In the seminal Monty Python sketch, Palin’s character says that an argument is “…a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition” to which Cleese replies “No it isn’t”. Palin continues “Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other...
With the Olympics just around the corner, many London-based organisations are encouraging their staff to work from home rather than increasing the pressure on the already over-stretched transport infrastructure. For many people this will be their first chance to work from home and will give them the opportunity to define their exis...
When the concept of reputation management first became fashionable it was always the banks that topped the list. Dour bank managers (with a dose of Scottish Presbyterianism thrown in) were held up as the pinnacles of trustworthiness. After all, you trusted them with your money. And now look what’s happened. One minute we’...
Apologies if you’re fed up with apologies, but it seems that we’ve now entered a permanently sorry state of affairs. People seem to be either making apologies or clamouring for others to make them. Hastily arranged press conferences, video apologies, and Parliamentary statements seem to be becoming the norm. We’ve even had ...
I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.
You ask me what it is I do. Well, actually, you know,
I'm par...
Three recent news stories have raised questions about the nature of work. Firstly, there is the transatlantic spat between the US tyre company CEO who is declining to take over a Goodyear factory in Northern France because the “so-called workers” only worked three hours a day, spending the rest of the time eating and talking. T...
For the past few weeks I ought to have been living in the past. I’ve been reading two excellent books: Jesse Norman’s book on Edmund Burke and Antonia Fraser’s Perilous Question, which deals with the 1832 Reform Act. Both are great reads; however, both curiously feel as if they are dealing not with historical ev...
I was talking recently with someone who was bemoaning the need to be always informed. It made me realise just how unfashionable it has become, when asked for one’s views on a subject, to simply say “I don’t know”. The sheer volume of news and information that bombards us in our daily personal and business life is overwhel...
Don’t you love September? I’ve always found its arrival a time for contemplation. With over half the year gone, it’s now downhill all the way to Christmas and the next set of New Year’s resolutions. The days are getting shorter, the cricket whites are put away, and the rugby season kicks off. In other words, it always f...
In my mid-teens I was given as a present the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. I started to read at the beginning and worked my way up to letter C where I arrived at Churchill. I was hugely enjoying reading his famous motivational and inspirational quotes when I read: “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of qu...
