OK, so the latest victim of the expenses debacle is Jacqui Smith (see BBC coverage).

To be honest, I am sick to death of this subject for one main reason. This whole protracted episode is dominating the news agenda and is stopping the news that matters from getting the oxygen it deserves. Did you know that although the Land Registry showed house prices have fallen again in April there are pointers that we are close to the bottom? (It’s worth looking at our Property team’s great blog on this subject). Where is the in depth analysis and debate on GM’s decline? Have we actually had any debate on the European elections aside from a focus on the bad lads of Parliament. Anybody reading the Telegraph recently would be forgiven for thinking that all other life has stopped.

Don’t get me wrong. Of course I feel that the expenses manipulation and fraud needed to be exposed. It exposes something far deeper - the fact that the system of remuneration has not only created the timebomb of mistrust in our democratically elected representatives but it has also finally shown that the reason that we have such poor representatives is that our best brains choose business over politics and until we reward our politicians at market level we will never get MP’s that can make the difference that we so richly deserve.

There’s no way of dropping this in without it sounding crow-barred in, so I’ll just say it.

Last Thursday, I was presented to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh as one of 14 business people to discuss the challenges and opportunities that this economy is presenting. They were in the North West to open the Leigh Sports Stadium and to visit the institutions of Heinz and Warburtons but had requested the chance to meet a few business people on the way. I was lucky enough to meet her alongside people such as Dave Whelan, Martin Ainscough, Imran Hakim, Moneeb Awan and Amin Amiri.

It was a surreal experience but one that certainly makes you appreciate what a great marketing asset we have in the pair of them, especially after they had spent the best part of an hour with us.

Dave Whelan said to me over lunch that he was going to ask her to disolve Parliament and start again in the light of the ongoing expenses storm but we both agreed that it probably wasn’t the time to raise the subject.

My mother has already started dining out on the back it. Great day.

Throughout history every slowdown/recession/depression has resulted in a new emphasis coming out of the period. These periods are traditionally a way that the market clears out dying industries or practices and replaces them with the new blood.

Following the industrial age and the 70’s recession, the eighties saw the turn of the i-bankers to emerge. The rise of private equity and hedgies as a power in the noughties leads us to where we are.

This period is no different and it is interesting to see the evolving market take a bit more shape.

From where I sit, after the last 12 months of market paralysis, there is a growing tide of activity and energy. People are getting together and talking. The new entrepreneurs are emerging. As always, Apple set the agenda by understanding that the i-phone wasn’t the holy grail but merely a box. The real prize sits within. The ability to create content that produces sustainable ongoing revenues. But the key aspect of this is that instead of keeping this to themselves they threw their code out to all the tecchies and invited them to share in the revenue that it’s apps can create. Instead of hundreds of developers, all of a sudden they had thousands.

To me this is the future of business life. I am seeing it day in, day out. I am involved in numerous projects now that are truly collaborative ventures and we are lucky to be in a region that seems to be leading the way in this new model of working.

Maybe I’ll be proved wrong but if you don’t see a world changing venture coming out of this region in the next few years, I’ll eat my i-phone.

There are a number of high profile and controversial education stories in today’s nationals.

The front page of the Independent focuses on an interview with Sir Alan Steer, the Government behaviour “tsar” and his views on how schools should be dealing with badly behaved pupils. The article has also been picked up by the Telegraph.

In the interview with the Independent, Sir Alan, a former headteacher said that “sending them to the head and giving them a right royal rollocking could be better than giving them a fixed-term exclusion.” He has warned that schools that frequently suspend pupils for two or three weeks at a time, should review their policies because they are failing to tackle poor behaviour. New powers are necessary according to Sir Alan and he plans to enshrine in law the teacher’s right to impose discipline, making measures such as detention and confiscating mobile phones legal.

The Independent also carries a story on how vulnerable children are missing out on the life-saving chance of a boarding school education. Despite a Government plan to encourage both state and private boarding schools to accept children at risk of being taken into care, only a handful of places have been funded.

The Telegraph features news on how thousands of children may not get a place at their local primary school this year due to a places crisis, caused by the recession and increased birth rates. The article states that competition for places is likely to be fierce and many parents may be forced to accept their second, third or even fourth choice school.

Today’s news had decent coverage of Andrew Nulty’s fall from grace having been struck off for “disgraceful” misconduct in his handling of sick miners’ compensation claims.

In the early days of MC2, we met Andrew with a view to taking on all of his marketing work. There was a significant budget (unsurprising now looking at the £40 million in legal fees that he took from over 30,000 claims) but we felt something wasn’t right about the business. The more we looked into it the more uncomfortable we felt. We declined the work. Sometimes something that looks like a dog and barks like a dog, actually is a dog.

TED Talks never cease to amaze, but the ability to create a sixth sense really will take some beating.

Have a look at Pattie Maes talk at TED for a jaw dropping look at new ways to access information. It is incredible.

Thanks to my pal Chris Cox over in San Francisco for pointing me to this

Ten years ago, I started MC2 with a computer, a desk and one simple vision: to create the largest independent agency in the North of England.

Today, PR Week’s Top 150 list for 2009 has shown MC2 to have achieved this vision. In terms of fee income MC2 is the 35th largest independent agency in the UK, the 75th largest overall but most importantly the No 1 Independent agency in the North of England.

The credit for this goes to the most dedicated, highly trained and passionate team around and a loyal client base who make up the best businesses and brands in the country.

Thanks so much for helping us achieve our original vision.

Since our return from Ecuador a number of people have asked us to let them know how the whole experience went.

This is my attempt to say a massive thanks to all of the many kind hearted people who supported our venture through donations for the school building materials, auction prizes and emotional support.

Thank you so much on behalf of me and all the children of El Pedregal.

On 28th February 2009, Jenny and I set off to the village of El Pedregal, Ecuador, with a group of 25 people who had never met before, as part of a Bobby Moore Fund Cancer Research party. The objective was to rebuild a school in the village so that the 120 or so resident Andean families could educate their children locally, rather than having to send them away to school or not have them educated at all.

If there is one word to sum up the entire Ecuador trip, it would undoubtedly be ‘intense’.

Everything about the experience was intense – emotionally, physically and mentally.

Even the journey there was tough. After we met the 25 strangers at Heathrow’s Terminal 4, wearing Bobby Moore No 6 t-shirts, we then sat through a long haul flight to Houston, Texas, followed by a six-hour connection to Quito, the capital of Ecuador.

The first thing we noticed was the effect the altitude has on your ability to complete even the simplest of tasks. Walking five steps with a rucksack left us breathless; trying to do anything more rigorous was unthinkable.

By the time we had travelled up to our home in El Pedregal, at an altitude of 3,500 metres, the whole group felt that working would be impossible. Standing up was a feat in itself!

It all became very serious when we got a chance to assess the task that lay ahead. We were expecting the school to be in a dilapidated state, but what we found was much worse. In the centre of the school was an open sewer pit around which the children played (and sometimes fell into). Basic hygiene was non-existent. The areas that were used to prepare and serve food had a roof that was falling down, and water poured down the walls. All toilets lacked basic functionality, the showers were disgusting, and we found that the floor in the dining room was so badly rotted that crossing it was like a sick game of chance.

Interestingly, having seen just how big the challenge was, this was the moment that the group came together. It was as though the near impossibility of what needed to be done was a relief. Whatever we did would make a huge difference and, if we could achieve everything we wanted, we could only imagine the reaction that we’d get from the children. We even started adding to our wish list. Couldn’t we sort out a basketball court while we were here? What about replacing the windows on all the buildings? The list grew longer and longer as our ambition took on a whole new dimension.

We were brought down slightly when we saw our living conditions. For the next couple of weeks, ‘home’ would be some damp, small tents set up on a hill slope, chewed occasionally by a few scraggy looking cows. Our ‘dining room’ was an old, asbestos-ridden portable shack, and there were no washing facilities on site. But once we’d moved our packs in and had a beer or two round the camp fire, the group’s spirits and bravado grew once more.

Each working day blurred into one. We quickly acclimatised to the altitude and work became our entire focus. Of the 25 people in our party, possibly four or five had ‘useful’ trades, from tiling to carpentry to roofing. This group went round coaching us novices on the basics of our task, after which we were left to our own devices.

It is incredible what you can achieve when you know that your failure will impact on the entire group and its ability to complete the task at hand. Over the next few days, a great sidekick and I took down a ceiling and replaced it with a new one. I took on skills ranging from electrical work to carpentry without breaking stride. Jenny mastered tiling to the extent that she then led an entire group of tilers. At one stage, I counted her team to be pushing seven people!

The low point came when one of the crew started having health problems. It went from difficulty in breathing and a lack of appetite to a complete physical breakdown. Our team doctor correctly diagnosed HAPE (second stage altitude sickness) and David was rushed back to Quito to spend the remainder of the trip in intensive care. It turned out that his heart had swelled to twice its original size and, without the doctor’s swift action, we could have been looking at a fatality.

The team dynamic was incredible. There was no slacking and, if somebody had a bad day, the group rallied round to lift them for the following day. The camp fire became our counselling bench and problems were resolved in the freezing cold with beers in our hands. The work ethic was equally inspiring. 14-hour days became the norm. Our 7am breakfast was a quick affair, as the various teams wolfed down food before quickly regrouping on their tasks. Knowing that we had to play a football game against a local semi-pro team on our last day, we had scheduled in a number of practice sessions to at least assess our chances, but every one of these was cancelled due to the desire that the group had to complete our tasks.

When handover day arrived, the excitement was palpable. Knowing that the entire village and various dignitaries were arriving at noon, there was frantic activity from 6.30am. Rooms were being painted, the promised basketball hoops were erected and various artistic touches were added to the buildings.

The emotion at the handover ceremony was extreme. The teachers were weeping uncontrollably and every one of our crew broke down. The reactions of the children, parents and dignitaries, combined with the exhaustion that had finally hit us all, was a bit too much. Karl, a well known historian from the Midlands who had acted all week as teacher, father figure and translator to the group, gave an impassioned speech in Spanish, finishing with the line: “There are a number of things that mark us apart – geography, economy and colour – but children are children everywhere and every child has the right to education and happiness.” At this, we unveiled the plaque that will always remain at the school, and the headteacher unveiled the plaque that they had made, onto which each of our names had been hand engraved. 25 children then came and presented each of us with a small soft toy that had been handmade by their parents, and we came together and danced as a community. These moments will never be forgotten by any one of us that experienced the intensity of that afternoon.

It’s interesting that, throughout the project, we’d built up the expectations of the huge celebration that would follow the end of the work, imagining how we’d drink through the night and party knowing that the early starts would be a distant memory. As it happened, the majority of the group succumbed to fatigue and the emotionally draining events of the day. For most, the night finished soon after dinner.

The only task left was the football match. We travelled to Manchachi and were surprised to find that we’d be playing in a stadium that could easily grace the UK’s lower divisions. Our opponents looked good; we didn’t.

Although we wore the England strip, the fact that a number of our team hadn’t played before, had the wrong shoes on and couldn’t run more than five yards without becoming breathless due to the altitude, spread a doubt amongst the team as to our chances of success. However, the adage that ‘a great team will always beat a team of great individuals’ almost applied. Due to the intensity of the relationships that had built up and the challenges that we had experienced together, something magical happened on the pitch. We could actually play together.

We should have been hammered, but we weren’t. The final score of 6-4 to the crack Ecuadorian outfit was a fair result on the balance of play, but we felt as though we’d gained a moral victory.

We swapped shirts and celebrated with our opponents (as much as one can when no common language is shared). The president of the football club then invited us back to his restaurant and we indulged in his hospitality for the rest of the afternoon - rather too well in a number of cases! The only worrying thing was that everywhere we went, we were surrounded by an armed police guard. My initial misunderstanding that they were there because they feared trouble from the ‘English hooligans’ was dispelled when we found out that word had gone around the local area about us and there was quite a high kidnapping threat. For some reason, this worried me less than my first thought and the police were fantastic throughout the day.

The night was left to our Gala Dinner at the wonderfully luxurious Hacienda, which was fabulous. In the morning, dressed as Andean cowboys (right down to chaps and hats), we were then allowed to take the horses and gallop them up to magnificent views of the snow covered volcano, Cotopaxi.

Our journey home was broken by a late afternoon and evening in Quito, buying ponchos (that we’ll never wear at home) and witnessing some of the finest architecture in South America.

The group returned to Heathrow as firm friends. The achievements of that group of people were remarkable.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. In fact, we’ve signed up to complete a project in Cape Town, South Africa, next February. In my head, that should be easier and less intense. Surely? No altitude problems, better weather…but then each of these projects seems to have intensity written all over it, and maybe that’s why they are so rewarding.

If you want to learn more about the Bobby Moore Fund projects, then please have a look here.