Jeremy McClintock

At the two-way

19 January 2009

Happy new year people. After our early successes at Chertsey College for the Mind, it’s been a busy few months for all of us at Right Path Management, getting the Sappington Bounce Brain Trust on stream and rebooting Skills@Norbury. Not to mention delivering key TrainFame insights at seminars and conferences and consulting with the consultants: all in a day’s work for a skills guru! Spreading the nu-thought to old-school institutions is also key: The University and Colleges Union is a key provider of adult and further education, and Community Education in Lewisham (not these guys!), that borough’s educational supplier. Here is an abridged version of what I had to say to them, and them to me. I’ll be down in the area this Friday to spread more insight. More above.

CEL UCU: Hi Jeremy, thanks for granting us this insight into the role of the top-class consultancy in the world of FE and adult education.

J: Not at all. Thank you for this opportunity to spread my views. 

CEL UCU: So talk us through your vision for adult education.

J: Listen, there are many things a consultancy can do that a board of directors or county council cannot. Most importantly, we can take the difficult decisions … speak with John Denham's voice … liaise with our local sponsors … remove the deadwood, that sort of thing.

CEL UCU: They have a better idea of what they can get away with?

J: We certainly know how to push the envelope of organisational change — our experience is invaluable.

CEL UCU: Or, at any rate, extremely expensive. You’re unelected, protected by commercial law — totally unaccountable.

J: No-one's unaccountable in a free market! In any case, why should a postman have a say in how FE colleges are run?!

CEL UCU: So tell me about the accountability of Right Path Management. Specifically, have you not run into some criticism from some quarters within the staff at your pioneering scheme in Chertsey?

J: Criticism is impossible when institutions and their enablers are subject to constant, hourly evaluation.

CEL UCU: I refer to this pamphlet, "Chertsey College of the Mind's Eye, Winter 2008”. There are some accusations leveled at RPM that I'd like to addr— 

J: Give me that! That pamphlet has been withdrawn, so I will assume that this one was stolen. I refer you instead to our groundbreaking ‘TrainFame’ press pack.

CEL UCU: Would you care to comment on what a top-flight consultancy such as yours has to fear from a photocopied college rag?

J [folding away the pamphlet and gradually regaining cool]: You can't underestimate the importance of brand image. If people obsess long enough over so-called facts and figures then they may well make some pretty warped claims and where would the skills needs of our people be then, hmm? [Solemnly, with head bowed] Especially at this time of profound economic incontinence.

CEL UCU: Isn't it precisely the facts, figures and the forms that outfits such as yours increasingly place under their remit and claim they can competently cover?

J: What a narrow view you have of people and their potential. We offer so much more! Professionalism. Enterprise. Real-life scenario planning. Life mapping. A greater choice of soups and sandwiches.

Come down to our 'Thrive! Hour'® in the central quadrant every morning and you'll understand just why we have so much pride in our young people. And in some of our senior people too, who we are clearly helping in their ongoing struggle with senility.

CEL UCU: Let me read from another copy of the newsletter: “a fifth of classes closed this year ... effects of restructure still being felt ... enrolment system still in chaos ... senior positions not yet filled...” and “A bunch of soulless, incompetent bureaucrats who treat tutors worse than cattle”.

J: [taking second copy and folding it away]: You are testing my patience now and the legal statutes of this country which I happen to respect. Any further questions will be fielded by the County Council's legal services department.

Further FE Education

25 October 2008

“High quality skills are vitally important to achieve our 
ambitions and we must strive to build a workforce able
to compete in a highly competitive global market.”

Rt. Hon. John Denham MP, Secretary of State

for Innovation, Universities and Skills

 

Most of you reading this will be fully paid up adults. I would expect the majority to be university-educated and highly articulate. But if you guys open your eyes for one minute between meetings, you’ll realise this isn’t the case for all Britons. Most of our fellow citizens - come as they are - are in no fit state to further themselves, so people like me have to step up to the plate and facilitate that furthering.

And now the number of unsuccessfuls is increasing as the credit crunch bites off ever more victims and spits them back to the Jobcentre Plus network. I am strongly wedded to my belief that all failures, even some migrants within reason, have a right to a balanced package of high quality brain-based support, the skills fully transferable and the opportunities visible.

 

It is in direct response to the economic woes caused by over hedging that I have appointed myself as Executive Principal of Chertsey College of the Mind, aka CCM – the Brain Academy. Right Path Management, which I have spun off from the Right Path Party, has secured a tranche of government funding for our ground breaking 'TrainFrame' programme.

 

I firmly believe that its targets are necessary, proportionate, achievable and hugely rewarding for the learners who are at the geographical centre of everything we do at CCM.

Nothing less than the RPM’s top brains will be on this job and the commitment, dedication and pure, hard slog that will be dedicated to this task will leave no swamps undrained in the pursuit of quality and excellence. Mike Fruckley, Sally Bishop, Mike Dixon, Peter Soyle, Sarah Peterson, Mike Terry – these guys can take a bow for the future excellence they will deliver. We will turn this benighted corner of Surrey into the stuff that skills dreams are made of.

 

Some people will probably ask how I came by this funding and I’ll tell them that’s classified information. We’re in the results business, nothing else matters - read the annual reports. To fundamentalise: let me be clear from the outset that I will be propounding free-thinking Millburnian solutions to any problems that we encounter. 

Moreover, the CCM campus won’t be the only place you’ll find me during this crucial period in adults’ educational emfurtherment. I’ll be in regular meetings with regulators Ofqual, and curating value-added ‘instillations’ with the LSC. I’ll go mano a mano with the delegates from Call to exchange and update each other’s skillsets. And yes of course I’ll be dropping straight out of Surrey to find out what the latest happenings are on the ground in actual classes across the isle – catching the mood music; expanding the knowledge base.

 

Late at night, I’ll be at home poring over the stats from our hourly ratings of instructor and learner performance, say, or working out how we can increase the information flow between instructor and learner through the application of innovative solutions, such as faith breeding and team building. 

We’ll also see how we can take adult learning outside of the traditional FE box – if a consultant tells us that we must cut woodwork classes in order to make way for a light engineering module partly funded by a local firm, then we’ll listen and evaluate, and source another second opinion just to make sure.

 

As the weeks go by you’ll learn more about our RPM’s transformative learning techniques. We’ll take so-so teaching out of the system and replace them with relentless instruction of the highest quality. Again clarity: we mean to remove the word average from contemporary educational vocab.

 

We actually want our further educationalists to tick all the boxes. I do not doubt the ability of my people to deliver on that delivery. You know, I have a quote from Warren Buffett above my desk. Simply says: “Deliver us to delivery for thine is the institution, the skill set and the knowledge base, forever and ever.” – Amen* to that.

 

No apologia

* My daughter Polly only recently came out of major issues with heroin abuse. It says much for Sappington Bounce’s evolved network of adult French classes that she has now got her life back by repping in Cham in the winter season. It says much for my refusal to be reduced to shameless hyperbole on this most important of matters that I mention this as a mere footnote. Where Da Bounce leads, others can follow.

McClintock Fries Chicken

9 September 2008

Core RPP players always knew different, but mean spirited observers who saw my live foray into affaires de cuisine as a one-off stunt will be eating their words when they read these.

The nutritional sector has always been near the top of my agenda – just as food is at the frontline of UK society. Tests show that if you mix the basics of supply and demand of good quality fodder with a little bit of self-empowering education (a cheap price) then the resulting fare is hearty and won’t break the average person’s bank or lead to a particularly untimely death – it’s the economics, stupid.

So I take many of my best working lunches now with nutritional evangelist Sir Peter Coqueslow. At these events I get the lowdown on what initiatives his guys are working on to bring the cheapest food to as many table-mounted-mouths as possible, and for the highest returns to those with those ever lucrative shareholder portfolios.

You will be familiar with the names of Sir Peter’s stable of corporate fillies: food chain distribution leader 4-Treble12-3, seafood absorbers Masskipp, meat reclaimers Thighback and, of course, purveyors of table water of the highest spec Highland Lake. 

‘Source locally’ I hear flax-sandalled-types witter inanely. Go back to the Guardian sponsored rock whence you crawled! I shout back. As Chairman of the National Tasters Association for over 30 years, Sir Peter is well positioned to rebuff these childish accusations. Not only does his portfolio and wealth speak louder than any organic farmer, we all know that food tastes better when you know that it’s been produced or even processed abroad. The knowledge that in consuming tomatoes in December we are propping up the new generation of wealth creators in Kenya, Chile or the USA is consumer satisfaction in real and anti-terror terms.

That’s not to say Sir Peter doesn’t acknowledge the importance of healthy consumers Sir Peter’s conversion to food semantics came after getting caught up in a dodgy area near Twickenham when his driver let him down after a Ba-Bas match. It was there, outside Mario’s Fish Bar, that my colleague had a chance to see the UK’s casual eating habits close up and unpleasantly personal. Having smelt the food and seen it eaten in the most dire fashion on the streets, Sir Peter vowed there and then that he’d smack down sharp on our eating habits or – when that failed - just price the unworthies out of it.

Since then, his mind has surged to lift the standards of his company and of the country. Less water in the chicken means better meat, more sales and a real-time water saving.

And choice is the mantra that has brought freedom to the world, of course – a subject that Sir Peter is no less evangelical on. This is he on his supplies to troops and locals in Iraq: “Saddam, amongst his many crimes, refused to allow fast food franchises or any form of serious choice to his people. A pow-wow with interim Governor Paul Bremer III was duly arranged - and political support was promptly secured for 12 falafel and 7 burger bars in Baghdad, 10 of each in Kirkuk and none in Basra.”

Sir Peter is philosophical about his company’s rebuffed efforts in the south of Iraq. “Clearly we are dealing with the after shock of invasion and the cultural hegemony of the Sunni Semi-Circle but I for one will not stop in my efforts to educate the Iraqi palate.” At this point he murmurs an Iraqi homily that he fashioned for his own toleration while in that country, and translated thusly:

Peace be upon the Prophet

And grant my business long life

For as long as I may serve your people.

A glance at his roadmap for change (left) shows what he’s all about. The employment opportunities in most of these are mind-boggling, Mr Chancellor!

Coqueslow advocates massive import levies on foreign foods such as ‘curry’ and ‘soy sauce’ to preserve the 36% slice of the indigenous pie for UK producers. Protect UK producers, ours as well as our ethnic bretherin, and you’ll soon see a drop-off in nasty additives and preservatives as transportation times are slashed and profit margins expand but, crucially, not the waist line.

He also well knows that some people can’t be trusted to make sensible dieting decisions for themselves. Men such as shadow Communities & Local Government minister Eric Pickles, or a well-known bearded football writer who could keel over at any moment from his waffle consumption alone. Pop music singer Adele, too, is forever chasing pavements in search of a tossed off takeout. 

Usain Bolt said he prepared for his triple gold Beijing Olympic success by eating McDonalds beforehand. That was product placement at its most cynical. The RPP, Coqueslow and others know that kids are getting stabbed because the Mackie D generation feel uneasy and chemically charged after a meal deal at any one of the ubiquitous takeout joints. Pump a chicken with water and a human will be pumped with an illness dividend that we don’t want to see. More column inches for this man and that will become obvious to British eaters.

If we can start to get Britons seeing a Burger Van on a layby as terrorism of the stomach then we’re halfway there; they’re not Sirpete’s word but mine.  

Our eating direction lies not with self-confessed vagyfolds like Perry Peters but with visionaries like Coqueslow who really step up to the plate rather than the polystyrene box. Stay off the junk, this nation’s future health depends on it. 

Thank you for listening to me.

Staying out of the frying pan

29 July 2008

Working with Tantric Fusion food pioneer Perry Peters was not easy, as you'll see in the excerpt from the Cuisination show I was drafted in to host, but the rewards were obvious. In these worrying times of credit crunchies and spiralling food and energy prices, office workers will need his imaginative recipes to expedite the preparation and eating of :LUNCH in order to get on with the next task. if that involves communing patiently with a stick of celery then so be it.

When I finally got to eat his Brain Sushi off-camera, I found it delicious. Watch and learn from this inspirational foodologist.

Declaring War on Won't

23 June 2008

Tyler Parris is typical of the unharnessed entrepreneurialism that exists in many of today’s social estates. A prodigious narcotics dealer who claims control of large swathes of south-east London’s sink estates, Mr Parris does not share many characteristics with his namesake from the Iliad, apart from a penchant for gang warfare.

As our esteemed guardian of London’s community values Boris Johnson will know, Homer could have described Paris thus:

“…strong footed did Paris run from the Greek boardroom after repackaging Helen’s pre-nuptial agreement and throng largely did the crowds at the prospect of retail in Powdered Hellenics.”

In the Trojan turf war there was no room for sentiment. Likewise the running urban knife and gun battles we see featuring on our news screens and imaginations everyday. Many of my political kin are moved to condemn the players as ghouls and parasites in equal measure. But I see them as gladiators in the traditional arena of street commerce, fighting for a share of what they can own, whatever the ultimate price.

Whether it’s a car boot sale or a coke deal, these skills are transferable. Even the Guardian is beguiled by the business practices of Cosa Nostra but, typically, they ignore the real business potential of the blacks in our country.

Tyler and his ilk may not be stakeholders but they test themselves every day in the coliseum of capitalism: the Brixton drug street. “My windows are open,” he’ll say, meaning drug dealing has not been suspended for the sake of a destructive bout of well contained fighting with others from the next postcode.

I witnessed several of these fights, or ‘face blastings’, during my recent doorstepping of London’s dodgy districts. I confess I was frightened. But I was also fascinated by these displays of power – human nature and evolution in action. I would also compare these displays to car adverts – throbbing, finely tuned machismo and vectors of certainty in a time of confusion caused by politically correct green guns.

As a contemporary shoe company popular with Ty and his crew would have it, these streets of naked commercial impulse are ‘next level’ and I for one am not prepared to let this energy spill out on the streets and harm our pensioners – at least not before we haven’t harnessed some of it to our economic benefit.

Roughly 47.869% of this year’s capital atrocities are thought to be directly attributable to Ty but this epic manslaughterer also helps his Grandmother yacht. Explain that away, Mr Lee Jasper of 23 I’m Alright Jack Street.

It is very much in the weft of Right Path Party policy to sort this dichotomy out – at root and branch. Simple solutions are required to take the heat out of the street and I’ve got the iced cubes to do it: cash money, my friends.

The RPP gladly sponsors, funds and collaborates with men like Ty who can deliver tours of drug infested inner city ghettoes for clear sighted politicians. Not to mention their frankly fifth-dimensional insight into the problems caused by financing local government in these areas. So I and the RPP say to all and one in the community: don’t tax the council, tax each other and see who comes out on top.

With his multitasking skillset, Tyler has a greater than-average chance of seeding growth and delivering change in the way that meets the traditional values of this country – aggressive aspiration, ignorant toil and proud prejudice. Combine these awesome street warriors together with the right guidance and community leaders like our Don, and the boon is enormous.

Only after that can trust build in these people and will we build a stronger, renewable Britain, together but on different ladders.

The Thrill of Ethnic Ice-Dancing

13 June 2008

Take a look at the latest cyberblast on "Channel Waltbulgbrier" - an uplifting tale of creative outreach and private sector intervention into raising standards on our high-density housing projects.

Substantial progress, I am sure you'll agree.

Green-lighting the Brown

29 April 2008

“Are you a green man or a brown girl in the ring?” That’s the question invariably asked of the CEOs in property development. Ask it too low down the foodchain and you may get punched in the face, so be careful all you trainee journalists out there who read this column.

This somewhat innocuous builders’ code divines whether they like to build sustainably on already used land or have a frontier mentality, hustling to build on any piece of agricultural acreage they see fit. It sorts out the girls from the boys, so to speak.

I’m aware that our dire need for more Swindons near premium service centres will involve a combination of development, and more ecovillages are a must. But we must take old and tired towns up and down the land and recycle them into the modern age. New paradigms for old Peterboroughs, and look how well that place is doing as a centre of media production. Right now the smart money is on the brown girls.

I’m pleased to say that The McClintocks have a proud tradition of taking over used land and making the most of local resources, especially in Africa, so I have always been instinctively in the brownfield camp. It doesn’t take a genius to see Britain is getting smaller (hello land erosion, goodbye Dorset country pile) and more crowded by the minute. Factor in the credit crunch chewing at liquidity and it’s best to deal with facts on the ground - negotiate with what’s already there rather than pies in the sky.

A great many well-meaning construction stakeholders forget the aesthetics of construction. At S’Bounce council meetings I always tell them to get a bespoke consultancy off an old pal - Mr Russell Harris. An architectural prime mover at the business end of the property market, Russell (pronounced Rousselle) is a passionate believer in blending function with style, as one look at the frontpage of his site would tell you.

I know from my wife Sophie’s legendary dinner parties that 'Russelldust' has always been a brown girl kinda guy, though he fraternises with a lot of green men too. Whatever the remit, this guy delivers solutions by the executive bucketload. How? You want a photovoltaic solar panel on top of your Victorian folly? Fax Harris and your dream will be catapulted from CAD simulation to super reality.

Catch more of this enchanting individual while you can on the Channel 5’s riveting I Own Britain’s Best House. It’s people like Harris who should be at the frontline of the UK’s development programme, thinking, acting and looking smarter.

 

A message to Londoners
Although I appreciate some of you may be too caught up in the crazy antics of toothy diva Amy Winehouse, it may have escaped some of your attention that there’s a mayoral election contest unfolding in the world’s greatest city.

The Right Path Party gave its backing to my old pal Boris Johnson some months ago and I urge you to do the same (we have already made arrangements for RPP delegates). This capital has always been a drivers’ city so it needs quaint old buses and more cars on the road, do yer Ken? Mark my words, Boris will build London rich again.

Coming Down the Mountain

15 February 2008

Innsbruck isn’t known for its primal rejuvenation workshops. At least not until the Right Path Party and DUFFF trundled into town last week.

The aim was to bring a group of underprivileged youngsters from inner city Birmingham – many of whom have special needs and learning difficulties – on a three-day excursion aiming to facilitate trust and re-engineer confidence through para-nodal counterintuitive communication strategies. The trip was organised in conjunction with the Birmingham Youth Service. And the youngsters were in for a special treat on the final day when my favourite rock band and close personal friends Coldplay just happened to turn up for an improvised jam session. Wonders never cease!

Day 1
We arrive at the Hotel Sporthotel Penz to a double surprise. Not only is it snowing – some of our youngsters have never seen the white stuff – but it turns out there’s a discount on the rooms. The parents will be delighted when they learn that their kids’ pocket money is being spent wisely this month, and we waste no time in getting everybody kitted out in their mountain apparel.   

The aim of this three-day exercise was simple: primal para-nodal FLOPP reinvigoration. Of the 17 girls and 20 boys signed up for the trip, all have some kind of learning disability. Most have spent time in foster care homes or juvenile detention centres. Many, like “Nigel” (not his real name), suffer from mild psychological disorders. For Hunt Freaker, DUFFF’s Executive Coordination Strategy Chairman, it’s all about trying to rebuild confidence from day one, even before the kids hit the slopes.

“The first thing that happens,” says Hunt, “is we get them running naked through the hotel corridors. It’s just an icebreaker. But it’s also crucial because before you can rebuild confidence you first need to earn the kids’ trust.”

Day 2
Today is the first rung on the confidence building ladder. Literally. None of these kids have skied before and some of them suffer from vertigo. However, that doesn’t dissuade Hunt from organising a “motivation workshop” at the top of the 50-metre high Bergisel Ski Jump. Not all of them come down in the elevator.

“Most kids who have grown up in traumatic environments,” says Hunt, “are just waiting to break out of their shell. It’s so important that they learn to accept unusual challenges.”

For Nigel, who suffers mild concussion after a near fatal crash landing, this was certainly unusual. However, Hunt, who always advocates a “shock therapy” approach, remains philosophical, insisting that “some kids have got it and others don’t.”

Day 3
This is more like it as we relax in the hotel sauna. It’s hot in here, so I ask if I can leave the door ajar. This is great for ironing out yesterday’s bruises. The kids get talking to a German man named “Hans” (not his real name) while Hunt and I meet up with Chris Martin, who arrives fresh from putting the finishing touches to Coldplay’s new album. Immediately Chris orders fondue – “I can’t stop eating the stuff” – and reveals how this delicacy was in fact the inspiration for the song Yellow, Coldplay’s most acclaimed stadium anthem:

“Our guitarist had been drinking all day, and was trying to recharge his batteries, so we suggested fondue. Halfway through eating his face just collapses in the fondue. So I quickly grabbed him and pulled him up by the hair to stop him drowning. His face was covered in this fondue. And I said, ‘Jonny, you’re all yellow’.”

It’s good to see Chris again, and later on he signs autographs for the kids and sings songs, including one from the new album, on what looks like a harp made from a goat’s horn. What an Alpine star!

For me this is more than ample motivation for these disadvantaged youngsters to take home with them. Although Hunt, ever the lateral thinker, is not finished yet: “We’ll get them out on a cross country hike before the coach leaves for the airport at 5am.”

Thanks to Hunt, for the first time in their lives these kids are ready for everything Handsworth, Digbeth and Balsall Heath throws at them.

The More Things Change

24 January 2008

The younger generation is often portrayed as a bunch of binge-drinking layabouts. But dig down deep enough and you’re bound to uncover enough of them lying at the bottom of the pile desperate to rise up and better themselves. Or at least this was the pet theory I came to test out last week during a motivational visit to a factory in southeast London.

The first thing that strikes one upon entering Hamm Fistidd Fibres Ltd. is the professionalism of the employees as they go about their tasks. Factory work can be demoralising, and at the start of my motivational lecture in the staff canteen I ask whether any of them have ever contemplated suicide. To their credit no-one admits anything. Later on, plant director Dave Street takes me on a guided tour of the production line, which turns into a fascinating educational experience for me, not to mention inspiring. Whatever it is they do here one would never guess from the facial expressions of the guys who pull the levers up and down that this is probably the most monotonous and soul-destroying job they are ever likely to do in their lives.

Of course, it would be quite wrong to pretend that the UK manufacturing sector is what it once was. “China is our big worry,” admits plant director Dave. “The whole operation could go belly up at any minute.” But with a healthy dose of positive thinking it’s not inconceivable that, whenever that happens, these employees will be capable of adapting. Indeed, the rest of my visit turns up more than enough evidence to suggest that change is not only being embraced here, but relished.

Take Will Header, for example, a 75-year-old production line assistant who’s been here since the factory opened in 1945. No spring chicken, Will left school at the tender age of 12 without formal qualifications and soon adapted to the task of crawling through pools of radioactive waste to retrieve dead rats. However, nowadays he mostly runs errands and “makes tea for the young-uns”.

“In those days they said the radiation gave you a lovely suntan,” says Will. “The only protective clothing they gave us was swimming trunks and beach towels.” When I ask him whether he misses the rats his answer is refreshingly honest: “I’ll be dead in a couple of years.”

After a quick cuppa with Will, I meet up with the evening shift over a game of pool. When this place goes belly up, I joke, the local pubs and clubs certainly won’t be short of hustlers.

However, life on the shop floor isn’t without its hard luck stories. “Gracja” is 42 and has spent most of her adult life in institutions. She doesn’t remember her parents and shortly after escaping from a Swiss ski resort five years ago she began an affair with a man that she later discovered was a woman. It’s a heart-wrenching story, but I try to rally Gracja’s spirits by saying that unskilled workers like her will always be needed to do the jobs that nobody else wants. At least until those jobs get outsourced to China.

The day ends on an upbeat note when my PA reveals that, remarkably, I actually own this factory! Change never ceases to confound and take us by surprise. It's a positive message that won't get lost on these employees.

A Year in Jeremy

19 December 2007

What a year! If modern politics is about reclaiming the ground from cosy consensus with new ideas, then we’re looking at an RPP election landslide. From winning over wary voters to bringing pop stars together in Africa in the name of eco-sensitive development, here’s my month-by-month highlights. Stock up on the brain juice.

January
Hit the ground running with Newshopper press coverage for "stronger terror laws, tax relief for second home owners and compulsory sport in schools”.

February
I bring to the West’s attention one of the major effects of global warming – the crisis in the monkey community because we insist on travelling thousands of miles to catch one in a tree decaying under the weight of C02 emissions. “Many of them have developed homosexual disorders… so let’s ramp up the zoo building programme, increase ‘tree-city’ capacity and get the worst-off some counselling,” I cried. Later, I face down scurrilous allegations that I auctioned off monkeys for cash.

March
RIP to a great friend and human rights torchbearer, John Inman, who wanted to live in a world where each and every one of us, from vaudevillian comic to asylum seeker (subject to proper completion of the relevant paperwork), is able to say confidently, “I’m free!”

April

A spot of retail therapy does the RPP coffers no harm, as I launch the RPP tartan spring range. They go down like a storm in a sporran in doorstopping around SE London as we launch our I Can’t Get No Literacy campaign too.

May
The film crew that I let into my life holds a lavish premiere for the documentary in a minimalist central London location. Check the trailer. Malcolm, when’s the damn programme going out?

June
Real experience = real policies. I camp out in Victoria Park in London’s Hackney for a week to flag up the absolute necessity of efficient roofing over the head of all Britons.

July

I work with my H20 cronies Green Piss to illustrate the folly of water over-use by staging a mass flushathon. Thames Water didn’t know what hit ‘em! My director of communications Rupert Chaucer tells me this idea is too good to waste on a busy news week, and times the release for drought-happy late summer. I mentioned this to MIND’s Claude Whole, who said I should advertise his position with immediate effect.
Major network synthesis was imminent, as the RPP announced its Designing Urban Futures scheme. To Hear Hunt Freaker, DUFFF executive Coordination Strategy Chairman, speak is to become a regeneration evangelist.
And at the end of a hectic month, I see for myself the real benefits of a paranodal approach to problem solving, by getting involved in the great work at the local NHS trust’s Tahiti Ward. Then I take a holiday on a Pacific atoll.

August
How do you get substantial pledges to deliver sustainable eco-villages in Kenya in little more than a week? By going in studs up on Coldplay’s Chris Martin! The protests that greeted me on my return to Heathrow were simply not valid.
Sensing the music industry’s ability to get the message across, I soon roll out my Ideas Bank with hot indie combo Editors.

September
Incorporating the Mind 2007 is launched amid no little media praise, to which my response was ‘See you in Chile’. My only concern now is leading the next generation by example.

October
I take the bulls by the horns by revealing how I get ahead in the office world. Cynics call it violent confrontation, I call it Managizing Change.

November
Inner-city Krakow finds a good deal of cheer as dartist Bobby George leads a torching of its main infrastructure. With this sponsored arson, I think we made our case for investment in Eastern bloc cities pretty transparent, don’t you?

December
I see how deals are struck on the environment at the UN conference in Bali and can only wail in an excess of emotion.

Phew! Next year, we will be rolling out more optimal proposals to create plans of action about taking this country forward in phases. The RPP bandwagon will become an unstoppable biodiesel-fuelled juggernaut. You can hitch a ride by joining up at party HQ immediately. Feel free to suggest your prime McClintock Event of 2007, but otherwise let's catch up in Sappington!

Deal or No Deal

16 December 2007

So there has finally been a breakthrough at the International Climate Change Talks in Bali, where I’ve been shadowing negotiations with a Green Piss delegation of single earth mothers - mostly from Totnes in Devon - at what the press pack are now referring to enigmatically as the Krypton Factor of global summits.

At 5am this morning, as the UK’s Environment Minister, Hilary Benn, emerged from a sixty foot pineapple looking pie-eyed and spaz-faced, we knew something was afoot. In the event it was a false alarm: Benn was on a Mars Bar and Red Bull run. However, two hours later the pineapple finally bore fruit, as Benn came out again to announce a comprehensive roadmap of ambitious goals for a timetable of further climate change negotiations.

What this boils down to, in a nutshell, is a raft of measures designed to make concerted efforts towards facing up to the challenges of raising the awareness, of people, of the need for the sustained promotion of concrete action in tackling CO2 emissions. Although I wouldn’t wish to take credit myself for this historic agreement – basically because I wasn’t involved – I would hasten to add that I do feel personally vindicated by the knockers and detractors that said I was wasting my time going to Bali, since Java had much better rafting.

Today, as developers in the north of this idyllic Indonesian paradise frantically chop down forests and burn off peat land to make way for a huge environmental theme park, the eyes of the world are turning on Bali in the renewed hope that, finally, people will wake up tomorrow morning fully conscious of the need to promote the need for change.

And whether you’re Chris Martin from Coldplay or a humble Green Piss delegate shouldn’t detract from the fact that we’re all fare-paying passengers on the same lump of cosmic space dust. Now pass me that Red Bull before I dry heave.

Diana Inquest Latest

It appears that there’s been a dramatic development at the Diana Princess of Hearts Inquest in London, as new photographic evidence this week emerged casting fresh light on the events shortly preceding the Princess’ tragic death.

Although not yet widely reported I can now exclusively reveal to you the photographs thought to have been taken just minutes before the fateful car crash.

The first, a panoramic view across Paris taken from the Right Bank of the Seine, is alleged to reveal an assassin atop the Eiffel Tower aiming an unidentified weapon in the general direction of the tunnel where the Princess’ Mercedes spun out of control.

In the second, a woman suspiciously eats ice cream on a park bench somewhere in the Paris metropolitan area.

I’m no expert, but like most of the evidence turned up so far at this trial, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that they don’t appear that conclusive. “Then again,” counters Al-Fayed’s legal team, “the fact that these images cannot prove a conspiracy does not prove in itself that they cannot NOT prove a conspiracy.”

That’s bound to make sense to someone. Let’s hope the legal beagles can get to the bottom of this complex case as soon as possible, if only to set so many British minds at rest.

Charity Case

19 November 2007

Last Friday’s spectacular BBC Children In Need appeal helped to reinforce the crucial role that charity plays in our society. But why so many famous names? As much as I delight in the spectacle of my favourite A-listers rattling their jewellery in front of the cameras like a bunch of Christian Aid workers with collection tins, what about the local communities and grassroots activists who, when it comes to helping the underprivileged, really are thinking outside the box, both at home and abroad?

One only need venture into the back yard of any of our less fortunate European neighbours to find a huge amount of positive work being done for the disadvantaged and downtrodden, albeit on a much smaller scale than in the UK. Take Poland, for instance, where only last week I led a group of policy makers from DUFFF and the Right Path Party on a whistle-stop fact-finding mission. Here’s my events logathon:

Day 1 Just before we begin our descent into Warsaw International Airport aboard a Hercules military transport plane, DUFFF Chairman Sir Alain Shipmount throws out a kitchen at an altitude of 20,000 feet. “Charity has to keep reinventing itself in order to keep up with the times,” opines Sir Alain. I’ve heard of food drops but this really is rebooting the mind expansion software.
   

Day 2 The next morning we visit the outskirts of the city where a staggering 88% of unemployed people are unemployed. Luckily Sir Alain, who once patented a flute, knows all about urban regeneration. And not surprisingly his solution to reinventing the social fabric bears all the hallmarks of the mind expansion approach. “The standard of living in Warsaw isn’t up to Western European standards,” admits Sir Alain, “but then people need to rethink the meaning of the concept of poverty in order to re-empower their FAGG domain.” But how exactly?

According to Sir Alain, Warsaw has a high proportion of homeless people: “They wander around the city like headless chickens high on a cocktail of kerosene and chlamydia. They smell like stray dogs. Which is why we at DUFFF recently got them on a 26km army assault course to help boost their self-esteem.” And the result? “Remarkably,” says Sir Alain, “only about 50% died.”

Day 3 Up early for our trip to Auschwitz where Gary Moore is due to play a two-hour guitar solo in aid of Polish orphans. As we pass though the imposing entrance of the former concentration camp to the sound of “Still Got the Blues” one cannot help but feel overwhelmed by it all. Clearly it’s difficult to express such dreadful horror in words. But if you can imagine the sound of a cat being spun around in a cement mixer then you’re pretty close.

Day 4 Today it’s all about the children. Unlike the telethons favoured by the big TV networks back in the UK, here in Poland charity is largely invisible to the viewing public. “It’s refreshingly small scale,” Sir Alain notes, who’s just signed a three year deal with Sky Sports for a new series called “Pole Dancers”, in which underage prostitutes are taking control of their lives through a combination of pole dancing and extortion. According to Sir Alain, equality is key. “Why should Bob Geldolf get all the perks?” I think I know what he means.

The day ends with the Liberace of darts, Bobby George, organising a sponsored arson across inner city Krakow. I spot at least 20 buildings on fire, including the town’s only gymnasium.

“The kids really enjoyed themselves,” beams Bobby the next morning from his hospital bed, where he’s being treated for second-degree burns. “Pyromania makes people feel happy.”

Thinking optimally, managing creatively, flushing out excuses, with the able assistance of DUFFF, the Right Path Party is spreading the message far and wide.

Managize Change

29 October 2007

The Lib Dems’ recent succession crisis proves that politicians still have a lot to learn from the corporate sector. Never has the phrase “fit for office” seemed quite so appropriate than in the case of Ming Campbell and Co. Contrary to rumour the RPP is not ageist, just youthful in its political outlook and flexible in its approach to disability rights, brain disorders and senile dementia.

Today transparent communication is almost as important as sound political principles, whether you’re trying to prize basic information of entitlement to discounted travel out of Virgin Trains staff or facilitating a PowerPoint presentation to the Orange Democratic Movement of Kenya.

The corporate sector’s copped a lot of flak over the years. Lately, however, I’ve been leafing through the literature and frankly it’s opened my eyes. Inspired by an intriguing mix of Jungian principles and Thai cuisine, the management gurus responsible for the following tomes could teach your average politician a thing or two:
* Trebor Ein-Farker’s Networkation Theory
* Jaroslav Boxcar’s Utter Relations Hypothesis
* Tommy Johnson’s How to Make Management Stick in a Web 2.0 World
* and, last but not least, Humph Jenik’s Optimal Performance Roulette.

And I don’t think it would be too candid of me either to reveal my mantras, which have recently been affixed at strategic locations on the walls of the Right Path Party’s new Battersea HQ:
* “Much of this is waste. What we don’t use might kill us” – Lord Coe
* “Winning is nothing. Victory is everything” – Dennis Hopper
* “Celebrate when the cows have come home and the pigs have flown: your work is never done” – The Ballad of Sir John Harvey-Jones, Annie Lennox
* “I wasted time and now time doth waste me” – William Shatner

Last week I went about actualising my enhanced communication skills during a Sappington Bounce Parish Council meeting. The councillor for Chappy Grove ward suggested the mass planting of sugar cane for bio-fuels in the town centre. As temperate as our little Dorset suntrap is, I had to break it to him that we didn’t have the temperatures for that sort of scheme. When he didn’t listen, I kept telling him again and again until he got it. I even wrote it down on a piece of paper and cellotaped it to his forehead when he put his hands over his ears (a classic sign that you’re winning an argument). It worked a treat; now he’s concentrating on persuading farmers to grow soybeans. That’s management advisory in action – to the good of our local environment and those all-important para-global FLOPP networks.

If we transmogrify this type of local experience to the larger playing field then we uncover more than a few pearls of wisdom for the country at large. Here are some other micro-resolutions gleaned from the minutes of previous Sappington Bounce Council meetings:
* Not finding out the facts before mediating in a dispute (direct action)
* Telling people in public that they don’t know what they’re doing (primal workshop approach)
* Likewise, questioning why they’re here in the first place (counter-intuitive motivation)
* Telling them the wrong thing to do, watching them do it and then ticking them off, preferably in front of other employees (reverse psychology)

It’s not quite as you see it portrayed on The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den, but not far off the positive role those TV programmes play in promoting the values of risk assessment and internal competition. Management is the new rock and roll now, they say, with news journals like The Sindie giving away free guides and The Guardian newly converted to the fiscal joy of private equity. In actual fact management is much like politics – sign the people up to your vision and enhance the networks of mutual trustability so that when you’re forced to flatly contradict yourself and renege on your promises everyone accepts a share of the responsibility. The first thing they teach you in public relations is to treat every disaster as a blessing in disguise. Think how that message could transform the lives of the terminally ill, park dwellers and homosexuals.

At the Right Path Party, with the indispensable help of organisations such as DUFFF and Claude Whole’s corporate communications assemblage Mind Associates, we are applying this philosophical approach to imminent ecological collapse as well as to the crisis in parliamentary democracy. We are turning voters away from the big three, and proving surprisingly popular in southeast London and the Kentish hinterland. As the Liberal Democratic Party has probably realised to its cost, soon we will be coming hard on their heels and dealing with the issues that matter. It’s time Britain had some new management.

Conference Blues

8 October 2007

Judging by this evening's first edition of the Sappington Bounce Gazette there are more exaggerated headlines in store for the Right Path Party as our annual party conference reaches its climax at the Margate Convention Centre.

Yesterday I launched a raft of sensible new policy initiatives while water-skiing along the River Medway. No fanfare, no hype, no publicity stunts, just policies, culminating that afternoon with Lionel Blair parachuting in through the ceiling of the auditorium in a pink jumpsuit to announce that he's staging Own Goal, a West End musical in the spring about the private life of ex-soccer star and confused gay man John Fashanu. What better way to illustrate our non-dom celebrity tax proposals which stand to net the Exchequer a not-insignificant 490 million pounds?

But what do the newspapers choose to write about? Not Blair and his musical. Instead we get the "controversy" surrounding the RPP's autumn conference theme tune. Granted thrash metal combo Gang Rape may not (yet) have a pop career to rival that of D:Ream, the pretty boys behind New Labour mantra "Things Can Only Get Better". But their latest foot-tapper, “Gravedigger Ass Explosion”, especially commissioned by the RPP, met with the immediate and almost unanimous approval of our conference delegates, even our discriminating front row of "Blue Rinsers".

Admittedly most of our golden gals are on artificial respirators these days, and have to be wheeled in to the conference every morning in expensive medical chairs.

But spirits were raised and the eyelids perceptibly twitching throughout Gang Rape's thrash medley – barring the one unscripted moment when lead singer Bozz Death stagedived head first into the front row.

For those of you that missed the live streaming from our RPP website, let's recap this week's big announcement.

The RPP is launching a new policy that we're calling "Inspiration for Respiration", bringing together healthcare coordination professionals, regeneration zone stakeholders and wellness rejuvenation personnel. What prompted this ingenious initiative was in-depth research, commissioned by the RPP, highlighting the fact that a staggering 400,000kw of electricity is being consumed every hour in NHS intensive care wards. By hooking up cardiovascular rowing machines, housed in fitness centres up and down the country, to artificial respirators, we can help save the environment and get our population fit and motivated again, with the knock-on effect of keeping our elderly hospital patients’ lungs pumping at reduced cost to the taxpayer. That’s a win-win message.

Incorporating the Mind Update

On 26 November 2007 The Right Path Party will be facilitating a group of 20 young people on a mind incorporation tour of South America. Part of the tour will include a stopover in Macchu Picchu to meet the Incas. For those of you who have been struggling with our Incas factsheet (which has now been withdrawn), please note that due to a temporary short-circuit in cross-cultural communication, some figures are wildly inaccurate.

It appears that our copy editing department wasn’t made aware of the fact that the Incas use the binary number system. So instead of 100 toilet rolls, participants are advised to bring an extra four each to Inca Base Camp. Equally every tent should NOT be big enough to accommodate 1,000 people, but eight people. And finally a word of reassurance for those of you panicking about the average seasonal inland temperature for November of 100,001°C. Leave the radiation suits at home. It’s actually a more modest 33°C.

Click here for more information about the tour.

Man In The Mirror

18 September 2007

“Jeremy McClintock is a people person. And Jeremy McClintock will become the people’s politician.”

I shout that mantra into the mirror every morning, and seldom do I see my reflection flinch. That much makes me believe I am a self-fulfilling prophecy here to save Britons – especially the young – from themselves.

How to salvage people and communities from the mounting pressures of everyday life is the question that has preoccupied me ever since I formed the Right Path Party. The voice in my head has reached fever pitch this summer, with almost nightly reports of children stabbing and shooting each other because they come from the wrong postcode.

Research carried out by DUFFF reveals that 23 per cent of central Ipswich is now regarded as “chronically pedic”, while gangs in Nottingham are known to rip up and urinate on perfectly-recyclable fast food waste. Politicians need to address this problem fast. What can we do for our wasted youths and what can they do for us?

The answer, for the sons and daughters of five lucky readers, is a "self-actualisation" tour of Chile.

Incorporating the Mind Tour 2007

On 26 November 2007 the Right Path Party and DUFFF are organising a once in a lifetime 11 day excursion to South America. Its aim? To inspire as many as 20 young people, drawn from a list of national regeneration zones (vetted by the Home Office), in the ways of outdoor survival techniques and cross-cultural mind fertilisations. Part of the itinerary will involve free association focus groups with jungle tribesmen. We're also keen to hear from you, our regular readers, for practical ideas that we can add to the itinerary.

This is the first time - to our knowledge - that any political party has tried this type of daring social experiment. It's a challenge for everyone involved, and it's sure going to be a steep learning curve for me. Undeterred, I intend to rise to the challenge and incorporate these kids' minds. Public figures need to travel down the engagement path that leads from telling and explaining to reassuring and transferring task ownership and skills delegation. But most importantly we must all learn to improve the way we communicate with each other, especially given how the intra-strategic facilitation networks are heaving with the geno-thetic-synbadd potential of stakeholders.

DUFFF head honcho Sir Alain Shipmount has agreed to lend us some key personnel for the tour, including the considerable faculties of their Associate Jesus, Rich Wilkes. “I started being Jesus about two years ago," recalls Rich, "and realised it was a good way of regenerating communities”. I have seen this guy spread the word through the regeneration zones of Clapham Park and Upper Venting and it’s impressive. Chile will be tough, but with a Jesus on board we can help to lighten the load.

The tour will begin on 26 November in Chile's capital Santiago. From there we trek down to Patagonia in order to meet the rural population, before heading to the Pacific for an ecological brain-storming session with Greenpiss, and then up to Macchu Picchu for a party with the Incas. Clearly there's a lot of self-discovery and personal re-evaluation to be done.

On a personal note, this tour was scoped out, costed, implemented and delivered within three working hours. And so the man in the mirror was looking decidedly optimistic this morning. As a politician I may not always succeed in winning over the hearts of young people, but with this scheme I might just change their minds.

Competition

Want to win a place on Jeremy’s Incorporating the Mind Tour? Simply email us when you have worked out the missing letters to complete the following phrase:

Facility is f------y.

And, no, it’s not "family"! The first five out of the hat will win a securitised passport to progress.

Flushing One Million Toilets

30 August 2007

As a green campaigner, I am delighted by the response to last month’s London Flushathon in which an estimated one million Londoners flushed their toilets for the environment. Such unprecedented mass participation is far more than The Right Path Party and myself could ever have hoped for.

The event took place between 8pm and 9pm on Saturday 14 July and was jointly coordinated by Green Piss.

To read more, go to the full press release. Download Flushathon2.pdf

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who took part in the campaign. Here's hoping the water companies - finally! - will begin to take water leakage as seriously as we all do.

Watch this space and keep clicking on Environment Now for future campaigns and events.

Best wishes,

Jeremy McClintock.

Juggling Priorities

24 August 2007

Politics is all about sound logistics, and no-one could accuse me of not having come prepared when I arrived in Sappington Bounce High Street this week aboard a Sunseeker Portofino 53 offshore cruiser. I was here to inspect the damage caused by the freak floods and incessant rains that have been sweeping across the West of England this summer, and Sunseeker International – whose spirit of adventure began more than forty years ago, and whose range of motoryachts has expanded since then, with each new addition adding something rather special to a highly competitive market – kindly donated one of its impressive craft to help with the clean up operation.

The Portofino 53 comes with built-in radar, flatscreen televisions in each cabin and a full wetbar with hot and cold water.

What a damned nuisance, then, that three days of dry weather had reduced the floodwaters to an insignificant puddle, so preventing me from navigating the high street by speedboat.

“It’s a lot worse than it looks,” says Colin Wyndham, a former champion yachtsman and now Chairman of Sappington Bounce Round Table, as we survey the damage from the bridge of the Sunseeker, which although not going anywhere provides a superb vantage point. “The Victoria Tea Rooms were under six feet of water this time last week,” Colin notes, “and the other side of town was like a duck pond.” We head off to take a look.

Unfortunately the narrow streets of Sappington Bounce weren’t designed to accommodate a 58-foot long motoryacht being towed by a Winnebago. We take a detour through Sainsbury’s car park where I count at least two overturned cars. Only now does the carnage wrought upon this delicate little hamlet when the River Piddle burst its banks a fortnight ago begin to hit home. So far the cost to local insurers is estimated at a staggering twelve million pounds.

Later on Colin discretely informs me that the overturned Volvo was in actual fact my doing (apparently it clipped the stern of the Sunseeker as we accidentally reversed into Sainsbury's exit barriers). “Let’s get things in perspective,” I tell him. “Where would this country be right now without its insurance industry?” As ever lateral thinking wins the day. And in any case it’s a well-known fact that the Winnebago has always suffered from a terrible blind spot.

If the lower end of the high street is anything to go by then that Volvo owner should be counting his blessings. Outside the Job Centre an incongruous sign reads, “Batch 22 jobseekers report to Southampton Benefits Office now.”

“Catch 22, more like,” says Colin, pointing out that much of the lower Southampton road is still waterlogged. It’s at times like these when the true insensitivity of the public services is revealed.

Nigel, a Batch 22 jobseeker, joins us for a coffee aboard the Winnebago and tells of his ambitions to be a film director. Nigel is bursting with raw talent, and illustrates perfectly well the regenerative potential of rural communities like Sappington Bounce. Have I just met the next Martin Scorsese? The fact that Nigel admits to spending 20 hours a day “or more” (?) downloading images of women’s feet from the Internet suggests not – but then doesn’t it equally testify to the unpredictable fortunes of the creative industries, where one day you're signing on in Sappington and the next busy directing your first Hollywood feature film?

Later that afternoon I introduce Nigel to Sir Alain Shipmount, Co-founder and Secretary of DUFFF, and one of the UK’s leading creative consultants. What Sir Alain doesn’t know about geno-thetic synbadd potential frankly isn’t worth knowing. Indeed, so profound is his influence over contemporary popular culture that when Chris Martin of stadium rock band Coldplay was suffering from the creative jitters last December, it was Sir Alain that he phoned first. And the outcome of the consultation? “I put him in touch with the Noise Abatement Society,” says Sir Alain, with characteristic modesty. To his credit we haven’t heard a whimper out of Chris and the boys since. Now that’s what I call successful brand management!

Finally, as if any further evidence of the interface between politics and the creative industries were needed, Sir Alain and I end the day with some impromptu canvassing for the Right Path Party, ably supported by Nigel, our budding filmmaker; Brian, a juggling Harlequin; and Bonzo Doo-Dah, Britain’s only politically-active chimpanzee (although I’m told there are currently three in Northern Ireland). It’s lateral, sure; but there’s no mistaking the power of symbolism. Bonzo successfully draws the public’s attention to hunger in Africa by making off with a child’s cheeseburger, while the juggler leaves everyone in no doubt that I’m a safe pair of hands who can keep all his balls in the air at once.

Plane Talking

A final word on the Heathrow airport protests that greeted me as I arrived back from my African Tour at the weekend. Demonstrators had latched on to Terminal 5 expansion plans in order to highlight the harmful environmental effects of air travel.

To my mind the main point being demonstrated here wasn’t so much the rights or wrongs of either party, with the aviation authorities wanting to increase passenger capacity on the one hand, and local residents and environmentalists understandably wanting to restrict noise and environmental pollution on the other. Of course, these were legitimate concerns. But there were more profound political lessons to be drawn here concerning the way in which politics in this country is presently conducted.

I’m especially keen to sound out grassroots activists these days; even if I don’t always condone their tactics, I’m the first to defend their right to express themselves, even if the protest is verging on the unlawful.

Take Ken, for instance, a local resident who had superglued his testicles to an air traffic control mast: “I’d rather lose my balls than one more night’s sleep,” Ken blurted out, clearly in a great deal of pain. As he was led away by security officials with the mast still attached, I couldn’t help but marvel at the deep-rooted passions that this controversial issue has aroused. We all want to enjoy the freedom and convenience of unlimited air travel. But what good is unlimited air travel if in the process we inflict irrevocable environmental damage?

I’m a convert to the environmental cause. And it must be said that the way in which the government has dealt with this issue has been misguided and wrong from the very outset. We don’t simply need to listen more closely to people like Ken when drafting legislation; we also need to harness such passionate views, learn as well as listen, with the aim of providing people like Ken with meaningful stakeholder experiences as we process, facilitate, strategise and coordinate the creatively integrated futures of people and communities.

Visit DUFFF today and sample the brain juice currently on offer.

Blogging On Safari

9 August 2007

Some people just can’t make the connection between the current situation in Africa and the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK. If it’s not happening on our own front doorstep then it’s irrelevant. This is more than unfortunate – it’s a travesty. Politicians need to get wise fast to how global issues are local issues.

This week I’m staying at The Waffles Big Game Reserve in Kenya on the first leg of my Trade + Spades Tour 2007, organised in conjunction with The Right Path Party, DUFFF and Green Piss, the consciousness-raising environmental lobby group behind last month’s London Flushathon. Bloggers please note that although it’s remote out here, especially when you're on safari, I’m checking my emails regularly, so keep posting your comments to my electronic mailbag.

Day 1 Linda van de Heijden, chief gamekeeper on the reserve, heads our convoy as we journey across thirty thousand acres of wild open bush. It’s an extraordinary place for wildlife. How does Linda manage to keep the herds of tigers and elephants so conspicuously free from disease? “Progressive animal husbandry,” she says, “plus the odd bit of shotgun therapy.” UK farmers take note.

Despite being born a Springbok, this is the first time I’ve actually ridden an elephant. It’s a surprisingly comfortable ride. Lucy and Dumbo are a real credit to Linda and her fellow gamekeepers, for whom ecotourism has become a byword for sustainable development. It’s only a matter of time before that investment filters down to ordinary Kenyans.

Later that evening we meet some Maasai tribesmen who throng our tent to hear my keynote lecture, “Trade and Aid in Spades”. It’s not clear how much they understand, but without doubt there’s a meeting of minds, especially when the village elders invite me to dance around a satellite dish in a traditional tribal costume, which comprises little more than a scanty leather sarong.

Day 2 One step forward, two steps back. The politically correct brigade is at it again, alleging that an extract from last night’s speech has racist connotations. I’ll let you be the judge of that:

"When we talk about trade let’s not forget the spades. Think what a difference ten million spades could make to agriculture in Africa.”

It must be the silly season in Grub Street. I dish out an ultimatum to journalists at the dawn press conference: tune in or ship out back to the safari lodge. The fact that three quarters of them pack up and leave on the spot is a surprise – until one of our entourage points out that England is due to play Wales in a rugby international tonight. Although we didn’t pack a TV (there wasn’t enough room on the pachyderms) I get the last laugh when Derek, one of the Maasai tribesmen, invites me into his hut, where he unveils his pride and joy: a 32-inch Sony plasma screen TV with Dolby Surround Sound.

Later on we watch the game over a couple of beers. Derek, a former security guard from Leytonstone, is a perfect illustration of what I mean when I say that global issues are local issues. Like an increasing number of young people – not just from the ethnic minorities, but from right across the social spectrum – Derek is rejecting the Western European lifestyle and reconnecting with his cultural heritage.

“There’s a whole different language and culture out here,” says Derek. “You can have loads of wives if you want and no one hassles you for it.”

Derek admits to presently having 14, although after the third crate of beer he revises that figure upwards to 62 (it seems he may have been getting confused here, either between his present number of wives and how many women he’s slept with, or else with the score in the rugby game – England ended up beating Wales by 62 points to 5). In any case, on this evidence globalisation is already confronting us with profound cultural challenges.

Day 3 Up before dawn to prepare for a charity football match pitting the Maasai against a celebrity team including Chris Martin (from stadium rock band Coldplay), Lenny Henry, Nick Knowles (last time he was in Kenya he was hamming it up for the cameras on Mission Africa, the BBC television series in which volunteers built an eco-resort in trying circumstances), Jamie Oliver and Yours Truly.

The objective today is to raise awareness for a forthcoming environmental awareness campaign sponsored by DUFFF and Green Piss. “Raising awareness is crucial,” admits Chris Martin (pictured) who’s broken off rehearsals with his band in Spain especially to be here. “People need to be more aware about environmental awareness campaigns like this one.”

But in addition to this admirable ambition, according to Hunt Freaker, DUFFF’s Executive Coordination Strategy Chairman, there are other principles at stake: “The important thing, apart from the awareness, is that we enhance intercultural communication between the two teams, who stand as a microcosm of regenerative participative networks in the local-global arena.”

Unfortunately the intercultural communication has some way to go when it emerges, half an hour before kick off, that the teams have completely different understandings of the “arena” in question. For the Maasai, the “pitch” is an enormous patch of bush approximately 26 km wide, an alarming revelation that results in five of our players - including the hapless Knowles - being spontaneously struck down by a mystery virus. Down but by no means out, we decide to split the difference with the Maasai: five-a-side over ten clicks instead of 26. To their credit Chris Martin, Lenny Henry and Jamie Oliver stick with it, the latter preparing refreshments atop a cantering Dumbo the elephant. Keith Floyd never did this.

Day 4 27 hours (?!) into the match, and the intercultural communication hasn’t yet managed to establish the concept of “half-time”.

Day 5 Or “full-time”.

Bed Pans And Broomsticks

20 July 2007

Healthcare is always a hot issue, and this week I’ve been taking the temperature at the special invitation of Jill Duckworth, Communications Manager at the Sappington Bounce NHS Trust. Jill was so taken with my al fresco sleepover in Victoria Park last month that she invited me to repeat the experience, only this time I’d be spending three nights in the hospital’s Tahiti Ward.

Arriving first thing Monday morning with a suitcase full of bare essentials my first question is – where am I going to sleep? An awkward one this, since Jill has been rushed away unexpectedly, and it’s all systems go on the ward. Undaunted, I volunteer to crash in the intensive care unit, which turns out to be the only spare bed in the entire hospital.

It’s a long way from Tahiti, but this will do. While unpacking my golf clubs I get talking to Dave, one of the hospital porters, who challenges me to a round, before lamenting that he’s “wheeled out three stiffs already” this week. If Dave was in Iraq they’d give him a medal, but here he’s just another unsung hero on the front line of patient care.

Unlike the hospital’s valiant doctors and nurses my job description this week is far more mundane, although no less important. I begin by shadowing Glenda, a hospital cleaner with 20 years' experience, who swears blind she was born with a mop in her hand. As we begin chatting I figure Glenda must be sitting on a wealth of untapped insights. What does this hard-working hygiene consultant make of the dreaded MRSA virus?

Glenda’s response, when it finally arrives, is like a breath of fresh air: “I just mop up the shit.”

Private sector cleaning companies have copped no end of flak for the lacklustre state of this country’s hospitals, but if Glenda’s sterling work is anything to go by hygiene should be the least of our worries. It’s such a revelation to see pile after pile of human excreta being systematically intercepted and then safely disposed of. After our mid-afternoon tea break Glenda and I swap roles, with me on the mop this time, and her on the bucket. We make a good team until I accidentally catapult a pile of vomit onto the ceiling (don’t ask how!) Time to call it a day.

The next morning I emerge from my intensive care suite rested and rearing to go. Jill arrives looking flustered: it’s been a bad night. A motorway pile up on the M27 has left a couple dead and their five-year-old son in a critical condition. Since there were no intensive care beds available at Sappington, the child had to be airlifted to a hospital on the outskirts of London, some 120 miles away, even though the accident took place a mere two miles down the road. It’s a cruel irony that speaks volumes about the way in which resources are currently being stretched in the NHS.

About time we thrashed out the day’s agenda (thankfully no more mops) and a scheduled visit by a DUFFF delegation of nodal facilitators and para-meta-linguistic design strategy consultants. Although still relatively unknown to the wider public, this type of partnership is typical of the way in which the NHS is adapting to the new challenges of 21st century healthcare. In an era in which a staggering 90% of terminally ill patients are diagnosed with a terminal illness, DUFFF is helping to radically alter perceptions. “With so many people wasting away on hospital wards,” Jill says, “isn’t it about time we started thinking creatively?”

Jill's clearly been on the brain juice. This isn’t just a question of alternative therapies – although of course homeopathic treatments have never been as popular as they are today. Instead, it’s more about turning the situation around and asking: “Am I really ill?”

Take Page 3, DUFFF’s resident artist. A deaf mute anarchist since birth, Page defied the medical establishment by opting for a career as a spontaneous bowel evacuation performance artist. Riana Baker, Page’s agent, recalls how the biggest hurdle lay in convincing Page that there was nothing actually wrong with her. “It took some doing,” says Riana, “but once the circus bookings started coming in there was no stopping her.”

So what hope the patients on Tahiti Ward might be able to harness the creative potential of their illnesses? Bill is a 53-year-old window cleaner who fell off a ladder while reaching for his shammy leather, and who now may never walk again. Would he ever consider performance art as a means of overcoming his handicap? “I suppose if they gave me enough injections I could fall off the ladder again,” says Bill.

“Or they could drop you onto a trampoline,” suggests Peter, a former tax inspector suffering from chronic honky instep. “They could set fire to me for all I care,” he adds sourly. “Since my wife ran off with a landscape gardener life’s not been worth living.” I pass Peter’s details on to Riana.

The day ends with an exhilarating performance by Page 3, who sprays the ward with faeces. The patients are so enthused that they even get a Mexican wave started (apologies to the lady with her arms in plaster). That’s the spirit - laughing in a shitstorm shows the true potential of cognitive therapy. Even the nurses join in. “I never imagined doing a pooh could be so artistic,” says Pam (pictured, with some of Page’s work, bottom right). Nor did I. Time to reach for that mop again.

To find out more about DUFFF visit The Right Path Party.

A Design For Life

2 July 2007

During a recent visit to a deprived inner London estate I was struck by the invaluable work being done by the community leaders. “Don” (who prefers to remain anonymous) takes immense pride in rallying the local youth, organising “ball games” on the flyover, and generally sounding out the village elders on the estate about how to make “Trumpton” (again, anonymity rules) a place worth living in.

What struck me about Don and the rest of his crew was their ability to have fun and remain upbeat in the face of incredible odds. Tragically, Don’s mother died a year before he was born. But for Don and the gang, not only is life a game worth playing (even if you’re a poor loser), life is “the only game in town”. “It’s like a lottery,” Don observed as we were sitting at a blackjack table in the local casino at four o’clock one morning. “As long as you don’t put all your chips on black,” I chipped in. “My favourite colour,” he replied.

Lotteries aside, Trumpton is a mind-expanding case study in 21st century community relations. It provides an invaluable lesson in how community leaders like Don can provide strength and cohesion in the midst of all forms of wayward behaviour. “My light’s always on for people,” Don observes philosophically. “Anyone needs stuff, day or night, I’m the man.”

Don is the perfect example of a new breed of community worker that resists the conventional labels and categories that still define so much of our local government. Don’s not a regular “nine to five” man. Sometimes, he admits, he doesn’t get up at all. Is that so wrong? Don is a role model for his community, not because he’s bursting with qualifications, but precisely because his CV is adaptable. In fact Don admits he’s never had a CV, but that if he ever needed to he could always get hold of one. Exactly!

Designing Urban Futures Facilitation Foundation (DUFFF)

We need more “Dons” in our society. Right now Britain is crying out for them. And spending the last few weeks knocking back the brain juice in the vicinity of Don’s local turf has convinced me that his involvement in the Designing Urban Futures Facilitation Foundation (or “DUFFF” for short) would provide this new and exciting project with a real shot in the arm. So welcome aboard, “Don”!

What is DUFFF? Allow me to quote what Wan Tripp, Executive Facilitation Coordinator and Chief Communications Strategy and Policy Design Director of DUFFF, said during a press conference only last week:

“DUFFF is all about expanding the regenerative potential of participative networks, not just in the macro-sense of community expansion, but also at the micro level. This is all about facilitating the non-linear and geno-thetic-synbadd potential which links the local to the global through SPANER, and through viable intra-communication strategies, succeeds in actualizing the community’s FLOPP.”

Clearly this is a bold statement that we would do well to understand. But basically what I think Wan was crapping on about was that for far too long local communities have been held back by a mixture of overregulation and fuzzy thinking. This hasn’t just affected the people often unfortunate enough to live in them; it’s also stymied the possibilities for creatively minded individuals to prize themselves away from these urban wastelands. “Would the last person to leave Trumpton please switch off the light?” If only it were possible.

DUFFF is committed to the design of future communities. The Foundation – which includes an advisory panel comprising many of our country’s top brains (plus “Don”) – already presides over a significant financial war chest for “participative expansion and design coordination in intra-communicational mind policy regeneration software initiatives”. That’s food for thought. And over the coming months we hope to invest money in areas ranging broadly across architecture, design, needlework, ethnic pole-vaulting, flower synergy, dehydration and cigar research.

So where does DUFFF go from here?

DUFFF works in close partnership with the Right Path Party. Together we want to expand minds and regenerate windows of opportunity at the summit of creative thinking. We would like to hear from key stakeholders and community partners today – and particularly if you’re an experienced team builder, facilitator, regenerative designer, architect or 3D graphic illustrator, mind expansion software innovator, virtual geographer, ethnic pole-vault instructor, environmental activist… or just plain “Don”.

Contact us here today.

To find out more about DUFFF visit The Right Path Party.

Park Life

21 June 2007

I’m always willing to stock up on brain juice in order to better process the stakeholder experiences of people and communities. So in the interests of a thorough political consultation, this week I’ve been living in a tent in Victoria Park in the east London borough of Hackney, one of the most deprived boroughs in the whole of Europe. 

Actually my political consultant has been on at me for ages: “Get out and live like London’s homeless,” he says. “You can’t understand how they feel unless you catch pneumonia and get hooked on smack.” Monsieur C. Whole may be a bit outré at times (calls himself a “yogi”), but his intuition and mind-expanding methods have been helping me to redefine my presentational style recently through a series of carefully-coordinated seminars which, incidentally, I would particularly recommend to landscape gardeners. Actually when I say “carefully-coordinated” that’s not strictly true, since Mr. C. doesn’t believe in clocks and is into “random ideas generation”. Not surprisingly this is helping me to rethink, not just the meaning of time, but of patience.

Anyway, more on that next week. For now, here’s my log of the week’s consultation with the grassroots.

Day 1 The day starts well with a filmed jog around the park track – I don’t set my usual blistering pace as it’s crucial at a time of shocking air pollution (my daughter suffers from gruff ingested glob-hoop) to promote the virtues of Alternative Transport. However, the day hits a sour point when Hackney Council representatives order me to pack up my tent and leave on the spurious grounds that I hadn’t sought the proper permission to pitch. “So it’s alright for the drunks and homeless to make the place their own?” I protest. I don’t like getting boisterous with public officials, but these are the appalling double standards running through the public sector that so annoy me. I end the day with yoga and meditation.

Day 2 High time I start what I set out to do here – talk to the outdoorsfolk about the stakeholder experience of park life. What are the big issues for park dwellers? One chap called "Racket" (at least that's what I heard) confides in me that his problems would be solved at a stroke if the park could grow a "money tree". I'm not sure the technology's quite there yet, Racket! People are happy to talk and appear enormously receptive to my ideas. Cynthia’s “primal soundings booth” (an ingenious Tardis-contraption conceived by a pre-Socratic mannerist artist and friend of my wife, who goes by the name of “13H7FD&W790” – check him out!) hints at a 95% approval rating for my policy of practical recycling classes for remedial schoolchildren. That’s the kind of wavelength the electorate and I are on in 2007. However, one guy did take exception to my brainwave (too much brain juice today!) that the terminally obese could be found work flattening polyethylene terephthalate bottles by sitting on them. If people only knew how much carbon waste our plastics industry spurts into the atmosphere then they might opt for tap water. Still I took the guy’s details as this sort of open dialogue is crucial.

Day 3 Hackney Council come back with a gaggle of local hacks, saying I can carry on the experiment if my tactical mobile unit, housing a generator for the computer, portable kitchen appliances and electric shower, is taken off-site. Alright! Let’s downsize. Now I really am getting back to nature.

Day 4 Now I know how a homeless person feels. Tin opener snaps, sealing off the foie gras to feral enjoyment. Water supplies run thin, so I resort to drinking my own urine. Actually tastes very good, and makes me wonder why more homeless people don’t try it. Not mine, of course – theirs. Although naturally I’m open to offers. Finally start dozing off around midnight with visions of Doctor Who running through my head. Figure I must be dehydrated then realise it's some addict trying to make off with Cynthia's Tardis. I bluff him away in a funny Cyberman voice demanding he returns my spaceship. Now who's got the visions?

Day 5 Communications crisis. Wireless connection goes (don’t tell me a now-fashionable park in E9 isn’t a hotspot!), and then the battery on both the laptop and the mobile phone. Wander into Mare Street looking for solutions but find the patchwork of enterprises most unforgiving and the dialects too varied for my smattering of Urdu (I can order a Bombay duck but that’s about it). Luckily, I catch Rupert rocking up with a folder full of press releases and other material, so I start plugging myself back into the matrix. That’s how things can go out here, some days you just have to mark down as bad fortune.

Day 6 Wake up early to rummage through the bins as I know the others would get there before me given half a chance. Start devouring the remains of a can of White Lightning and a shish kebab before remembering that my stay with the down and outs, crack-drunks and general down-on-their-lucks is reaching natural closure. I quit the experiment, taking the chopper back to Bounce, their insights and opinions my companion. They have far too much pride and dignity to expect me to cart them off in the boot, but what I can promise them in the months to come is some concrete action and help from people who care, as I begin the process of engaging and facilitating engagement from an influential group of contemporary artists.

Let’s start thinking outside the box.

Film, Et Cetera

7 May 2007

***** The UK film premiere of The McClintock Factor will take place from 8pm on Thursday 17 May 2007 at Corsica Studios, Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB. Admission free. Click here for directions.*****

Click image to enlarge.

Legal Statement

***** The following statement has been prepared by Jeremy’s solicitor, Fletcher Burkhoff, of Burkhoff, Spatt and Swift Solicitors.

Following several allegations relating to incidents reported in The Sun and The Times newspapers on 12 and 13 April 2007 respectively, my client, Jeremy McClintock, would like to make the following clarifications:

1. The statement appearing in The Sun on 12 April that Mr. McClintock “likes to fondle monkeys” is categorically false. Mr. McClintock has a distinguished background in animal conservation work and is a proud supporter of monkey rights, particularly the rights of homosexual monkeys. He rejects outright The Sun’s insinuation that he has ever either touched, stroked or looked at a monkey in an inappropriate manner.

2. The Sun (12 April 2007) alleges that Mr. McClintock attended a charity auction on 13 February 2007, at the Bull’s Head Hotel, Chislehurst, where he “auctioned off several monkeys for charity”. This is categorically false. Mr. McClintock did not auction off a monkey and, furthermore, would only ever consider doing so if it were in the monkey’s best interests.

3. Mr. McClintock rejects categorically any insinuation that his charity work in the homosexual monkey arena is a cynical attempt to gain publicity for his own political organisation, The Right Path Party. Although The Sun newspaper is correct in its assertion that The Right Path Party was joint-sponsor of the aforementioned charity event, the allegation that two thousand helium-filled Right Path Party balloons were released during the auction is misleading, since the balloons were in actual fact released 30 minutes AFTER the auction had finished.

4. The allegation made by The Sun, and reprinted on 13 April 2007 in a separate article appearing in The Times, that an unfortunate incident in which a chimpanzee named Bonzo Doo-Dah quite inadvertently became attached to a Right Path Party balloon and ended up on the roof of the Bull’s Head Hotel is a malicious perversion of the facts. Furthermore, the allegation that this event was stage-managed for political purposes – since the local Fire Brigade were allegedly telephoned an hour before it happened in order “not to keep the photographers waiting” – is categorically false.

5. Finally, Mr. McClintock would like to make it known that he regards monkeys as intelligent creatures that are still evolving, which thereby explains the increasing numbers of homosexual monkeys who are coming out of their cages. Whatever the rights and wrongs of homosexuality, the monkeys can't help it.

END OF STATEMENT. *****

BP Man Comes Out Of His Shell

I've never discriminated against homosexuals, whether they be animals OR humans. They might be perverse little critters (I like to stay open-minded) but regular visitors to my blog will know that I recently paid tribute to John Inman - need I say more? However, when the news broke last week (like a priceless Mong vase) that BP CEO Lord Browne had resigned over lying in court about his homosexual affairs, I couldn't help laughing out loud, "You silly old ring fencer!" It’ll take a long while for the oil and gas firm to promote a man of the same calibre to its ranks, and all because he went weak at the knees for the odd escort (the silly old poof should never have got out of his Rolls!).

Funnily enough our paths crossed occasionally. Browne and his firm used to be one of my wife Sophie’s clients at her old PR agency, and we even ended up on the same Mediterranean cruise to Beirut once. We both loved the Paris of the East for different reasons, Browne for its shady nightlife and me for its newsworthy political mire and ethno-religious tension. There we were one evening, hobnobbing on the poop deck of The Tolerant Arab over a plate of raw pork, when all of a sudden the Israel Defence Force blew a large hole in our starboard side, resulting in a pianist falling overboard - an inconvenience which resulted in Browney and I having to fill in with an impromptu medley of Charles Aznavour and Inglebert Humperdink, him on bass, me on baritone. "Strangers in the Night", indeed.

After we docked I didn't see him for a day and a half. I put it down to his heavy work schedule. This guy was the top banana when it came to managing big oil contracts. He understood that only Western companies have the necessary nous to pump the Arabs' black gold. Browney cared passionately about exploiting those all important oil reserves till the wells ran dry, and knew how to get the stuff out of the Arab Straits to where it was needed most as fast as possible, without causing a war or provoking the likes of that dodgy old pirate Saddam.

The next day he did surface eventually, somewhat worse for wear, carrying a briefcase and sporting a purple sarong. One can only speculate about what was in the briefcase, but looking back now there was little doubt that the time he'd spent in the local bazaars hadn't been devoted to sober business lunches. In business as in life, man is a ruthless species that hunts down the object of his desire with an unrivalled passion; man cannot escape his passions. However, man would be best advised to confine those passions to secluded areas of the New Forest, rather than the seedy pimp dens of Beirut, in order to avoid the long lenses and nosey hacks from The Mail on Sunday.

For the guttersnipes on Grub Street the monicker “Lord Browne” now offers muck-raking innuendo - but don’t expect that angle from a writer of integrity like yours truly. This head honcho is in a field of one when it comes to hydrocarbons, and that’s a serious business whoever’s mincing about with the bottom line.

This Is My Life

23 April 2007

***** The UK film premiere of The McClintock Factor will take place from 8pm on Thursday 17 May 2007 at Corsica Studios, Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB. Click here for directions.

Please note that space is limited, so in order to reserve a seat email here and you will be added to our guest list. However, rest assured that if you turn up on the night we won't be turning you away. Admission free. *****

Click image to enlarge.

Two years ago an independent film production company eager to get the “low down” on my good self approached me for an interview. “We want to find out what makes McClintock tick,” the smart arses quipped. I told them that, whatever it was, it sure as hell wouldn’t be blowing up in my face, and politely – but firmly – declined.

At the time I needed a film crew sniffing through my recycling and composting bins like a hole in the head. However, it wasn’t long before I started having second thoughts. I’d been so busy covering other people’s lives for so long that I’d forgotten about the importance of my own. In September 2005, following a chance meeting with Michael Winner, I decided it was about time to give the public a taste of Big Mack. “For Lord’s sake don’t do it,” warned Mike. “You’ll be humiliated.” Coming from a man with a unique talent for humiliating himself on the big and small screens, that struck me as a bit rich. Undaunted, I got back in touch with Films Noirs and agreed to appear in front of their cameras.

It wasn’t long before a one-off interview had become a series of weekly sparring sessions, with wily documentary filmmaker Malcolm Devereux seemingly camping day and night somewhere in the vicinity of my land. Admittedly I was standoffish at first – so much so that in the early days his preferred journalistic technique would consist of running alongside my Bentley waving a microphone as I backed out the garage, while mine would consist of discretely trying to run the annoying bastard over. However, as the months passed my suspicions eased, and I gradually came to regard Malcolm as one would an endearing gypsy squatter residing at the bottom of the garden (luckily our garden comprises several hectares of private property).

I sometimes think of my life as a game of cricket. As well as knocking seven bells out of the opposition, above all it’s about giving the spectators a good show; a show of grace under pressure that would have made W.G. proud. By all means subject the opposition to all manner of ruthless gamesmanship if you must (think “Bodyline”); but always do it in a way that fosters the illusion that one day they can compete with you on an even playing field.

This is the moral lesson that runs through every fibre of my being and will continue to inform my thinking until a better offer comes along: from charity to politics (which is just another form of charity in my book); from polo to shooting; from yachting to futures trading (which I sometimes combine with yachting), life is all about good works. Which brings me neatly onto the subject of my film.

London Premiere: Thursday 17 May 2007

I’ll be honest: I didn’t want to cede control to Malcolm and his colleagues at Films Noirs. I work in the media and am wary of the sort of "low down" tactics that the less scrupulous operators in my field can sometimes employ. As fascinating as my life undoubtedly is to other people, when you’re living the dream the magic does not always transfer to the TV format.

Nonetheless, The McClintock Factor is, I have no doubt, a televisual masterpiece. It may even scoop up a few awards - providing its producers have managed to keep the gossip and intrigue that currently surrounds my private life in some sort of perspective (and relevant parties please note here that nasty little surprises will be dealt with decisively by my “SWAT” legal team, who will be commandeering a large swathe of a West End hotel, ready to serve writs and injunctions on anyone who ever even thought of pointing a camera in my general direction).

I look forward to seeing you all at the premiere. Expect special guests. Evening wear is optional but attendance essential for RPP members.

Click here for details on how to get to the venue.

In order to reserve a place email here.

Words On The Street

10 April 2007

Last week the Right Path Party debriefed its party political foot soldiers in the wake of its highly successful “Canvassing In Kilts” exercise, which took place in New Cross, South East London on Monday 26 March.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who turned out to help the party in its election push – plus a special thank you to the three young Bangladeshi men who assisted me in another kind of push. Namely, pushing my “Popemobile” around that vast council estate when the battery gave up the ghost. There was a moment when you were visibly flagging there, but no sooner did we discover that you’d been pushing me around for three hours with the handbrake on, than it was all plain sailing.

I’ve just got the evening’s stats back from our party bean counters, and they make for very encouraging reading:

Total number of households canvassed: 2030

Confirmed RPP voters: 456

That would give the RPP a 22.5% share of the vote.

Of course, the Right Path Party is a local party devoted to local issues first and foremost, and no one is pretending that such a figure could be achieved nationally. Nevertheless, it’s a nice little acorn from which a big oak tree can grow.

Communication Breakdown

As for the residents of South East London, they seemed a tad reticent. Trying to get one to express some political views was like trying to get Keith Harris to ditch the duck (only joshing, Orville!). At one point discussions dried up to such an extent that we had to get Gary, our resident leaflet shifter, to draw caricatures of the main party leaders, myself included, whereupon the voter would be asked to point – and in several cases spit! – at the one they preferred.

Needless to say this lacks true objectivity and provides a poor overall impression of local issues. Crime? The Environment? Unemployment? Trident? What was it, I wondered, that most affects these people’s lives? Then it suddenly struck me. In fact, the answer had been staring me in the face all night. In a word: Communication.

Or rather a distinct lack of it. On the evidence of my first grassroots consultation for a full year, the main political issue of our day is obvious. People in Britain’s inner-city communities are a multi-cultural hotchpotch of dialects: from Lithuanians to Jamaicans, Vietnamese to Angolans, these ethnic groupings are more diverse than the milk bar clientele in Star Wars (where Han Solo vaporises the green alien – there’s someone we need running the Met!). We Brits cherish such diversity, it’s what makes our minorities so endearing. But, dear me! how it makes communicating with them so excruciating.

If you ever get lost driving around New Cross don’t stop to ask someone the way, just switch on the GPS instead. I’m embarrassed to say this but frankly someone has to: these people need to go back to school. Otherwise there will come a time in the not too distant future when the cultural and commercial development of this country hits the buffers. And I predict significant social breakdown when it does. The lower classes may not mind descending further into a morass of incoherent gossip and waffle – as long as they can keep texting their mates and rapping Afro-Caribbean gibberish – but I personally do. It’s time someone arrested this underdevelopment.

Express Yourselves

This spring the Right Path Party will officially unveil its “I Can’t Get No Literacy” campaign aimed at reversing our national communication crisis. The campaign is set to comprise a smorgasbord of seminars and personal tuition from the basic to the advanced. There will also be regular one-off cultural events for the faint-hearted, half-hearted and positively curious amongst you, for whom the mere mention of the word communication makes you feel like an illiterate loser. That need not be the case, and the Right Path Party has teamed up with several highly experienced communication specialists committed to ensuring it isn’t.

To find out more visit the Right Path Party today by clicking here.

Hostages To Outrageous Fortune

4 April 2007

I know what it’s like being an unsung sailor. There was that time I rounded the Horn in a pedalo for charity; or the notorious incident when, whilst yachting off Crete, I was capsized by a display team of Swedish water-skiers. The sea is a cruel mistress, and all who sail in her its flotsam and jetsam.

Most Brits have messed about in boats. The deeply mystical relationship we islanders have with the ocean has made us such intrepid explorers, charting unknown waters, firing our canon proudly and trading with enchanting primitives. For the British, the sea is in our blood as surely as alcohol runs through the veins of a drunk.

Which is exactly why that despicable Iranian regime crossed the line when it took our 15 Royal Naval Personnel hostage; personnel who, according to my trusty contacts at the MoD, I can exclusively reveal were doing nothing more provocative in Iraqi waters (yes, Iraqi!) than rescuing a dolphin that had escaped from an Iranian circus. Another innocent captive of the fundamentalist Islamic state.

Sappington Bounce is often referred to in the Westminster village as the “weathercock” of British public opinion. Well, Britons, better prepare for a bloody hurricane! I don’t spend as much time as I should in the constituency these days, and frankly this affair came at exactly the wrong time for me (I had to cut short a windsurfing holiday in Bermuda) but according to my people on the ground, folk on Sappington Bounce High Street are up in arms right now. Only yesterday morning did two piles of canine excreta appear on the pavement outside the Victoria Tea Rooms (this hasn’t happened since 1978) and Gary, the fat bloke from the chip shop, saw a fight break out between two OAPs in Wendy’s Florists, apparently over whether the store’s Persian carpet should be destroyed.

End this madness now!

Let me be absolutely clear. I do NOT condone dog shit on public thoroughfares; nor do I condone fisticuffs in florists. I will not allow Sappington Bounce to become another Vietnam. Not in my backyard, thank you very much. Having said that, what we are dealing with here are the early warning signs of a national rebellion in response to a severely botched international crisis. Things could get a lot worse. And what is our government doing? Sweet FA, that’s what!

Opinion polls released yesterday by MSN suggest that 68% of Brits would support invading the Iranians in order to seize back our yachting personnel. Need I say more? Is international diplomacy really worth pursuing one fathom further when what we are faced with here is the choice between enduring an increased turd count on pavements outside our national landmarks, or invading a totalitarian state in order to rescue a team of catamaran sailing dolphin rescuers?

Of course, the root cause of this unruly shambles is the fact that our naval personnel were engaged in nothing more offensive than marine ecology. If that mildly attractive lady sailor – with children for God’s sake! – is now having her dignity exploited by the Iranian propaganda machine, then it’s down to the mealy-mouthed UN mandate that compromises military exercises in the wake of the Iraqi Liberation. If only our yachting crew had been busy blowing things up then maybe the enemy would have given them more respect, rather than mistaking them for a bunch of hippy Greenpeace activists.

We Brits don’t choose a life on the ocean waves, we simply heed the call to cast off, jibe ho! and bid farewell to you fair Spanish ladies. The Iranians, with their uncouth and uncultivated Arab ways, couldn’t have been expected to understand that – although that doesn’t amount to a legal defence of their vile behaviour. But as international environmentally friendly peacekeepers our proud sailors deserve a lot more support than they are currently receiving from Mr. Blair & Co., who right now are rowing desperately around in diplomatic circles.

The Iranians need an ultimatum. Fanaticism is the only language these Shi’ites understand. Let’s set a deadline for the immediate release of our sailors, within 24 hours, or else all British dog owners should be mobilised to get their pets lining the pavements of Whitehall with festering turds! In fact you can count on it, Mr. Blair. Watch this space.

***** Show your patriotic support for our Royal Naval Personnel by sending in your comments this week and we will forward them to the MoD. Also, write to your local MP and tell him/her to do more to lobby government in order to secure the immediate release of our sailors. *****

++++STOP PRESS++++

President Ahmadinejad has released the 15 Royal Naval Yachtspersons following an Iranian news conference. British officials to comment in time for tonight’s six o’clock news.

I’m Free! At Last

27 March 2007

Last weekend saw the funeral, not so much of an actor, as of a Great British institution. John Inman had a certain way about him – anyone that was fortunate enough to meet him agreed. He was often no more than a contact in my Nokia, but whenever we did meet he would typically respond to the fact that I always got him mixed up with Larry Grayson by subtly ignoring me. That was John all over: a private man with discretion by the cartload.

I first met John as a contestant on The Generation Game. With his kooky catchphrases, burlesque asides and anorexic Scottish hostess, Isla St Clair, you can imagine how horrified I was (my old school pal Chopper told me we were off to see Torvill and Dean!). However, within seconds of meeting him I was completely at ease, and I dare say it was that inaugural experience in showbiz that enabled me to understand gay people.

Of course, back then people thought “PC” was what The Village People wore to the beach. There was none of this exhibitionist moustachioed techno-ribaldry. We didn’t need Clause 28 in those days. If Uncle Cyril went to the bathroom with a box of Kleenex when Jimmy Osmond came on the telly, people just made polite conversation. It was an altogether more stoic, more chivalrous, more “in” time. I guess people like Uncle Cyril (not my uncle, I’m employing a gay stereotype here) were happy to be “different”, without the need to ram their “issues” down people’s throats.

Ditto dear old Johnny. As a journalist it’s a central tenet of my profession to be objective. And yet – through no want of trying! – I have resoundingly failed to dig up a scrap of dirt on John’s private life. For example, there is no evidence that he ever wore a stiletto heel offstage. Inners was so discreet, even innocent, about the term “homosexuality” that he thought Boy George was one of the Famous Five. But then of course John was a performer in that decidedly old-fashioned vaudevillian-family-values kind of way. When John used to “roll out the barrel” it wasn’t gay slang for an “erotic” cabaret show involving colonic irrigation.

Unlike his troupe of faithful fans I didn’t follow Johnny’s career that closely. Having said that if Grace Bros. ever happened to be on the box I wouldn’t switch it off. Of course, that’s not to take anything away from John, who thanks to his relentless on-screen mincing around in a department store helped to inspire a generation of digital shopping channels. He wasn’t just an actor, John was a brand, and if only he’d been twenty years younger he could have cleaned up in everything from brake fluid to crotchless underwear.

For me, this is the most important moral lesson of John’s untimely passing: brand awareness. Know your market and milk it for all it’s worth. But John refused. I received a phone call from him once claiming not to know who I was, and demanding that I stopped pestering him with crank calls (I’d been trying to persuade him to play the lead in a musical I’d written about Oscar Wilde, “What A Gay Day For Libel”). In an effort to placate him I pretended to be Danny La Rue, and during the intimate moments of lacklustre impersonation that ensued, it suddenly dawned on me that Johnny was living beyond his time. He didn’t want to be a gay icon; he didn’t want to “represent” homosexuals; he didn’t want to have some ghastly perfume bearing his seal bussed into Boots for OAPs to fritter away their pensions on; and he certainly didn’t want to revive his career with the lead in “What A Gay Day For Libel” (sadly he made the wrong decision there).

He may not have been on the Right Path, but John wanted to live in a world where each and every one of us, from vaudevillian comic to asylum seeker (subject to proper completion of the relevant paperwork), is able to say confidently, “I’m free!”. Tragically, Dame Inman didn’t get the chance to inhabit such a world. But it’s thanks to John’s unique theatricality and dignified offstage comportment that we can declare with pride: John, one day we will all be free.

***** Jeremy would like to give a big thank you to everyone who took part in The Last Post’s recent competition. Judging by the fervour with which you approached this single issue, the Right Path Party looks set to consign the manifestos of its rival parties to the recycling bin. The lucky winners will be selected on Friday 31 March, so there’s still enough time to get your entries in (please include an email address – there are five copies of Jeremy's acclaimed autobiography, “Lines Crossed”, to be won). *****

Trident Tested

19 March 2007

My father fought for The Allies in The War. When the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima he was on a secret mission 150 miles off the Japanese coast disguised as a minky whale.

Actually, when I say “secret mission” that’s not strictly true. Nor was he “disguised” as such. He was working as an extra in a Howard Hughes flick with the risqué title, “Whale For Me Honey”. Ole Pop always loved the showbiz lifestyle, and I think there must have been something about the idea of making a B-movie in wartime that appealed to his reckless streak (since making one in peacetime already seems reckless enough).

There’s an important moral lesson here – apart from “never accept a role in a B-movie” – and it’s this: if my father was prepared to put himself in harm’s way for King and Commonwealth, and to suffer for his art whilst the nukes rained down around his ears, then why aren’t the rest of us?

Today, opinion polls reveal that the majority of the British public opposes the replacement of the Trident submarine kit that served us so faithfully during the Cold War. Not that this prevented David Cameron from marshalling his parliamentary troops behind the government’s plans to ensure we’re not left in the nuclear graveyard come 2024, when Trident officially passes its sell-by date. Good on you Camers, the country’s national security is too important to play party politics with!

As much as Dave’s touchy-feely shtick makes me blow chunks, when it comes to the crunch this man can apply to join my party anytime. Only last week during a game of ping-pong in Boris Johnson’s conservatory (talk about Georgian chintz!) did Camers sum up the nuclear conundrum so well with an anecdote that harked back to my days in the Scouts: “If you haven’t got any matches then how on earth can you cook your marshmallows?”

I can understand why the British people feel nervous about Trident. But let us be clear, would you want your dying wish to be, “God, I wish I’d bought some matches” when confronted by an Islamic extremist brandishing a bag of marshmallows? And what about Iran, which reliable CIA intelligence sources suggest is stockpiling matches faster than you can say “dib, dib, dib”?

Great British people take heed: we need a nuclear weapons system befitting the new millennium in order to buttress Britain’s blue chip national stock. Unless we replace our nuclear deterrent right now the Scouts can kiss goodbye to their cosy baked bean farting competitions round the campfire and should prepare themselves for full-scale nuclear Armageddon instead.

ASBOs or SLAPs?

With the Labour government under Twilight Tony bringing forward reforms to the probation system, I thought it apposite for the Right Path Party to outline its proposals on law and order.

This is one of my favourite policy areas and it will perhaps shock some of my supporters to learn that the RPP does not advocate the restoration of the death penalty in this country. That would be an uncivilised step, more at home with the donkey courts and kangaroo justice of modern day Afghanistan than a bright, forward-thinking democracy such as our own. Plus we’d never hear the last of it from the clamour of moral busybodies in the European Court of Human Rights.

Although Dave Cameron is often misinterpreted by the press as a slippery snake with about as much credibility as a rock star in rehab, he was talking sense recently about the rights and responsibilities of the individual. Our young people face difficult choices these days, especially when deciding on their future careers. Should they become toilet cleaners or financial consultants? Youngsters need to be given adequate time following their GCSEs to reflect in smoke free common rooms on their vocational aspirations before being marshalled along to the local dole office or accepted into Harvard Business School.

Of course, when all is said and done, some of the business students will prefer to shovel excrement, while some of the lavvy cleaners will aspire to a loftier perch than the one with an arse-shaped hole in it. This is precisely where the role of parents becomes crucial in nurturing the dreams of their nearest and dearest.

My own daughter Polly (aged 12) recently admitted to having stolen a tomato from J. S. Sainsbury’s. She has forefeited all pocket money for a month and is due to do voluntary community service folding deckchairs for a day at this year’s Henley Regatta. It’s early days, but already Sophie and I have noticed a positive change in her attitude when only last week she expressed a newfound determination to become a hedge fund manager by the age of 21.

This is the challenging ideological context in which the Right Path Party is currently seeking catchy acronyms to replace ASBOs. And it’s precisely the point where we, as a democratic and (quietly) progressive party, intend to solicit views from our growing constituency of grassroots supporters. And yes, that means you!

So please resist the temptation to use my web space as a public notice board this week, and instead post your half-baked opinions about how all of us, as parents and responsible adults, can bring wayward youths like my daughter Polly back onto the straight and narrow. And don’t forget the catchy acronyms! For example, do our young people need a SLAP (Special Lessons And Probation) or a GG (Grants Galore)? The ideas factory is now open for business.

***** The five most original suggestions to be posted in the comments section before 31 March will receive an autographed copy of Jeremy’s acclaimed autobiography “Lines Crossed” PLUS the opportunity to deliver Right Path Party election leaflets to 10,000 homes in their local constituency. ***** 

Another Brick In The Wall

12 March 2007

I was in King’s Cross last night. At 4am. Before you start putting two and two together and making five, it’s not what you might think. There I was, almost choking to death on the rancid stench of cheap perfume, night burgers, rats the size of my dog and outcrops of faeces even larger – and all in the name of “education”.

Not literally, of course. I was observing this abject spectacle from the air-conditioned “comfort” of Sophie’s Porsche (the Bentley’s back in the garage). But you get the general idea. Why on earth was I there? Actually, it was all to do with my daughter Polly’s spring term project, “Could I live like a tramp for a day?” No she bloody well could not!

No wonder we’re breeding a nation of couch potatoes. When I was my daughter’s age “fieldwork” really meant something. Like the time we herded 25,000 flamingos into an oil drum in Natal; or the time we got a herd of stampeding giraffes to flush out a family of Zulu squatters from a Portaloo toilet. Growing up in South Africa really brought home to me the importance of animal husbandry and environmental protection.

Nowadays our education system is stuck in cloud cuckoo land. These loony leftwing teachers would rather take our kids on a joy ride through the sess pit of the urban bazaar, peopled by all manner of pimps and social misfits, than they would teach them how to rescue their photography equipment from a pile of elephant dung in the event that their Land Rover crashes on a Kenyan safari.

Anyway, driving round in circles in that north London ghetto, desperate for an Earl Grey, the penny finally dropped: Sending us out on some pointless school run at the crack of dawn was a joke deliberately perpetrated by the teaching profession in order to put out rich and successful parents like myself. And with that, as we turned down another needle-strewn cul-de-sac in search of yet more exotic local “wildlife”, who did we see? That’s right: Polly’s classmate Alexandria Penhalligon no less, and the family chauffeur, in her father’s Aston Martin. Suspicions confirmed!

Polo-axed

I see Prince Charles has been reading McDonald’s the riot act, and lamenting the place of the greasy burger in our national cuisine. I’m with you all the way Chaz!

Actually, if truth be told, Charles is batting on a sticky wicket there. The last time he invited me along to one of his charity Polo gigs, I spent three hours with my head down the pan of an executive turdis, blowing chunks for England when I should have been scoring goals for the Gordonstoun Old Boys. The culprit was a dodgy Cornish Pasty, courtesy of the Duchy of Cornwall. There were more noxious chemicals in that thing than in a bucket of napalm. I’d never dream of alleging foul play, especially since Charles was captaining our team, but it hardly escaped my notice that with me and my trusty pony King Abdullah (a present from the Saudi monarch) out of action, Gordonstoun were trounced 8-1.

I’m behind the Prince on the big constitutional questions (of course Harry should sow his wild oats in Iraq), but when it comes to commerce there are nuances. By all means Your Highness, build your own private villages but don’t stand in the way of popular brands – that way lies tyranny.

So what about Mackee D’s? To what extent should we indulge the mammoth expansion plans of this former Scottish whelk fisherman (how menus move on!)? Basically, there is no one size fits all solution. The working class wants to munch on fat, so let them eat burgers; while the more discerning upmarket neighbourhoods and transitional pockets of petit-bourgeois affluence hanker after a more exclusive menu, so let them quaff burgundy. Where plans to build a new McDonald’s restaurant encounter fierce opposition from the local landed gentry, a village fete should be organised, in order that the great and the good can thrash it out over a jam scone, and a traditional game of Find the Lady.

The days of big, centralised government are a distant memory. These days, people are mature enough to make their own choices without being nannied into submission by some Big Whig with a whiff of power. If the proles keep eating chips and turkey twizzlers at the current rate, then soon they’ll be too big to defecate in a straight line. But then you can't expect pleasure without a bit of pain!

It’s All Relatives

20 February 2007

Like globalisation, global warming is here to stay. Tides they are a’rising. As I type away on my supercharged computer, another exclusive beachfront development is being washed ashore somewhere on the far side of the planet, the victim of nearby tsunamis. What can be done to address the environmental problems we face today?

It is the job of any politician to make clear his green policies to voters. Some will have genned up, but others do not have the wherewithal to realise that the subtropical temperatures that allow them to drive with the sunroof down come at a cost. Earth PLC’s stakeholders should have taken out some insurance aeons ago, because now we’re dealing with the fallout and I for one do not intend to wither on the vine.

The key is not to panic. The boffins will save us again with these new forms of egg petrol and acorn diesel, so we can continue to use energy in the way we have been accustomed and, frankly, have won the right to do.

So what should be the main challenge facing environmentally aware politicians like myself? CO2 pollution? Alternative energies? Or the dreaded green taxes? In a word: monkeys.

Those jungle VIPs, once feted for their Hollywood stunt work, have fallen on hard times. Decreasing numbers of trees to jump between, poor nut harvests and the rocketing price of bananas place them in grave threat. Internecine feuds between species are sadly on the rise. Many of them have developed homosexual disorders; others are sold into prostitution in Dubai or Liverpool. We can’t expect the ministries of their host nations to tackle the problem (not when they have agreed to take up the industrial baton and bleed the world dry), so it is up to ambassadors of freedom and equality such as myself to inform you of the stark choices they now face. If you want to carry on snapping monkeys you’ll need to put more than film in your camera – a little bit of respect wouldn’t go amiss too.

My solution can be summed up thus: give our ecosystem a rest and bring the monkeys to the West. Ramp up the zoo building programme, increase ‘tree-city’ capacity and get the worst-off some counselling. A department for monkey affairs should be created at ministerial level immediately in Whitehall, and other G8 nations should follow suit. The burden must be shared equally.

Heat death haunts us like a cancer now, but humanity will prevail with flying colours. Unless we intervene now with a raft of internationally binding measures, the same can’t be said for our closest relatives.

Captain’s Blog
Browser alert! Ever since I commissioned the august site you’re reading now, I’ve had constituents accusing me of being a consumer. The mutual confusion only increases when I tell them Sophie does all our shopping and the only time I set foot inside a retail outlet is when I'm meeting and greeting out on the campaign trail.

They mean the internet. “You’ve got to build your online presence, it will boost funds and help the party campaign,” Rupert keeps telling me. “We’re loaded,” I reply. “But if that’s where the contango is now, then I’ll ride that curve.”

So, in the spirit of technological progress, this week I've been emailing my virals all over the shop like a demented monkey. I’ve entered “chatrooms” to sniff out what the youth is saying, downloaded images and clips and observed my web profile (not bad - although no entry on Wikipedia!) and signed up to dozens of helpful pedagogical networks. My site is now full of images, clips, bio and helpful information. You want a piece of Jeremy, people? Well, now you’ve got him in spades!

One thing that didn’t escape my notice on my online travels is that the so-called web logs of MPs could never have been authored by them. And it struck me that this is the problem of the unaccountable era of self-publishing – it’s too easy for hypocritical charlatans to get a voice. So I am still skeptical about the merits of this virtual world, and advise you to stick with Jeremymcclintock.com to be sure of absolute integrity.