Journal

Delighted to have been made part of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network a while back – and both the privilege and potential were underscored last night during an informal dinner at Serata Hall, Old Street. In short order I met wonderful people in such diverse fields as urban regeneration, sustainable supply chains and artificial intelligence.

All that on top of a day which started at the Conduit and included calls with the Christian Science Monitor and the Harvard Business Review. Something’s stirring.

Wrote a column for GreenBiz today on Earth Day 2020 (slated for 22 April), which is due to be published in week beginning 10 February. Completely serendipitous – or perhaps synchronistic – that the New York Times also ran the latest Earth Day ad today.

Reminded in the process of the writing of serving as a member of the Earth Day 1990 international board, as the formerly US-focused initiative started to go global. More on our plans shortly, but the theme this year is very much in the “stepping up” spirit of our Tomorrow’s Capitalism Forum on 10 January.

For more details on how to sign up and engage, click on this link.

After a wonderful birthday lunch for Elaine at Scully, off Regent Street, noted for its sustainability credentials, we went back to Hania and Jake’s home to see their son, our grandson, Gene Lushington. Joyous. His immense engagement with TV cartoons, the ups and the downs clearly marked on his face as he bounced, was utterly infectious.

Thank you our European friends and colleagues for their messages of support and commiseration yesterday.

History helps, a bit. It has happened not just once before, but several times. There was Henry VIII, of course. And then the Parliamentarians (aka Roundheads) took over the country during the Interregnum period, following the English Civil War. We endured the Protectorate Parliaments. Ultimately, Oliver Cromwell did no better than Charles I in handling parliaments.

So is this another interregnum? Might the wounds inflicted by Johnson, Gove et al never fully heal? Might their bulldozing of the expressed interests of half the nation (and latent interest of much of the rest) prove to have been a self-inflicted wound for these narcissistic ideologues?

Who knows. But if this prove to be the case, the anti-EU rebels might usefully ponder Cromwell’s posthumous fate, his exhumed body hanging in chains. We don’t do such things any more, but reputations arrive on foot – but can depart on horseback, as they used to say.

Our parents’ deaths more or less book-ended 2019, he on 1 February, she on 19 November. Happy releases, in both cases, but they left a huge hole in our universe. Their love and humour, abundantly clear in this image, were a gift way beyond our nuclear family. Much missed.