Sorry is the easiest word to say

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 ...

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Left, right, left, right

I often think it comical How nature often does contrive That every boy and every gal That’s born into this world alive Is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative.  I thought it best to leave out the fal-lal-la’s from WSGilbert’s lyrics, but it...

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Shooting the messenger

It is extraordinary how so many things in life seem to be either black or white.  Despite the complexity of modern society many seemingly want to view every social, environmental, moral, and economic issue as either being from one political standpoint or another. Parties of the centre, and those who proudly nail their colours firmly...

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Networking is not working

It’s all too easy to get the wrong end of the stick with networking.  Perhaps it’s the memory of the “networking opportunity” coffee breaks at conferences when people you’ve never met sidle up and try to engage you in polite conversation in order to sell you things that you don’t want to buy.  These opportunities can be...

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Travails of my Aunt (part 2)

For those of us brought up in an era of three TV channels and the test card, the iPlayer is a marvellous innovation.  It provides high quality content for use on multiple platforms so that the consumer can choose where, when and how they watch and listen.  It is a service of which the BBC can be justly proud.  It is, however, as l...

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The inevitability of gradualism