Michael Gove / BookTok / Barcelona / Scale up week
📚 BookTok
🤓 What will Michael Gove do next?
⚽ Simon Kuper, Barca - A review
👷 Job of the week: Corp Comms at THG
👨🏿💻 Why Developers are running lots of side projects
🚀 BGF Scale Up Week
Welcome to the 12 new subscribers. If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and politics.
📚 BookTok
TikTok, it is just people dancing, right?
Appears there is more to it than that, Penguin have published a great piece on BookTok and how it has changed publishing over the last couple of years.
It is inspiring a new generation of readers complete with colour co-ordinated bookshelves from Sunderland to Surrey.
We have been experimenting with TikTok too here at Jimmy’s Jobs towers, and we have been rather surprised and impressed by the impact it has had on listener numbers.
I openly admit I was quite dismissive of it at first, but condensing episodes down into 60 seconds is actually a real skill and has made our introductions to the show much sharper.
Jimmy’s Jobs TikTok is here
We also line some of the content up as YouTube shorts:
🤓 What will Michael Gove do next?
Michael Gove has said he believes his frontline political career is over and is not expecting to serve under the new PM. He has been widely seen as one of the most effective Cabinet Minister of his generation. Why is this the case?
The art of politics is about many things, but three core attributes of it are PPC, policy, politics and communication. In total, there have been around 1,200 MPs since the formation of the Coalition in 2010, it would be fair to say that Gove was in the top 1% in all three key categories, making him a formidable player. He is also very clubbable which is an underrated trait in politicians.
Therefore that is why I tweeted earlier in the week:
I don’t think I have ever had a tweet that prompted so many DMs / WhatsApps asking to explain the logic.
So my view is that in the future a Conservative government will need shoring up and it will be told it needs to ‘get a grip’ (this happens to all Govts at some point whoever the PM is).
There is also another scenario where you get a tricky Cabinet resignation and the PM doesn’t want to do a full reshuffle and just wants someone to slot in from the backbenchers.
In both instances, who you gonna call? Govebusters …
You can see why every press office I have ever worked with fears my ‘suggestions’ for innovative press releases :)
⚽ Simon Kuper, Barca - A review
A book on football, economics, business, culture, history and politics (broadly in that order) was always likely to be hit. I also came across it from wandering around fellow substacker, Tom Rowley’s Balham street stall. Therefore possibly making it a contender for the most on brand ‘Jimmy McLoughlin’ story ever.
Refreshingly, Kuper explicitly states that what you learn from the book is unlikely to help you in business, it is no self help book for your business to become Barcelona. (Graham Ruddick has launched a new series looking at this in more detail here)
What Kuper does do is take you on a thrilling 50 year football journey, the whole game has become much more professionalised in that time, and for the majority of it FC Barcelona has been a step ahead, including how they were looking at mental health in the late 00s, which Arsene Wenger describes as the final frontier for football.
Of particular interest I found how in 2004 Barcelona had just 150 non playing staff and how this now stands at well over 500. Many of these are jobs of the future, even my club of Derby County employs close to 200, football and sports teams are becoming media and content businesses in their own right.
The politics of Barcelona is intriguing and the election of the President fascinating, having been thrust into the #SaveDerbyCounty campaign earlier this year, I am very torn on the whole, ‘fans should be on the board’ of clubs. Barcelona provides a useful case study of where it has been brilliant and an abject disaster.
There is also a deep analysis on the greatest player of his generation, Leo Messi and whilst his brilliance made the club on the pitch a cut above, his increasing financial demands has also led to its recent downfall, Greek tragedy-esque.
I would encourage you to sign up to Tom’s Rowley’s Substack where he talks about his bookshop adventure, he quit his job as journalist at the Economist earlier in the year and is now crowdfunding for £20k to help with the fitting of a bookstore.
Reading Tom’s work is a reminder of how tough it can be to get a business off the ground, £20k to fit the shop out may seem a lot, but then you have £50k on rents. That’s a lot of books to shift … but Tom has some very clever ideas for other revenue creation, it will be fascinating to watch.
The Crowdfunder page is here.
Maybe even consider buying Barca or thinking of doing your Christmas book shopping from there too.
👷 Job of the week: Corp Comms at THG
A new feature, we are going to start profiling some of the most interesting jobs at the most interesting UK companies, drop us a line with a job you see.
It has not been a straightforward time for THG in the last year to put it mildly, but Matt Moulding is a resilient leader who has built an e-comm giant employing 10,000 people in the North West of England and it’ll be interesting to see how the company bounces back.
Chance to be a key part of it as the Head of Corporate Communications based at the e-commerce giant in Manchester.
I have been lucky enough to visit the new offices and have a tour of THG Studios and it is incredible.
Full details on the role available here.
We are also hiring for an Assistant Producer at Jimmy’s Jobs, details on LinkedIn.
🚀 BGF Scale Up Week
On the subject of British scale ups, I wanted to remind you about a great event I’ll be attending on exactly that topic. BGF Scale Up week is between 19th - 22nd September. Including appearances from some of the Jimmy’s Jobs alumni like Nigel Toon of Graphcore, Tessa Clarke of Olio and big city names like Nigel Wilson of Legal & General.
There is a huge amount going on during the week and lots of it will be free to attend. You can register here.
BGF and Jimmy’s Jobs are working in partnership, if you would be interested in partnering with us, you can check out the opportunities here.
👨🏿💻 Why Developers are running lots of side projects
Ben Stokes (no, not the England cricket captain) has written an interesting piece on why Devs are launching lots of side hustles, betting at the side hustle casino he calls it, full post available here.
🧠 Tech Start up Manifesto
Think tank dynamic duo, Dom Hallas of COADEC and Philip Salter of TEN have written a series of ideas for the new PM to enact to support the UK entrepreneur / tech ecosystem, worth checking out here
📅 Coming up …
In the next few weeks, we’ll be profiling some of new PMs key Cabinet players, and those that are going to be influential behind the scenes …
And we’ll be launching a new podcast ….
So make sure you subscribe or forward onto a friend or colleague who might be interested.
✍️ This notebook is not possible without …
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Well it is possible thanks to our various partners as listed below.
Octopus Group who have backed us all the way since Season Two
National Farmers Union
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BGF
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