If you haven't got into South Park then I strongly suggest you do. One of the characters, Kyle, has the predisposition to believe what he is told by one of the gang (Cartman) and is continually disappointed. Cartman on the other hand is not a character to like, he is described as a devious sociopath who is only interested in achieving his own ends. And this my friends is where we are today with so many politicians, bureaucrats and bankers (to mention only a few). They live in Cartman world where the only thing that matters is them. Is it only me, but there seems to be a complete missing of the point regarding the politicians and their expenses! The bottom line is this.... by virtue of their position they are able to leverage income beyond the imagination of most people. Not only to they take advantage of this, they want carte blanch to write their own expenses cheques for whatever they want. The review seemed to be going somewhere but apparently that is going to be watered down. In the end, I wonder, nothing will be very different than before.

If you haven't woken up to the fact that your home is not an investment, then it would be worth, to coin a phrase from Officer Barbrady in South Park, "getting right on that with thinking". It is easy to underestimate the impact of seeing the world in the way you want to see it rather than the way it actually is. It is much easier to see the folly of others because we are distant from it than to see our own folly.

Let me give you some numbers, which are personal. I bought my home about 15 years ago for £71k and sold it last year for about £240k. I didn't sell it at the top of the market, at the top apparently it was valued at £280, so lets work with that latter figure. That means that my house went up by 400% in the space of about 14 years. As a side note, my mortgage when I sold the place was £230k, the rest I took out and 'invested',.... long story but it blew up!

Anyway...... I lived in a bubble of increasing house prices and assumed things were going to sail along as they always had, and that is what a large number of people have also done. So, if things had carried on in my illusory 'bubble world', by 2025 my house would be work nearly £1million! Woo hoo! Now this is a house which is not in a great area and where the majority of people earn less than the average wage I would guess (which in the UK is about £25k). So my average house, in my average town would be 40 times average salary. Ok..... stick with me here..... wages go up over time (always good to get those end of year pay rises), so to keep pace, average salaries would have to be in the region of £330k. These are ball park figures and not meant to be down to the penny, all I am trying to do is to give you a feel for what is going on.

So, while you sit there and hope that your house is going to go up in value, think that in order for it to do so UK average salaries need to go up by about £300k over the next 15 years in order to pay for it. The reality of course it that wage settlements are down and not up, so the chances of your earnings going to that level are a big fat zero. So despite the blip in house prices at the moment if you are sitting there hoping the party is going to get started again you are going to have sit....... and sit...... and sit....... (well you get the picture). It is not going to happen so get your head around that fact and plan for a future that is going to be very different than the one you imagined.

Time to press send........

Ok, as this is called the Reality Check.... here is one to start the ball rolling.

Take a look at the UK debt clock. Go on.... Google it, if you dare.... I dare you!

To save you a moment it is £800 billion. Now, we are not used to thinking in terms of a billion so we just tend to think that it is a big number and a million is a big number so it must be bigger than that. Well, as we evolved over the plains and grasslands we didn't have to think in terms of billions, or even millions or even hundreds of thousands or perhaps even thousands. So our brains are not made to cope with large numbers (and given that most people cant cope with maths, including checking change, I doubt we can even deal with small numbers very well either).

To give you a feel.. if there was such a thing as a £1000 note then a million pounds would be a pile about 8 inches high. So, what about a billion? If you guessed without working it out, in all likelihood you would underestimate by a hugh margin. The answer is that £1billion would be a pile of £1000 notes 800 feet high! (a trillion is about 45miles high).

So.... the UK Government debt is 800 columns of 800 feet piles of £1000 notes. Or one pile 640,000 feet high.

Oh.... and for those of you who think any different, the Government don't earn any money, they take it from taxpayers, from you and me. So that big pile of money the Government owe.... you and I owe a part of it, and so do your children (even if they are not born yet).

That is a reality most people would rather not think about.......

Touching Reality

Well.... this is the start of it, the first page if you will of my launch into 'blogworld'. My purpose for writing? Well, not only to give myself something constructive to do but to add an emerging world of thought in the virtual world.

Who am I? Well, I have spend time doing a number of things over the years. Currently, I am running an organisation (small as it is) which helps sane people find ways of navigating an insane world. I draw from psychology (my background), economics (not the neo-classical stuff which has lost credibility) and experience of working with teams and organisations over the last 15 or so years.

My purpose?

Selfishly to help me to articulate a line of thought which I hope some people (ie you if you are reading this) will contribute to. I am not making any claims to be able to see into the future, nor am I claiming that I have the franchise on understanding what is going on in the world. What I can say is my starting points are ones which are based not just in my own experiences, but ones supported by research. If you find what I have to say to be controversial, that is fine by me, but please don't assume that I am interested in reading some ill thought through rant. If you want to challenge a point at least make it coherent. I am of course not promising that all my points are coherent but I am attempting to discuss and explore organisational life, the life of work if you will, in a way which will help towards better thinking and better solutions.

My starting premises?

• That most people do not employ rationality in their thinking (many think they do and argue vociferously in defence of their case)
• That we cling to our thinking in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary
• That despite the rhetoric about change in organisations people don't want to change
• That most efforts to 'train' people are a complete waste of money
• That the strategy for many is to stick their heads firmly in the sand
• That the 'quick fix' solutions offered by many (exercise, diet, improve your life.... add your own here if you want) are masterfully sold but change nothing
• That for the most part people dont want to take responsibility and prefer others to make decisions for them (and then to put all their effort into complaining about that fact)

I am sure that I will add to these as I go but this is going to be my starter for the moment. I am sure too that given that there are a kazillion blogs on the web this is just one small piece of a massive web.

If you find this welcome to my space.

Si