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This question was posed in a below the line thread in the Guardian.  My reply: Because: (1) MPs wrongly, and without permission from the electorate, abrogated their responsibility to be the representatives of their constituents by voting to have a referendum. (2) The wrong... Read More

Book review:  Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, HarperCollins (2017) Warning:  contains multiple plot spoilers from the start 1 This is a popular book.  It has won prizes.  The lustrous Jane Garvey, no less, praised it on Woman’s hour.  For the first two... Read More

This is the essay I was required to write at the end of the first term of a psychodynamic counselling skills course Describe your understanding of the counselling relationship. What helps it to develop and what might hinder its development? 1 Counselling.  Well, there’s a... Read More

Olga Tokarczuk, Flights (2007), translated Jennifer Croft, Fitzcarraldo editions (2017) 1 Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a ‘novel’, about ‘travel in the twenty-first century and human anatomy’. Not an easy one and I think Olga Tokarczuk copped out... Read More

Most businesses have concepts of ‘volume of sales’ (number of sales transactions in a given period) and of the (average) ‘value of a sale’. Looking across the broad sweep of businesses in any area (whether geographical area or business sector), clearly there will be businesses... Read More

  1 Tolstoy observes at the start of Anna Karenina, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. *1 Equally, if happiness at work is a doddle;  unhappiness is much more complicated, runs much deeper and is more likely not actually to be... Read More

…to solve the UK’s immigration problem 1 What is the UK’s immigration problem?  It is that some people already resident in the UK think that too many people, currently not resident, are being allowed to come and stay. The indigenous people (some of whom are just the... Read More

This blog is about how to talk to people at networking events If people tell me what they do at networking events, I rarely remember for any length of time.  (That is, after all, why we hand out business cards that say what we do.)  If I do remember, I have may wel... Read More

  As discussed here, in all projects, things go wrong.  In a gigantic project, things will go wrong big time. 1  No plan It is realised that there isn’t a plan.  Or what there is is so inadequate that it’s worse than useless. Given that the Leave side in the referendum did... Read More

As discussed in part 1, the British seem unable to “think things through”.  Here are twelve major brexit problems which those in charge of implementing whatever is agreed will have to face. Even though I am no fortune teller, this is so close to fact, rather than... Read More