Current Affairs
Cricket & Retrospective Racism
As a cricket chairman, one of the most thought-provoking events of the last few weeks, has been the racism scandal at Yorkshire. Is there an inherent racism problem in the game and can people be forgiven for remarks allegedly made a decade ago? My opinion, which is not necessary the right one, is that if someone can see what they were in the past and have learnt from it, they should be able to move on. We are evolving all the time and many ...
Corruption is the Issue, Not Second Jobs
I keep hearing MP’s and journalists debating what should happen to stop sleaze in parliament. This of course, is after the recent row over the Tories trying to ringfence Owen Paterson. Paterson was getting paid by two companies who were winning government contracts. This was clearly wrong, and he should have been sacked. In the end, he resigned, deciding that the cruel world of politics was too much. Then, shortly after, it was revealed that ...
Hugh Edwards and the Train Awards Scandal!!
There has been a lot of bad press about Tory MP’s this week. Second jobs in The British Virgin Islands, paid lobbying on behalf of Covid contractors, and an attempt to rip up the standards bill to protect Owen Paterson. Yet, whilst the media outlets have been all over this like a rash caused by an ill-fitting Burton suit, The Telegraph have been working on stories that really count. This week, whilst other national newspapers concentrated ...
Johnson’s Gamble that Backfired
If anyone was still in denial about the level of corruption at the heart of government, they shouldn’t be now. It was ruled that Owen Paterson had broken the code of conduct when he lobbied ministers at the Department for International Trade and officials at the Food Standards Agency (FSA). This was carried out on behalf of two companies. For this lobbying, he was paid £100,000 a year by the healthcare company Randox and £12,000 by ...
Beating off Racial Stereotypes
I was speaking to a chap who carries out work for my company, the other day. We got onto the subject of racism and the recent abuse of England’s black footballers. I have known him a long time, so he admitted to me that until he started running projects in London, he had always carried inherent racist attitudes. It was when he started working in London that he realised to himself that he had a head full of stereotypes. These had been ...