Life Society

Enoch Powell did such harm to this country. When he did his Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 everything changed. I went from being “Lettsy” in the playground to “that black bastard” and “golliwog” overnight. And, thanks to Brexit, it’s happening again. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. I still believe in the power of music and culture […]

History People Space

50 Years since Apollo 13 – Lessons in leadership and planning

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/29/apollo-13-how-teamwork-and-tenacity-turned-disaster-into-triumph In approaching this crisis, their delegation of authority and deference to expertise is almost total. In the face of high-stakes scenarios, it is tempting to wrest control from more junior colleagues. But in 1970 the approach of mission control was quite different. They empowered their most junior team members, giving them total ownership of […]

Big Brother Big Business Privacy

Surveillance Capitalism

Councils are sharing your data in the UK with whoever wants it, basically (” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/04/councils-let-firms-track-visits-to-webpages-on-benefits-and-disability “). Wolfie Christl, a technologist and researcher who has been investigating the ad-tech industry, said: “Public sector websites and apps should not use invasive third-party tracking at all.” Johnny Ryan, the chief policy officer at the anonymous web browser Brave, […]

Books

American Caesars

My nomadic friend at work dropped this on my desk a while back before heading to catch a cargo ship out of Kiel. We’d been discussing the madness of Nixon over coffee one day in order to avoid any actual work, and he reckoned I’d enjoy this, and he was right. It’s a riveting overview […]

Health

Good News

For ex-smokers. A limited study has shown some evidence that your lungs can replace smoking-damaged cells over time. The study’s joint senior author, Peter Campbell of the UK-based Wellcome Sanger Institute, said the results should give new hope to smokers who want to quit. “People who have smoked heavily for 30, 40 or more years […]