What is the point of writing this notebook?
🦁 🏴 Lionesses - more than just sport …
✍️ Why do I bother with this notebook?
⚽ Fantasy Football League - best team names so far
🔈 Julian Richer - final Sunday Times column
👀 Seen elsewhere
Welcome to the 9 new subscribers since Saturday. 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.
🦁 🏴 Lionesses - more than just sport …
Last week I wrote about the mega trend of the increasing economics of professional sport. What better illustration than that of what the Lionesses achieved on Sunday. Undoubtedly it felt more than just a moment of sporting triumph, but represented a deeper cultural shift.
If you think of Grand Slam tennis as an example, it demonstrates how women’s sport can be as popular for attracting gate receipts. Wimbledon equalised pay for women and gentlemen fifteen years ago, which seems a long time ago now.
Arguably, women’s tennis is more entertaining than the constant serve fests of male tennis too. How long will it take women’s football to catch up?
Another intriguing thing about the story its relation to business, is the amount of resilience the individual Lioness’ have shown. It is one character trait that comes up again and again on the podcast - it is shared by many top entrepreneurs and politicians alike. Can you dust yourself down and go again?
The Mirror compiled a good list on the trials a lot of the squad have been through here.
I include a graphic below of how their memory will become etched in Wembley history.
Another interesting subplot is there were reports that Boris Johnson was thinking of announcing a Bank Holiday in the event that England won the tournament.
There are now reports that Downing Street may not host a party for the players.
It seems bizarre, the only thing I can think of is that there is some unease about going to Downing Street for a party after everything that has happened …. perhaps another example of our ever more polarised world …
Although pity the top brass at the Football Association trying to navigate the situation, perhaps an elegant solution can be found where the team might pop by in the Autumn, or maybe there can be a big joint Christmas Party for when the men win the World Cup in Qatar 🤩 🤩
Perhaps it is a soft ball question I could ask Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss when I interview them on Friday night.
✍️ Why do I bother with this notebook?
Writing this notebook can sometimes feel a lot like going to the gym, it is a bit of a drag to do, I get worried about Spagging because of my dyslexia and wonder if the whole thing really makes much of a difference any way?
But always, after doing it, I am grateful for undertaking it.
This is down to your kind words and thoughts that you often respond with.
When I asked for your thoughts on questions for what I should ask the two candidates to be Prime Minister, you came back in your droves.
The responses both directly to this email and the LInkedIn thread were brilliant, incisive and well crafted and will be going to make up a chunk of my questions on Friday.
Truth be told, I am pretty nervous about Friday but crowdsourcing a wide as pool of questions steadied those nerves and made me realise that there are A LOT of topics that we haven’t actually heard their views on. Also this post from Iain Dale who chaired the majority of hustings last year was very insightful.
I am still compiling questions and thoughts, so if you didn’t respond last time, feel free to do so now.
So thanks for reading and replying, it can be difficult to know with a podcast if anyone is listening, bar watching various bar charts go up or down.
⚽ Fantasy Football League - team names
You can join our Fantasy Football league here via this link.
I promised I would give a shout out to some of the best team names thus far:
Eze does it from Richard Fletcher, Palace fan and Business Editor at The Times
Chris Martin (elli) from Alex Pheasents, who writes Lord Vaizey’s newsleter.
Lord of the Mings from Jack Lewey, former adviser Levelling Up SpAd.
And perhaps my favourite so far, only Kruls & Horses from James Scott
You can join up to via this link.
To incentivise you .. we are offering some prizes.
🥇 1st prize: £100 cold hard cash*
🥈2nd prize: £50 or half hour zoom call to chat whatever you want … podcast, content curation, running a public campaign, what’s going on in Government etc.
🥉 3rd prize: 2 x tickets to live shows of Jimmy’s Jobs
🏆 Another prize for the best team name as judged me.
* T&Cs you are only eligible if you subscribe to this email + you must have a UK based bank account - congratulations to Havard who won last year, but I have learnt transferring money to a Norweigan bank account was a lot trickier than I imagined :)
Why not forward to a friend who also likes fantasy football?
Tips: Graham Ruddick who writes Off to Lunch newsletter is setting up a spin off newsletter just looking at fantasy football and the data behind it.
It is a wonderful geek out read, so if you like the economics behind FPL it is worth checking out.
I am expecting him to have a very good team name, given he journalist and writing a newsletter dedicated to it.
🔈 Julian Richer - final Sunday Times column
He took over the entrepreneurship column from James Timpson and Luke Johnson at the start of this year. He is the founder of Richer Sounds, which had a pioneering employee ownership model.
He has written 31 pieces, and they have all been thought provoking and actually a rather good amount for a business leader to write, many more and they can become repetitive, many less and they might not quite find their ‘voice’ and style.
Writing is like any skill / muscle, it needs to be used or it wastes away.
His final column is on the importance of fairness, which did remind me of a phrase an old favourite boss of my used to use which was
‘Fairness is not a concept that should be applied beyond the age of 7’.
Will be great to see Oliver Shah and Jim Armitage line up to take the column on.
👀 Seen elsewhere
Very interesting piece on Herman Narula, the metaverse mogul that has raised £500 million + from Softbank etc in the Sunday Times, also interviewed on Jimmy’s Jobs a few months ago, where we used the template of #SaveDerbyCounty for how the metaverse could work. That episode is available here.
Continuing the very sporty theme of this weeks newsletter - I loved this story
End of the Notebook …
Building an audience whether it is through podcasts or newsletters is hard, and it predominantly relies on word of mouth so if you think someone might find these emails interesting - please do forward it.
‘Feedback is a gift’ was the last thing we were told on my course at Stanford and it has always stuck with me …
So feel free to drop us a line with whatever your feedback is on the notebook or podcast, whether that be an amazing guest you’d like me to feature, or a news story about the future of jobs/work - hit reply and let us know or email us on - hello@jobsofthefuture.co
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