Why people long for stories

Why people long for stories

“It takes a civilized man,” said George Bernard Shaw, “to be deeply moved by statistics.” The whole edifice of Fabian statistics, outcomes, learnings, KPIs and so on were built on those foundations. Shaw was not wrong. You do need an imagination to imagine the picture...
The great debate between talking and doing

The great debate between talking and doing

I helped launch my new pamphlet The_Grammar_of_Change, commissioned from New Weather by the Local Trust, the agency which is distributing £1m each over the years to 150 of the most impoverished estates. One of the issues that came up at the launch was the question of...
The post-crash culture we now live in

The post-crash culture we now live in

There is a truism about fish, who are said not to wonder overmuch about the nature of the water they are in, simply because they are swimming in it. I have to say I find that pretty unlikely. There would be many other reasons why they might not think about it –...
Empathy is not a finite resource

Empathy is not a finite resource

I have been reading Robert Hutchison’s excellent pamphlet on rapid transition – though it does not use that phrase – which includes a hopeful idea: that there is no limit to human empathy. In the end, as he explains, there is a race going on between...
Missing election issues #2. The rise of the giants

Missing election issues #2. The rise of the giants

This is the first of a series of contributions which New Weather is setting out before the last week of the general election, about what has been glaringly missing from the campaign.  There is clearly something about airlines which, beyond the other business sectors,...