🔥 Steve Bartlett vs Tim Armoo | your questions for Grant Shapps
🇷🇺 Putin vs. The West
💰 Dan Mccrum: The Story of Wirecard
🖥️ AI Interns: The future?
🚀 Jimmy’s Jobs interns
✍️ Job of the Week: Chief Speechwriter in DCMS
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.
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🔥 Bartlett vs Armoo
As we were going to pixel on this week’s edition, I was sent the below tweet thread from Timothy Armoo.
Make no mistake, this is the social media entrepreneur world equivalent of Ferruccio Lamborghini vs Enzo Ferrari or Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs or Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison.
Currently the tweet only has 200 likes, but has already been seen in excess of 40k times, I imagine that the latter figure will 5x, possibly substantially more.
Both men have built impressive businesses in their 20s and sold them for millions of pounds, there are many fascinating subplots to this story, and it may well just be the opening salvo ….
It will be fascinating to see if Steven Bartlett responds this week and in what medium he chooses to do so …. I doubt it will be through the letters pages of Times / Telegraph …
I will provide an update next week, so make sure you subscribe, or forward to a friend who will be interested in this Battle Royale of social media entrepreneurship.
✈️ Questions for Grant Shapps?
This week we are interviewing Grant Shapps, the Business Secretary for Jimmy’s Jobs. I would love your thoughts on questions that we should ask him. The most obvious one that we’ll be kicking off with is what is the job of Business Secretary? What is the Business department there to actually do?
In government, I used to think you could split departments into two broad categories ‘offensive and defensive’, some are largely about stopping things happening, Home Office, Defence, etc. and the Business department is actually one of the biggest offensive departments.
There have been six secretaries of state in the last five years, which has meant no-one has really had an opportunity to grip the Department, so it will be fascinating to hear what he has to say.
Your responses to Sunak/Truss hustings in the summer, really did make up a good portion of my thinking for the questions, so please hit reply with your ideas, good quickfires always appreciated.
(BTW, we used a plane emoji because he is a qualified pilot and I am going to ask him about drones and if he has flown one)
🇷🇺 Putin vs. The West
Regular readers will know I have waxed lyrical about Tom Rowley and his Balham bookstore on many occasion.
One of the things I admire most in Tom is how he is using new tools and methods in one of the most traditional industries (including writing a substack on his story ...
)He is also hosting regular events, and they are not always book related, on Friday I attended a brilliant screening and Q&A with Norma Percy on her new documentary, Putin vs. The West.
Having often been in the room next door at some of these key decision moments, it was fascinating to watch back and reflect about where the West got things right, wrong and where we should have acted earlier.
And ironically as someone who finds himself now in the production and media world, I was really intrigued by the Q&A afterwards about how these amazing shows are set up and how they develop a story arc.
Traditional letters are still the start of the process, how there can often be a domino effect with guests and overall the interviews last about an hour with each individual.
The event was sold out with 50 people in attendance, showing how the high street is evolving.
It was gripping, and I urge you to watch it on iplayer or on BBC2 tomorrow night at 9pm.
💰 Dan Mccrum: A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth
Speaking of Tom, I have recently finished his recommendation on Jimmy’s Jobs to read Dan McCrum’s expose into Wirecard.
It is a bit slow to get going and requires some persistence, but ultimately the foundations are worth it as it really is a scintillating read.
It is probably the closest Europe has had to a Theranos story and it was Dan’s dogged determination to get to the truth in the end which made it happen.
For anyone interested in finance and payments, it is absolutely crucial read, a video of Tom below recommending it:
🖥️ AI Interns: The future?
Eliza Filby sent me this great piece on how Codeword are incorporating the first AI interns, it will be fascinating to see if it works, intern programmes can often be hit and miss for both employers and the interns.
We talk about that and the general impact of Chat-GPT in next weeks Shift podcast.
In this weeks edition, you can hear us talk about Prosecco Mums and the missing half a million people from the UK workforce, you can listen and subscribe below.
You can also read Eliza’s original substack piece on the Prosecco Mum below
🚀 Jimmy’s Jobs interns
Speaking of interns, we are exploring a Jimmy’s Jobs intern programme this summer to help us produce video and written content about jobs of the future, we will be writing about 40 jobs of the future and producing TikTok and YouTube content around them.
I am biased but I think it will be an amazing opportunity for people to gain a wide perspective on the future career paths they want to take. If you think you or someone you know might be interested in the programme which is likely to last four to six weeks over the summer, then please do hit reply to this email.
To state what I hope is obvious, they will be paid internships.
✍️ Job of the Week: Speechwriter to Michelle Donelan, DCMS Secretary
One of the toughest but most rewarding jobs in politics, is a speechwriter to a Cabinet Minister.
Many speeches will take a minimum of 15 drafts before being completed, and often have a tendency to look far similar to draft three rather than draft eight. And I would say 30-50% of the time never see the light of day at all.
I think Michelle Donelan is one of the most interesting politicians out there, she is one of the youngest members of the Cabinet, and having been born in 1984 is the first not to remember the Berlin Wall coming down.
The Department is hiring for a speechwriter here, even if the first skill requirement listed on LinkedIn page is '- ‘personnel security’ (!?)
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