On Becoming A Smoker

I have never smoked. I’ve never even wanted to try. I’ve always been very supportive of taxing cigarettes out of existence. They are after all, bad for you and bad for the NHS, which by extension means bad for me because my taxes help pay for the NHS. Cigarettes bad. Cigarette tax, good. I feel much the same way about alcohol but I don’t drink alcohol either (well, not much anyway).

Yesterday I bought a ready to drink Ribena in a petrol station. I’ve been drinking Ribena for nearly 50 years (except a brief period where my mother banned it from the house for fear I’d spill it on her white carpet – who has a white carpet???). I like Ribena. It’s full of things I like. Mostly fruit and sugar. However, something was wrong. Had I put Ribena in the car and drunk the petrol by mistake?

I quick look at the ingredients (required glasses – I’m getting old) and found the answer Somebody had taken out the sugar and put something else in instead. Something that tasted bad. A quick Google showed I’m not the only one who has noticed. GSK, who own Ribena have, as a response to the sugar tax, replaced the sugar with artificial sweetener. Instead of passing the tax onto the consumer and letting them choose to pay more to be unhealthy they have, I assume, decided that they will sell more product if the price stays down.

As I understand it the rationale for the sugar tax was to dissuade people from consuming too much sugar, because much like cigarettes, booze and petrol, it was going to be taxed and thus expensive. I don’t imagine that the tax was supposed to stop manufacturers using sugar at all. That hasn’t happened with fags, booze and petrol after all. You can still buy them, they are just expensive. But you can’t buy Ribena any more! Not real Ribena anyway.

So, I’m now entirely full of righteous indignation. I’m ranting to myself about how I should be treated like an adult and be able to make my own choices. I’ve consumed too much sugar for forty plus years, I’m not going to stop now! Then I catch myself and realise I sound like a smoker. I’ve become one of those I have always been so dismissive of. It’s my choice if I consume too much sugar, but is it fair that the costs of that consumption are then picked up by the NHS and therefore others who make better choices. It’s a much harder debate when its something you like that’s bad for you.

I don’t know what the answer is and perhaps this will make me more tolerant of those with addictions to other bad things. What I do know is that I’m going straight to the Co-Op because my wife says they still have stocks of real Ribena and people are buying them by the caseload. I hope there is some left.

Giles Letheren – Chief Executive Officer

Gossos De Carrer De Barcelona

I’m on my last day at #GartnerSYM in Barcelona, having spent most of the week with 6000 IT leaders and analysts, and reflecting on key themes and personal learning:

We live in an era of disruption. What you did yesterday will not work tomorrow. Fail to change and you will fail.

AI is the most significant new technology for almost every sector. It will be net jobs generative!

European central bankers really are as boring as you might imagine.

The future of digital is analogue. The technology is easy compared to getting your people and culture right.

Spanish sugar packets have 2 spoonful’s in them. Awesome!

The new reality is that infrastructure is global and fluid.

By 2019 50% of all durable goods will be IoT configurable.

The IoT will revolutionalise healthcare, if healthcare can stop working in silos.

Master IT people are business professionals first, technicians second.

Digital value can (must) be delivered at pace and at scale.

These are all important but there is one more thing that sticks in my mind and it’s a question, not an answer. As I was sat on La Rambla last night, eating my rip-off tourist café sandwich and watching a wide cross section of society walking by, I read an interesting blog post where the author wondered aloud why so many of Barcelona’s street people had dogs. Was it companionship or marketing? Such weighty philosophical questions are beyond this small brain of this particular bear but rather I am left pondering a different question. Irrespective of whether these dogs are adept marketing tools or friends in a time of great need, how are they all so well behaved? As somebody whose house appears to have a revolving door for rescue animals (actually revolving implies that some ever leave, we must have a one way door) I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that none of the dogs in through that door would ever patiently sit silently, watchfully, unleashed, on a blanket at the side of the road, looking soulful and hungry (though well fed and cared for), motionless as the world walks by carrying with it the smell of paella, burgers and sausages. Street dogs of Barcelona, I salute you.

Giles Letheren – Chief Executive Officer

Getting Married Again!

About five years ago I got an email from Ebay confirming my purchase of a size 16 wedding dress. It didn’t take me long to remember that I was already married and that I was at least a size 18. What was going on?! I quickly clicked on the Ebay link in the email and logged into my account. Or at least I tried to. For some reason my password didn’t work. It was then I noticed the website I was on wasn’t Ebay at all but something designed to look like it. I had just been phished.

I’ve got much better at spotting phishing attacks and since then I’ve been caught only once. That was by our own Joe Smith with a carefully crafted spear-phish that looked just like an approval from SAW. My protestations of ‘not fair’ were somewhat lame.
The real trick with phishing a group of smart and cyber aware millennials (like most of Delt) is crafting a phish that isn’t completely transparent. You are all too worldly wise to fall for the Nigerian 419 scam or its ilk. You’d be sensibly suspicious if you got an unexpected email from your bank, PayPal or even from me, asking for money or your PIN.

A really awesome phish would be one that was explicably unsolicited, completely believable and exciting enough for you to not think carefully before providing personal information. Enter the recruitment phish! You get an email from a recruiter who has a perfect job for you! Its not that in your right mind you’d want to leave Delt but this opportunity – it’s so good you should really take a look…

As an employer, we don’t want good people to leave but sometimes it’s the right thing for you to do. We might try and persuade you to stay but more often we’ll wish you well and hope to see you further down the road. I’d actively encourage people to consider new opportunities for personal and professional growth. People who have worked in different places and different industries bring a broad perspective to what we do and if we grow as expected, there will still be a warm seat here for you.

However, don’t let your enthusiasm for a possible new role and the riches of heaven turn you into an idiot. Joe tells me there are a bunch of recruitment phishes floating around right now so please be careful.

On a completely different cyber security topic, if you haven’t checked your personal and corporate email addresses on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ then its well worth it. I’ll offer a small consolation prize to anyone who can beat the 7 pwns I have against my personal email address. Rather than more idiocy, this is an indication of the fact I’m really old and have been using the internet with the same email address since 1995 (on a 28.8k modem and AOL Weeeeep!).

Giles Letheren – Chief Executive Officer

Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Woman

There has been much coverage in the press this week about high salaries paid at the BBC. Although the story was always expected to be big news, it was the gender pay gap shown in the report that has generated the most negative coverage. In a defence of the Beeb Lord Hall noted that the gender pay gap across the whole organisation is ‘only’ 10% compared to 18% nationally.

The issue was being discussed on Women’s Hour on Radio 4 this morning. (Yes, I do enjoy a good Women’s Hour) and having enjoyed a moment of self-righteousness about Delt, decided to check the maths, lest I was incorrectly self-righteous and let’s be honest there’s nothing quite as embarrassing as incorrect self-righteousness.

I thought I would share the result with you.

The gender pay gap in Delt, that is to say the difference between the average male salary and average female salary is, when including the leadership team 1.3%. If you exclude the leadership team its 2%, this time in favour of the ladies.

I’ve asked for the analysis without the leadership team because we have consistently struggled to recruit female leadership team members, simply because so few female candidates apply. (Head of Brand and Workforce was the exception where there were only two male applicants.)

It’s great to confirm that there is no material gender pay gap in Delt but it would be even better if we could see more female applicants for leadership roles.

Giles Letheren – Chief Executive Officer