Tari's Patch

During religious holidays, Christmas or Eid or Divali, our minds turn to giving - gifts, goodwill, peace, love... But giving also makes us think about receiving. After all, you give presents, you expect to get some back, right? So this Christmas I've been thinking about the concept of transactions. A.A. Gill, writing in Vanity Fair this month talks about the difference in humour between the Brits and the Americans. "In America, funny is a profession... in Britain, comedy is a craft, not a business". American humour is made by writers, often in groups, who do it for a lot of money. It has high value because it also has a message - humour is transacted. It is created for our enjoyment. Brits on the other hand, use humour all the time not just to make ourselves laugh but also to mask sadness, pain, disappointment. We call it banter and use it when we feel awkward about exposing our feelings, so humour runs through our interaction with each other. It is not a ...

This has been an interesting week for anyone obsessed with reputations, as I am.  First there are clumsy and careless corporations who seem to have lost touch completely w ith the way their consumers think or behave. This is an age when online privacy and social network rights are way up the agenda, when so much can be so easily misunderstood, misinterpreted and spread around the world like wildfire. So how on earth could Instagram misjudge its market so so badly? Did anyone there not think about the way a whole set of new terms and conditions might be received and what risks they might pose to its reputation? Did anyone do a 'what if' exercise and assess the worst possible impact of being misunderstood? Isn't this what every responsible corporation does? Co-founder Kevin Systrom did a mea culpa yesterday, but much much ground has been lost and  trust (already shortly lacking as far as Instagram's new owner Facebook is concerned) is severely shaken. Second there a...

Sandy Hook school in Newtown Connecticut is the thirty-first school to have seen a brutal massacre since Columbine in 1999 - that's thirteen years in case your arithmetic fails you. The murder of so many primary school children have galvanised people around the world to show their sympathy and emotions but more importantly, demand that Something Is Done about this. The (mostly) middle class twitterati get moving when an Event occurs which could, in their view, be fixed by Government if only they could free themselves from the shackles of Big Business or the Opposition Lobby or anyone else Blocking Progress. Over the past few days the media and online networks have been full of Good Advice to Obama, to Congress, to the NRA (well, possibly not advice to them...) on What Should be Done. Mostly this advice comes from people like me - with strong opinions on what is right, mostly liberal minded (as the Republican right would call us) but working in all sorts of businesses around ...

Passion, a little bit of madness and colours seem to have been the themes this week - at least as far as films and art are concerned. After the frantic family weekend and Monday's full-on theatrical party to bid adieu to the National Theatre of Scotland's fabulous artistic Director Vicky Featherstone at Glasgow's Tramway came The Silver Lining Playbook. Robert de Niro seems to have carved a great niche for himself - playing psychotic OCD patriarchs and going from bad to worse before tumbling upon redemption. He does it here to perfection. With Bradley Cooper playing his bipolar son who returns home after a spell in a mental institution, and Jennifer Lawrence as the (supposedly crazy) woman who helps him, we are reminded that actually it's not the mad who are mad. It's the rest of us who are mad. What's more, families, mostly, make things worse not better. What a lovely film. It has a serious message about mental conditions and how our lifestyles put on...

This has been a week of theatre and families. Which has made me think how much one is so much like the other. A weekend full of adult children, their spouses and their children sharing food, wine and a cold Edinburgh with all the energy, excitement, chat, gossip and sharing is the domestic  version of theatre.  Two send-off events of the National Theatre of Scotland's inspirational and exciting artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, were also full of energy, excitement, gossip, show-offing, shrieks and laughter. The Point Of View is the stuff that makes family or theatrical gatherings. This is what I love most. As we are in Scotland, Independence is a big Point Of View subject. This usually starts with some Dancing Around ( which side are you on and is this going to be a big argument? ) before moving directly to the CrazyOMeter ( their side would be crazy to think.... ) and going for the Kill ( there's only one Point Of View that matters, and that's mine ). The volume ...