John Donne – a better man than you or I!

There is an importance to Easter that goes back  2000 years , it is a festival of Christianity and I was rather hoping to find the VFM podcast thinking a little about it.

The recording was on Maundy Thursday; I thought we might mention it’s importance but the religious significance was dismissed in return for a puff to a football team for beating another team. I had hoped we would get a serious discussion of pensions, instead we got this

You can pick up the pod yourself from this link

I am not in the social circles of Matt Roberts , nor indeed Darren or Nico but I wonder just what podcasts like this do but create noise these days. I listened but not to anything to do with improving the way people retire and there was no further mention of Easter, which suggests that nothing is worth respecting in this podcast world – hey-ho, I am sure that the 15o or so listens this one will get will be relevant to someone.

The relevance of being serious

But I get more reads of my blogs on the irrelevance of their 80-90 minute podcasts than you get listens (and I am one of them). My partner dismisses me with more scorn than usual when she discovers I am plugged in.

The idea , 113 hour +’s ago was that we would move towards a better way to work out if we were giving or getting value for money. Originally, people turned up in a room and hammered things out, I enjoyed people who were serious about making things better. But now? I am sure that Matt Roberts is a well respected person in his world, ex WTW asset manager, now an alternative asset manager for Fulcrum (whoever they are) and a jolly nice bloke but really?

There are a lot of really important people to pensions who are taking their jobs very seriously. They are regular visitors to this blog and they are doing more than playing with their intellect. Nico and Darren and Matt, you have between you – a huge IQ but you are wasting it on these sessions, get serious about the problems that ordinary people have with their later lives and start talking with people who are serious about getting things done.

I know you are better than rotten pods like this one!

Back to Easter, it is too big a subject for you to mess with . I will give you John Donne writing his blog 412 years ago. Pick the bones out of this.

Donne decided after this ride to return to St Pauls and become Dean, even though it would have been easier to have had a life as an erotic poet, politician and many things else. He alongside Bob Dylan is my favorite spokesperson for the voyage of a serious man.

Thanks to my correspondent for suggesting Leonard Cohen is John Donne, he has many of Donne’s talents though maybe not Dylan or Donne’s depth (IMO). See for yourself later, for now take on “1613” below.

What follows is one of the toughest poems in the English language but it is one of the most rewarding. With your brilliant brains, engage with it – you three. You have better things to do on a Maundy Thursday, Good Friday or Easter Day of redemption.

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward