November 2012

On a similar theme to the last post, this Twitter discussion led me to something interesting: https://twitter.com/relume1/status/265117766896476160 The linked Harvard Business School paper, which is good and worth reading, concludes that the craze for delayering in business since the 1980s, which was sold as a way of devolving decision-making authority to lower levels in organisations,…

Read More On the theory of the pathological firm

Inspired by this weekend’s story that you now pay a transaction fee to fly Ryanair even if you use a Ryanair credit card, which is apparently a thing that exists even if it sounds like it shouldn’t, I have been thinking about their business model. It is not what you may think it is. This…

Read More A brief inquiry into the nature and consequences of think-of-a-number pricing

So, are we going to get the name of the Tory paedophile (or paedophiles) or the confirmation of just how far Becky Asbo and Dave from PR’s relationship went first? I just ask because I want to prepare for the inevitable storm-surge of everything that is creepy in advance. Sandbags. Back-up generators. Areas of wetland…

Read More The year everything went impossibly creepy

Mike Smithson tweets this poll, showing that even Tories hate and fear the possibility of another Republican presidency: https://twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/status/264720136831901696/ Stian Westlake remarks that this isn’t true of Tory pundits: Funny that 8 out of 9 UK conservatives want Romney to lose, but most UK conservative pundits want him to win. pic.twitter.com/MuI30sm8 — Stian Westlake (@stianwestlake)…

Read More The difference between pundits and voters