Author: James Murphy

Stanley was endlessly jovial, stopping to talk to everyone. A fusspot staffer, one would try to hurry him through any such casual encounters but rarely made progress. He had almost an excess of the common touch, loved to chat and loved to laugh. For him, all were welcome, political friends and obvious opponents alike. This was a sense of emotional hospitality that never wavered, even in the presence of those whom his staff thought were blethering twits. Labour to the core and thus hardly a friend of Mrs T., Stanley kept a miner’s lamp prominently on his desk; he was also fiercely anti-racist and the merest mention of the apartheid state brought out the tiger in him  -  any chance that came his way he would kick it as hard…

It is your job, say, to name trends across the cultural, political and commercial sectors. Your clients have a boundless appetite for insights about the future, a future they very much want to reach before their competitors or their regulators or their voters. The task  -  distributed across reports, presentations, emails  -  is to bring the paying punter onto that inside track. Does it make any difference if you, inadvertently or otherwise, identify yourself as a forecaster with the age of 25? Or 45? Or 65? Do ageing and cumulated experience make you any better at the job? Well, let’s think. If you are well past the first blush, does anyone ever ask you how many recessions you have correctly predicted over your career? Mangling Leonard Cohen, does such a…

When I was a very young schoolboy, I was once taken to Hampden Park in Glasgow. The football pretext was an evening Friendly between Brazil and Scotland. At the time, victory for England in the World Cup was still but a twinkle in Bobby Moore’s left bootlace. My attending adult was if memory serves  -  and it may not  -  my hometown doctor; I went to the same school and had the same teachers as his two youngest sons. We sat in the packed Stand. We had a terrific view. The match itself was uneventful. I have deliberately not checked the details, not wanting to fudge my memory. However, I do believe that the outcome was a 1-1 draw, with someone called Servilho scoring for Brazil and (I think) Steve…