Five Things I Have Learned This Week #14

1?—?Rishi Sunak currently has the best job in the world. Hear me out.?

He achieved his current position in the most perfect way possible. Having won the final vote amongst people he possibly respects (his fellow Conservative MPs), he then goes 11 rounds head-to-head against someone he almost certainly doesn't (Liz Truss) and goes on to lose a moderately close election (57% to 43%) amongst an electorate he definitely considers under-educated, if not downright idiotic. (No band ever wants to meet its die hard fans…)?

His opponent promptly presides over the Queen’s death, crashes the economy, pushes her Chancellor into the volcano, and finally loses a meme-war against a lettuce. (The Revolution will not be televised, but it will be live-streamed on The Daily Star’s website.) Rishi gets to waltz into Number 10 with the biggest “I told you so” grin of all time.?

That should already be the best part. He hasn’t had to fight an election, he’s in office, and he’s pretty much unassailable by the only people who can turf him out?—?his own MPs. His carte is blanche, he should be able to do what the hell he likes.?

Sadly, he succumbs to the hubris perhaps all of us would succumb to once you’re actually Prime Minister. He decides he can win the next election, if he were only to pull hard on whatever nonsense the focus groups are screaming for. He should be espousing whatever it is “Ready 4 Rishi” believes in, but he’s left jabbering on about stopping boats and mostly avoiding the core items of his inbox that might actually leave a lasting change on the country. (Tax reform, penal reform, childcare reform…there is weirdly lots still to reform.)

After the recent local elections, however, this idea is now beached, and rotting. Even poor Andy Street lost his job, and people liked him. Rishi’s never going to win the next election, not in a million years. But his party has finally got bored of new leaders. “As [the] afternoon drew on…the plotters met for Negronis”, the FT wrote of the dying hours of the latest Conservative putsch against its leader. I’m not sure if that sentence was written to specifically infuriate Nigel Farage, but it tells you all you need to know about the state of rebellion within the Conservative party. We’re in the US Embassy, Saigon, early April 1975. The fall is coming, but you may as well drink the bar dry before you join the queue for the chopper.?

If he milks it, he has until the 28th January, 2025, until he is booted out. That’s LOADS of time to do and say exactly as you want. You’re protected! The local elections were the last protective dyke and the Mississippi has broken through. Pour a Negroni, throw out the nonsense that your successor will immediately repeal, and use your time to do those passion projects you really care about!?

Reform Business Rates. Increase HMRC’s budget. Remove some nit-picky red tape from the planning regime. Do Something. ANYTHING!?

Because right now, you have just shy of 9 months in the most important job in the UK, you have a majority and nobody cares what you do.?

2?—?Talking of the Fall of Saigon, the famous photo of people queueing to board a helicopter during the evacuation is not a photo of the US Embassy. It’s of 22 Gia Long St, an apartment complex in Saigon, which housed employees of USAID, the US Agency for International Development, and the CIA. The people were US employees, but not Embassy staff. The helicopter did not belong to the armed forces, but to Air America, a nominally civilian passenger and cargo airliner, covertly owned by the CIA.?

The photographer who took the photo tried for years to correct the misunderstanding, before eventually giving up.?

3?—?You should support your local farm shop. According to data from twentyCI, a market research company, your home decreases in value by ￡22,000, for every mile you live further away from a farm shop.?

The headline is a little reaching (I dread to think of the data jumps required to come up with numbers), but perhaps it’s a modern way of thinking about the Marylebone High Street story. The Howard de Walden Estate has owned most of Marylebone in central London since the early 18th Century. By the late 20th Century, the area had become downmarket. Postwar, London had an oversupply of period housing and Marylebone was out of fashion.?

The Estate, which owned much of the local housing stock as well as the retail units on the High Street, had the benefit of the sort of long term thinking available to those whose holding period of property is “forever”. It eschewed the highest paying tenants and focused on quality occupiers, offering peppercorn rents to attract them. Using Food and Design as its two cornerstones, it brought in independent shops such as La Fromagerie, the Ginger Pig butcher and the Conran Shop. Throw in a Waitrose and a weekly farmers’ market and they hit paydirt.?

The concept has since been copied across London, though never with the same level of success. However, I think those landlords just lacked heft. If you are a wealthy property developer, consider buying lots (ideally all) of the commercial units on a local high street, and as many of the flats in the surrounding area as you can afford. Once achieved, bring in the right sorts of tenants (sourdough neapolitan pizzerias) and kick out the wrong sorts of tenants (chain pizza takeaways). Then sit back, and become even richer.?

4?—?Talking of property, one of the key problems of having too little housing stock in your country is that house builders can build rubbish and get away with it. Land is valuable, flats on that land even more so. The quality of those flats? Who cares…they’ll sell because location, location, location.?

But imagine if people did have a choice, and modern flats with no storage, terrible acoustics, wafer thin plasterboard walls and low ceilings didn’t sell. In fairness, this isn’t necessarily something I’ve learned, it’s a talking point. But we’re coming back to this topic very soon. It’s a teaser trailer.?

5?—?Perhaps my mind has turned to mush, but if I want to check if I really like a song I’ve just heard, I check my Shazam account. Invariably, the ones worth chasing down have several entries, suggesting I can enjoy those songs for the first time, several times.?

Don’t judge me, but I shazamed Michael Kiwanuka’s Cold Little Heart three times in 11 months. I blame Shazam’s flawless and vital software. If I had to pay each time, perhaps I would force myself to be more circumspect. But then again, I once spent ￡4.50 on roaming charges to Shazam Ram Jam’s Black Betty from a bar on the side of a ski slope. Worth every penny.?

The current favourite on my account is Koliko by The Allergies feat. K.O.G. Two Shazams in 3 weeks. We live in a postmodern world, and it’s hard to find something truly new. Hearing Koliko was the kind of Stop and Listen moment I haven’t had since hearing Blue by Eiffel 65 in 1999. Don’t laugh?—?that was a revolutionary track.?

On the one side, I’m disappointed Koliko is so widespread I’ve heard it on the radio twice in a month. On the other, it’s given me a great rabbit hole to disappear into?—?Afro Beat, Tony Allen, Art Blakey… Music streaming has a lot to answer for, but it’s also absolutely, totally brilliant.?

(If you spotted the niche Good Morning Vietnam reference, score yourself a point.)