12.03.2011 // Glasgow.
The two sides of Scotland's real capital city, Glasgow, come together on maybe only about seven times a year to indulge in ninety full-throated minutes of taig/hun baiting. It's what happens. It is normal and it passes for entertainment in a country where snow, sleet, hail and more hail blight the country for months on end until the real winter sets in.
And, so it came to pass in recent weeks that the ritual snarling boiled over into something where someone might have said something that someone else might have been sorta offended.
Queue the outrage, And enough money to save my daughter's library ten times over being committed by a man with a nice cardigan to deciding that it would be better if we all could be friends. It made the news on a global scale until, quite rightly, it was demoted to a footnote by matters of greater importance.
It must be to the eternal chagrin of a 'news' source called The Drum that the twin-pronged murderous intent of Japan's geology and Gadaffi's raging cant (and attempt at smashing Lennon's touchline ban) have conspired to knock their "Power 100" off the front pages of the Le Monde , Wall Street Journal and the Mombassa Mercury.
Just to recap, The Drum is a marketing magazine in Scotland that likes nothing more than to do polls and their hot 100 is eagerly awaited by wide-eyed potential careerists who know how to craft a mean PDF.
So. Who are the elite who have the inside track? Who indeed is fitter than a KwikFit Fitter? Depressingly, the answer is the same as last year and the year before that. White. Middle-Class. Men.
Less than 10% of these 100 movers and shakers are women and only three make the top fifty. And, virtually all of them describe their management style as being - and we paraphrase - "firm but fair". No, we don't know what that means either but we can hazard a guess that it means that they have to brandish a set of lead-lined knackers to even think of garnering anything that could be remotely be described as respect. As for being representative of the wider population; there are pix of fewer than half of these power brokers but it really does look like the Britain of the 1950's. Can it really be the case that the UK's black and Asian communities have turned their collective backs on a career in advertising and marketing?
This is not to suggest that these lads are all shameless grunts carved from the same block of self-entitled, chinless lard as Michael Gove. No, there are true talents such as Messrs Angus Walker and David Shearer who will always shine through by dint of their abundant humanity and enviable intellect. Similarly, there are doubtless people of fine character running inclusive, broad-ranging businesses within this coterie who don't deserve a kicking due to their genital configuration and peely-wally pigmentation. But, where we struggle to square the circle is when we try to understand how such a mono-culture can begin to hope to connect the message and the Customer. On the other hand, it is no wonder that social media are gaining ever more more traction if the keys to the kingdom are still firmly in the clutches of those who have done the least to deserve them? At least we know who our friends are!
Since you ask the question. Is Grain as broad and representative as we need to be? Well, not quite yet but at least we are sorting that. Will Scotland wean itself oiff white middle-class testosterone? Dunno, but the rest of the world will continue to spin upon its axis and that is their choice and something to ponder every time they bang on about "freedom".
Every country has challenges to face and a need to ask the awkward questions that see us scratching feverishly under our collective collars. And sure, we can all wring our hands over the convenient sideshow that is the fitba but real the solution lies within us all - small countries with big ideas and grown up ambitions can make big things happen. But only when everybody has a voice and a representative at the top table.
