Priorities

As I drove into work this morning, I wondered what might happen if we started to look at important things, rather than sensational things.

·         Hans Rosling has posted a thought provoking short video that highlights our view of Swine Flu(which gets over 8000 press mentions per death) , versus TB (which gets 0.1 mentions)

·         The press is saturated with MP’s expenses, whilst unemployment at 2.2m is forecast to over 3m, with the young most severely affected.

·         Post (or at the current stage) in the Banking crisis, credit is at best flowing like treacle.

·         Risk aversion is so endemic, that any potential risk gets magnified and leveraged. In the supply chain I deal with, every stage in the chain (from raw material to retail) sets its own requirements and strategy for things as diverse as product safety to ethical standards, with each party’s lawyers trying to lay off liability elsewhere. The end result is a torrent of administration and cost that adds no value whatsoever.

The list could go on. And on. We are being seduced into a strange sense of priorities.

I wondered what might happen if we chose to leverage things with potential – ideas, people, ventures and used the money we are spending on propping up obsolescent brands and businesses to grow the new areas our children can take advantage of.