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Land of detergent swans, ambushes, glorious fruit

Plane was in early this morning – and I was picked up from the airport and driven to the Hotel Transamerica, which helped immeasurably. Struck, once again, by how the drive in from the airport, running alongside a canalised river that is full of ‘detergent swans’ (clumps of white foam that can look like swans) and great rafts of bottles, as if thousands of desperate-to-be-rescued Robinson Crusoes are marooned upstream, is like a Time Machine trip to Europe in the early 1960s.  Everyone here full of the Formula 1 event in the city, though the news of a machine-gun ambush of world champion Jenson Button shows that – in some respects – things here haven’t changed that much.

Between Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes

Halloween pumpkin in compost bowl Anish Kapor’s ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ Model of new WWF UK ‘Living Planet Centre’ Pandamonium Ditto Ivana, Sam, Patrin, Amy at 2 Bloomsbury Place Patrin, Sam’s camera

Loved the smell of bonfires as I cycled through London last night. Have been profoundly enjoying the Fall (a word I was overjoyed some time ago to find was more English than Autumn) colours as I cycled to and fro this week. One delight is Anish Kapoor’s new installation in Hyde Park, Turning the World Upside Down, which my route takes me past. Took a number of photos earlier in the week, but it was only when I rode past the work yesterday – having accidentally left a bag and camera in the office (in fact outside it, but inside the building) – that I realised that if you look inside the mirrored structure you see the world turned upside down. Colour me slow.

Highlights of the week have included visits to Earthscan, to discuss new book, a meeting of the WWF Council of Ambassadors at 30 Fenchurch Street to discuss things like their proposed new ‘Living Planet Centre’ building in Woking, and a lovely evening at 2 Bloomsbury Place, when Ivana (Gazibara) was due to turn up for a glass of wine after work – and we ended up with Amanda (Feldman), Amy (Birchall), Jacqueline (Lim), Patrin (Watanatada) and Sam (Lakha). Joyous.

One weird thing at the RSA Insurance building in Fenchurch Street – apart from having my slightly less than pinstriped look commented on in the lift to the ninth floor by two very well dressed Americans – was an installation constructed out of something like 100 old WWF panda collecting boxes, that became surplus to requirements. Thanks to televisual trickery, as you stand near the pandas, a few start to turn to look at you, and then they all do. (RSA have a partnership with WWF, see here.)

During the Council meeting, Bernard Donaghue, who chairs the Task Force organising WWF’s 50th anniversary celebrations next year, showed a slide quoting Max Nicholson – a typically striking foresightful comment from decades ago. I said I couldn’t channel Max, despite having worked with him over decades, but noted that if he had been around the table he would be totally happy with plans to celebrate, but would also be forcefully arguing for a hard-hitting assessment of progress over the past 50 years – and arguing the case not simply for a spotlighting of the really nightmarish challenges we face over the next decade, indeed over the next 50 years to 2061.

Once again, he’d be telling us to turn this unsustainable world upside down.

And goodbye No. 1?

Having been travelling in Australia, France and so on, I missed much of the furore about the Government cuts – but am coming across all sorts of implications. Yesterday it was the news that the RAF’s Harriers are to go, something that profoundly upsets my father – for whom No. 1 did a Harrier fly-past last month (see September 19 entries). Not sure whether No. 1 Squadron will go to, but it’s probably too good a brand not to slap on something else that flies.

I loathe much of the defence sector, where levels of corruption tend to be off the scale, as I was reminded when I chaired the Advisory Council of the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD), but we do need to ensure our national security. The question whether we need Harriers to some degree depends for its answer on whether we need to project power into other parts of the world.

History says we shouldn’t be in Iraq, at least in the form that we have been there in recent years, and it says we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan. But the idiocy of the Bush II regime and the complicity of the UK Government mean that we are up to our eyeballs in unwinnable occupations.

One of the horrors of the moment, watching the Republicans and the Tea Party campaign in the US, is to witness the unbelievable dishonesty and self-delusion of the more conservative elements in US society. It’s almost as if they have a national death wish. Can’t help but feel that in the coming century the US is going to follow the UK down the inexorable, increasingly slippery slope to irrelevance.

A day in the old Paris Bourse

Eiffel Tower from my hotel room Part of the old open cry trading floor area Jay Whitehead points out piece of old Roman city wall Mirrored Mirrored by the ceiling Ditto Later, Jay gives the guided tour again

Across to Paris, City of Lights (and contrasts), via the Eurostar late last night, to speak at the first CRO Summit in Europe.  Bit of a struggle to find my way into the Palais de la Bourse, but when I finally broke in, I was given my own guided tour by Jay Whitehead – taking in the old open cry trading area and the section of old Roman city wall in the main conference theatre. Extraordinary the imagine all those hundreds of traders in full cry, with a huge heap of sand somewhere on the floor, in which they stubbed out their cigars.

Met a whole bunch of people who are potentially going to be helpful for the new book I’m now planning. Chaired a session with Bouwe Taverne (Director of Sustainable Development at Rabobank), Manlio Valdes (President, EMEIA, Climate Solutions, at Ingersoll Rand) and Gabi Zedlmayer, VP of Global Social Innovation at HP).

In conversation with Manlio and Dirk Olin, Editor of CR Magazine and one of the other moderators for the day, we were discussing how the agenda is becoming ever-more complex for business. I mentioned that I had sometimes suggested that it was sometimes akin to C-Suite folk being put on LSD, noting that I knew of what I spake.

Dirk raced off to get a copy of the latest issue of the magazine, where his editorial is called ‘Tripping Over Work’. It starts with Timothy Leary’s six word mantra: Tune in, turn on, drop out. And the basic idea is that, while users of hallucinogens in the Sixties sometimes became paranoid or depressive, people kept in the dark by business can also suffer a form of sensory deprivation – very much akin to being put into a sensory privation tank.

Dirk quotes a study reported in the October 2009 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease which found that many people isolated for as little as 15 minutes from normal sensory stimuli results in what is called “faulty source monitoring” – in which we assume that what is going on in our own heads is coming from the outside.  Companies run the risk that their stakeholders will do the same, assume the worst and “drop out”.

Streets of city wreathed in refuse, presumably a result of the ongoing strikes and mass protests. Also more people sleeping in the streets than I remember, which was a striking contrast with the luxurious surroundings of the Palais de la Bourse. And with the meal I had at Brasserie 1925, cheek-by-jowl with Gare du Nord, as I waited for my Eurostar later in the day.

Swarm grows at 2 Bloomsbury Place

Six of seven today: Amy, Thais, Nadine, Jacqueline, Sam and Alejandro Approximation of fall colours

Volans is really getting into its stride, with the office abuzz with people today – and the trees outside beginning to move into wonderful autumnal colours. That said, I worry increasingly about the long-term fate of the horse chestnut trees, which are all now affected by both the leaf miner and bleeding canker.