The Last Word

A book by David Charter, titled ‘Europe: In or Out?¹ and subtitled ‘Everything you need to know,’ is sometimes infuriatingly impartial and even-handed. After reading the book, you will either have had your mind changed from one side to the other, will be even more convinced of your previously-held beliefs, or you will continue to be as resolutely undecided as you were before. Let me précis the book’s contents for you.

The Hippie Movement was an informal counter-cultural collection of ideas that gained currency in the 1960s in the US, but which had largely been overtaken by other cultural movements by the 1980s, leaving only isolated adherents clinging to their out-dated ways, with believers increasingly looking like unwashed madmen from the last century.¹ Right?

I’ve just return from a big exhibition called Ecobuild, which was all about the latest building materials and methods which inevitably focuses on low-CO₂, low embodied energy and low energy-in-use. It was an interesting day out and I was fascinated to see some of the latest trends on display, not all of which were expected.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron has returned from Brussels to metaphorically declare that he has done a deal with the continental powers, echoing Neville Chamberlain’s infamous ‘I hold in my hand a piece of paper,’ speech after meeting Mr Hitler in 1938. In his turn, Mr Cameron claims to have wrested important concessions from the current rulers of Europe. The difference between 1938-9 and now being that the deal will be put to the test of the referendum ballot box instead of by being tested by opposing armies. The British people, including the restive Scots (themselves arch-Europeans and sometimes seemingly half-French), will now vote on 23 June on whether to remain in the EU or to leave.

I was at an industry dinner the other day and was chatting to a senior figure who happens to be male. He happened to mention something that happened to him recently that might have lessons for us all. He said to one of his female colleagues, in a meeting with a number of other colleagues, that he considered that she was wearing a pretty skirt, in words close to ‘That’s a pretty skirt you’re wearing.’