Just been applying for jobs – have decided to focus on my old work again, public sector consultancy. I was on the KPMG jobs website, saw a job, and began to register. Did the usual thing, uploaded my cv, filled n my details, then pressed save. Then bam! I got a message thanking me for applying for the job! Really lucky that the CV was finished. Web designers out there – ‘save’ does not mean ‘apply’! I didn’t upload a cover letter though which is a bit crap, though the website seemed to imply they only want my cv. Contrast that to the Ernst and Young website – good, clear, lots of ‘save as draft’ buttons.

Hello everyone. Apart from the last post (which I wrote ages ago and forgot to post), this has been my longest gap between posts. Since my exams finished 10 days ago it seems like several weeks have passed.  We’ve begun our lecture course on innovation, entrepreneurship and design. Great lecturers so far, but it’s hard to regain my motivation knowing that they won’t be directly examinable. (the exams went okay I think – I’ll let you know when we get results in March)

I am now in anxiety-causing sight of the real world. Having turned the calendar corner that was new year, I can see my money running out and and the need to have a job looming large. I have begun networking, tapping up old contacts and exploring what I might do afterwards.

Do I do what I did before, but in a slightly better role? Maybe.

Do I attempt to make a big change? Maybe.

Do I make money a goal and try to recoup some of my sunk costs? Maybe.

Do I go for what energises me and makes proud of what I do? Well, duh, yes, of course.

I’m in a bit of a pickle because given the fact that when you google my name, this blog comes up, I need to avoid writing anything that might jeopardise future career prospects. So I can’t write that I couldn’t imagine anything worse that working for XXXX company, because i’m changing my mind so fast I might want to work for them next week, and someone might read my blog.

In fact I can’t imagine working for quite a lot of companies. I dearly wish I could abuse them on this blog. I think it would make good reading. But I must stay cool and collected.

This year is general election year in the UK. Polls predict a win for the Conservatives, ousting Labour after 13 years in power. But what can game theory tell us about election strategy, and what does selling drinks on the beach have to do with it?

Imagine a stretch of beach with sunbathers evenly spread along it. You are a selling cold drinks, and there is another seller, selling the same drinks at exactly the same price. The only strategic choice left for you is location along the beach because sunbathers will simply walk to the drinks vendor closest to them. You could locate yourself in the middle of one half of the beach i.e. 1/4 of the way along, and hope that the other guy does the same at the other end of the beach. But if you did that the other guy could simply locate himself in the centre of the whole beach and take about 62.5% of the whole market. So you both end up  in the centre of the whole beach (and probably end up having to differentiate yourself in some way).

This logic shows why petrol stations end up so close to each other. And it also shows why political parties move inexorably towards the centre as elections near. It doesn’t pay to be off to the left or right. So the real battle of an election is in defining the centre (this is where polling and other research comes in), and arguing why your party is much more representative of the centre than the other party.

So where is the centre? Well recently Gordon Brown made a comment about “the playing fields of Eton” – this was designed to create a perception of the Conservatives as way off centre, promoting the interests of a thin slice of the population at one end of the spectrum. He has since pushed this further, stressing that he is not targeting his core vote (i.e. left of centre), but the middle classes.