In life, there are only three decisions you need to get right - and one of them is where you live.

In a TV programme called Escape to the Country, couples are helped to move house from an urban to rural location. The format of the programme is...

Watching the BBC's The Apprentice, I am reminded of a show in last year's series when one of the contestants endlessly repeated 'What's the strategy? What's the strategy?' to a team leader who had no answer. Quite clearly, he didn't know what a strategy was (or is).

This...

When I joined the advertising business, there was a new buzzword called 'marketing'. Few knew what it meant. At Ogilvy & Mather, where my career was born, we had a guy - yes, one person in the whole agency - whose job was to explain this new concept...

In what may be my most read post to date, DLA Disgrace, I discussed the shameful process that our Government inflicts on disabled benefit claimants in our community. It is outsourced to ATOS - 'an international information technology services company'.

Do you know what...

What is it about the national debt that I am not getting?

Please forgive me for not being an economist but, when you owe loads of money, you can't keep up with the repayments and you plunge deeper and deeper into the doo-doo, there comes a time when you go...

Last week, I heard Jeffrey Archer promoting his latest book on the radio.

In the light of Chris Huhne's jail sentence for perverting the course of justice, the presenter insisted on asking Archer about his own experiences in prison. Monosyllabic were the answers. Not quite...

Cynics might interpret the title of this post as a definition of marketing and, thus, the world we live in today. But, as marketing is my job, how could I agree?

One of the advantages of working in creative businesses is that, on the whole, decision-making is based on creative...

For how long will we say that our educational system is our country's greatest failing?

It won't surprise you when I say for as long as our inadequate career politicians are in charge:

In the last few weeks, we have had education secretary Michael Gove in an embarrassing...

It was revealed last week that, following the introduction of university tuition fees, there has been a 40% drop in admissions.

What a surprise.

You don't have to be the world's most sophisticated marketing or behavioural expert to know that if you start charging money for something...

So now we are here in another New Year and, in the UK, the savagery of social welfare cuts continues to slice through our society.

We have had:

06 January: 'Soldiers, nurses and teachers hit by benefit curbs'
07 January: 'Benefit cuts will see...

This post on kindness was going to be my Christmas message until the massacre in Newtown forced me, and many others, to rage against the inhumanity of the US gun laws.

Mind you, even at Sandy Hook, there was evidence of extraordinary human behaviour: 'What we...

What a world.

Twenty-six children have been slaughtered.

To protect them, teachers have thrown their bodies into hails of gunfire.

"Carnage", as President Obama said:

"It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realise no matter how much you love these kids, you can't...

Once, I was Managing Director of a London advertising agency. After a couple of years, I felt I had done a good job. I had secured all the important clients, recruited a new generation of staff and, in the face of severe financial difficulties which I had inherited, I had...

"Was last week a watershed week in terms of unsubstantiated online gossip?" Andrew Neil asked Richard Bacon on the BBC current affairs programme 'This Week' last week.

On Twitter, as @richardpbacon, Bacon describes himself as a 'minor celebrity' (and we all know how much I admire celebrity) but,...

I am sure we all admired the rolling brilliance of Barack Obama's oration when, in his Presidential acceptance speech, he said:

"If you are willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like, or where you love*....

Last week Labour leader Ed Miliband spent over an hour telling us two things: that he wants us to be 'one nation' and that he went to comprehensive school.

I quite like the one nation thing building, as it does, on our Olympic success and burying, as it should, Labour's...

In Britain, the question is did Andrew Mitchell call the Downing Street police 'plebs'?

Elsewhere it is "who on earth is Andrew Mitchell?" I suspect, at the time of the incident, the police did not know who he was either: which may be why they asked him to exit Downing...

'Ideas don't make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does'. So said Felix Dennis in his book 'How To Get Rich'. He's worth over £500 million, so I think we can believe him.

As it happens, last week, I got really excited about one of my big...

I saw my doctor yesterday. Sensitive, intelligent, considerate, thoughtful and understanding, he is as kind a man as any I have met.

But I have a problem with him.

So kind, sensitive, intelligent, considerate, thoughtful and understanding is he that he always runs over time. While he attends to the...

This summer I have been listening to the audiobook 'Life Beyond Measure' written and read by Sidney Poitier although, when I say 'read', I should really say 'performed' so brilliant is Poitier's delivery.

Good actors have a wonderful talent of bringing the written word to...