Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

Manufacturing work has moved to China because labour is cheap. Already this is changing as labour becomes more expensive and more organised.

Many companies have realised, too, that operating in China has many hidden costs, including poor quality delivery, the need for extremely careful and trustworthy supervision to avoid unsatisfactory or dangerous substitution of raw materials, poor delivery timekeeping, bad descriptions for shipping leading to delays at ports of exit and entry. Product labelling has been a recurrent problem and sourcing of sensitive raw materials is often confused by relationships of a personal rather than a commercial nature. Pre-delivery payments can be a disincentive to prompt delivery. The list is long.

Assumptions that because labour is cheap, management will be cheap too are fallacious. It is rather the other way round. Because the standards of reliability are often radically different from those of the company’s home country management can – and usually should be – more, not less, expensive.

The great Hongs in Hong Kong built their businesses on the labour negotiating skills of the Compradors who themselves became very rich men. Without them trade would have been impossible.

The need for astute and clever management extends beyond the manufacturing area. Consultants, advisers, agents and go-betweens of all sorts are kept far more on their toes in a country where the commercial culture is still being developed and where one man’s promise is often another man’s profit.

Many companies have failed to make a profit operating in China. Some have withdrawn their businesses, making a substantial loss in the process. Those who succeed are generally companies that are used to operating in uncharted areas such as Africa, Russia and South America where systems are seen as something to be circumvented and logical, tidy trading is rare – and where the quantum of agents’ fees are a crucial part of the negotiation.

Cheap management in China is always the most expensive.

Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

Alabama is used to tornadoes; they are an annual event. The people who live there are prepared for them at this time of year. In spite of that what President Obama describes as catastrophic storms have left almost 300 dead in the past few days. Following catastrophic earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand and many examples of extreme weather elsewhere in the world it is time to ask what is the relationship between what happens above the earth and what happens below it.

We understand that the climate is changing and we know some of the causes, although there are still many people who have personal or commercial agendas that make them deny the obvious. What we do not yet know is the relationship between the different manifestations of our climate’s ups and downs. It is important that we should.

The pressure to accommodate our rapidly growing population on a planet that clearly cannot feed, water and house the numbers it is expected to, is at the heart of how much effort and money we are prepared to put into correcting our behaviour to make things better. If it is established that tornadoes and earthquakes are in some way related then we must redouble our efforts to bring man’s behaviour more into line with a sustainable planet.

It is not just a matter of climate and core. The basis of our planet’s economic survival is growth. Successful capitalism depends on it. A shrinking world population – for that is what we are soon going to have to see – brings economic consequences that themselves will be called catastrophic. Already ageing populations in many developed countries are threatening the stability of their economies.

The immediate consequences of catastrophic climate and core events are personal tragedy and rescue. Their causes, interrelationships and solutions have profound consequences for our children and grandchildren. It is time to raise our eyes above our immediate survival and comfort and accept that if we do not plan better there may be nobody to remember us a hundred years from now.

Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

Everyone loves a wedding, especially a Royal Wedding. The ceremony, the pageantry, the exquisite music, the colour all make for a spectacle it is difficult to find elsewhere,

There are other reasons for enjoying weddings. Commitment, that precious quality rightly demanded by employers of their employees, seems to be less in evidence than it used to be. The promise of a lasting relationship, the hope for new life both make a wedding a special occasion.

Tomorrows wedding will be seen by many people. Some will watch for the spectacle, some will pray for the happiness of the couple getting married, some will hope for Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to see their first great grandchild. Whatever the reason, many will celebrate the marriage of Wills and Kate.

Not everyone is in favour of Monarchy. Some regard it as vulgar, wasteful and giving to human beings something they have not earned. I respect the views of people who think like this but I do not agree with them. Stability and continuity in our hysterically fast changing world are to be prized. If you don’t have a Monarch you have to elect a President to fulfill the dreary duties politicians have neither the time nor the training for. Trouble with Presidents is that they can get ideas above their station – ask Mr Putin about that if you don’t agree with me.

Seven generations on from Queen Victoria the British Monarchy is well and living at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Balmoral and a few other places too. They provide a service I would not be willing to perform myself and they do it at no cost – in fact, the British Monarchy is a substantial net revenue earner for Britain. That’s not why I’d keep them, though.

Queen Elizabeth the Second has lived through twelve British Prime Ministers and most of them will testify to the value they place on her experience and commonsense. She made a commitment when she became Queen on February 6, 1952, at the age of 25 to serve her people for as long as she lived. She has fulfilled that promise with a great generosity of spirit, patience that would put Job in the shade and a sense of humour that prevents the whole thing becoming ridiculous.

I shall be watching the Prince marry his Princess. And I shall be saying God Save the Queen and God Bless the Bride.

Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

You could be forgiven for thinking that you have heard it all about why money values are falling and cash seems to be dripping away from your savings daily. Now there is a new explanation. Termites in Uttar Pradesh have chewed their way through bank notes worth some 10 million rupees. And this is not an isolated incident.

In a repeat performance in Bihar a trader lost his life savings to the money grubbers. We know how he feels. In a breathtaking (even for bankers) disclaimer the manager of the bank in which the trader’s deposit box was sited said “The bank is not liable for the deposits kept inside the safe as it is only when a locker is found broken that the bank is answerable”. Dentists are not responsible for your teeth either, I suppose, and certainly not when they are in your mouth.

A very senior and erudite banker explained to me the other day why printing trillions of dollars did not lead to inflation. Technical jargon abounded, logic was chopped as finely as any I have ever heard, commonsense was conveniently ignored.

Money is a symbol of goods and services, nothing more. Print more of it to represent a given quantity of goods and services and its value goes down. No amount of logic chopping changes that. But money is not just the notes and coins we handle. It is confidence, too. Lose confidence in money and it gets transferred elsewhere – to gold, for example. Ah, you noticed the price of gold, too, did you?

What is happening to our money system is that, due to gross mismanagement resulting from unchecked greed, it is failing. As it does, valuables of other sorts, such as commodities, will take its place. Already many people in poorer countries are turning back to barter where I give you a bucket of water and you give me a loaf of bread. Primitive, perhaps, but the values of the items being traded are swiftly established and the concept of trade – the willing buyer and the willing seller – instantly effective.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, recently complained that people are not angry enough with the banks. Perhaps he has forgotten that possession is nine tenths of the law and that the banks possess our money. They have the power to lock it away from us for the rest of our lives. That’s why the anger, though there, is muted.

Yes, the banks are and will remain well and truly in control of our money – provided, of course, that the money grubs don’t get at it first.

Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

Annual General Meetings present an opportunity for those running an organisation to meet their owners or shareholders and give an account of their stewardship. If reports presented to the shareholders are clear and transparent and if, in turn, the shareholders treat their directors as responsible people, the event should be a sensible but rigorous examination of the health of the organisation.

Judged by those criteria the AGM I attended last evening depicted an organisation in the terminal stages of incompetence. The Chairman allowed the noise level to reach such a pitch that only those with pristine hearing could understand what was being said. A Resolution of predictably an extremely controversial nature that had been presented to the members turned out to be ultra vires and had to be embarrassingly withdrawn by the proposers, one of whom had pretentions to the Chair.

Procedural matters and points of order dominated the meeting so completely that virtually no business was transacted at all. Presentations apparently intended to enlighten the members were poorly made, with illegible tables of figures and dimly lit pictures, and so peppered with caveats of the “nothing has been decided” sort, that the exercise would have been more fruitful if conducted as a brainstorming session.

A group of directors at odds with each other will never communicate well with their shareholders. It is in the nature of our aspirations to democracy that we will have committees and boards. They have a place in an organisation but when they come to dominate it the consequence is virtual insurrection. For some reason they reduce personal responsibility and introduce the game of pass the buck.

Committees design camels, not racehorses.

But society is built on compromise. The give and take exhibited in a good marriage is mirrored in well-run organisations where disputes remain objective and the simple but effective Top in the Boardroom technique of fitting personal objectives to corporate needs solves problems before they happen.

What can be learnt from the several thousands of pounds of paper consumed and the hours of seemingly pointless dissention at the AGM I attended?

You can be as meticulous a communicator as you like but if you cannot handle the person or people with whom you are communicating it counts for nothing. As with all leadership, some will carry the torch, others the fire-extinguisher. Both must know what the other is doing; both must work in harmony. If they do not one will surely set fire to the other and the other will smother the one with foam.

At least, that’s what happened last night.

Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

The spark plug has not changed much in the 150 years since it was invented. This reliable little device ignites countless trillions of explosions in car engine chambers. It works well but ignites only the compressed fuel immediately around it causing waste and, because of the unburnt fuel, pollution. Lasers ignite more of the fuel, increasing efficiency and reducing waste and pollution.

The analogy between the spark plug and any stimulus to our brain is a good one. The brain is kicked into action by observing something from within it or outside it, mainly the latter. Something triggers thoughts and we start to relate them to our and other people’s needs. When you see a dripping tap you turn it off. If it won’t turn off, you call a plumber and have it fixed. That is a simple stimulus with obvious responses. The spark plug of the dripping tap has triggered obvious action.

Suppose, however, that the observed tap also stimulated thoughts about the need to prevent dripping taps worldwide. They are a source of massive loss of water, now regarded as the most precious and most endangered commodity on the planet. We might then proceed to think about how to use the pressure behind the flow of water to effectively seal taps when they are not immediately required. Such taps exist; you can find them in many public washrooms. As long as you exert pressure on the tap it will run; when you stop, it seals.

How cold we produce simpler, cheaper and more universal versions of this desirable technology?

Creative thinking is to the mind what lasers are to the combustion chamber of an engine. In addition to seeing obvious answers to immediate problems, it also stimulates the brain to think more widely and create inventions and solve problems beyond the immediate and obvious.

Today’s minds need the laser of creativity to maximize our ability to develop ideas and to reduce waste. New technology is the first source of what will help an over-crowded planet survive. It is also now clear that an actively stimulated and perpetually functioning mind is much less susceptible to dementia and related diseases and can go on functioning actively well into old age.

If you have not found the laser of creativity now could be the moment to do so.

Bismarck said that politics is the art of the possible. Possibilities change and yesterday I suggested we could stave off the threat of the social media turning democracy into a rolling referendum. That is already happening and it may lead to anarchy and to minorities being bullied by the majority.

A five year term is good for a politician. It gives him or her the chance to make a difference without having to look over their shoulder hourly at public opinion. But why should we vote for all the Members of Parliament at the same time.

In the UK there are 650 Members in the House of Commons. If we exclude the holiday months of December and July / August and some public holiday dates there would be about 33 voting weeks each year. Four constituencies a week would allow 130 elections a year. Five years would complete 650 elections.

The benefits to society and to democracy would include a weekly check on constituents’ views of the government’s performance without the threat of a sudden change. Government could moderate its policies – or not depending on how it viewed the need to stick with decisions that might take time to commend themselves to the electorate.

The five yearly circus of a General Election with the “benevolent budget” the year before it would be done away with. New parties could field candidates in a few constituencies without having to fund a national campaign. Democracy would be advanced.

Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

So President Obama joins the legions who meet on Facebook, confirming his high-tech, up-to-date connectivity. Good for him, the social networks are a great way for politicians to tell us their plans and an even greater way for us to tell them what we think.

And therein lies the danger. We vote someone into Parliament to represent us, not to be a delegate. As a representative, we first establish that his standards and principles accord with our own, we vote for him to represent us. When we have given him that role we leave him to make decisions until our next opportunity to vote him in or out. That is democracy. It doesn’t mean we cannot communicate with him during his years of office but it does mean that we have cast him as our representative and we do not expect to dictate his every decision and vote.

The danger is that our social media allow just that to happen. Recently an MP in UK started the day with one vote in mind, changed it later because of what the bulk of the blogs were saying – and then changed it back again when the social media swung the other way.

Democracy by daily vote is not democracy. A rolling referendum is no substitute for well informed and responsible representation. By all means let our voices be heard and certainly we should kick out any politician who betrays the principles on which we elected him. But let us avoid politics by popular shout.

They lead to anarchy and the bullying of minorities by the majority.

If we want better democracies let us phase our voting. I’ll tell you how we could do that tomorrow.

Apple are suing Samsung on the grounds that the latter have copied too much of the iPad in order to create their Galaxy TAB. That’s for the courts to sort out. But what has been the effect on me?

I have been eyeing the iPad and the Galaxy for some time, gyrating slowly around them as one does around a beautiful girl at a dance when one is too shy to ask her. Portability, function, a general distrust of both companies for various reasons, the prospects of the new, improved version coming on stream soon – all these delaying tactics have held back the final commitment. The analogy with girls really does sustain, doesn’t it?

But now I see the light, clearly, unequivocally. Apple has switched it on. I will buy a Galaxy. Why? Because it is so like the iPad. I have it on the best authority, none other than Apple themselves.

Publicity is a strange monster. When you think it will help it often kicks you in the teeth. Banks know that, although they seem to ignore it pretty thoroughly. When you fear publicity most it can turn up trumps. The Japanese government has sadly not learnt that yet.

Every word we speak, every promotion we offer, tells more than we expect it to. We should be careful who we sue and for what. It may just help the opposition.

Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox

‘No man is an island’ said John Donne in the seventeenth century (1572-1631) – long after the Book of Gen 4:3-8 had asked ‘AM I my brother’s keeper?’

These are questions we have struggled with throughout time and we face them more brutally today than perhaps ever before. We can support the rebels in Libya – but not by putting troops on the ground – except, it seems, for Military Advisors. A handful of them are being landed in Libya to help the rebels. They are known as the Military Advisory Team – MAT for short. Let’s hope they do not become the DOOR MAT, trampled on by both sides in the dispute.

There is no doubt about our duty to interfere in other people’s lives when we see them doing harm to the innocent. There is equally no doubt about the right of each person to his or her independence – the gift we were all given when born and the only gift we can give over and over again to those we meet and care for.

Where do we draw the line between interference and allowing independence?

It is a question every police force in the world has to answer hourly. In today’s world we need urgent international answers to this question if we are not to stagger from one dispute to another. But we also need personal answers so that we are prepared for the neighbour’s spouse abuse or child mistreatment.

Libya is not some far off country with remote problems; it is your next door neighbour in a global world.