Governments all over the world have been shackled by Covid 19. It is totally understandable that they didn’t know what to do, when to do it or, in most cases, how to do it. How could they? They have not seen a pandemic before and the records of the last one show that it dealt,…
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Martin Wolf, who was Guest of Honour at last year’s Drink & Think, wrote a sensitive piece about Democracy beginning at home [‘The healing of democracies starts at home.’ Financial Times 23Jun21.] Meanwhile, a Freedom House classification chart showing the decline of the free and the rise of the not free is frankly chilling. Of…
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A pandemic causes chaos in some parts of an economy, as Covid-19 has demonstrated. Jobs are lost, many never to be replaced. Work patterns change and the relationships between employers and employees alter and may take time to settle down again – or, indeed, may never settle. Authority has taken harder knocks in the last…
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Dedicated to Zoey Lim, Aspiring Terrific Mentor who suggested this subject One of the many advantages of having been born before agricultural tractors were commonplace among farmers, and having spent much of my childhood on farms,was that I was taught to plough a field with horses and a blade. Valuable as this experience might have…
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Dedicated to my cousin-by-marriage, now approaching his 100th birthday, Sqn.Ldr. A C Gilbert DFC, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur The first duty of a government is ‘to defend (the interests of) its people’. For as long as the world is carved up into ‘countries’ that will remain a government’s prime responsibility. ‘Carved’ may not be…
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Today’s Daily Paradox is kindly written for us by Douglas Bullock With increasing freedom from poverty, predation and a vastly increasing affluence, today’s Paradox examines the boundary between individual privileges, rights and responsibilities, our duties to the Environment and Societies people live in, and the imperative for us to evolve. To keep moving forward, integrated…
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Several people who have read our articles on ‘The Heart of the Matter’ have asked “How do you get there?” I will try to show you. First, you have a proposition, an idea, a concept, a thought. It may have developed slowly or come in a flash. People always think spontaneous ideas are the best.…
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A rather different Daily Paradox but I hope it will be intriguing and a little challenging. What is the most beautiful thing you have seen on your tv or computer screen in the last couple of years? Beautiful means moving, stirring, touching the heart with love and hope. Demonstrating the best and hoping for the…
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We used to say in Britain that most jobs were passed on to Buggins because it was “Buggins’ turn”. Too often true. The top job is not a reward, it is a challenge. Filling top jobs is less ‘Buggins’s turn’ today. There are many enlightened appointments made. But still not as many as are needed.…
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Our old friend Edward de Bono died on 9th June. There are plenty of obituaries that give dates and times of his many achievements so I shall confine my comments to some of the events that involved us. There were plenty, and they were invariably lively and often challenging. As a thinker you can’t please…
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