Month: May 2026

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You Can’t Handle The Truth

The famous line uttered by Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men. A film about finding the truth. A film about the law, surely the upholder and arbiter of truth? Not in 2026.

Mainstream media (MSM) is frequently seen as having an agenda that is turning us all into sheep. Or something. Nonsense by dint of the fact that all media, fringe, mainstream or otherwise, has an agenda. A perspective. It’s how well it pressing the ‘cognitive bias’ button in your brain. Best to take as many viewpoints as you can and then orientate.

Which is what research does.

Why is this of interest to me? The reason I’ve not been writing is that I’ve been reading, researching and understanding how the gap between the gatekeepers of (alleged) truth – academia – and those who peddle (alleged) lies – the media – has closed in recent times.

The Times newspaper, once the mouthpiece for the Murdoch-loving elite – and perhaps still is – has recently arrived with a new campaign. It’s got a snappy line that will resonate, and it positions them as the arbiter of truth. Or at least trust.

And then there’s the Financial Times, or the FT as it’s known. They are also positioning themselves as the arbiters of truth with their brand campaign that suggests they are the journalism to trust. Source: FT (see what I did there?)

They’re certainly more trusted than, say, Washington Post and many, many other media outlets in certain Western ‘democracies’.

Truth is a difficult word because it involves bias and perspective, and at least a smidgen of critical thinking. Three things in short supply in the age of the internet. Add in LLM hallucinations and it’s getting harder to know what’s what and who’s who. Google is most definitely not your friend.

The work I’m doing butts up against this idea of truth and trust. Not so much the what but the how. How do we demonstrate we speak or write the truth and can be trusted when no one trusts the truth anyway?

I don’t have the answers, yet. Perhaps I won’t. However, it’s a really lovely brief to think about and despite the lunatic deadlines given to me to think about it in-depth, I’m really rather enjoying the intellectual challenge.

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Hotting Up

After actively avoiding work for a few years, I’ve dived back in. And I’m actually enjoying it, mostly. Some bits of it I’m not, but most of what I have to do I am finding good fun. Well, fun in the way shilling your skills for dosh is fun.

Now, I’ve also had to learn someone else’s process along the way, which hasn’t always been as much fun. However, as I believe all processes are mostly a start and end point, what has been interesting is the messy stuff in the middle. How what I call something is not the same as someone else calls it, and if we do call it the same thing then why oh why doesn’t it mean the same thing? Oh, the joys of nuance.

As such, I feel like I’ve made some things more boring than I would normally have done and wish I could go back and switch things around and be more ‘creative’ about how they’re presented. Equally, I now realise I shouldn’t be beholden to how it’s done if I want to retain my own personality and abilities. Which is why I’m happy to have been asked to do more work and why I’ll be upping the creative effort and downplaying the need to be corporate and everyday.

It’s not the language that’s doing it, it’s how that language is presented.

Another thing to note is how the constraint of the online presentation software dictates a certain aesthetic. Verbal and visual. It’s not necessarily a good thing even if it’s how we’ve all come to know presenting.

Lastly, I seem to have become a victim of hayfever and my nose is streaming more than a gak-infused right-wing Yaxley-Lennon wannabe. And the sneezing? Yeah, I’m over that.

Oh, a post script. I decided to continue the vinyl label odyssey (or idiocy, perhaps) and sign up for another album. The writer of the sleeve notes who begged to do them and said they’ do so for free has now decided they can’t do them. So, now my budget is fucked and I’m without the words. Cue me sending some begging emails and crossing my fingers. Let’s hope someone takes pity on me and doesn’t want £££ for 300 words (although I must stress I’m always willing to pay, but I am not rich).

It’s the bank holiday here in the UK, which means Monday is not a work day. And it’s due to be sunny and hot, like Greek island hot. Sadly, this also means men who should know better taking their shirts off in public. Ah well, it can’t all be good I suppose.

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Trust Me

Trust. A word that’s so overused that it’s lost its meaning. Or at least it’s lost its power. It’s been highjacked by grifters, and politicians (some are both, I know) and so if someone says ‘trust me’ many people will become wary.

So how do you say trust without saying trust?

I think if you give someone confidence or make them ‘famous’ (I mean famous in the sense that the person’s boss sees them as amazing and rewards them) then I think with the right context it’s a better way to say it. It shows you can be trusted even if you’re just saying is because you have to clarify ‘how’.

Clients, though, love the word. Like they love ‘quality’. I’ve got some convincing to do as this project I’m working on starts to move towards finishing (finally!)

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Them Bones

I always liked Alice In Chains, the grunge band from the early 90’s. They weren’t your typical grunge band. Dark and emo before that term was really a thing. They didn’t hide from the fact that the lead singer was struggling, mostly with heroin addiction, but clearly many other related things. One of their songs is called Them Bones. It’s a song about dying, even if it is delivered from a slightly sarcastic perspective (according to the band).

This morning I was told that there is a real possibility that my bones are dying. When you have some chronic health issues, this is not the kind of new you want to hear. Cue another round of X-rays, an upcoming CT scan and, if these show some deterioration, an MRI. That’s a lot of radiation in a short time. Conversely, radiotherapy is the likely cause of this bone degradation.

Anyway, while I was waiting to see the radiologist, the song came into my head. I popped my headphones on and listened to it while I sat in a cold waiting area. It’s a darn fine song. And in a weird way it gave me the lift I needed. I mean, being told your bones are dying doesn’t really work as a mood elevator.

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Narrative structures

I’m building out a presentation. The story has to be crystal clear as the audience isn’t really into ‘marketing/brand’ and therefore the things I want them to focus on – the important parts of the strategy – need to be obvious. Not dumbed down, but not clever. Everyday language.

I had three ideas, one of which has been dropped. Thankful for that. It was okay, but there was something about it that wasn’t quite right. One of the other two remaining is fantastic. I could see the smiles on the faces of the internal agency team as I talked it through. The final one is there but the title of it just doesn’t quite cut it. I think I’m trying to do more with it than is possible so I might go back to it with the ‘everyday language’ mantra running through my head.

I’ve been doing all this against the backdrop of someone being in hospital. I don’t know the outcome of their operation. I think they’ll pull through, but it’s a proper life-saving op and, well, until they come out of it I won’t know if their life will be saved. Weirdly, especially given my post yesterday, this isn’t someone I have met. I just know them. We plan to meet up regardless of the news. I’m looking forward to that, but hope there are happy times ahead when we do.

Anyway, it’s been at the back of my mind and yet it’s also allowed me to think freely. I’ve felt unencumbered in many ways. The brain is fascinating although I don’t know that I’d like to learn exactly how it works. The mystery surrounding it is, in many way, what makes it so fascinating.

Still, two great ideas mostly articulated with a decent narrative structure. Now all that’s left is to finish off the brief to the designer. That’s tomorrow’s job. My brain has been free to think but it needs a rest.

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Terminal

I learned today that a person I’ve not spoken to for over 15 years is dying. They have terminal lung cancer.

That person is my brother.

When my mum was dying, her estranged brother didn’t see her, didn’t attend her funeral. I know she was a bit gutted. But my mum was, although not without fault, a wonderfully empathetic person. My brother is a racist. And if he can fuck someone over then he will. He takes glee in that.

For a moment I wondered if I should call him, or at least attend his funeral which, so I’m led to believe, is weeks away.

Then I remember that I’ve removed a lot of toxic people from my life and I see no reason to engage. I also won’t be celebrating. I’m not a fan of his, but I’m not callous.

I’ll continue to miss my mum. I’ll not speak of my brother again.

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Workshops, & Territories, & Ideas

Did some strategy things. Worked with a client group to get them to really think about what they do and why. Pushed some buttons that made them uncomfortable (in a nice way) and that really got them woken up to the idea that they can’t sleepwalk their way to growth. Went well.

Part of the work was looking at broad territories that we could explore together. I always do three. One is safe. It’s now. One is a little bit scary, a nudge towards an (I think) obvious future. And one is there to make them super concerned that they don’t have the aspiration or the actual chops to do. Except they do. And they could easily do it with the right tools, the right coaching and the right foundations. They went with that! Rarely happens, but they were visibly excited to just embrace the change. They know it won’t be easy but they don’t want to stand still while the rest of their sector moves on. They don’t want to be the losers. Yes, there is ai involved. Not the usual nonsense grift but good ideas around ML and pattern matching and insight sifting. Nothing new but presented in a way that sounds new.

Today I have given things a real focus. I’m working on giving it clarity. Tomorrow will refine my thinking. Wednesday will be about building out the tools they need to execute this strategy, and set out the pathways they can take. Next week it’ll be brought to life properly. I’ll even do some marketing work for them so they can take the ideas to their customers. The ones they have. The ones they want to have. Test and learn. Some (hopefully) minor refinements and then done. Invoice and move on.

Looking forward to what’s next.

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It’s not me, it’s you

Someone wrote to me on a certain professional social media to say they’d read something I’d written and that they recalled me as being ‘cantankerous’ at a job we worked together at some 25 years ago.

I felt a little flummoxed by that comment. A little put out. Perhaps I was.

Then I thought about why I was. Maybe it was them that had made me a little bristling? In fact, they admitted they weren’t very good at the job they’d been employed to do. So, why was it that I was the problem they’d identified?

The more I thought about it, the more I sit with the notion that your reality is a reflection of your own behaviour within it, this was as much about them and their abilities as it was about my reaction to it.

So, yeah, I probably was cantankerous. But they were fucking shit at their job and I felt the sharp end of that.

While I’m still not pleased with their choice of word to describe me, I’m also okay with knowing that I’m good at what I do (or did) and there are far more inadequate people in roles they are unsuited for that deserve someone being cantankerous. Or, doing what is necessary and pointing their failing out.