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Category: News

  • ‘It worsened my anxiety’: why the estate agencies exemption on home-working is unfair

    ‘It worsened my anxiety’: why the estate agencies exemption on home-working is unfair

    Georgia Heneage

    Research published last week in the Guardian, based on a poll conducted by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), revealed that one in five people in the UK are unnecessarily going to the office, putting both themselves and others at risk.

    The poll revealed that people felt under pressure from their employers to travel to and from the office, despite not being key workers. 19% from a pool of 1000 workers polled reported still going into the office and said they could do the same work at home. Many felt it to be an unnecessary risk due to their line of work and the unions have received hundreds of complaints from workers.

    An office manager for a London property company, 23, who would prefer to remain anonymous, was made to go into the office at the start of this third lockdown and said the requirement has been unsettling.

    “Boris Johnson announced that estate agencies were exempt – hence why I’m still working in the office, even though I could work from home,” she said.

    “It just feels like a huge risk because I’m coming into daily contact with contractors and landlords and clients, in really close proximity. And my company haven’t made much effort at all to try and keep us safe.” She says that the risk felt unnecessary because “negotiators could have easily done viewing and videos instead of taking clients to properties.

    “The thing that really annoyed me about the situation was that our bosses haven’t really taken it that seriously. If I was in contact with someone who had Covid, I’d have to get a test. But if it came back negative we’d be straight back in the office within hours”. The 40 minute rapid test, she says, is “great for business but not for one’s personal safety”.

    “We didn’t really ever get the choice; I think that if you can work from home you should be able to. Boris Johnson’s exemption of estate agencies meant that we either come in or lose our job”.

    She added: “I don’t think that’s morally correct, given that there’s a deadly virus circulating. It has worsened my anxiety, which was already bad during lockdown. I think it’s quite selfish and it’s put my whole house at risk as well.”

  • The Poet at Work II: Alison Brackenbury

    The Poet at Work II: Alison Brackenbury

    As part of our regular series which looks at the relationship between poets and the workplace, Alison Brackenbury discusses her how she has managed to juggle the need to earn a living with her commitment to her art.

    Alison Brackenbury has had an unusually interesting working life. She won a scholarship to Oxford and left with a First in English. She subsequently married and moved to a small town in Gloucestershire, where she combined writing with horse-keeping, parenthood, grassroots politics and a variety of non-academic jobs. For twenty-three years, until retirement, she worked as a manual worker and bookkeeper in her husband’s family metal finishing firm.

    Her poetry shows deep respect for tradition. It has a worked-at burnish and commitment to form which reminds us of manual labour. Brackenbury is a maker, too worldy-wise not to know that a poem must reach as wide an audience as possible. There is a streak of pragmatism in her poetry, which sits alongside – and is perhaps fed by – a rare knowledge of nature.

    For Finito World, she has produced an exceptional poem ‘Metal Finishing’ which illustrates her many strengths: impeccable technique; a knowledge of the real world; the quiet humanity of her noticing. Above all, we always feel that Brackenbury, like Larkin – another poet who did actual jobs – understands that if poetry is to have any place at all in our busy lives it must be memorable.

    And that, more often than not, will mean that it will rhyme. But the point is that it is an insight that could only have been arrived at by her having once been busy herself. Brackenbury is a great advert for the idea that in order to write you first need to have done jobs.

    Metal finishing   

    Nobody worked like the West Midlanders.

    I scrambled off my bike from one sharp frost

    to find a driver dozing in his van.

    God knows when he set off from Birmingham

    to have his tooling first in Monday’s queue,

    be ‘Just in Time’, words spat by me and you

    as by steamed vats of acid or oxide

    we plated, coated, fought off rust, then dried

    laser-cut tools in our Victorian mews.

    ‘Like Dickens!’ grinned the driver while he chewed

    three o’clock lunch, then roared down our back lane.


    We quit. Accounts and knees reported pain.

    Small margins were not hard to understand,

    for decades, we wired robot parts by hand.

    There was untarnished love in this, no doubt.

    Our buildings saved us, sold, walls razed, dug out.

    Milk bottles crash. I wake. It must be four.

    I listen while the van throbs from our door.


    Notes about the poem


    Metal finishing: processes which protect metal from corrosion. I worked for 23 years in a tiny family company which spent half a century battling with rust.

    Just in Time: a production system in which manufacturers do not hold stock. Components are delivered by sub-contractors, ‘Just in Time’. It was not popular with metal finishers..


    Finito World: Metal Finishing is a wonderful poem. Whenever I read your poems I always feel: ‘This is someone who has done something else in their life other than poetry.’ Did your career empower you to write?

    Alison Brackenbury: I think that my work – especially in industry – gave me material for poems which is rather unusual in British poetry. For example, there may not have been too many poems in the Times Literary Supplement about a van driver’s narrowly averted industrial accident…

    I have always had paid jobs which had no direct connection with poetry. This did make me aware that many people are unacquainted with or even frightened of poetry. This strengthened my own desire to write poems which attempt to be as musical as possible, and relatively clear. There’s always room for a little mystery!

    Conversely, what role did your love of poetry have in giving you confidence in the workplace?

    Like many people – perhaps, especially women? – I have had to be pretty pragmatic about what I did, simply to keep the financial show on the road.

    I have had three, very varied main jobs. When I ran a technical college library, I was regarded (rather optimistically) as a source of knowledge about literature and poetry. There was (then!) just enough spare money in the budget to buy a little poetry. I was amazed and pleased to find one day that a young woman police cadet had plucked a copy of Wordsworth’s poetry from a display and was reading it aloud to some remarkably meek male colleagues… In a public sector admin. job, I again had a rather undeserved reputation as an expert on literature and language. When consulted on knotty points of grammar, I would point out blithely, that poets simply dodged such issues and wrote something quite different, invented if necessary! In my hectic industrial job, few of our sixty customers knew that I wrote. But I was sufficiently fierce about language to be unimpressed by various waves of fashionable phrases, used in larger companies. Privately, I always referred to ‘Just in Time’ as ‘Just Too Late’. Post- Brexit, I fear that this international supply system may be ‘Much Too Late’…

    The government has recently said that poetry should be optional at the GCSE level – a significant demotion in its importance on the curriculum. What is your view on that and what do you feel the impact will be?

    I have great admiration for teachers, but I’ve never taught, and my daughter is now in her thirties. So I don’t consider myself an expert on poetry in the curriculum. But I do know that many people ONLY know – and value – those poems which they encountered at school, especially if they learnt them by heart. If they don’t come across poetry which appeals to them in their curriculum, the one chance may be gone. 

    What poetry should be on the curriculum? I can only offer three observations. First, having to study one set text which is the work of a single contemporary poet may have the very unfortunate effect of turning many pupils against that poet! I’ve heard this widely reported from university lecturers, who find that most of their students are prejudiced against the major living poets on their former school curriculum. Secondly, I think that the subject matter of a poem may be more important than its period. My daughter reported from her (very mixed) comprehensive that the boys in her class were truly impressed by the poetry of the First World War. Finally, I think there is a case for studying an anthology – possibly a themed one, with poems from various periods? There’s a better chance, in that variety, that a student will find one poem whose sense speaks to them, and whose music stays in their mind.

    Was there a particular teacher when you were younger who turned you onto poetry?

    No, although I did have some very good teachers who introduced us to a range of work. I remember poetry books being available to read in the later years of primary school. I discovered much! But I could have been put off poetry for life by my first class in that small village school. Our (untrained?) infant teacher used the dullest doggerel I have ever encountered. I don’t know where she found it. I dreaded those afternoons.

    What’s your favourite poem about the workplace?

    ‘A Psalm for the Scaffolders’, by Kim Moore. It’s a compelling – and fiercely humorous – account of a dangerous, skilful job. Technically, the poem is entrancing, with its repetitions and powerful beats: truly, a modern psalm. Kim is much younger than me, and has so far only published one collection. She is a poet to listen out for – and she had her own skilled previous career, teaching children to play the trumpet. 

    I can reveal, after hearing her read, that the man who fell thirty feet (and lived) is her father… Here are the scaffolders:

    https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poem/27299/auto/0/0/Kim-Moore/A-Psalm-for-the-Scaffolders/en/tile

  • Interview: leading bookmaker Will Woodhams

    Interview: leading bookmaker Will Woodhams

    The CEO of Luxury bookmaker Fitzdares speaks to Georgia Heneage of his career journey, the need to bring the ‘human’ back into business and the secret recipe for success

    Will Woodhams’ journey from Archaeology & Anthropology undergraduate to CEO of the world’s leading horseracing bookmaker Fitzdares holds nuggets of wisdom which any young jobseeker can learn from. And this is precisely the direction our conversation takes: even over the phone it’s easy to tell that he’s a natural people person – friendly, funny, and very generous with his advice.

    Woodhams entered the business world with a whole lot of drive and absolutely no experience (or formal training, for that matter). “All I did was flip my skill set on its head to become a corporate beast,” he tells me.

    Zigzagging from company to company, and propelled by his drive to “just get on and do stuff”, Woodhams worked for brands like French Connection (which he says he was “woefully underqualified” for), LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) and finally Fitzdares. His career, he says, has taken the twists and turns of a “poacher turned gamekeeper”.

    So what is Woodhams’ core advice for anxious jobseekers beginning to brave the corporate world?

    Segment your audience

    Woodhams says that one of the most useful takeaways from his degree at Durham was the ability to “segment” his audience; he’s since learned to tailor his business model towards the right audience, even if that’s a high fashion brand aimed at women.

    “People pigeon-hole themselves into industries,” says Woodhams, “when all you need is to understand what consumers want; which is good customer experience and to be taken seriously.”

    Have a point of view and filter out the ‘bullshit’

    “This is the best advice I could ever give anyone,” says Woodhams. “You can read as many business books as you want but if you’re not actually shaping a particular point of view then you’ll fail.”

    For young people there’s reams of information and advice on the internet. “It’s a bit like the protestors in America,” says Woodhams. “If you’re reading it, you’ll start believing it.”

    “I think that having a really strong bullshit filter is absolutely imperative,” he says. But this is something you have to learn yourself: “No one can teach you that, and if you haven’t got it then you’re not probably going to do all that well.”

    Make decisions quickly, and have the ability to pivot

    In a world governed by tight time deadlines and swift turnovers, the “greatest skill anyone will ever have” is making decisions quickly. “That means hearing everyone’s advice, looking at the data, and then just making a call,” says Woodhams.

    But this isn’t always easy with big corporations, in which management is like “moving a supertanker”. Businesses must “be agile and be able to pivot weekly”, says Woodhams. Using another apt aquatic analogy, he says that once they stop moving they will, like sharks when they stop swimming, die.

    “A good example of this is Coca-Cola. People think they are static because the brand has stayed essentially the same, but they tactically remove products or markets and are brilliantly creative. They were the first brand to do personalization, for instance. So there’s tonnes of stuff happening under the water, even if the surface looks still.”

    How has Covid-19 affected this?

    Our lives in the previous year have been defined by the very sense of immobility which Woodhams warns is the death of all businesses. So how can this be avoided?

    Characteristically cutthroat, Woodhams says Covid-19 has in a sense been the great divider, or test, of business models. “Most businesses which have died haven’t been able to pivot quickly enough,” he says.

    Woodhams’ advice comes from personal experience. Woodhams has used the pandemic to accelerate business and get his clients “excited” about their future relationship with the bookmaking company.

    In September, Fitzdares faced almost certain death. But Woodhams was determined to build from the ground up, and he capitalised on the lockdown.

    Despite being opened and closed “like a fire escape”, they managed to generate huge amounts of marketing publicity which has been hugely beneficial for the business as a whole. They sent daily emails to clients, organised a drive-through in Derby so that clients could watch the race on a big screen, delivered Beef Wellington and encouraged people to post on Instagram, set up a wine club and a pasta club, and are planning to hire a castle for clients as an equivalent to the Cheltenham races in March, where it’s easy to socially-distance.

    “It’s about finding a solution to a problem. Business has been really good this year!” says Woodhams.

    State of Play

    But Covid-19 aside, what is the state of the betting industry as a whole? Because of government regulations over betting, the sector has been in a “tough spot”. But Woodhams is optimistic; “it’s a massive industry in the UK and we’re global leaders in the market”.

    Fitzdares has found a niche within the sector and played on the lack of care for customers shown by larger betting companies, which more often than not results in addiction, mental health issues and alcoholism. “We’re zigging when everyone’s zagging, and it’s working,” says Woodhams.

    This support for his clients is at the core of Woodhams’ business ethos. As big tech hurtles to new heights, Woodhams believes customers increasingly crave the “human side” of business. “The experience economy is coming back,” he says, “and I’ve noticed that customer service has got better again.”

    In Woodhams’ opinion, some companies deemed successful are hindered by a lack of attention to their customer needs: “British Airways is considered the world’s finest airline but I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot by delivering bad customer experience; it feels like they should be a cheaper product.”

    Topshop, who used to have a “great customer experience” back in the days when their store in Oxford Circus was teeming with pop-up beauty bars the occasional live events is another case in point. “The experience got worse and worse, the business got worse, the product got worse and even the owner became worse.”

    So if tech is “coming in and eating people’s lunches by trying to smooth the consumer journey”, what is the ideal business model in an technical age crying for the return of the human touch? A mix of the two, says Woodhams, is the “axis of amazing customer service”. With that our time is up, and I realise my conversation with him has enriched my understanding of business – and the world.

  • Opinion: Getting rid of exams will create a generation unfit for the workplace

    Opinion: Getting rid of exams will create a generation unfit for the workplace

    Alice Wright

    Exams are never popular and are never going to be. They’re stressful and known to induce waking nightmares well into adulthood. Occasionally I’ll wake up in cold sweats thinking that I’ve missed my History A-level paper on Henry VIII’s foreign policy. There is no point in glamourising it: exams are horrible. 

    They are however, necessary. Exams are the first time you feel the reality of having your future in your hands. To be able to excel under your own steam and with those results, craft a future of your own choice. Life as we know it is pressured, and exams introduce a person to that in a controlled environment. They teach time management and stress control. 

    Yet there are a cohort of teenagers whose first experience of exams may also be their last. It is the 2003-2004 age group whose GCSEs were cancelled last year, no longer sit AS levels, and who must face their final school exams with no real preparation at all. 

    GCSEs should be considered a learning curve, a stepping stone. I am in full agreement with those that think children of that age are put under too much stress – but not with those that want them removed completely. AS levels used to represent the next step, to break the leap into higher education. Being worth half of the overall marks, they provide the opportunity to learn and improve the following year. 

    Whilst 50 per cent of this cohort will likely go on to university or college, the other 50 per cent will not, either moving into apprenticeships or the world of work. Both demographics will suffer from not having experienced the preparatory rigour of exams. 

    If the cancellation of the last two years’ worth of exams, (and potentially next summer’s too) led to a genuine overhaul of our education system where we began to cherish learning for learning’s sake instead of mass-produced league table fodder, I would understand. If we replaced these assessments with another form that delivers the same lessons in diligence without so much anxiety, I would be all for it. 

    Alas, I see no such utopia in sight. Therefore this cohort’s lost opportunities must be addressed, and plans to mitigate how this will affect their futures long term should be made now. 

    Photo credit: Studio Neat

  • Zedify CEO Rob King: the man making our cities greener

    Zedify CEO Rob King: the man making our cities greener

    Alice Wright 

    The UK Government declared a Climate Emergency in the summer of 2019. There is no single definition of what action this mandates, but MPs have pledged to reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Whilst not the ‘carbon neutral by 2030’ goal sought by campaigners such as Extinction Rebellion, it is still a sizeable task. 

    Rob King is making lowering emissions in UK cities his life’s work. Alongside co-founder and CCO Sam Keam, King is responsible for Zedify, a zero emissions delivery company with depots across ten UK cities. And Zedify is expanding, having opened a branch in Bristol last month.  

    We begin by discussing the ongoing restrictions and how they have affected businesses for better or worse. “The pandemic hasn’t really changed much in terms of keeping connected,” King says. “However, people’s expectations on needing a physical meeting have changed. I no longer have to travel all the way to Wimbledon from Cambridge for a one-hour meeting.” It’s not surprising that restrictions seem to have benefited rather than hindered Zedify: after all, delivery services are booming and expected to continue to rise. 

    The story of Zedify’s origins goes back about sixteen years when King was looking to set up a business with his brother. While hitchhiking in the Lake District, King got a lift with a man who was doing cycling courier work in York. The encounter planted a seed. “It seemed like a fun, outdoorsy job,” he recalls. “At the time, I was doing expeditions all over the world, and my brother was in the army getting fed up with being sent to Iraq. We always wanted to go into business together, so we thought this would be fun.” 

    The brothers first spoke about doing cycling couriers for small items, such as moving flowers and material from printers, but soon moved into bigger items that could be taken by cargo bikes. “There were almost no cargo bikes in the world when we started,” King continues. “We found a mad, wacky designer who had designed Chris Boardman’s bike when he won the Olympics.” The brothers grew the business around Cambridge and then three years ago King spoke to his financial adviser: he sensed that Zedify’s time for expansion had arrived. “The urban landscape was changing, people were talking about emissions a lot more, and about reducing car and van use,” he says.

    By creating a licensed network, Zedify expanded into other cities, including London, and were able to access deliveries coming from outside the cities, as well as deliveries contained within the city. “We knew that cargo bikes were the most efficient vehicle for use in cities, but our competitors don’t use them because they are coming from depots 50 or 100 miles away. They have to use a van, which is good for going up and down the M1 but not for going about the city.” By using cargo bikes, King explains, “we want to make our cities better, to reduce congestion, reduce emissions. That’s how we sell our services: better deliveries and better cities.” 

    Included in this better service, are narrower time windows for clients and ethical treatment of Zedify’s staff, now numbering around 150 people. “Even now, 95 per cent of our industry competitors are engaged in the gig economy with self-employed drivers,” King tells me. “Instead, we decided to hire living wage-employed drivers. If something goes wrong, they’re protected and will still get paid.” 

    Although there has been huge interest from larger corporations that have recently been pressured into making their own climate targets, King remains skeptical of their motives and keen to keep Zedify true to its mission of providing an exceptional as well as ethical service. He admits that the environmental angle is a great selling point but that “the price and service must be right, otherwise companies will use us once and it won’t last or they will use us in one of their cities but not all. They will use us as a bit of greenwashing. We want to make sure we offer such a good service for such a good price that anyone would take us up. That’s when we will have the biggest impact on our cities, on our environment and make them better.” 

    As well as private work, Zedify conducts work for local councils. Waltham Forest Council supported the set-up of Zedify’s operation in London during the ‘Mini Holland’ scheme funded by the Mayor’s office a few years ago. The aim was to recreate London streets in a Dutch style, a harbinger of the current Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. “Initially local businesses were up in arms questioning how they would get their deliveries in and out. So the council put out a tender for a cargo bike delivery scheme.” 

    With that success under their belts Zedify now encourages other councils to review their work tenders, asking them to consider whether a van is truly needed for delivery work, to at least give firms like Zedify the opportunity to bid for the work. 

    On the controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, King is optimistic: “We’ve got a really good case study here. People want clean air, clean streets but need to balance that with being able to get around and make deliveries. Because of Low Traffic Neighborhoods deliveries in vans are taking too long, so companies are starting trials with us. Businesses are adept at change. They can utilise our schemes or go in-house and use low emission vehicles or their own cargo bikes that are more suitable to liveable cities.” 

    King explains how city schemes that challenge businesses can work out for the better. “We use our depots as consolidation hubs. This means that we can do deliveries with our cargo bikes completing several routes in a day. Whereas a van would normally only do one route in a day. We can actually do two to three times the volume of work.” For example, Zedify works with a veg box supplier in Cambridge, which used to drive into town with their old diesel van to make around ten deliveries. They now drop the produce at Zedify’s depot on the outskirts of town and then the last mile of transport is done on cargo bikes. “That’s a great service for a company like that which wants to focus on other things rather than driving.”

    Zedify has won significant recognition for its work, and came runner-up for the ‘Clean Air in Cities Award’ from the prestigious Ashden Foundation the year before last. King has no thoughts of slowing down anytime soon: “We’re still small but there is definitely potential for changing the whole way deliveries are made.” 

  • Talan Skeels-Piggins: ‘Ask yourself: how many people have you helped?’

    Talan Skeels-Piggins: ‘Ask yourself: how many people have you helped?’

    I wanted to become a P.E teacher because I am passionate about sport. In a team game I always enjoy working with others and individually. I’m a bit sad that I’m no longer teaching, but life changes and we’ve got to move with it. If you’re always looking over your shoulder at what you were then you’re never looking forward at what you could be. 

    I was in the Navy as both a regular and then as a reservist. In the regulars, I was a fighter controller in the operations room. I was only in my early twenties and there was a massive amount of responsibility placed on me at that young age. When I was a divisional officer, I would mentor a group of sailors that were in my charge, helping them along with their careers. That was very rewarding. 

    I did six years as a regular and then I was a reservist. Shortly after I joined the reserves in November 2002, I was paralysed, at the beginning of March 2003, as a result of a motorcycle accident. Initially the Navy dismissed me, but I wanted to go on my own terms. I argued my case to the medical board of survey and proved that I could carry out the same requirements an able-bodied officer would have to. I did the bleep test, the mile and a half run in a race chair, the weapons handling test, the gas mask handling test and I passed each one for my age group. I did everything that would have been expected of me if I had been able-bodied.

    Then I went to the medical board of survey and put forward all the things that I could do. I accepted the considerations and understood that I would not be going to sea again, and I ended up working with NATO. 

    My case has set an important precedent in allowing disabled people to remain in the armed forces. Back in 2003, I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody the outcome as the Navy were concerned that the floodgates would open and all those that had been previously dismissed would want to return. Then there were all the injuries from Afghanistan and Iraq, and people were able to use my ruling as a precedent to continue serving in whatever shape they could. It’s great to see that the military now do not simply give up on the wealth of knowledge that these people have.   

    We learn as we go through life; some of the learning we don’t even know we’ve got. We experience things and they remain dormant inside us. After the paralysis, I was in a pretty dark place, this massive change had happened to me and when we have change happen to us, all we can see is the change. Initially, for me, it was a space I didn’t want to be in. 

    Luckily for me, I had a chat with a guy, who had also become disabled, who had come in for a regular check-up, while I was laid up in hospital. He told me about the opportunities that were still there for him. He started to list things: he still had a girlfriend; he still drove a car; he lived by himself. Then he said he had been skiing. I couldn’t believe that; I thought it was incredible. That became my little goal: to get out of hospital and to learn to ski.  I didn’t know at the time that I would become a gold medallist in the European championships.

    In order to do that, I had to accept what had happened to me. The more I looked internally, the more I realised that we have this untapped power, resilience and energy inside of us. I call it the little person inside. I believe that we all have it. I don’t have any magical ingredient. I’m not superhuman. I’m not special. We should use ourselves as our greatest source of inspiration. You don’t need to look externally for inspiration.  

    Motorcycling would become another passion. As with the Navy, I went about getting permission to race motorbikes by looking at the arguments as to why I couldn’t do it and then I would try and show what I would do to overcome that obstacle. Gradually I worked through all the different obstacles, and jumped through all the hoops that they put me in. 

    To finally do it, it was the most thrilling thing I had ever done and it then opened the pathway to others. Since that point in time there have been quite a few paralysed motorcycle racers and all they have to do now is go to a club, get their license like anyone else and they can race any capacity bike. There are no restrictions placed on them. 

    In Great Britain you are either a motorcycle racer or you’re not, and that was what I was fighting for. It is a really fabulous thing for me as a paraplegic to go and compete with able-bodied cyclists. It’s a little bit of escapism because for that moment in time I am simply a racer and I’m not being treated any differently from an able-bodied racer. I feel free from my wheelchair, my disability and the restrictions that have been placed on me due to an accident. For my own personal mental health it is vital that I get to compete against able-bodied people. 

    I set up a charity called The Bike Experience. I take disabled people and help them to learn to ride motorbikes. We’ve taught over 400 people so far. Some people come once and it’s the catalyst for them to go off and do other things, whether that be triathlons or fly planes. Some people come back and they’re able to ride on the road again. You see someone arrive nervous; when they leave they look like they can take on the world. 

    After 13 years of being paralysed, I had a conversation with myself about what it means to be a human being. I asked myself: ‘How do I validate my existence?’. The answer I came up with was: ‘How many people have you helped?’ and I realised that since I’ve been paralysed I’ve helped more people than I would have done if I had been able-bodied. So therefore, I wouldn’t change what has happened to me. That moment was when I fully accepted the change in my life.      

    It’s a very difficult time right now, and everyone is experiencing change: they’re allowed to be upset. Sometimes when you have things that affect your life it sets off these waves or these ripples in your timeline, but it’s realising that it is only temporary and the next peak is coming. Don’t feel as though you are weak for being upset. We can all grow and learn by giving something back. I think we don’t take enough time to do self-reflection. It’s amazing what you can get from it.  Everyone is an amazing person, you just have to believe in it.

    Talan Skeel-Piggins was talking to Alice Wright

    https://www.existentialbiker.com/the-bike-experience.html#
  • Sports focus: Mayweather vs Paul and the Rise of the Freak Show Fight

    Sports focus: Mayweather vs Paul and the Rise of the Freak Show Fight

    Ben Godfrey

    In the past few years we have come to accept strange as the new normal, so perhaps it should come as no surprise when we see a YouTube star booked to fight one of the greatest fighters of all time.

    There has been much talk about whether this kind of freak show is good for fight sports or not. Does it degrade the dignity of a noble and dangerous profession? Or does it draw a wider audience to the sport that might ensure bigger pay days for real fighters in real fights in the future? Probably both are somewhat true. This, however, is not what is most interesting. What is most interesting, is why so many people find these fights so compelling.

    First, let us chart the evolution of this oh-so post-post-modern spectacle. It all began with KSI vs Logan Paul in August 2018. That fight saw two YouTube stars who had been beefing online decide to settle it in the ring; they were smart enough to monetize it.

    Eddie Hearn (Matchroom Boxing) saw the money-making potential of the event and threw his promotional weight and know-how into the cauldron. A monster was born. An 8 fight event, with a host of internet stars, who are apparently followed by a horde of hundreds of millions online. Two or three events and one unconscious NBA player later, Logan Paul signed a contract to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. (arguably the greatest defensive boxer of all time). Meanwhile Jake Paul is set to box retired MMA fighter Ben Askren.

    So, what does this tell us about humanity? Firstly, it shows that even people with little interest in fighting excellence love a good scrap. We would probably be pretty uninterested in watching two people play an unskilled tennis game, but if a fight kicks off-at a sporting event, at a pub, in a nail salon, we can’t take our eyes off it.

    Secondly, what is even more compelling than watching two strangers fight? Watching a friend fight. Internet stars make a living out of sharing with fans, posting 2, 3, 4, 5, maybe even 20 times a day; their teenage fans see these people more often than their best friends, maybe even than their mothers.

    But what makes these fights most compelling, is the collision of the fake and the real, the constructed and the chaotic, the candy-floss simulacrum and the steak-and-eggs visceral. Perhaps nothing is more symbolic of 21st century veneers of false reality than the rise of the internet star; curating and distributing a cult of personality to millions of zombie-eyed followers, all the while getting paid for sponsored content.

    Equally, perhaps nothing is more symbolic of older, simpler times, than two people agreeing to duke it out in front of a crowd until one is proclaimed the victor and the other the vanquished. Perhaps I am sentimental, but I hope that the real wins out here. Mayweather may be twice Paul’s age and half his size, but the smart money is still on him – surely, there is no possible world in which he loses? That would be like Donald Trump winning a presidential election.

  • Covid-19: What is the real cost for school children?

    Covid-19: What is the real cost for school children?

    Georgia Heneage

    A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has revealed that school children are likely to lose as much as £40,000 each from their yearly salary in the future, due to repeated school closures during this second lockdown.

    The figures are not plucked from thin air, but are based both on estimations from the World Bank that a year of schooling increases earnings by on average 8% and that loss of face-to-face teaching could result in a total of £350bn lost earnings for 8.7m students across the UK. The £40,000 statistic is based on the average yearly salary in the UK.

    The disadvantages and even dangers of homeschooling and isolation have been widely discussed in the past month; remote learning has been seen as an inferior model of education to face-to-face contact, especially at a younger age, and continual isolation from peers is already having a knock-on effect on children’s mental health.

    But seeing the wider ramifications of school closures on children’s future career prospects and income puts the cost of the pandemic in an even bleaker light; the IFS’s figures are more applicable to those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, so the loss in yearly salary will worsen the already-huge fissure in education and later on in class pay gaps.

    Professor of Social Mobility Lee Elliot Major sees the UK as being at a ‘tipping point’ in terms of social inequality, which begins at the level of education. He says it’s become “near-impossible for young people from poorer backgrounds” to move up class and career ladders. If the onset of the pandemic added “extra weight” to this imbalance between class opportunities, these latest figures are likely to tip the scales even further.

    On Twitter this morning MP and Chair of the Education Select Committee Robert Halfon called the figures the fourth pillar of the “four horsemen of the school closure apocalypse”, the other three being “big loss of education attainment, huge rise in mental health problems, significant safeguarding hazards”.

    As ever, the cost is hard to quantify and these figures are mere estimations: but they play an important part in opening our eyes to the indelible effect school closures will have on the lives of what Halfon has called the ‘lost generation’.

  • ‘You’re on mute, sir, mute!’: the tribulations of an online vocational degree

    ‘You’re on mute, sir, mute!’: the tribulations of an online vocational degree

    Daphne Phillips 

    So far this academic year, I have been luckier than most. Since my Masters is vocational for the first term, September through to December, I was still able to have in-person teaching on most scheduled days. 

    After the loneliness and fatigue of the first lockdown the new restrictions in the late summer and autumn were comparatively airy. While any activity was still conducted by the book – including wearing masks at all times and keeping a two-metre distance from one another – in-person teaching allowed me to get to know my small cohort of 24 that would be taking the course alongside me. To sit in a room with my contemporaries during a seminar felt like finding gold dust. 

    Fast forward to 2021, however, and there are no such considerations. Like almost everyone studying anything except medicine this term, my course has been relegated to an online-only affair. The trials of this are threefold. First, like everyone we’re sick of shouting “you’re on mute, sir, mute!” at a frozen pixilation representing a lecturer. Secondly, there are facilities that need to be accessed in labs and studios that simply cannot be replicated at home in student flats.

    Thirdly, there is the unpalatable question of expense. Masters are expensive and universities – as with undergraduate programmes – understandably insist on retaining full fees. There is an undercurrent of manipulation in the discourse around the expense of education at the moment. To complain, or even question, the idea that full fees should not be demanded, leads to calls of “aren’t there more important things to worry about?” Of course, the answer to that question is always going to be, yes. But that in itself doesn’t make the concern any less legitimate. 

    Vocational masters degrees are paid for by postgraduate students and what do they get in return? Alongside academic teaching, they are paying for access to industry experts and facilities. If facilities can’t be accessed then this needs to be taken into account, as does ‘access’ provided by webinars. Often the same experts are doing similar things for the public too while stuck at home. The element of exclusivity is being eroded and students know this.  

    Furthermore, working on large-scale projects is difficult when you can’t be in the same room with your teammates. Long days and constant conversation are required to complete tasks while ensuring as little overlap in labour as possible, and to make sure that diversions from the goal are limited. There is the option of a 12+ hour continuous Zoom call but it’s hard to produce free-flowing writing when you feel watched and conversation is stilted. I miss the shared energy of a group of people sitting around the same table, papers flowing around, where a single purpose is met. 

    Even those doing non-vocational academic Masters are limited by access to resources. A friend of mine who is completing their Masters in History cannot obtain all the relevant books without full admission to libraries, nor can he complete elements of research without access to archives. 

    This is not to say that restrictions are unnecessary but financial compensation ought to be considered, as should consideration on a case-by-case basis for the limits that homeworking brings to postgraduate education. 

    Picture credit: DC John

  • CEO Jason de Savary on the future of gyms

    CEO Jason de Savary on the future of gyms

    Alice Wright

    The gym sector has been acutely hit by government restrictions in the response to the coronavirus pandemic. I spoke to Jason de Savary the CEO and founder of Core Collective Gyms, a company which has sites across London in Kensington, Knightsbridge and St John’s Wood, as well as pop-up fitness classes at Soho House. We discuss the ways in which fitness businesses have been forced to get creative, as well as how the industry will look to evolve going forward. 

    Core Collective has an on-demand online service, as well as a whole library of online videos and live classes delivered via Zoom. “We have seen an uptake for online provision,” he says. “I do think people prefer to be at the gym but it is a useful thing to have if you’re stuck in your house 23 hours a day. We find the live ones are particularly popular. People like to feel that someone is watching them or that they’re there with other people, it keeps them a bit more accountable.” 

    So what is it that draws people to the gym? For one thing, it means people feel they are being held accountable for their exercise. But there are also social and safety concerns to exercising outdoors which make people prefer to join up with an organisation like de Savary’s. Of late, women in particular have started to speak out about the safety limitations lockdown in winter poses to their ability to exercise. 

    Many women who used to go to the gym now can’t exercise as frequently, when before and after work it is too dark to safely go for a run or to do exercise in a park. 

     “There are people who are at home and exercise has crept onto their radar; I hope that’s something they will need to do after the virus, and that they’ll come out to the gym,” de Savary explains. “There is a big social side to it that you don’t get at home. Just being in one place can feel imprisoning, you eat at home, work at home and exercise at home. It can be very depressing.” 

    Core Collective also sells equipment packages to provision people for their home workouts. Has there been an uptake there too? “There has, but people got quite organised in the first lockdown to be honest. We have also been renting out some of our more expensive kit to help people out, so they can have a rowing machine or a bike at home.” 

    As with a lot of gyms, Core Collective works with freelance trainers, and many freelancers have found it difficult to access government support. “It’s tricky,” de Savary admits. “The reason they’re freelance is because they have their own personal training businesses and other incomes so we can’t do anything for them, but they do seem to be coping well. We do weekly check-in’s and group workouts together.” 

    Has the government support for the businesses themselves been sufficient? “We are in the most acutely hit sector there is, I think even more so than hospitality. While they got VAT cuts, we had to stay shut for another month. The government support has never been there in the way it needs to be, and it’s waning now. Come March we supposedly have business rates coming back in and we won’t have even been open then so many businesses will be forced into bankruptcy the moment they open.” 

    This pandemic has altered consumer habits in a myriad of ways. I ponder whether the restrictions will affect customers’ habits long-term for the gym sector. “What we saw in the first relaunch was that people were coming back a few more times a month and spending a bit more money,” de Savary recalls. 

    “I think the things people really miss are going to gyms, going to restaurants, as opposed to the things they could avoid like buying an extra handbag. It’s turboed up the direction we were already heading in, which is people valuing experiences and their health more.”