Nick Pickles’s blog

so, today the battle of the X factor landed - and the X factor won.

essentially the X factor winner’s version of Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah was a near shoe-in for christmas number one, and a campaign had been mounted to stop it getting there - with Jeff Buckley’s version the vehicle  for the anti-X factor vote. Buckley got number two in the chart.

and to top it off, Cohen’s origional made it to number 36.

the sad thing is - while i fully support efforts to end the proliferation of shit music and “i want to be a celebrity without needing talent” that the x factor encourages, people have somewhat missed the point.

the person who owns the publishing rights to the song - and thus gets paid every time someone buys any version - is Simon Cowell.

so, by buying the jeff buckley version, you are funding the man who has done more to damage the british music industry than anyone since mick hucknall.

what should people have done? well, last year malcom middleton released the splendid “we’re all going to die” in a bid to get to christmas number one. he didn’t quite make it, but fellow scots glasvegas had a go with “please come back home” - sadly, the anti-X factor vote missed this gem.

what do i want for christmas? well, its a long list but if someone can put an end to the jumped up karaoke cowell pedals, that would be awfully nice.

debt is not wealth.

i keep thinking this, amid all the calls for banks to lend more. i rent my flat and am pretty much priced out of the property market. in part, the reason why is because mortgages were easy to come buy, so more people entered the market, and that pushed prices up.

add that to credit cards and overdrafts being given to anyone and everyone (and even a dog) and people living on credit. end result? personal debt has now hit £1.5 trillion (£200m more than Britain’s GDP) and when the credit dries up, the economy grinds to a halt, house prices fall and consumer spending is desperately courted to kickstart things. (ie a temporary cut in VAT that will be paid for by higher taxes on everyone in work)

so is the solution more credit? It has to be paid back at some point, so the cycle is not sustainable. add that to the fact that credit is based upon the return banks make from investing savings, and so in theory the amount banks can lend is tied to the amount of savings they hold, and its fairly plain to see that lending is not the answer.

I think there’s a serious long term issue here about how people live - do we believe credit is now an entitlement, so in other words we feel that we should be able to buy a new car every few years, eat out frequently and go on several holidays a year without having the means to pay for them?

I think before too long, discussion is going to have to move back to talking about how people live within their means - more credit is not going to change that, it’ll just make it more painfull when the real crash comes.

Robert Peston posted a blog on Monday entitled ‘the new capitalism’, including an extensive article of the same name talking about the global economy. it makes interesting reading, particularly when you consider this week’s developments at Woolworths and today in the US, where the motor industry is apparently weeks away from collapse. it seems the world is spinning a little faster at present, and i’m not quite making sense of it all.

Yesterday I attended a networking shindig run by Barnardos in Leeds, where Clive Wilson from Primeast spoke. Despite being one of my clients, I’d never heard Clive speak so I was rarely excited about the event - despite the 5.50am alarm to make it.

He discussed how businesses and managers focus on people’s weaknesses, spending vast amounts of energy and resources trying to improve what are regarded as areas to be ‘improved.’ Simply, Clive questioned why excepetionally talented people are unable to reach the top of professions because there is a minor part of a ‘competency framework’ they are able to meet.

In other words, you can excell in 90% of your role, but the 10% you are weak in is the focus.

Clive’s approach is called ‘talent liberation’ - a concept I’m keen to learn more about and will be on my reading list for christmas. Basically, the concept is simple - focus on enabling people to spend 100% of their time on what they are talented at and take away the weak areas. That way, people will achieve more and find their roles more fulfilling.

Unfortunatley, it means taking stock of what your talents are - something I’ve absolutely no idea of. At 24 I’m definately not too concerned about that, but it’s slightly worring I’ve never even given it any real thought, certainly not after I bagged my first job.

So, there’s something else to add to the list of things the blog is going to be about. as i do various things, deciding what it is about them i enjoy and figuring out how to do more of it.

good evening,

after much ado and me not getting my arse into gear, here is my blog! i’ll be talking about music, politics, photography…well, there the things i know i’ll be talking about anyway. In truth, I’ve no idea.

the past week or so has been an interesting time - i got locked out of my flat, stuck in snow and saw both of my flatmates move out. i’ve also managed to see coldplay (photos here) and tonight I’ll be shooting Bruce Foxton and from the jam. Tomorrow I’m heading back to my old stomping ground at leeds met for two fantastic bands - Glasvegas and White Lies. Monday is the NME Rock and Roll Riot tour with Primal Scream and Tuesday I get to spend some time with my wonderful girlfriend.

But for now, I’m off to cook bolognese and crack on with season two of The Wire.