brothers in arms - my interview with Veterans Aid CEO Hugh Milroy

A couple of months ago, I had the good fortune to be commissioned by the Victoria Business Improvement District’s magazine “inSW1” to interview Hugh Milroy, Chief Executive of the charity Veteran’s Aid.

The magazine is now out, and so I have taken the liberty of publishing my version of the article here.  Beware... this is a lengthy article.

Dr Hugh Milroy leans back in his chair and fixes his gaze upon me from the other side of the desk. His is an intense stare that accompanies a relaxed manner and a ready smile. This is not, I find myself thinking, quite what I had expected.

A former Wing Commander in the RAF, recipient of an OBE and holder of a PhD, what I had expected was that the CEO of Veterans Aid would be altogether more formidable and imposing.

The room itself also belies many of the usual preconceptions you might have of a CEO’s office. Boxes are stacked from floor to ceiling against one wall, full of clothes and other essentials. Another wall is dominated by a painting of a WWII Spitfire. There’s a meeting table, which I’m later told is second hand. Elsewhere there are collection tins inserted into old boots, a portrait of the Queen, and artwork produced by some of the veterans the charity has helped. But more on that later.

Dr Hugh Milroy, CEO of Veterans Aid

What wasn’t in evidence in his office was any trace of standing on ceremony, of self-importance or of lavish expense. It is a businesslike office with enough personality about it to feel genuine, without being over-bearing.

Little did I know at that precise moment, I had entered a world where so many of my preconceptions would lead me to nothing but a slight feeling of confusion.

Affable and amiable he may be, but Milroy is clearly a driven man, a man with a clear sense of purpose and deep understanding of the people Veterans Aid supports. And it is in regard to these people that I soon begin to realise that much of what I had considered to be received wisdom was actually nothing but misleading.

Veterans Aid works with former service personnel who, in civilian life, have hit upon hard times for one reason or another. A veteran is classified as anyone who is ex–Army, Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, Royal Marines, or from the Merchant Services. It also covers the Reservists and in fact just one day's service qualifies any of the above to be considered veterans. The charity sees itself as very much part of the Victoria scene and has been for much of the 80 years it has been in existence.

Myth busting

Anyone paying even scant attention to the media will have read or heard that a disproportionate number of rough sleepers in the capital are veterans and that they all have drink and drug problems.

This is perhaps the first myth that needs dealing with, and it’s one that Milroy dispels with the relaxed sense of focus he displays throughout our time together.

“We see veterans who are in crisis,” Milroy explains. “Real crisis – homelessness is only one aspect of that.”

Yet for all the truth of that statement, it remains inescapably true that when it comes to actually getting someone off the streets, Veterans Aid is remarkably efficient and effective. The charity provides in excess of 20,000 nights of accommodation every year, and can house between 60 and 80 people per night; in addition to its Buckingham Palace Road HQ, Veterans Aid has its own hostel in east London.

“You could look upon Veterans Aid as the accident and emergency service for the veteran community,” Milroy tells me.

“If someone needs accommodation we’ll find them somewhere, whether it’s in our hostel or in a hotel. If they need detox we’ll get them on a detox programme. If they need clothes, a suit for a job interview perhaps, we’ll do that. We try to be as pragmatic as possible in the way we handle things.”

There are no hand outs. But there is a helping hand up to those who need it and, just as importantly, are willing work hard to make the most of the help available.

I ask Milroy if this pragmatism is because the organisation, and the majority of the people working there are ex-military – do people with a military background have a particular approach to fixing things and making progress because of having served in the armed forces?

“There may be something in that, perhaps we are quite straight in our approach to things. But I think it’s important to point out that people don’t come to us because they’ve been institutionalised by the time they spent in the armed forces. If we were dealing with problems caused by institutionalisation, then it would seem strange that we rarely see people who have served for a long time.”

Common ground, common language

Milroy talks to me at length about the need to help people rediscover their resilience, something he describes as running like a thread through all service personnel. He refuses my suggestion that surely those who have served in the armed forces are predisposed toward eschewing hand outs and favouring an opportunity to stand on their own two feet, whereas – I suggest – run-of-the-mill civilians are that bit softer, lack that resilience, and will gladly take the hand out.

He is quick to correct me in a firm yet non-chiding manner that sits well with his overall demeanour of a man who is thoroughly relaxed and at home with himself, yet uncompromisingly focussed and alert. “The ‘service’ part is a very good way of getting to ground zero, where we can all talk the same language,” he tells me. “Beyond that it’s down to the individual.”

Finding a common language is clearly an important aspect of helping someone in need start to find their self respect once again. After all, few of us flourish as a result of being patronised and talked down to. Veterans Aid works to sow the seeds of a physical support network of friends and acquaintances in the lives of those it helps, addressing one of the most pernicious demons many of its clients are facing – social isolation. The downward spiral of drink and drug addictions, much like the burdens of growing mountains of debt, will ultimately push people away from their friends and family until, all too often, they have no one to turn to, no one to talk to.

The typical user of Veterans Aid’s services is male and aged somewhere between 38 and 45. It is generally the case that they joined up at an early age and served for around three years. Like many people they encounter difficulties in later life and some simply struggle to overcome these difficulties.

The younger veterans, in their 20s, encounter the same barriers to social housing that face anyone else of their age in the UK.

Far and wide

Last year, Veterans Aid received around 2,000 calls for help, it put 216 people into accommodation. But it also works hard through a network across the country to identify those needing support before they arrive in London – Victoria coach station being one of the key magnets.

Milroy talks of people graduating from the Veterans Aid service, and how they must be ready and capable individuals that can sustain themselves once they’ve received the helping hand up. Otherwise, he cautions, it’s a waste of both time and money.

“We see people from all branches of the services and all ranks. But very few are in trouble because of their military service. They’re here because of life in Britain today – which can be difficult for anyone.

“In fact, it is extremely rare (Milroy places a great deal of emphasis on the words extremely rare) for Veterans Aid to see somebody with PTSD. What we see is people with complex problems. Addictions, alcohol abuse, debt, general mental health issues – just like one-in-four of the general population might also suffer at some point,” he says, referring to a statistic often quoted by the NHS and mental health charities such as MIND.

Not just art for art’s sake

It’s not all detox and emergency housing though. There are examples of veterans going on training courses that will enable them to get regular, well-paid jobs. Some have gone to university, and in December Veterans Aid will be hosting an exhibition at the SW1 Gallery of works of art created by some of the people it has helped.

Veterans Aid is an integral part of the Victoria community and this year is its 80^th anniversary. Clearly held in high regard, it was the recipient of Victoria BID’s jubilee fund raising lunch in May and has received the support of the Lord Mayor of Westminster. It is involved in training officers from the Metropolitan Police on how to identify and help veterans in need of support. It seeks to stem the flow of homeless people arriving in SW1. It rolls up its sleeves and finds practical, sustainable solutions to the problems facing many people who at some point in their past have served Queen and country.

I reflect on what I’ve learned as I leave Milroy’s office, and upon the ordinariness of it all – the lack of pretention, the absence of affectation.

On my walk up the two flights of stairs earlier that morning I had met two Veterans Aid staff who had once been on the receiving end of the charity’s help, and a third man who was clearly there in need of said help.

It is someone’s birthday at Veterans Aid, and as I leave I hear an office full of people singing “happy birthday” to their colleague, as happens in pretty much any and every office all across the country.

You can find out more about Veterans Aid by visiting their website here.

Portrait of Dr Hugh Milroy is copyright Glyn Strong/Veterans Aid

july 2012 wordcloud

July was my busiest month so far this year, in terms of traffic to the blog. Here's a wordcloud highlighting what I wrote about...

July 2012: Sean Fleming, "don't run with scissors" wordcloud

january-june 2012 - six months as a wordcloud

Last year I created wordclouds at the end of each month.  I've stopped doing it each month as it felt like it was becoming a bit of a *thing*.  But I find them interesting to look back on, so I've created one that covers the first half of 2012.

January-June 2012 - Sean Fleming's "don't run with scissors" wordcloud

why the uk health service is not america's concern

Following the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, the world’s media was awash with reaction and opinion. Not all of it glowing. A fair few overseas commentators seemed to find the NHS section of the evening somewhat troubling.

For those that don’t know, the NHS is our National Health Service, set up in the wake of WWII, state-owned and funded by taxes.

Many US Republicans (and some Democrats too) point at our NHS when arguing against many of President Obama’s planned health reforms. A lot of what I read today was woefully inaccurate at best, and rantingly offensive at worst.

Our health service *is* free at the point of delivery. There is no ‘gaming’ it. We do have a private health sector, which is thriving. So, if you have the money you can choose to pay rather than use the NHS. You get treated by the same doctors, sometimes in the same hospitals. But you get treated sooner.

All emergency treatment is via the NHS – from heart attacks through to car accidents, shootings, stabbings etc.

The use by people in the US of the term “socialized” health care means nothing to us. That simply is not what it is, not what it feels like.  It is a hollow ideologue’s term to defend their distaste for providing health care for all members of society.

It is my belief that the true test of a society is how it regards the less fortunate and those in need of help. But I keep that opinion to myself. I would never stoop so low as to lecture people in the US, for example, on what their health system lacks – because I don’t live there.

The UK’s NHS is far from perfect. The waiting lists are too long. There is too much emphasis on measuring the wrong aspects of patient treatment and not enough on actual patient care. Some hospital governing bodies (it’s done regionally) have run out of money. The quality of care you get is often due to how much the people you are treated by actually care about what they are doing.

My father died in early 2011 and was treated very badly in hospital during the last week of his life. My mother’s cancer wasn’t diagnosed, despite many warning signs, until it had advanced to the point where it was declared inoperable. My oldest son was left with a ruptured appendix for almost two weeks before one particular doctor realised what was going on – he dodged a one-in-a-thousand bullet.

Most people in the UK know someone that’s had a bad experience at the hands of the NHS.

Most of us also know someone who received life-saving treatment, or life-changing care at the hands of the NHS.

It’s always fascinating to read what people overseas think of our country. But, mostly, you are all speaking from positions of varying ignorance. The opinions I value most are from those who caveat their comments by declaring themselves onlookers, not behaving like experts.

what the olympic sponsors could learn from beckham and adidas

Adidas pulled off a fantastic PR stunt yesterday at the Westfield Stratford shopping centre (that’s ‘mall’ to my colonial friends).

They installed a photobooth and encouraged people to step inside, whereupon… from the O to the M to golden-balls G – there’s David Beckham waiting for them.

Brilliant work. Inspired. You want warm and fuzzy brand association – there you are. You want to be seen as well connected – help yourself. You want people to think your brand is cool – you got it.

So how come the other big ticket sponsor brands haven't also done something interesting, different, entertaining..?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not for one minute suggesting that anyone in their right mind would want to see Ronald McDonald emerging from the darkness and coming toward them, least of all while they’re in a confined space.

Yet, unless I’ve missed something, there appears to be a dearth of other Olympi-brands dusting off their creative mojos and winning the hearts and minds of the public.

There’s really no excuse in 2012 – it would be as cheap as chips (which you can only buy from McDonalds, unless they are served with fish as part of an authentic fish ‘n’ chips experience) to knock out a whole rash of Facebook competitions and games, or do some cool London stuff via Foursquare, maybe linked to previous London Olympics.  Plus all the big brands have so much corporate sponsorship going on that they have more than enough potential strings to pull for a spot of A-list celebrity endorsement action.

  

Something. Anything. Anyone..?

It really wouldn’t be hard for these big brands to create campaigns or one-off stunts that demonstrate they’ve actually been listening to their customers through all the Facebook groups etc they have.

It makes me wonder what the point of it all is (having a brand presence on Facebook, I mean) if you can’t then take everything you’ve learned about interacting with your customers via a meaningful two-way dialogue and put it to good use throughout all your PR, advertising, marketing and comms activities.

I think that might be worth setting aside for another post.

Footnote: list of the London 2012 Olympic sponsors, partners and supporters here.

o2 and the social media handbrake turn

Did O2 get it right on twitter in the wake of their network outage problems?

No.

And yes.

This may be one of the biggest clichés in PR and comms, but it gets to the heart of a very important consideration – what are you trying to achieve, and what does success look like?

When I and thousands of other O2 users found we couldn’t make calls or send texts, we turned to twitter to see what else we could learn about the problem… was it happening to anyone else, was there an explanation, and so on.  The O2 support page seemed to go offline around the same time, possibly due to being swamped by enquiries.

Twitter was soon a-buzz with tweets from disgruntled O2 customers.

There wasn’t a great deal of information coming out of O2 and the grumbles began to grow in volume and intensity. The O2 twitter account seemed to go a bit quiet at that point too.

By Thursday, O2 seemed to be more in control of itself, if not of the glitch that had caused the outage, and the company’s twitter stream was soon alive with responses to customers.

O2 is one of the few brands I follow and interact with on twitter. Not just because I’m a customer, although that is ultimately the explanation, but also because I’ve always thought they got the balance of interaction and broadcast right. There was a human touch to the O2 account but it never overpowered the O2 brand.

But in my opinion the wheels came off on Thursday.

If you check out Karen Webber’s excellent piece about the outage on NewsReach you’ll see what is probably the most famous tweet from O2 in response to an abusive customer’s tweet. It was inspired. Genuinely funny.

That whoever was staffing the twitter account was given the freedom to do that is a masterstoke.

However, I also got the impression that the huge positive sentiment that tweet elicited from the wider audience prompted someone at O2 to declare “do more tweets like that, I think we’ve found our way out.”

For a while it seemed that O2’s motivation on twitter was no longer to inform or engage with customers, but to demonstrate how achingly funny the brand could be – how irreverent and not-at-all-how-you-expected it was capable of being.

For me, that joke wore thin pretty quickly.

It was clever though.

Social media is a fickle environment. The speed with which people get enthused and subsequently bored is staggering at times. So, why not take advantage of that..?  Which is what O2 did.

By engaging in a spot of banter, attempting to shock us all a little by responding to remarks about anal sex with people’s mothers for example, the brand was executing the perfect social media handbrake turn.

O2 outage..? What O2 outage..?? Look over here - they’re being funny about tweeting first and fellating in hell later, and joining in with jokes about pigeons.

Did O2 get it right? I think that depends entirely on what we think they were trying to achieve. If it was reassuring customers (and don’t forget some of them rely on O2 for their business) that the problem had been identified and was being put right, I don’t think so. If it was turning the tide of negative tweets, then yes.

They could have posted some animated cat gifs, that would probably have had the same effect in terms of getting the angry mob to put down the pitchforks and torches.

Personally, I think there was too much emphasis on trying to be clever and funny, and not enough on acknowledging the problem.

Footnote: can you see sour grapes here? If you feel like trawling through my twitter stream you’ll find a tweet from me to O2 stating that despite being inconvenienced by the outage, I wasn’t feeling at all aggrieved. There are no sour grapes.

Background reading: BBC: "O2 says mobile network fully restored after fault."

a torch, a procession and a glimmer of excitement

If you follow me on twitter you may have seen me occasionally expressing disappointment in the way certain aspects of the London Olympics are being handled.


Mostly, I find it distasteful that the corporate sponsors of the event have such a stranglehold on things. From the removal of beverages that aren't owned by Coca-Cola from swathes of London while the games take place, to the last minute decision to re-route the torch procession to avoid St James's Park (the football ground in Newcastle upon Tyne) because there were advertising boards bearing the names and logos of businesses that weren't official Olympic sponsors.


There are restrictions in place regarding non-sponsors being able to advertise on billboards during the games that mean LOCOG (the committee in charge of organising the London games) has had to buy up loads of advertising space in order to control what appears. I have no idea how much that has cost, nor how that is funded, but surely even the most ardent fan of the Olympics can't possibly think that is a right and proper way for things to be done.


The torch itself doesn't exactly sit well with me either.


When did the torch first become part of the Olympic paraphernalia...?


At the Berlin games of 1936. Yes, that's right the year Hitler tried to use the Olympics as a massive Nazi propaganda vehicle. The torch fitted in with the love of ceremony the Third Reich's architects had.


I remember the Olympics as an exciting sporting spectacle that had us all glued to our TVs when I was a boy. Sporting excellence was all that seemed to matter. It doesn't feel like that any more.


Athletes are no longer the plucky amateurs they once were, either. And is it me, or are police officers starting to look younger these days..?


The sight of the Olympic torch being borne around the UK (and, bizarrely, Ireland too - it's a different country) by a cross section of the population, or wounded service personnel, or ordinary people who have done extraordinary things, is one thing. But when celebrities started getting involved, the whole thing started to look like a circus.


In a couple of days' time, the Olympic torch passes close to my house. My youngest son, having been learning about the Olympics at school recently, is very excited and wants to see it.


So I'll take him.


And I'll hope that some of the wonder and excitement rubs off on me too. Because, for all that I think the excesses of commercialisation have tainted the Olympics, well... it's still the Olympics, right?

is there a glitch..?

The right hand panel of this blog keeps disappearing - the search field, the "about me" bit, the archive, etc.

It *should* be there.

But it isn't.

Apologies.  I'm sure, if you've noticed, it hasn't really bothered you.

I'll try and figure out what has gone wrong when I have a bit of time to focus on it.

Footnote: There was a glitch. It seems ok now.

bigots, banter and middle class banality

It’s not easy being white, middle class, well educated and English. Or so I gather. I’m some of those things, not all of them. So I speak (or write) from the vantage point of the partial outsider. If such a beast exists.

This is a group of people that have been denied so many of life’s little pleasures – in particular, public displays of arrogance, superiority and bigotry. These things simply aren’t cool anymore.

They can’t even get away with being bigoted toward the less well off or the working class anymore. It’s frowned upon.

Don’t go thinking their fetid snobbishness has died off though. It’s the getting found out that’s frowned upon. Being clumsy enough to give the game away is not cool. And so the bigot just reinvented itself – well, slightly.

Want to see it in action? Check out the I hate banter brigade. On one hand this is a great example of how some people on twitter really need a few actual problems in their lives in order to gain some perspective. But on the other, it’s a plain as they come down-the-nose sneer at the working class.

The kinds of conversational dynamic that get labeled as banter are really no different to badinage, or witty repartee. Except even I know you’re unlikely to hear “it’s just a bit of badinage” offered as an excuse from someone who doesn’t have three or four A levels, a 2:1 from a red brick, and who has a job rather than a career.

When I hear (or read) “I hate banter” it translates as I hate people who aren’t like me, who aren’t as clever as me, who don’t share my sensibilities.

No one’s perfect though, least of all me. I hate bigots and snobs – I’m only human. I especially have a problem the ones that are not as funny or as clever as they think, but do have a superiority complex than tends a little toward clinical narcissism.

I wonder sometimes if part of the problem is simply that WMCWEEs (that’s white, middle class, well educated and English) can’t be racist anymore. Unless they’re talking about Americans, of course. For some reason I haven’t been able to figure out, despite several years of thinking about it, it’s still OK to tell racist jokes about Americans – mostly about them being fat or stupid.

I’ve heard middle class English whities with degrees from hard-to-get-into universities make remarks about Americans that simply would not be tolerated in public if the word “black” was used rather than the word “American.” The extent of their denial when their racism is pointed out to them is the only thing more astounding, in fact.

It’s the same with the French. Being rude about the French is a commonplace activity. But again, isn’t it tantamount to racism?

I think what I’m getting at here is displacement. Those people savvy enough to realise they have to cloak their bigotry will do just that and will find other targets and use other weapons.

I don’t have any answers. This is, really, little more than my using 500+ words to say “I hate smug middle class wankers.”


Footnote: I dislike anonymous commenters. If you can't be adult enough to put your name to a comment, don't bother. I'll only delete it. 

isabella joice fleming, 3 may 1924 - 3 may 1997

Today would have been my mother’s 88^th birthday.  It’s also the 15^th anniversary of her death. 

Born in the 1920s in Newcastle upon Tyne, my mother moved south with her parents and some of her siblings during the war years of the 1940s – she was the youngest of seven children.

Although she left school aged just 14, my mother always seemed intellectually very accomplished and was a big believer in education. Some of my earliest memories are of her teaching me to read.  She had cut out small squares of card and hand-written letters on them; we would sit and make words by putting them together.

1966: yes, that's me. And yes, I still like ice cream.

I can remember many happy times spent with her. Lots of warmth and laughter. But my memories of her also include the sense of disappointment that she carried with her.

I suspect she knew she could have achieved more in her own right.

When the end came for my mother, it came in the form of cancer of the oesophagus, which over the course of many, many months whittled away at her until there was almost nothing left. It was an ugly and unpleasant end.

She died before my sons were born. But I know she would have adored them.