When government employees stopped setting the beat, the Japanese lost the rhythm and their economy fell apart.

Americans complain about the lack of true leaders and of today's poll-driven politicians. But if American is a democracy, isn't that exactly how it is supposed to work?

GM found that when you ask for government help, you'd better be careful - you might get what you wish for, and our guys have a track record of losing negotiations.

George W Bush, lambasted as the destroyer of peace in the Middle East, may preside over the most welcome development there since the Second World War.

We gripe about bias in the mainstream media because freedom of the press is only meaningful if you happen to own a press, but enough people have presses to keep politicians on their toes.

Principals have be to able to fire teachers, or you can't run an effective school.

A computer can only do what it's told, or programmed, to do - it can't force people to do anything, unless they allow it to do so.

One of the supreme ironies of our time is that a religiously-motivated US president went to war in the name of God to set up a non-religious state in Iraq to protect Americans against a highly religious movement known as Al Qaeda.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, stirred up a storm when he spoke of the Nativity as a "myth." The Pope didn't have that problem. Perhaps the Pope has a stronger brand identity than does the Church of England?

It is time just to face up to what we know to be the case: Anything goes.