Denise Young Smith, Apple’s first vice president of diversity and inclusion, went on the record opining that there can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation. Declaring that diversity is the human experience, Smith said: ‘I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of colour, or the women, or the LGBT.’ Read on ›

As Bell Pottinger prepares to put itself into administration following its expulsion from the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), here’s an opinion piece, which calls out the PRCA’s humbug. Read on ›

What unites all the major political parties in South Africa: the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)? The answer is their determination to divide the country along pre-existing racial fault lines. Yet the DA, South Africa’s main opposition party, has had the audacity to lodge a misconduct claim against Bell Pottinger (BP) with the UK’s Public Relations and Communications Association, accusing it of “sow[ing] racial mistrust, hate and race-baiting, and [encouraging a] divided society”.  Read on ›

The success of both BREXIT and Trump tells us that the world is changing. Their triumphs mark a transformation of the public’s mood, which is causing the rules governing media schmoozing and managing relations with the masses to be rewritten, as fast as the authority of existing elites evaporates. Read on ›

Unlike the BNP, self-respecting political parties don’t hold their Emergency General Meetings in East London’s notorious Elm Park pub. I know. It is where I roughhoused, before I made a bid for respectability and left. My memories of the place are bitter-sweet. Read on ›

Contrary to popular crisis management mythology, most dramas and disasters aren’t really crises at all. Chin up: things aren’t often really all that bad. Read on ›

Out tomorrow, a film that’ll mean a lot to me, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, a biopic of my hero from Upminister, Ian Dury. I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch it without crying. Read on ›

The British National Party (BNP) is thrashing the mainstream parties – but only online. This says as much about the internet as it does about politics, and I don’t think the mainstream should overdo its response. Read on ›

Today’s Jade Goody story in the Sun is very touching. The PR trade needs to get over its aversion to Max Clifford and his brilliant manipulation of a story at once luminiously modern and as old as time. He’s on the side of the angels. Read on ›

Here’s an example of the risk of fast-news. This morning the BBC reported an alleged racist attack by three skinheads at a Zurich railway station on a pregnant Brazilian woman that caused her to miscarry twins in the station’s toilets. By the afternoon, important bits of the story collapsed.  Read on ›