It’s a hilarious but worrying example of how the people who work in education are becoming divorced from the parents of the children they are supposed to serve.

Do you know what deep learning and functional skills are? If not, then read on.

Satisfactory – One of 4 possible categories that the Schools Inspectorate can award. However, satisfactory is not what you think it means. The Chief Schools Inspector recently said that satisfactory schools are “not good enough”. The categories are, in order:

• inadequate
• satisfactory
• good
• outstanding

The “inadequate” category is known to be abysmal.

In other words, schools can tell parents that their child’s school is deemed satisfactory by the inspectors, which keeps the parents happy – whilst the schools know that its only one step up from abysmal. Teachers are kept happy because they haven’t been pointed out as being sub-standard.

Excellence & Enjoyment – these terms cannot be used together as they are mutually exclusive. Excellence is used for what matters (literacy and numeracy). Enjoyment is used for what doesn’t matter (ie everything else). You therefore can’t say a child is “enjoying reading” or “excelling in music”.

Non-Statutory – The National Primary Strategy for schools says that non-statutory means obligatory. You should also note that the Government issued Strategy are only guidelines – hence schools do not have to follow obligatory guidelines. However, if they don’t follow the guidelines, they risk being categorised by the inspectors as “satisfactory”.

Gifted and Talented – these refer to the top 10% of children in both academic and non-academic (eg sports) pursuits respectively, who are to be encouraged to develop these attributes. However, in order to ensure that these descriptions do not become elitist (which is an abomination), the descriptions have been broadened to include “the ability to make sound judgements” and “to show great sensitivity or empathy” and “to be fascinated by a particular subject”.

The terms are necessary to pacify parents who worry that their children are not being stretched enough. Radical left wing teachers unions are kept happy because they know the terms include everyone who wants to be included.

A specialist school – is a bog standard comprehensive school that has fulfilled enough form filling to get extra Government money. “Bog standard comprehensive” was a term coined by a government minister to denote the substandard state of most state schools before the government started its reform programme. Most bog standard comprehensives are now specialist schools. Of these, almost as many chose their specialism because they were weak in it and wanted to improve as those whose chose it because they were actually strong in it. Specialist schools are only allowed to select 10% of their children according to ability – which does rather prevent the schools from specialising…

An independent Government commissioned review – is a review which is authored by someone who isn’t a government employee. The job description of the review leaves little room for manoeuvre and the conclusions are highly predictable. The authors are normally chosen from a small group of people known for their reliability and unwillingness to rock the boat. The purpose of the review is to provide justification for politicians to carry out what they were going to do anyway.   

Shades of George Orwell’s “double-speak”?!

I have been saying for some time now that the best use for Government money currently is to stabilise the prices in the housing market, which will in turn encourage people to spend more on the High Street than they are doing. High Street spending represents around 60% of GDP.

The best means to stabilize the market is for the Government to provide new mortgage lending to people who want to borrow – at sensible commercial rates and at a sensible rate of credit risk, bearing in mind the personal circumstances of the borrower.

The problem has not been the small number of people wanting to buy property at the moment, but rather the lack of bank lending allowing them to buy property – despite them having good jobs and available deposit money.

The Government previously had tried lending money directly to all the UK banks in order to get them to increase their general lending but, as other sources of borrowing have dried up (like the interbank market), the banks have been keeping the money in order to shore up their dubious balance sheets.

So finally the UK Government has seen the light and U-turned on its policy of running down the Northern Rock mortgage book. Northern Rock was nationalised last year by the Government. Instead of running down it down, it aims to lend an extra £5 billion in new mortgages this year and up to £9 billion from 2010. To help fund this expansion of lending, the Treasury will provide an extra £10 billion in taxpayer’s money to the bank. Some mortgages would be lent at up to 90% of the value of the property being bought – these mortgages used to be common but are currently hard to find.

Last year, net lending in the mortgage market by all lenders was £40 billion, whilst this year the Council of Mortgage Lenders forecasts that lending could be minus £25bn – ie more mortgages money will be being paid back than borrowed. So the extra £5bn from Northern Rock this year might be very significant.

With the value of all new mortgages currently averaging £112,000, an extra £5 billion of lending would amount to around 45,000 averaged-sized home loans per year. That would be approximately equivalent to the number that were lent each month last year by all lenders in the UK.

You might wonder why the Government structured the payments as £5 billion this year and £10 billion next year, when the need is more urgent this year. The reason hasn’t been revealed as yet, but it is clearly because lending money into a falling market is politically dangerous – it opens up the Government to a charge of wasting money. However, by next year, prices should have fallen sufficiently far enough so that a fresh injection of £10 billion should help stablize prices rather than just reduce the speed at which they are falling – which is what the £5 billion in 2009 will do. The Government seems to have acted intelligently in this case, although £15 billion is not enough.

This is because the Government

Just to put this in perspective, the British army has suffered deaths in war every year except one since the end of World War Two. That’s a lot of fighting (or peacekeeping, depending on which side you’re on). The British people are generally very proud of their armed services – they are highly disciplined in war (rather than one nights out in their garrison towns) and effective as a result of their battle hardening experience.

However, British commanders are now saying that their forces are under unacceptable strain:-

• The air forces transport fleet is in poor shape
• the navy is shrinking
• the army has shortages of men and vital equipment (battalions are up to one-fifth below their regular size and a further fifth of the battalions are ill, injured or unfit to deploy).
• A multi billion pound hole in the defence budget for military equipment means that new systems are being cancelled, delayed or scaled down.

Things have long been this way. George Bernard Shaw, that scourge of the establishment, once joked that “the British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office”. That’s now called the Ministry of Defense or MOD, for obvious reasons - but scores of relatives of dead soldiers are finding out from coroners judgments that the MOD has not improved much over the last hundred years or so.

Apparently the Nirvana lyrics were taken from a Seattle drug campaign that encouraged heroin users to soak their used needles in bleach to reduce the risk of spreading Aids. The original campaign slogan was “If doused in mud, soak in bleach.”

The best place to start when answering this question is the past. Once we can see what’s happened before, we can begin to assess what might happen next.

The following statistics come from the US National Bureau of Economic Research.

America’s Business Cycle Dates. Duration in Months

Peak                Trough           Peak to          Trough           Trough            Peak

                                                Trough           to Peak           to Trough       to Peak

Feb 1945         Oct 1945         8                      80                    88                    93

Nov 1948        Oct 1949         11                    37                    48                    45

Jul 1953           May 1954       10                    45                    55                    56

Aug 1957        April 1958       8                     39                    47                    49

April 1960       Feb 1961        10                    24                    34                    32

Dec 1969         Nov 1970       11                   106                  117                  116

Nov 1973        Mar 1975        16                    36                    52                    47

Jan 1980          Jul 1980           6                     58                    64                    74

Jul 1981           Nov 1982       16                    12                    28                    18

Jul 1990           Mar 1991        8                     92                   100                  108

Mar 2001         Nov 2001        8                    120                  128                  128

The Peaks are the point at which America’s economy is at its strongest and the Troughs are when its at its weakest, within the cycle.

As you can see quite clearly, America, like most countries, spends much more time growing (Trough to Peak) than shrinking (Peak to Trough). However, those periods of expansion and contraction vary considerably from business cycle to business cycle.

Americas ten year expansion from March 1991 to March 2001 was the longest for at least 150 years – the length of time the National Bureau has data for.

So, to answer the original question, how long is this recession likely to last? The maximum length of a Peak to Trough in the last 60 years has been 16 months. If we hope that this recession is no worse than that, and there seems to be no evidence that specific factors are going to cause an abnormally long recession (indeed with globalisation, the World’s economy is more diversified than ever and so should be more robust), and given that the National Bureau have decided that the Peak of the Cycle was December 2007, then the Trough should be around March 2009.

Although the US economy will start growing from that point, people probably won’t start feeling the benefit for around another year as the slack (that has developed in the recession) gets taken out of the economy. This slack is measured in unemployed people and companies producing less than their capacity.

Whatever does happen, it won’t matter for Obama – the recession can be blamed on President Bush and by the time his re-election comes around in 4 years the economy will be growing again, probably strongly, making him a shoe-in. The only thing that could stop this happening is if he manages to become generally unpopular in the meantime for unforeseen policy mistakes.

The police might argue that they don’t need anyone’s support as they are charged by the State to carry out their duties, and no one is going to take that anyway from them, but it strikes me that if the police lose their integrity in order to boost their performance figures, they themselves will lose the support of the public. In effect, this will mean less respect from the public, less public help to solve crime and less support from Parliament when they want things, like more powers or larger pay increases – less Members of Parliament are going to support the police if they become unpopular.

Lets hope that this was a case of one off opportunism by a rogue policeman, but please let me know if you have any similar stories.

“All the news that’s fit to print.”

New York Times 1896 (Author – Adolph S. Ochs – Proprietor)

“Ask the man who owns one.”

Packard cars 1902 (Author – J W Packard – Proprietor)

“When it rains, it pours!”

 Morton Salt 1911 (Advertising Agency – N W Ayer)

“Good to the last drop.”

Maxwell House Coffee 1915

“Say it with flowers”

 Interflora 1917 (Advertising Agency – PF O’Keefe Advertising Agency)

“I’d walk a mile for a Camel.“

Camel Cigarettes 1921 (Advertising Agency -  N W Ayer)

“The Eyes and Ears of the World.”

Paramount Pictures 1927

“Guinness is good for you.”

Guinness 1929 (Advertising Agency – S H Benson)

“My goodness, my Guinness!”

Guinness 1931 (Advertising Agency – S H Benson)

“Snap! Crackle! Pop!”

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies 1932 (Advertising Agency – J Walter Thompson)

“Safety fast.”

MG 1933

“Don’t be vague. Ask for Haig.”

Haig Scotch Whisky 1934 (Advertising Agency – Lord & Thomas)

“If you want to get ahead, get a hat.”

 Hat Council 1934

“Breakfast of champions.”

Wheaties 1935 (Advertising Agency – Blackett Sample Hummert)

“M’m! M’m! Good!”

 Campbell’s Soup 1935 (Advertising Agency – BBDO)

“Careless Talk Costs Lives.”

UK Ministry of Information 1940

“Think.”

IBM 1941

“A diamond is forever.”

De Beers 1948 (Advertising Agency – N W Ayer)

“A little dab’ll do ya.”

Brylcreem 1949 (Advertising Agency – Kenyon & Eckhardt)

“Finger lickin’ good.”

Kentucky Fried Chicken 1952 (Advertising Agency – Ogilvy & Mather)

“The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”

 M&M’s 1954 (Advertising Agency – Ted Bates)

“You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”

Pepsodent 1956 (Advertising Agency – Foote Cone & Belding)

“Go to work on an egg.”

UK Egg Marketing Board 1957 (Advertsing Agency – Mather & Crowther)

“Have a break. Have a Kit-Kat.”

 Kit Kat 1957 (Advertising Agency – J Walter Thompson)

“Drink a pinta milka day.”

UK National Milk Publicity Council 1958

“Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet.”

Hamlet 1960 (Advertising Agency – Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners)

“The greatest tragedy is indifference.”

Red Cross 1961

“Think Small.”

Volkswagen 1962 (Advertising Agency – Doyle Dane Bernbach)

“We try harder.”

Avis 1962 (Advertising Agency – Doyle Dane Bernbach)

“Schhh … You-Know-Who.”

Schweppes 1962

“Does she or doesn’t she?”

 Clairol 1964 (Advertising Agency – Foote Cone & Belding)

“Put a tiger in your tank.”

Esso 1964 (Advertising Agency – McCann-Erickson)

“Let your fingers do the walking.”

Yellow Pages 1964 (Advertising Agency – Geers Gross)

“A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play.”

 Mars 1965 (Advertising Agency – D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles)

“You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world.”

WINS Radio, New York 1965

“Fly the friendly skies.”

United Airlines 1966 (Advertising Agency – Leo Burnett)

 “Nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven.”

Pillsbury 1966

“Beanz Meanz Heinz.“

Heinz 1967 (Advertising Agency – Young & Rubicam)

“Because I’m worth it.”

L’Oréal 1967 (Advertising Agency – McCann-Erickson)

“When you got it, flaunt it.”

 Braniff Airlines 1967 (Advertising Agency – Lois Pitts Gershon Pon)

“And all because the lady loves Milk Tray.”

 Cadburys 1968 (Advertising Agency – Leo Burnett)

“Say it with flowers.”

Interflora 1971

“Accountancy was my life until I discovered Smirnoff.”

Smirnoff Vodka 1971

“The quick picker upper.”

Bounty 1971 (Advertising Agency - Dancer Fitzgerald Sample)

“Nothing runs like a Deere”

John Deere 1972 (Advertising Agency – Gardner)

“Merrill Lynch is bullish on America.”

Merrill Lynch 1973 (Advertising Agency – Ogilvy & Mather)

“Have it your way.“

Burger King 1973 (Advertising Agency - BBDO)

“Probably the best beer in the world.”

Carlsberg 1973 (Advertising Agency – Saatchi & Saatchi)

“Lipsmackin’ thirstquenchin’ acetastin’ motivatin’ goodbuzzin’ cooltalkin’ highwalkin’ fastlivin’ evergivin’ coolfizzin’ Pepsi.”

Pepsi Cola 1973 (Advertising Agency – Boase Massimi Pollitt)

“Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.“

Heineken 1974 (Advertising Agency – Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners)

“For mash get Smash.“

 Smash instant mash potatoes 1974 (Advertising Agency – Boase Massimi Pollitt)

“Don’t leave home without it.”

American Express 1975

“The ultimate driving machine.”

BMW 1975 (Advertising Agency – Ammirati & Puris)

“Tastes so good cats ask for it by name.”

 Meow Mix 1976 (Advertising Agency – Della Femina Travisano)

“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is.”  

Alka Seltzer 1976 (Advertising Agency – Jack Tinker & Partners)

“The Citi never sleeps.”

 Citibank 1977 (Advertising Agency – Wells Rich Greene)

“I love New York.”

New York City 1977 (Advertising Agency – Wells Rich Greene)

“Reach out and touch someone.”

AT&T 1979 (Advertising Agency – N W Ayer)

“I liked it so much I bought the company.”

Remington shavers 1979

“Hand-built by robots.”

Fiat Strada 1979 (Advertising Agency – Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners)

“H2Eau.” Perrier 1980

“Reassuringly expensive.”

Stella Artois 1981 (Advertising Agency – Lowe Howard Spink)

“Be all you can be.”

US Army 1981 (Advertising Agency – N W Ayer)

“The appliance of science.”

Zanussi 1981 (Advertising Agency – Geers Gross)

“When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight.”

Federal Express 1982 (Advertising Agency – Ally & Gargano)

“Milk’s gotta lotta bottle.”

Milk Marketing Board 1982 (Advertising Agency – BMP DDB)

“The antidote for civilization.”

 Club Med 1982 (Advertising Agency – Publicis)

“The world’s favourite airline.”

British Airways 1983 (Advertising Agency – Saatchi & Saatchi)

“Vorsprung dursh technik.”

Audi 1984  (Advertising Agency – BBH)

“Say no to no say.”

Greater London Council 1984 (Advertising Agency - Boase Massimi Pollit)

“Raise your hand if you’re sure.”

Sure 1984 (Advertising Agency – Wells Rich Greene)

“Hello Tosh, gotta Toshiba?”

 Toshiba 1984 (Advertising Agency – Gold Greenlees Trott)

“Don’t just book it. Thomas Cook it.”

Thomas Cook 1984 (Advertising Agency – Wells Rich Greene)

“Where’s the beef?”

Wendy’s 1984 (Advertising Agency – Dancer Fitzgerald Sample)

 “We’re Getting There”

British Rail 1984 (Advertising Agency – Grounds Morris Smith)

“Are you a Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut case?”

Cadburys 1985 (Advertising Agency – Young & Rubicam)

“It’s a lot less bovver than a hover.”

Qualcast Concord 1985 (Advertising Agency – WCRS)

“Australians wouldn’t give a Castlemaine XXXX for anything else.”

Castlemaine beer 1986 (Advertising Agency – Saatchi & Saatchi)

“It is. Are you?”

The Independent 1987 (Advertising Agency – Saatchi & Saatchi)

“Just do it.”

Nike 1988 (Advertising Agency – Wieden & Kennedy)

“Its everywhere you want to be.”

Visa 1988 (Advertsing Agency – BBDO)

“A newspaper, not a snoozepaper.”

 The Mail on Sunday 1988 (Advertising Agency – Lowe Howard Spink)

“I bet he drinks Carling Black Label.”

Carling 1989 (Advertsing Agency – WCRS)

“Cats like Felix like Felix.”

 Felix 1989 (Advertising Agency – BMP DDB)

“I think, therefore IBM.”

 IBM 1989 (Advertising Agency – Ogilvy & Mather)

“Intel inside.”

Intel 1990

“Free enterprise with every copy.”

 The Economist 1990 (Advertising Agency – AMV BBDO)

“It’s good to talk.”

British Telecom 1994 (Advertising Agency – Abbott Mead Vickers  BBDO)

“You know when you’ve been Tango’d.”

Tango 1994 (Advertising Agency – HHCL)

“Drivers wanted.”

 Volkswagen 1995 (Advertising Agency – Arnold Communications)

“The future is bright. The future’s Orange.”

Orange 1996 (Advertising Agency – WCRS)

“Absolut perfection.”

Absolut Vodka 1998

“Think different.”

 Apple Macintosh 1998 (Advertising Agency – Chiat / Day)

“It’s a Skoda. Honest.”

Skoda 2000 (Advertising Agency – Fallon)

“Be the first to know.”

CNN 2002

“10,000 songs in your pocket.”

Apple ipod 2004

“Buy it Sell it. Love it.”

Ebay 2005

“So where the bloody hell are you?”

Australian Tourist Commission 2006

Undated Adverts

“Nothing Sucks like an Electrolux.”

Electrolux 1960’s (Advertising Agency – Cogent Elliot)

 “There are a million and one excuses for not wearing a safety belt. Some are real killers.”

American Safety Council

“Moms depend on Kool-Aid like kids depend on Moms.”

Kool-Aid

Famous Advertising Copywriters:-

Salmon Rushdie used to be an advertising copy writer. He worked for three advertising agencies, Ogilvy & Mather, Sharp McManus and Ayer Barker Hegermann., before becoming a full-time writer. He created the fresh cream cakes slogan “naughty but nice”. The reason the slogan worked so well was because it gave consumers permission to break the rules for the sake of pleasure. The advert was originally rejected by the client because they were worried that it would associate their product with getting fat, but a year later, the client relented (perhaps the original manager moved on, Rushdie still doesn’t know) and the slogan became one of the UK greats. See it in action here http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlq0196ulmI  and http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=voPzNTO9uJE&feature=related. Rushdie also created the “irresistibubble” slogan for Aero chocolate bars.

Of His copywriting days, Rushdie has said “Beyond that, it taught me to write like a job. If you have, as my sweating friend did, the client coming in that afternoon for his new campaign, you can’t not have it. You have to have it. What’s more, it has to be good. You can’t afford temperament, you can’t afford days of creative anguish; you have to sit there and do your job and you have to do it like a job, get it done on time and well.” “I now write exactly like that. I write like a job. I sit down in the morning and I do it. And I don’t miss deadlines. I do feel that a lot of the professional craft of writing is something I learnt from those years in advertising and I’ll always be grateful for it.”

Another former advertising copywriter turned novelist, Fay Weldon, reputedly coined the phrase “Go to work on an egg”.

Best Advertising Story

When British Rail, one of the largest railway networks in the world,  decided they wanted to have an advertising campaign to improve their poor image in the early 1980’s they asked several agencies to pitch for the job. One of the agencies arranged a meeting at their own offices after they had finalized their pitch. The BR managers turned up at the agreed meeting time and the receptionist showed them into a meeting room and told them that the advertising team would be with them shortly.

Whilst they waited, they slowly began to notice how dirty the room was – there were stale cigarettes stubs in the ashtray, the room smelt badly, there was litter on the floor, sticky seats and the windows were unwashed. After 20 minutes, they began to get impatient and one of them went out to speak to the receptionist who told them that unfortunately the team had been delayed but would be with them shortly. After another 20 minutes and, growing ever more impatient, one of them again left the room and asked the receptionist what was going on.  The receptionist rather bolshily told them that they would be seen to soon. Confused, the BR manager returned to the meeting room where the conversation inevitable focused on how unbelievably stupid it was for the advertising agency to treat important clients this way and how they couldn’t understand how this large advertising agency even had any clients at all who were willing to put up with this sort of behaviour.

Another 20 minutes past and the managers from BR decided that enough was enough. They all got up and opened the door to leave the room. Outside, the Advertising Team were waiting with their message – You now feel like your customers do. This is what the public think of your service. You’re dirty, you’re late and you’re rude – but we can help you.

“We’re getting there” was born. The slogan worked because it implicitly acknowledged the existing failings but promised that the organization was working on improvements.

Some more advertising resources:-

http://www.adslogans.co.uk/site/pages/home/hall-of-fame.php

http://www.ad-mad.co.uk/slogans

http://www.theactivitydirectorsoffice.com/AdvertisingSlogans.pdf

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1357091.stm

 http://www.businessandleadership.com/marketing/news/article/11676/marketing/a-writers-tale

Let me know if you can think of some more and I’ll add them on!

Inequality only exists in your own head.

If you believe than you are more superior than another, then it follows that others are superior to you.

Therefore to remain equal, you must value everyone else as your equals.

There seem to be quite a few good People Search engines out there now like Spock and Wink but I came across a great new one the other day – WikiWorldBook.com.

Its Free People Search provides highly filtered results for names enabling you to see immediately if that person is on a range of networks and media like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or Wikipedia to name a few, whilst also providing a range of filtered web results to cut down on wadding through millions of less meaningful results.

It also has a free online address book which allows you to create a profile, with just your name, so that people can find you and contact you without seeing your email address or having to register themselves which is novel. You also get a Search Alert if someone Google’s you, and if you are trying to find someone, they have a Trace facility, which I have never seen before – apparently it creates a result on the search engines for that person, so it might be picked up by either the person being looked for or their friends.

Its also got a directory for products and businesses, but there don’t seem to be many products as yet and the businesses seem to be mainly US ones.