 I can’t find the notes I made for this talk and I don’t recall much about it, but I do remember not being convinced that the powerful will ever face prosecution.
I mean just look around at the aftermath of the Epstein files; one of the most heinous crimes in modern times, attacking the most vulnerable in society, and zero repercussions for the perpetrators. What an unjust world we live in.
0 Comments
 I attended this brilliant talk about the challenges facing ‘creative freelancers’ a few months ago, so I’ll just post the notes I made at the time:
‘Precariousness and insecurity of employment plague the life of a creative freelancer. On average, they earn less than 25k per year, which is less than the minimum wage! Consequently, there’s an inability to plan or save for the future: not being able to afford to have a family, not being able to save for a pension, not even being able to afford to date (especially as a man, where you're expected to foot the bill)! Unable to get loans, car insurance, mortgages, etc. Not to mention malpractice and exploitation! The industry has a reputation of being difficult to enter, so employees get exploited, as they don't want to lose their place, or the opportunity to enter; ‘if you don't do it, then someone else will!’ From a 'quality of life' perspective, it is absolutely NOT worth being a creative freelancer! Low paid, intermittent work is absolutely no recipe for a good quality of life. It's no wonder poor mental health is so prevalent amongst freelancers, especially in Film and TV. You pretty much need to have a partner with a 'stable' job/income, or you need to come from money. 60% of creative freelancers have no savings for retirement! That’s a ticking time bomb. The industry keeps going on about 'diversity', yet non-white creative freelancers suffer worse outcomes compared to their white counterparts in all aspects. The creative sector is worth £125 billion to the UK economy, yet if other sectors worth as much (such as finance or defence, etc) had a workforce plagued by even a fraction of these problems, you can bet the Government would do something about it! Is the industry so valuable, because exploitation and low pay are so rife? An audience member suggested. The good news is, organizations are starting to think about these issues, and what can be done to solve them. Also, universities are pumping out creative graduates year after year, and there's not enough jobs, so it's a buyers market. Employers can demand more for less, as they do. Universities should be honest about the reality of finding work as a creative, yet still encourage students to pursue their passions. 80% of the challenges facing creative freelancers relate to money.’ As a creative who has never had a penny to his name, none of this was new to me, when it came to my own life, yet I was surprised that the issues I’m facing, are faced by the majority of people within the creative industry! Especially given that it’s such a lucrative industry! One could argue that a career in the creative sector isn’t worth pursuing, but in pretty much all sectors of the economy, the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few. We pay our taxes so governments can look after our interests and regulate industries to make them fair; clearly the massive inequalities in the world today are a result of weak/corrupt government. The question is, what are we going to do about it?  Let’s be real. The world of film can be very elitist, and film festivals tend to mirror that elitism.
One of the great things about the ‘London Film Festival’ is that they make it open and inclusive for everyone, holding many free events, with tickets allocated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. The talks I attended were in that vein, and were very good. However, I didn’t take notes and don’t recall much about them! The thing I do remember, however, is that a girl fainted during one of the talks. The speaker was discussing the visceral effect of cinema, when based on true stories. She showed us clips from films to prove her point, one of them being the scene from ‘127 Hours’ where the main character cuts his own arm off with a pen-knife. All we heard was a loud thud, and the audience member was laid out on the floor, completely unconscious! She’d passed out due the harrowing clip from the movie! The power of cinema ladies and gentlemen!  This talk at The Royal Society featured an Astronaut, who spoke about her experiences of going into Space, and was fascinating.
The main takeaways for me were that Space is really bad for humans! It has all kinds of negative effects on the body, such as muscle wastage, especially in the legs. The Astronaut made the point that disabled people may theoretically be better Astronauts than able-bodied people, because what if they didn’t have legs? Also, on average, an Astronaut will gain 7cm in height whilst in Space, because the lack of gravity means the spine elongates and loses its natural curvature, which causes a lot back-pain! She also floated the idea that there was accelerated ageing in Space. All in all, it was a great talk, that rid me of any desire I had to go up into Space! European Fragmentation and the Single Currency – Talk at the LSE – Monday 29th September 202521/2/2026  I say it to pretty much every creative person I meet: “Your input is your output.”
So take an interest in EVERYTHING! It’s term time, so that means all the FREE talks and lectures at London’s many universities are back on! The London School of Economics, in particular, has a calendar full of events, so definitely sign up to their newsletter! Anyway! My main takeaways from this talk were that, according the speakers, Europe’s economy remains sluggish, especially compared to the US, and definitely in terms of investment from Venture Capitalists. The speakers were all too aware of the demographic slow down in Europe, and were proud of the fact that Europe is an attractive destination for migrants, again, in comparison to the US and China. European leaders want to attract more migrants to fill the gaps left by an ageing population and falling birthrate. One of the speakers talked about the fact that European Leaders need to be brave in the face of unrest from their citizens, and was confident that they just need to ride out the storm. I was left dumbfounded to be honest. The powers that be, only have one goal: economic growth. The wishes of their populations and the damage to the planet (you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet!) be damned. The economy is a Ponzi-scheme where you need an ever-growing base to funnel money to the top. If people aren’t having kids, instead of addressing the reasons and their concerns, just import people to ensure the base of the pyramid keeps growing. There was all the usual blathering on about the need for Europe to be militarily self-sufficient and less reliant on Russia for energy. There will always be money for war (they call it ‘defence’, but it’s the kind of defence that always results in protracted wars). So no different than the narrative that’s already fed to you by the mainstream media. What’s sad, having spoken to some students at the talk, is that there is a conformity of opinion: there was no sense of questioning the narrative being presented to them. These students will go on to become the leaders of tomorrow, and the status quo, the establishment, will continue with business as usual; and we all know that ‘business as usual’ only benefits those at the very top, the rest of us be damned.  This was a great talk with the screenwriter of Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’, ‘Meg LeFauve’ and her husband, ‘Joe Forte’, organised by the Gorilla Filmmaking Guru himself, Chris Jones!
Too bad I can’t remember any of it!!  I forgot to add this talk, because I’m writing this 8 months later, and am sifting through the backlog. There’s actually a few talks I’ve forgotten to post, but at this rate, I’ll never catch up!
So anyway, just going to post the notes I made in real time: Exactly.ai - An 'Ethical ai.' -isn't that an oxymoron? You train your own model based on your own work. Your model is private; sharing is up to you. A lot of people are already using it 'discreetly' despite some companies banning a.i. just because it's a wild west Suddenly, all emails are eloquently written, etc. The genie is out of the bottle. The tech is moving so fast, and the law is slow to catch up, or as in the UK, the law works for the thieves (i.e. the tech industry). Absolutely great discussion and absolutely on point. Shame we never see these types of debates on mainstream news channels. It's a literal free for all, with tech companies stealing creative work on an industrial scale, before the law catches up with them, and consumers using a.i. like it's free candy.. everyone is just so excited by it. The ethics are never discussed, let alone the carbon footprint. It's just accepted that the genie is out of the bottle, and we as people must adapt to it, as opposed to the other way around! Preventing a climate catastrophe is not compatible with the adoption of a.i.! But this again, is never discussed. Everything is driven by capitalism, and getting the most for less. Corporations would rather pay less for good enough, rather than pay more for creativity. The consumer, with its increasingly short attention span, is also happy to consume content that is merely good enough. We're creating a world full of slop! Of all the panelists, the lawyer, and the architect were most positive about a.i. The audience was mostly fatalistic. The fundamental question is, do the benefits of a.i. outweigh the costs, on a long-term scale. We're at the very beginning of the journey.  Once again, I attended this talk 8 months ago, so will just post the notes I made at the time:
The coming change is unlike anything we've ever encountered. The modes of managing change of the past, will have no bearing on the future... Mass unemployment by AI. One of the reasons for this is the mismatch of identity. There are jobs, but people aren't willing to do that work, because it doesn't match the identity of the person. Eg. Blue collar workers won't do pink colour jobs. Altruistic capital? Quiet quitting. Cost to productivity- because people feel like they're doing something meaningless. People WANT to contribute, but the work that we do does not stimulate our human needs. Is the purpose of law to provide jobs for lawyers so they can provide justice to 'consumers'? Is medicine there to give doctor's a job, or to give people treatment? People who work white collar jobs are intrinsically tied to the identity of their job. They want to be the lawyer or doctor that 'was' ..Now, that job has changed. The entire 'work' landscape is now dynamic. As a 'worker' you have to be adaptable and separate your identity from what you do. Kids in school need to be taught that. They have to be dynamic and adaptable. That means they'll have to be training and learning their entire life, not just until they're 21. Workplaces of the future won't be so 'top down' (autocratic) - it will have to be more democratic, where the relationship between workers is more peer to peer. But to get there will be difficult, as those at the top will resist it fiercely. No one knows what the jobs of the future will be: people have to be allowed to experiment, on the payroll! So much money is spent on 'restructuring' in organizations, and this 'experimenting' can come from those expenditures. It also empowers the workforce, and they're more productive because of that. The problem is, employers don't want to invest in skills that their employees can take to another job/organization. Maybe governments need to then step in. The future workplace MUST be flexible. Why not different occupations on different days? Monday's you're a baker, Tuesdays you're a teacher? People need to FEEL something from their work and their lives! It needs to be enjoyable and meaningful. So much productivity is lost to mental health and lack of motivation issues. The human psyche is fragile. Fear stumps cognitive function, including creativity. Fear of losing your job impairs your thought process. The challenge of the future workplace is uncertainty. How do we respond? Flexibility in jobs and continuous investment in learning! One company can't do it. It requires systemic change. Everyone, top and bottom, every company, needs to be on the same wavelength.  Again, I’m writing this 8 months after attending (on Valentine’s Day no less!), so will just share my notes at the time:
Grace argues that corporations and elites are on the same tracks as government, against the best interests of the people. She argues that it's class warfare. The pro capitalism guy argues about all the benefits capitalism has created, and how our lives are better, etc. etc. That corporations don't supersede democracy, just because they're against minimum wage, and the recent rise in National Insurance contributions. Capitalists like to argue that all the modern world's innovations are a result of capitalism, forgetting the fact that humans have always been innovators and inventors. Did we emerge from caves and create new materials and buildings because of capitalism? Of course not! We're a creative species that loves to solve problems! In fact, the most creative people, problem solvers and inventors are not the least bit motivated by money! The other woman talks about the economic models being a machine world, where the environmental world doesn't even figure. She argues that we need to move away from a machine world, to an ecological model. Grace argues that anytime the corporate run world has worked for the benefit of workers, it's because of hard fought victories by the workers! "We need to build movements that make politicians just afraid of people, as they are of corporations". The other woman: "Switch profit for purpose." Profit is subordinated to purpose, as was the case in postwar Britain. The guy argues that we are not living in a neoliberal economic world. In the UK, we have the highest taxation, highest public spending, not to mention all the money spent during the pandemic. He argues that most people are employed by small businesses, not corporations, and the people that create and employ in those businesses, are not greedy capitalists. They're merely trying to provide. Audience guy raises the point that housing is the issue. 90% of housing expenditure is on housing benefit, not building houses, which goes straight to landlords. Grace argues that scarcity is fundamental to the energy market and economic model. The problem with green energy is, that it's not scarce, consequently, it's not profitable! Which is why the fossil fuel corporations are against it. The rearming of Europe will pump so much greenhouse gases into the environment, and benefits fossil fuel companies. The other woman: Corporations that put purpose ahead of profits are ironically more profitable, because they have a driven workforce who believe in what they're doing. Get money out of politics! Audience member argues about removing ownership and becoming a trusteeship, as described by Gandhi. I like that Grace names her sources and consistently refers to the authors whose arguments she paraphrases.  I’m writing this on the 14th of February 2026 (clearly no romance in my life!), so I’m just going to post the real-time notes I made at the time:
Ways of being - book, check it out Arts and culture is more of a multplier interms of government investment, than the car industry, yet that's never discussed. Also, there's the human factor; the enrichment of people's lives. Yet, in the culture war, the arts are the first things to be cut. However, in private schools, the arts are never cut. Reinforces the idea that the arts are elitist. Financial Insurance Real Estate (FIRE), accountants for 80% of the economy in the UK, and that doesn't reach the 'real' economy. The UK is 28th in the OECD in terms of business investment. The UK is a low investment economy. The UK government is just shit. During covid, and the 2008 crash, they gave money to private companies, with no conditions. This was not the case in Europe, where those companies had to make changes to lower emissions. The arts are resilient and provide so many benefits, yet the government consistently devalues it, because it doesn't even know how to value it! There's never money for the arts or public programmes, but infinite amounts of money for war. We're seeing it in real time right now! There's a water crisis, but no government is doing anything about it. Yet for war, they magic money overnight. Growth is not a mission, it is the byproduct of investment! Yet Labour can't seem to grasp that. We have no growth because we have no investment. The government know the numbers, they just don't give a shit, because it doesn't affect them or their kids. |
This page is...
A chronicle of films, shows, and theatre I've seen, as well as books I've read, and talks I've attended. Archives
February 2026
Categories |
RSS Feed
