The Pentagon, I am told, has a good working relationship with Disney and other purveyors of a caricatured life. I still remember the time when my then boss wagered me that we would never have a fax facility. Remember the fax? If you are very young you probably won’t. It came and went so quickly.…
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It is easy to draw cartoons of irate shareholders being congratulated for their ESG record while dividends decline. But it is going to happen – is happening already – and shareholders had better do more than laugh about it. They must appreciate that it is part of the price the human race is going to…
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In most societies since we became human beings, whatever form of government they have had, there has been a place for what is often called The Elders. These are people who have experienced life and usually have a more balanced outlook than the desperate young or the flagging middle-aged. It’s not always true, of course.…
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We all know the tragic story of the Boeing 737 Max. The fleet is grounded since the crashes that revealed faults in the way pilots had to react to a particular emergency. Boeing had assumed certain responses and timings which turned out to be wrong in practice. How was that possible given the heavy responsibility…
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Would you say humans had learnt to cooperate with each other enough to survive the changes that are coming? A swift, cynical answer might be ‘No’. The wars and disagreements going on are as bad as ever. There is strife over import tariffs, over Brexit, over Iran, over the dreadful Syrian conflict – the list…
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We never stop growing up, however old we get. We keep growing up whether we like it or not. It shows in our faces. It shows in our smiles, in our words. It shows in our treatment of other people, especially those closest to us. As spring water never stops bubbling to the surface, so…
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson is about to discover that you can be friendly with two wives, you can be kind to two wives, you can even receive forgiveness from two wives but you cannot be married two wives at the same time. That is what he has been given for his homework as Prime Minister.…
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Perhaps the nearest we get to a pure transaction in our lives is in business. I want toothpaste, you have toothpaste to sell. I have the money to buy it, we transact. Satisfaction – at least potentially – all round. There’s something very satisfying about a transaction like that. Clean, unambiguous. Relatively little room for…
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For reasons that had much to do with the war, the death of my mother before I even got to know her and a certain assumed stoicism the English middle class were supposed to exhibit, I grew up a lonely child. My loneliness did sometimes cause me to contemplate suicide, but everyone thinks about that…
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There are so many aspects of the behaviour of the British Prime Minister, the British Government, Britain’s Parliament and relations with the United States President that it is difficult to know where to begin. Certainly it is necessary to be tough to be effective. Tough. Not rude, not stupid, not John Wayne. It is also…
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