The trees not the wood

Just been reading Mark Penn's Micro Trends. There's a related website which you can find here 

Penn is interested in the 1% and makes the good point that 1 percent of the population is 3 million  - a decent tranch of people, at least a niche that can be marketed to.

There's 75 micro trends listed, some are interesting, some a bit more obvious. But those I liked, and made me stop for thought included

1: Extreme Commuters: Those people spending more than 90 minutes commuting a day - and that doesn't include those people, like me, who spend at least 90 minutes a day on average, on a plane. Not 90 mins every day, but on average. There must be some implications from all of this in terms of the marketing opportunities for these people. Digital content? Clothing? Health & Remedies? Communications tools. With the time commuting in Asia only going to go up, Extreme Commuters need thinking about. 

2. Pet Parents: The vast and increasing number of pets who live better than children in underdeveloped countries....

3. Impressionable Elites: Penn neatly debunks the theory that less educated voters only care about personality and superficialities in politics. In fact, its the rich, who are going to pretty much stay rich anyway, who worry about a cut of a candidate's jib and the media reflect this. The poor pay attention to policies and what it means for their bottom line

4. Long Attention Spanners: Even though we are in the age of the soundbyte and even though twitter is replacing blogging, there is a demand for more, and more detailed content. Book reading is supposed to be dead - and yet, I subscribe to The Times Literary Supplement and can't believe all the incredibly esoteric titles that are published each week

5. Christian Zionists: Penn also neatly debunks the theory that US support for Israel is because of the large Jewish population. Firstly there aren't that many Jews in America. Secondly, its the Christian Zionists - believers in The Rapture and all that nonsense. Which I will rant about some other time...

Anyway, the general principle that you SHOULD be seeing the trees, and not the wood, is sound and worth remembering

And now for the counterfactuals

So know its all about the counterfactuals. What if....

1. Hilary had won the primaries? Hard to say what the impact would have been. The economic crisis would still have favoured the Democrats, but Hilary is part of the establishment and the electorate wanted to vote against the establishment. Also McCain probably wouldn't have picked Palin as VP so there would have been the possibility of a positive impact from the VP. Verdict Close, but Hilary maybe just sneaks it

2. McCain picks someone other than Palin? Palin did energize the Republicans but ultimately they would have voted for McCain anyway. She did nothing for the swinging voter, and if the idea was to take Hilary voters, it showed a very poor understanding of them, and deserved to fail. And a focus on policy didn't help her - if it was a culture war election, maybe she helps but the electorate wanted a policy based election. The attempts to present a black guy from a single parent family as somehow part of an elite was pathetic as was the attempt to link him to Castro. This deserved to fail Verdict Its closer, but Obama wins anyway

3. Republicans pick someone other than McCain? Ultimately McCain didn't stand for anything in particular and thus couldn't shake off the somewhat unfair Bush comparisons. Badly run campaign Verdict Its ultimately closer, but Democrats win anyway

Obama, McCain, Maradona?

So its the US election tomorrow and the polls suggest an Obama victory, which is probably a good thing. I was convinced that the US wasn't ready to elect a leader who was a) inexperienced b) black and c) didn't bang on about "God" every 5 minutes. Looks like I was wrong about that  - although there is still time for a last minute crisis to be manufactured.

 Obama has been helped by the economic turmoils I think - even though neither candidate has a solution, and it frankly wouldn't look credible if they did, at least you need some vigour and energy, some capacity to roll up the sleeves and get on with it. McCain looks good for his age and the far from easy life he's had, but vigour, no. Trying to pretend to Cubans that Obama is the rebirth of Fidel isn't helping any either

But still, regardless of who wins, it seems to me that two fundamental issues haven't been addressed - and they never are, in any US elections. 

First of these is, who is actually going to run the country? One of the oddities of a so called democracy is that most of the people with power don't actually get elected by anyone. Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Weinberger, Powell, Rice, Schultz? Not a vote between them. And people write books on their influence on history. So really, it doesn't matter so much who the President is, assuming he's not insane or drunk enough to launch first strike, but who his team is. Who's with Obama? Who's with McCain? No one knows. In a genuine democracy, the whole team would be on the slate so people knew what they were actually voting for. 

In a sense, this is like the appointment of Diego Maradona as Argentina football coach. Is it a good move? Without knowing who he's surrounding himself with, assuming its not vendors of Bolivia's primary export, who can say? Is the abuse or mockery he's been subject to in any way justified? Without knowing who else is part of the team we can't say

Second, what the US really needs is someone who can manage a country in decline. Because there's no doubt that although the US will be important in the world for years to come, its not going to be the strongest economic power for much longer, won't be the engine of the world economy and such will have to give up it right to military primacy and its expectation of controlling the world agenda. This is no surprise - these things are cyclical and its time for the US to have a down cycle. The key is that its leaders recognise it and act accordingly. Can they avoid turning competitors into enemies? Can they learn to be colloborative and gracefully give up some of that power and influence? The US needs a leader who can do that - in much the same way as leaders of the colonial powers accepted the realities of their new position in the world and gracefully, eventually, withdrew. It remains to be seen in Obama or McCain is the right man for that particular job

Why Cherry Diamonds?

Because when I was growing up, and I wanted to be rockstar, I didn't want to be a guitar hero or a prancing lead singer, and definitely not a drummer. I played bass - sort of - and there were a limited number of bass players that had any sort of image that I was interested in. 

Paul Simenon of course was the coolest bass player ever, did anyone ever sling their bass lower? Not only the subject of the best rock photo of all time, the smashing the bass one that appeared on the cover of London Calling but when it was all over, happily stepping off to a successful career as an artist

And judging by his recent appearances with The Good, The Bad And The Queen, he's still got all the moves, still looks a million bucks, and still can't play bass to save his life

And there was Jean-Jacques Burnel of course, and Dee Dee Ramone. But thats about it. So my image was of the studio based, multi instrumentalist. Like Matt Johnson, of The The. And my dream project would be called The Cherry Diamonds.

So I did get to play in a few bands - mostly very bad ones - but never got the chance to to use the name. And as I still think its a great name - here we go

But that doesn't mean this is going to be a music blog. I am going to blog about music but, anything else that interests me, culture, politics, art, living in Singapore and whatever....