Opinion

By Nick Joy

It is my inalienable right to speak in this society (but why do you have to exercise your right so much, I hear you say). I suppose this is an inevitable issue for the verbose as there needs to be some sort of justification for so much ear damage. I remember asking a colleague, in early management days, why he sat through interminable industry meetings without speaking. He said it made no difference, but I couldn’t and can’t see the logic of that.

For me, this is a fundamental duty of citizenship. I don’t suppose any of you have had someone come up to you and thank you for being a fish farmer. It won’t have happened but it should have.

The people who are at the beginning of an industry and want to help the world move forward are important. So before anyone else says it…thanks! Thanks for the dangerous days, the stress about losing everything, the exhausting hard work, for coping with government trying to work out how to legislate and, most of all, for listening to those people who think you are bad for just existing.

Add yourself to the following list: wind turbine developers and installers, electric car developers, drone builders and all of the industries that are unpopular but necessary for the way the world will have to be.

Where was I? Without the right to speak we would not have the developments we have now.All democratic societies depend on the views of the reasonable.

What has changed in the last 50 years is the lionising of the advocate, irrespective of their interest in the matter. It has become assumed that someone opposing something must be fighting nobly for a cause, while those who support it must have something to gain.

The idiocy of this simplification is never more obvious than looking at those who oppose wind farms. Nearly always it is hill walkers or people with houses nearby, who think their view is going to be damaged or their property price damaged. I am not going near salmon farm objectors or the ones who make a good living out of it.

Advocacy has become a legitimate career choice. It is a lucrative business, surviving on criticising others and moving the goalposts to ensure that there is always something to be critical of.

If all industry is good industry then there is no advocacy. Sadly, industry has plenty of hideous exponents and there will always be a need for people to expose them.

However, the more it becomes a career, the more cynical people’s attitudes will become towards it.At the conference I attended in New York, where funds were discussing the best places to put their money, an interesting voice who should know, said ‘government isn’t listening to advocates any more’.

I did not have time to ask why but a similar thing is happening in the universities where I give talks. I normally ask the students what careers they are looking at.The NGOs and the regulators used to take up about 90 per cent when I started doing this about 10 years ago.

When all had expressed a preference, I would introduce the 90 per cent to the 10 per cent who were going to pay for them. In the last few years, this has significantly changed and few want to join the NGOs or the regulators now.

Why? Well I guess that at last people are beginning to understand that we have to have people who do things. Criticising other people is a choice but actually doing something about it is better. Joining industries that are not popular is a good choice.

For this world to change to be what it needs to be for the countless to come, we need to make sure that we express the need for change, that we encourage the young to take on the challenge, not to become cynical and to do rather than to criticise.

Only when you have done something, can you start to understand the sheer effort of will, discipline and determination that is required to achieve. So many of those who tell you what you have done is wrong, would never have done it themselves in the first place.

So as you can see, I will continue to express my hope that the world will get better at doing what it needs to, and I will continue to try to influence whoever is silly enough to

listen to me.

“The people who are at the beginning of an industry and want to help the world move forward are important”