all about not born yesterday

 

The predecessor to Not Born Yesterday began life as a round-robin email called Media Ink in 2002. Sent to mates and heavy hitters in publishing, the media and commerce, it started out as a thinly veiled attempt to get me a book contract/columnist's job/more freelance marketing work. Its other purpose was to say, "Look, I can write" to important people like my kids and my Mum.

The subterfuge landed me one nice article in The Independent Magazine, and a series of pieces in Market Leader. In those days, you couldn't do much more than type and attach humungous photographs to emails, and by early 2003 - with a circulation of just 104 - I was thinking what else I might do with my new-found knowledge. This learning was only partly technological; with far more time after retiring from full-time work, several things were becoming ever more clear to me. These were:

1. Most large-scale business is crooked
2. Stock exchanges and remote shareholders are ruining business and family/community life
3. Globalism is obviously flawed as the way forward
4. Energy and water will dominate geopolitics until a technological solution is found to the problems
5. Banks exist for each other and have lost the plot about their proper role
6. Personal credit is wildly out of control
7. Capitalism is a good model for feeding people, but we need a better version
8. The lack of civic education will mean more and more draconian legislation until all our liberties are gone
9. The UK Party system is controlling and corrupt, as is much local government
10. Hard-line pc is driving people towards extremists and ignoring the rise of Islamism as a local threat
11. Focus groups, packaging and slick (but empty) communications ideas produce useless ‘gesture’ politics
12. UK debt servicing has spiraled out of control and threatens all of our welfare services
13. Little or no preparations have been made for an ageing population
14. Politicians must stop asking why people don’t get involved, and instead look in the mirror
15. As a culture we have lost the ability to think freely and laterally
16. We need a new Establishment more than we need a new Government

While many folks (and especially their cvs) work hard to make some order out of life, most of us get where we are via a mix of talent, good fortune and fate. My fate at this point was to be chatting with media star Richard Eyre, and listening confused as he said "What you should do is start a blog". So it's all his fault, really.

The following week, I was with an old American friend who accused me of being naive, adding "Sometimes I think you were born yesterday". The following afternoon, I had lunch with a client who had an idea for a financial services company called - spookily - Not Born Yesterday. He never went ahead, and so I bought the .org domain, .com having been taken. Who, I wonder, is this anti-Santa Claus figure who has thought of every site name in the world and registered the .com domain?

Anyway, armed with 104 email addresses and a vague notion of writing for people who still had some common sense and humorous bone left, I bought Microsoft Front Page and remained completely confused about how on earth sites worked for some two years thereafter. (It is almost without exception the most idiotic, complex and unpredictable piece of software in existence - living evidence that sooner or later the monkey-typewriter team will make it to market unscathed).

The site started up in June 2003. I think it may be unique in having been almost entirely grown by individual invitation, recommendation and the odd review. Up until 2007, it was seen by most readers as quite funny but slightly deranged…as well being wrong about almost everything. Bear in mind, by this time Nby had accused Lehman Brothers of having an unsustainable business model, Peter Mandelson of dodgey EU dealings, Tony Blair of murder, Northern Rock's CEO of being unhinged, RBS's Freddie Goodwin of having a small willy complex, various local government officers of being crooks, a computer retailer of gbh and fencing email names to criminals, Hillary Clinton of being a mad bitch, estate agents of talking up a busted market, and Gordon Brown of being a sanctimonious hypocrite who, once in power, would unravel in public.

In turn, during 2008 the site's column Funny Business (thanks to three utterly reliable sources) was early into stories about Sarkozy's interest in white powder, the Bradford & Bingley collapse, Alan Johnson's dementia about Alzheimer's, manipulation of the Gold market, the likely FTSE low-point of 3500, and the equally likely size of the Government's projected 2009 Budget overspend.

The stock market crash, banking meltdown, economic slump, house price collapse, Madoff affair and MPs expenses scandal briefly made Not Born Yesterday a hot number receiving 1200-1500 hits a week. (Look, to little old me, that's big). And although most have returned since to la-la-land, one result is that with more contacts and sources reading and sending me stuff, I can produce an even better-informed product.

In September 2009, Nby broke the Brown health story, which the Press rapidly turned into Brownmadandblind. Within a week the site was getting 5,300 daily hits. The Front Page, Guido Fawkes, The Independent and the Daily Express picked up the story in full. After two weeks, Tony Blair said Brown should retire for health reasons. A week later, Charles Clarke offered a multi-media agreement. As I write, rumours persist that the PM will resign before the Election on 2010....or be pushed.

The Nby ‘product’ as such is not for most people. I’m trying to be an engaging philosopher with some practical ideas to reduce and reverse the power imbalance between the Big and the Individual. A lot of the time the site is meant to amuse, expose, suggest, predict and explain. A lot of the time it misfires, but a loyally subscribed readership of just over 800 are still enjoying it regularly , and we still get at least two thousand visits a week.

Of late, Felix Dennis's fine publication The First Post has taken to printing quite a lot of my output. You can read it at http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/author,596,john-ward

There is also a Mole column at TFP which describes the Gordon Brown on MAOIs story at http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/53143,news,the-mole-gordon-brown-on-drugs-to-control-depression-poor-health-rumours and his follow-up, http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/53311,news,the-mole-gordon-brown-the-depressive-john-ward-offers-more-ammo-anti-depressants-bruxism

There is no business model to Not Born Yesterday. I have found that business models do not save businesses from stupid strategies; and anyway (so far) I don’t need the money. The 'philosophy' can be summed up in a few words as 'denial will never make things right, conviction often leads to repression, people who can't see the funny side probably have a nasty side, and making money will never make a just society: only a strong civic culture can do that'.

But there's more detail on that for those who want it at What Am I on About.

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