Future

Not sure about you, but I would really like to fly to the moon. It seems mad, but flying anywhere seemed mad a century ago. Flying around the world is a reality today, as long as there’s no pandemic, so flying around the solar system will be a reality tomorrow. In that spirit, my friends…

I’ve been isolating too much and watching too much TV. Binging on Netflix, Amazon Prime and such like, almost every film I watch seems to be the same. Good versus Evil and Order versus Chaos. Half of society seems determined to make everything sunny and bright; the other half seems determined to destroy, disrupt and…

A final thought for the week on bank transformation. I often talk to banks. Some I’ve spoken to for decades. It shocks me that, after decades, they still have exactly the same issues. Fragmentation of data; an organisation built over decades with systems that are not integrated; data that is split into lines of business…

I’m reflecting on COVID rules. As a guy who lives in Europe, the rules are that I need to fill in passenger locator forms, get a pre-flight COVID test (fit to fly), and a landing form registered with a QR code. It’s challenging and clunky, but turns out to be actually quite easy and no…

I grew up as an Englishman. Then I became British. Now, I’m a European. But then we had Brexit and all the other stuff. Yet now I live in Poland. I believe in a world of the future that has no borders, no flags, no barriers. Am I deluded? During my lifetime, the world has…

I didn’t think about it until recently, but every generation is paying the debts of their parents and ancestors. When you say it, it’s obvious. It’s clear. Yet, why are we always thinking about the future whilst gorging on the past? I can see this with the arguments over the climate emergency today, but I…

Were you proud of June? Did you notice that June was the month to celebrate Pride. Do you know what Pride is? As June ends and July starts, I had to reflect when I read an article by Christer Holloman, founder of Divido. It’s about diversity. I often look at things from the point of diversity….

There are 100s of economic forecast reports out there, but I got one this morning from the Asian bank DBS with the following headlines: Growth normalising The reopening of US and European economies points to a snapback in economic growth and inflation. We see central banks gradually tapering their asset purchases while holding policy rates…

I was struck the other day by how many words are bandied about so much that they become meaningless. Then realised that many of these words fall into buckets. Then listed the buckets and they fell into two tribes: digital and analogue. The list is non-exhaustive and misses some bits that should be in there,…

Talking about HSBC often drags me into political controversy. For example, when I criticised the bank for not making a stand over the Hong Kong protests, I got a lot of pushback. Frankly, I don’t like to dip my feet into political waters unless forced to and, in the spirit of that thinking, I was prompted…