Wednesday 27 May 2015

No 102: The Shewee


I have fond memories of my childhood holidays. My sister, my two brothers and I would bundle into the back of my parents car and we would drive from darkest Essex to darkest Wales, a journey that typically took 7+ hours. Inevitably someone would be sick before we reached Dartford Tunnel and, shortly thereafter, someone else would declare they needed a wee. This would instigate a chain of events that would culminate within minutes of us all needing the toilet and all of us declaring no we can’t wait until the next service station.  My father would grudgingly pull over and we would tumble out. While us boys gratefully relieved ourselves, boldly and proudly spraying with abandon at anything (or anyone) who happened to be within an 8 foot radius (young bladders have so much more oomph that older ones), my sister would have to scuttle off into the woods to find somewhere to squat with dignity. Girls just don’t have the luxury of being able to urinate-and-run.

If only my sister had known about the Shewee. Apparently it was invented back in 1999 but it has only recently made it onto my radar. The Shewee is a device that, according to its website (http://www.shewee.com/), provides women with a revolutionary way to urinate. Apparently one is sold every 3 minutes. I assume it’s not the same one being re-sold over and over again, although the website is suspiciously quiet on this. You can buy them in Original Black or ‘Freedom’ Purple. There is even the Shewee Extreme (for £10.99) or the Shewee Original (a mere 6 quid). I don’t know what circumstances qualify for the use of the Extreme model. I have diligently studied photos of both models and can’t get my head around how they work.

You may be asking why my sudden interest in this product. My introduction came via a good friend at Yorkshire Water, Tom Taylor. Tom performs in a band called the Loos Brothers. They have recently written a funky, blues-ridden song about the Shewee. You can download it at http://loosbrothers.bandcamp.com/releases. If you don’t like the song then you should still download it as the money goes to WaterAid. £1 well spent.

The John Belushi/Dan Ackroyd fans will not be surprised to hear that The Loos Brothers are on a mission: a mission from WaterAid to promote Everyone, Everywhere by 2030. If you are not a JB/DA fan then this mission reference will be meaningless. Everyone, Everywhere is the name of the UN’s drive for everyone to have a tap, and everywhere to have a toilet by the year 2030.

The only place the Loos Brothers have been seen in public for the last 5 years is managing the African latrines at Glastonbury. Apparently one member of the band worked at Yorkshire Water for 32 years. True to the enigma that is the bands personality, he now makes cheese and can no longer fit comfortably into the shoes he wore at his wedding. These are facts that only a true fan needs to know.

As an aside, if you like this music then you will love http://klonk1.bandcamp.com/releases. This is another band Tom Taylor plays in and it is a high energy concoction of jazz/rock/middle eastern funk that simply buzzes along. One could say it was music to urinate to, but that would be degrading it. The website suggests you donate a minimum of £4 for the album. I donated £10 as I was immediately smitten by the intensity of the performances that I felt they deserved more.


This may go some way to explain why I am not cut out to be a successful private equity investor, but at least I now know what a Shewee is. My sister will be so pleased when I tell her.  

Friday 22 May 2015

No 101: How do you know if your waitress is wearing underwear?



Last week a colleague and I had lunch at Roast, a classy restaurant in Borough Market, London. There are two notable things about Roast. The first is that they proudly employ chefs who have been trained by The Clink. The Clink is a charity whose sole aim is to reduce the reoffending rates of ex-offenders by giving them training in practical skills that will aid their rehabilitation. In particular, they train them as chefs.

At any one time there are over 150 prisoners going through The Clinks training process. In addition to the hands-on experience and real-value qualifications, the ex-offenders also get assistance with interview techniques and a comprehensive mentoring scheme for the first 12 months once they are in their new job. Purely by chance I happen to know the CEO of The Clink and he recently shared with me some statistics. It costs £46k to house a prisoner for a year in the UK. In their first year this cost is actually nearer 70k, due to the court costs. The average reoffending rate (within 12 months) is 26.2% (Ministry of Justice, 2013 – see I even did some real research!). For juveniles this reoffending rate rises to 36.6%. This is completely crazy. It is a societal failure on a breath-taking scale.

To put a prisoner through The Clink training programme costs just £4k. The reoffending rates of Clink-trained ex-offenders is less than 10%. The numbers quite simply speak for themselves. This is a gloriously successful venture.  But let’s ignore the numbers and think instead about the impact on society. People whose lives were unravelling have been given a chance to earn a salary, to contribute, to have respect. They have been given a chance to get their lives back.  

So why am I, a water industry man, so excited about this? As we ate our (terrifically tasty) meal we talked about the challenges the water sector faces and it became obvious that the water industry needs a Clink-like initiative. I can’t tell you the number of times I have attended conferences where speakers pontificate over the crisis that we are facing due to the depleting number of skilled field-workers. How, they ask, can we ensure we have adequately trained staff to keep our aging assets maintained and operating? It doesn’t take a genius to join the dots and see that we need a Clink-like initiative for the water sector.

Perhaps (hopefully) there is already a similar scheme in place, but I have not heard of it. One of my missions for the next few months is to explore this further. If you feel minded to join me on this journey I would love to hear from you.

The second notable thing from our visit to Roast was that the waitress who showed us to our table was wearing the tightest, most sheer, most revealing pair of trousers that either me or my colleague had ever seen. I have no doubt that other diners also questioned whether she was actually wearing any underwear, it was that revealing. When I got back to the office and mentioned this to my female colleagues and they commented that she was ‘probably wearing spandex’. This phrase means absolutely nothing to me and has only served to heighten my interest further.


Of course, it goes without saying that a Note discussing ladies underwear is totally inappropriate and crass. However had I entitled this Note ‘Two blokes go to a restaurant and have an idea’ then few of you would have bothered to read this far. I trust you don’t feel too cheated. If you have suggestions on how we can develop the idea of training ex-offenders to work in the water sector then I would love to hear from you. This concept has to be worthy of further investigation. If you can explain what spandex is as well then even better. 

Wednesday 13 May 2015

No 100: All Change...



Last Thursday the UK went to the polls. To everyone’s surprise, the Conservative party secured a clear victory and, as a result, a number of senior Labour and Liberal MPs lost their jobs. I imagine them wandering the streets, forlornly wondering what they will do next. I have a degree of empathy with them, as I also resigned last week. After just 8 months with Blackstone/Global Water Development Partners I decided that I needed to do something else.

I am clearly not a high profile politician. I have not had to bear the indignity of having 30,000 of my neighbours publically sack me. My choice has been made independently. Some might conclude that I resigned to show support for these poor misunderstood politicians. They would be wrong. I am clearly a lovely, kind hearted and empathetic individual, but I am not completely stupid.

Others might conclude I did it just to get a juicy topic for this 100th Note. Again, they would be mistaken. While I take the task of finding engaging topics very seriously my obsession has not quite reached that level. (Yet. Wait till we get to No 200)

Perhaps I have resigned just so that I can taunt the Compliance Officer at Blackstone. Over the past 8 months he has diligently (laboriously?) read these Notes just to make sure that I don’t breach the strict rules of private equity confidentiality (yes Roger, you know I mean you). I can hardly contain my childish delight as I write this very sentence, knowing full well that Roger will be reading this with growing sense of panic, asking himself just what it is that I am about to reveal.
Roger, you can relax. I have not resigned just to have some sport with you. (Well….not in this edition anyway.)
I am leaving a team of incredibly hard working, very bright, supremely focussed individuals. Our parting is as amicable as it could possibly be. I will stay in post until August, and will then continue to be a ‘Roving Ambassador’ for GWDP, helping them find investment opportunities that meet their investment criteria.
I am leaving because, deep down, I am simply not an infrastructure investor. Try as I might I cannot get excited about writing huge ($100M+) cheques to fund big, de-risked infrastructure projects. When I started the role I honestly thought I could, but it has become increasingly clear that this is not my passion, and never will be. I am a techie at heart. Maybe not a very good one, but I do so love new technology. Rather than work on big infrastructure projects that have been neatly de-risked, I positively hunger to work with entrepreneurs who have scary market risks to resolve and difficult technical questions to answer. Quite simply, the salesman in me hankers for that delightful buzz that comes from doing something that disrupts the status quo.

If my epitaph is that I didn’t possess what was required to be a hard-nosed corporate investment banker and that I am actually more a cheesy salesman then, you know what, I am good with that. 

Tuesday 5 May 2015

No 99: What this country needs:


As we stand on the verge of the closest election the UK has seen for a generation I have finally worked out the solution. It came to me on Sunday as I slogged my way around the Tough Mudder course. For those unfamiliar with Tough Mudder it involves running a half marathon through some of the most exacting and muddiest terrain that the nutters who organise these events can find. Running a cross-country half marathon clearly isn’t enough of a challenge, so every half mile there is an obstacle that men better than me probably find challenging, but which just struck fear and loathing into my heart.

For example, the ‘Ice Bath’ obstacle where contestants entered a 5 ft deep trench of muddy water and had to swim underwater to avoid a series of obstacles on the surface, all done while ‘helpers’ tipped buckets of ice overhead.  Or ‘Everest’ where you had to sprint at top speed at a parabolic surface that stretched 15ft into the air, throw yourself at the highest point in the vain hope that someone at the top might catch your hand and pull you up. If they didn’t (and they mostly didn’t) you smacked down hard on the smooth wet surface and slid back in a crumpled heap to the bottom, only to have to try again. And again. And again. All while braying crowds cheered/mocked your every attempt.

And I am not going to even attempt to describe ‘Birth Canal’ suffice to say it involved one of the most claustrophobic and crushing experiences of my life. (Well….for the past 45 years, 5 months and 28 days anyway). Other obstacles involved fire, electricity and tear gas. They were all bonkers.


I was part of a team with my work colleagues, their partners, and my two eldest sons. For reasons best not explored too deeply we decided to do it in fancy dress: morph suits of various colours (see attached). We realised, probably a little too late, that morph suits don’t leave much to the imagination.

The original plan was that we would be a happy rainbow of colours (also it is so much easier to find the body if it is in a bright colour?). However it quickly became clear that our colours matched those of the political parties currently slugging it out for our votes. This was when I realised what it is that this country needs. As we trudged our way around the course enduring a peculiarly British mix of sun, rain and torrential hail we bonded, becoming a truly cohesive team. There was no room for unaligned agendas; we just had to get to the end. There were no personal space barriers left unbroken. You simply can’t lift your team members over a 12 foot vertical wall without a degree of pushing/probing/yanking that in all other circumstances would be grounds for a tribunal.

Therefore I think all the aspiring politicians should don figure-hugging morph suits and collectively bond in a mud-pit. When (if?) they emerged, they would be a closer knit team, better prepared to face the monumental task of running the country. That is what this country needs.


Final point: I was dressed in the pink morph suit. After about 7 miles I passed a man who was clearly struggling to keep it together. As I passed by him he turned to his team mate and said, in mild exasperation ‘For a moment I thought my penis had just run ahead of me’. After a pause he then added, with perfect comic timing, ‘Apart from it’ s not quite big enough’. Male groin-humour never changes, never tires.    

Friday 1 May 2015

No 98: My Shock Election Prediction: A landslide for the Liberal Democrats



The smart money predicts that this time next week the UK will wake up to a Labour minority government which will have to work in coalition with, probably, the Scottish National Party. This is not a universal opinion. Others believe the Conservatives will romp home as voters who defected to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) will at the last minute revert to their more traditional voting patterns. No one is predicting a Liberal Democrat landslide. Until now, that is.

Every Thursday night I help out at a local Scout group. It is two knackering hours spent with 30 boisterous 11 – 15 year olds. They are a cheeky, lively, impertinent group of wildly energetic boys and girls. From the moment they arrive you have to be completely on your toes. Most of the time you are giving advice on behaviour.  Leading the group is like riding a wild horse: you have no idea how it is going to respond. You have to be on your game every second.

Helping at Scouts is rapidly becoming the highlight of my week, probably because life at work is unbelievably hard (or possibly because I am on the verge of an empty-nest that probably scares me more than I dare admit).

Last night we ran an election campaign. The awareness of the youngsters was fairly dire. While most could name Cameron and Miliband, few could link them to a Party. With the exception of ‘UKIP want us out of Europe’, no one could link a policy to a Party. We started with a 10 minute video on the election process and then four youngsters were chosen to be the politicians. Each was given a list of the basic, unembellished factual policy statements from the 4 main parties (Conservative, Labour, Liberals and UKIP). They sat behind a table and a lively, vibrant debate was held.

There were some lovely moments: like when the UKIP candidate realised that he vehemently disagreed with their policy of halting tax breaks for renewable energy (‘This is a ridiculous policy’ is never a good way to introduce your idea to the electorate), or when they compared their tax breaks offerings (‘But you have just copied what I said and then added £500?!’). There was no shortage of passion or opinions. Topics covered were health, education, tax and immigration – 5 minutes of peppy spirited debate on each. After the debate a formal, secret, voting process was held, replicating the true election process as closely as we could.

The result: a landslide for Liberal Democrats (taking just over 50% of the vote), with UKIP taking about 30% and Labour and the Conservatives the new minority parties. Somewhat bizarrely the Scottish National Party won a vote despite not even standing.


The Youth have spoken. I am finally beginning to get excited about next weeks’ election.