugby.” The trouble, he says, is that football is so much more powerful: “Nothing really rivals the level of passion you get with football. When you consider the lack of money with the football club foundations which sit alongside very rich football clubs, the case becomes even harder with other sports. Take cricket as an example. Even at Lords they struggle to make money: to work with other sports codes would increase our funding exposure. It’s a real challenge.”

    The Twinning Project is now impressively expanding its football offering into the US, where soccer is the fastest growing sport. This prompts some interesting reflections on the difference between UK and American prisons. “Let me tell you something: you don’t want to go to prison in the US. Prison for me should be rehabilitative. In the UK, it is:  your punishment is the loss of your liberty, and you are being prepared on day one for the day you get out. In the UK prison system, you can work, you can study, you can do sports-based activities, and you can go to the gym.”

    And in America? “You go to prison in the US and there are 80-90 men in a dormitory three bunks high. There is no privacy. Locking prisoners in a cell for 23 hours a day is not going to rehabilitate anybody – it’s going to make them angry.  We have to work with these individuals to create an environment of nurturing, learning, skilling, and improving these people for when they come out. I was on Rikers Island in New York. You don’t want to go to prison there: it’s another level.”

    And what’s the reception been like in the US? “We work with an organisation called the International Prisons & Corrections Association,” explains Freund. “We have made a presentation to them and, off the back of that, we were given the opportunity to speak to the heads of prisons commissioners and deputy commissioners across the US. There are 50 states, and we have pitched to over 20, and 14 loved the idea.  But you’ve got a federal system: what’s going on in California is very different to what’s going on in New York or Texas. US prison reform is a political hot potato around which elections are won and lost.”

    And where next? Has Freund got a 5-10 year plan? “We are currently in advanced conversations with South Africa; we are in conversation with Roma football club in Italy.  We have been approached by Australia. The only thing holding us back is money: I can’t be in a million places at once but what we have managed to do is come up with a provision in the UK which we can be very proud. There are 92 football clubs in the football league; currently 73 are engaged with the Twinning Project.”

    That’s an incredible achievement and could only have been achieved by passion: “As you can tell, I am hugely passionate about this. I eat, live and breathe it.” He certainly does – and his story is a marker about what can be achieved with that passion – and a window also into the way in which our collective passion for football can be leveraged for good in our communities.