The Funding the Future team has grown in number today.
Eighteen months ago, I was responsible for dispatching almost all the content on this blog, and there was no video channel.
Admittedly, I spent quite a lot of time back then working with other academic and NGO collaborators, just about all of which activities have now ceased, but as if to compensate for this, the YouTube channel has been launched, and is now probably amongst the top three per cent of serious YouTube channels in the world, which are defined as those that publish videos likely to enjoy 5,000 or more views, on average. Our average is more than 50,000 a day.
My youngest son, Thomas, has been heavily engaged in that process.
Over that same period, and as has become increasingly apparent of late, my wife, Jacqueline, has also moved from having a decidedly backseat role where she suggested content, and also edited, but did not want acknowledgement, to being quite explicitly engaged in the development of some content, which I think has been of real benefit.
Given her own research work, looking at ethics, medicine, economics and the relationship between all those issues and well-being (and amongst her range of medical qualifications is one in medical ethics), we are also now looking at how she might expand her activities in the future, including in front of camera roles, but that might not be just yet.
However, partly in anticipation of that, our elder son, James, has now joined the team as an employee. James is a politics graduate from Leeds University. Since graduating he has been working for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but he has now decided that after completing his graduate training and relevant professional qualifications there that, firstly, London might not be for him after all, and, secondly, that before he decides whether to continue with a local authority career, he might get some experience in a very different type of work, which is what working for this blog and the related YouTube channel can offer.
James will be taking on a number of responsibilities, including:
- Producing and editing the short videos that we post in the late afternoon now. These will provide him with a perfect opportunity to also master the editing process, which forms a key part of his training in what we do.
- Managing posts that we are now planning to put on YouTube, in addition to the polls that we already share there. The aim will be to increase awareness amongst YouTube viewers of what happens on this blog. We think that most readers here are aware of what happens on YouTube, but there appears to be little flow the other way, and so we are looking to encourage that.
- To look at how we might increase our publication output. A number of comments have been made of late asking whether some of the series that we have been producing will be published, and James is going to take on looking at how we do this.
- Researching some more in-depth videos on longer planning horizons than we are used to, where we think this will be advantageous. Thomas is also keen to do this, and I hope that the evidence of their input will become more apparent quite soon, with both unlikely to appear on camera as a consequence.
In case anyone thinks all of this is a little nepotistic, well, maybe it is. But I have simultaneously set James and Thomas the goal of ceasing to be employed by their parents. They are both working part-time so that they can also establish their own channels or video production activities that will be entirely independent of us. Working in the way they are at present is, therefore, as much a training exercise as it is a long-term proposition. However, when and if they succeed in that goal, we will be looking for new employees.
In the meantime, we are entering a new era with new challenges, and we hope the benefits will become clear over time.
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Buy me a coffee!
I’m going to have to retire to keep up with the output!
Seriously though its good that you are able to produce more and reach a wider audience BUT have you given any thought to protecting your work so that it remains on line once you are no longer able to keep posting?
My Great Grandfathers obituary was on the internet until one day the site disappeared, I assume that the owner either died or was incapacitated and it would be a great loss if your work disappeared the same way.
It is a questiion I need to address.
I might have to leave funds to ensure that this survives me.
There is a whole world of amazing specialist archives. An entry point is linked. It’s likely at amongst them a suitable home exists for such a substantial body of work. That the archive is already digital simplified matters.
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/?terms=Political%20economy
I will investigate
The late great Kenneth Roy from the now defunct Scottish Review and before that BBC produced numerous wonderful articles and published them via SR.
In particular I remember an outstanding piece on Nicola Sturgeon but with the demise of the Review I’m unable to access same. Not even AI can locate it .
It has just vanished into the mists.
PS . He also wrote a similarly brilliant article on the cult of Billy Graham entitled ‘Storm Billy’ – an earlier time when a large portion of the UK went ‘bat shit crazy’.
Can’t find that either
Firstly, welcome to James – I hope he is successful in his endeavours. Secondly please don’t accept any words like ‘nepotism’ – I see this as your enterprise and you have the right to employ who you choose, whoever they may be. And I also look forward to reading more explicitly perhaps from Jaqueline – from various radio programs (eg Woman’s Hour) I know that it is possible that women have different experiences and views on economic matters and as you already know better than me, diversity of opinion does matter! So while I know she contributes to and helps shape your work and ideas, I at least would be interested in hearing hers more directly if she felt able or willing to do that in some format.
We are exploring this.
It’s a big step to go public in a hostile world.
Looking forward to following Thomas’s new channel and videos.
If there is a new channel it will be the two of them together. They have plans…
I am not involved in any serious way.
Excellent news
Cries of Nepotism? Wendell Berry, the great American poet, novelist, environmental activist and farmer who argued for a life lived slowly, and the value of home, also had to trenchantly defend his position when, in his article “Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer” published in Harpers Magazine in 1997, he stated that his wife helped type his work on a Royal standard typewriter and helped edit, “she is my best critic because she is the one most familiar with my habitual errors and weaknesses”. This article was subsequently attacked by many letters to the magazine at the time.
And he defends his position brilliantly with great reasonable-ness and the clearest of prose, both in replies and in a subsequent essay “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine”.
I quote:
“There are, however, still some married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, each other, and to their children. What they have, they have in common, and so, to them…’mine’ is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as ‘ours’. This sort of marriage usually has at its heart a household that is to some extent productive. The couple, that is, makes around itself a household economy that involves the work of wife and husband, that gives them a measure of economic independence and self-protection, a measure of self-employment, a measure of freedom, as well as a common ground and common satisfaction.”
Both essays, and replies are contained in the short booklet “Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer” Penguin Modern 50 Series). I recommend this book, and his other works, wholeheartedly.
Another for the reading list, and thank you.
Congratulations to you all! 🙂 I look forward to reading/listening/seeing the new input.
Off topic really, but I follow The Meidas Touch on Substack, and sometimes watch their videos too – sometimes those are just too long for me as I always seem to have too much to do!
Anyway, he’s mighty critical of Trump, so I thought you just might possibly find some of his articles articles interesting. Here’s a taster of his latest on Substack for you to try if you have the time:
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/urgent-message-from-meidastouch-founder-a16
Thanks