David Godfrey-Thomas, Afina’s CEO, comments on an article by Stefan Stern in the Financial Times:
“John Lennon and former Congressman Paul Mitchell make strange bedfellows but they both share sentiments to live by…”
Do not dismiss today’s “vulgar nincompoops”. They are the future. “I fought the war for your sort,” a disgruntled commuter tells the Beatles in their 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night. “I bet you’re sorry you won,” Ringo Starr replies. In November 1969, John Lennon sent back his MBE “in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against Cold Turkey [his latest single] slipping down the charts”.
That sort of laconic humour might help defuse some of today’s tensions. Too many of us, of all ages, are poised to take offence at the slightest mis-step. As Paul Mitchell, a former US congressman, observed in a CNN interview screened after his death from cancer: “Learn to understand people and judge less and love more and let’s have less hatred. It’s destroying our society.”
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