The fair’s not fair

There’s been a spate recently of major high street chains going to the wall.  Of all the many reasons behind their demise, one stands out: their inability to compete with internet retailers.  Retail, of course, isn’t the only business that is struggling to face the challenges of disruptive technology; whilst the death of newspa...

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Useful work v useless toil

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...

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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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Time to change our politics

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...

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The inevitability of gradualism