Latest news with #JohnKay
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Business
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Book Festival round-up: Sir John Kay Peter Frankopan Thangam Debonnaire Rowan Williams
From talks on corporate capitalism and Central Asian history to a lively debate about freedom of expression, David Robinson's horizons are expanded once again by the Book Festival Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Every year, I deliberately search out a subject at the book festival about which I am spectacularly ignorant in the hope of ending up less so. On Tuesday, I was drawn to economist Sir John Kay's talk on corporate capitalism, largely because his latest book has the subtitle 'Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business is Wrong'. Companies are, he points out, no longer the monoliths of old. Broken down by the search for shareholder value, they are losing their ethos and, ultimately, place in society, becoming 'combinations of capabilities' instead. An airline no longer owns its own planes but leases them; ditto its engines, which are then serviced by yet another company. From vet companies taken over by private equity firms and given treatment targets to banks losing sight of their purpose (that was you, RBS), a reset is needed. Kay made the case so lucidly and free of jargon that even I could understand. Praise indeed. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sir John Kay | Contributed Listening to Peter Frankopan, who speaks way beyond the speed of shorthand, is like being in a wind tunnel of historical facts. They whistle past as in sync with his slide show of heavily arrowed maps centred on Central Asia: look at the spread of tin mines here, copper ones there, religions on the next one, linguistic patterns on the one after that. Did you realise that there were more Christians in Asia before the 14th century than there were in Europe? That there's a 20 per cent genetic link between people in North India and Scandinavia? And as for what archaeobotany tells us about the spread of rice cultivation ... I don't mean to mock. He speaks engagingly and entirely without notes for an hour, and his emphatically non-Eurocentric history has the intellectual panache dial turned up high as he speeds into the present. It's now a full decade after he wrote his groundbreaking The Silk Road: A New History of the World, and these days, in all the comparisons, whether on shipbuilding, funding African ports, rare earth minerals, size of cities or container ports, China is embarrassingly far head of the divided and retreating West. 'History,' he concluded, 'is all about trying to anticipate trouble.' There is, he warned, a lot of it ahead. The intertwining of past and present was a feature of the Freedom of Expression debate on the Festival's opening day, in which the peer and Labour former shadow culture spokeswoman Thangam Debonnaire called for the removal of the statue of Robert Clive, the soldier who laid the foundations of British rule in India, from outside the Foreign Office. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This was one occasion when an otherwise quiet chin-stroker which also featured former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and philosopher Richard Sennet sparked into life – a quite remarkable state of affairs given that, as Debonnaire herself admitted, freedoms of expression are already effectively restricted in, for example, the gender debate. In hindsight, the fault lay in Sennett's tethering of the debate to Shostakovich's creativity-mangling travails under threat of being purged by Stalin for his music's 'bourgeois' affectations. Interesting enough, but more of a Radio 3 talk than a debate. That only happened when Debonnaire laid into the 'historical inaccuracies' of the Clive statue, which shows Indians as being 'delighted to see him. What it doesn't do is contextualise or indeed give any honesty about what his presence in India actually did.' Politicians, she said, have no business deciding what makes good art. But they do have a responsibility to tell the truth about history. And if you've spotted that there's a gap between those two positions, you're not wrong.
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Scotsman
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
primary posted footage of her trip to Wigtown on TikTok, comparing it to the fictional Connecticut town from the hit TV series Gilmore Girls. Wigtown Book Festival 2025 will run from September 26 to O
Watch footage of the historic Scottish town, which is preparing to host its annual book festival next month - with speakers including Nicola Surgeon and Sir John Kay. Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... A teacher's TikTok video showing her visit to 'Scotland's version of Stars Hollow' has gone viral. @miss_davidson_primary posted the footage to the platform, comparing Wigtown to the fictional Connecticut town from the hit TV series Gilmore Girls. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In the caption of the video, which received 186.1k views and 19.4k likes, she wrote: 'I half expected to see Lorelai and Rory [characters from the show] browsing the shelves!' One user commented: 'I'm from Scotland. Why have I never heard of this magical place? I need to book a trip.' Another commenter said: 'We visited two days ago - we only live about an hours drive away and for some reason only been twice. Such a beautiful wee town.' Wigtown - Scotland's National Book Town Located in the southwest of Scotland, Wigtown - Scotland's National Book Town - is home to 15 bookshops. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad With a rural seaside community of under 1,000 residents, it's estimated the number of books in Wigtown outnumber people 250 to one. Wigtown also has a wide variety of cafés and independent shops, with plenty of opportunities for walks around the surrounding landscape. Wigtown is home to 15 bookshops. | TikTok / @miss_davidson_primary Wigtown's The Open Book airbnb Wigtown even has a bookshop airbnb - The Open Book - a 'charming' bookshop with an apartment above. Wigtown Book Festival said: 'Paying guests live in the self-catering apartment upstairs and run the bookshop below it for the duration of their stay. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'During their stay, guests are free to change displays, price books, re-categorise them, and make inventive use of the blackboard that entices visitors in to browse or chat. 'Some guests are happy to quietly run the bookshop, while others come with firmer plans and creative ideas!' One reviewer said: 'The Open Book is a holiday stay like no other we have ever experienced. Running the bookshop and getting to meet the other local book merchants and customers was incredibly satisfying and fun! The surrounding Scottish countryside, villages and seashores provide ample opportunities to get out and explore. Would do this again in a heartbeat.' Wigtown Book Festival In 1998, it was announced that Wigtown would become Scotland's National Book Town after a period of dereliction. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Wigtown Book Festival, which runs for 10 days, was established the following year and is held annually. This year's festival will run from September 26 to October 5. Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will join broadcaster Gavin Esler to discuss her memoir Frankly. Others scheduled to speak at the 2025 festival include former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Sir John Kay, Reeta Chakrabarti, Louise Minchin and more.
BBC News
26-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
'Playing against him was intimidating' - Smith's top five 'hard men'
Throughout Thursday, we are revealing who former Sunderland attacker Martin Smith has picked as the Black Cats' all-time toughest third place, he has picked "stylish and classy" centre-back Gary Bennett, who made more than 350 appearances for the club during an 11-year stint."You would always find out about it if you got on the wrong side of him," Smith told BBC Radio Newcastle. "I spoke to somebody else who also played with him, just to confirm what I thought, and even they said he could handle himself."He could always stick his foot in. If you think back, as a centre-back, some of the players you were up coming up against were real handfuls."There were some proper centre-forwards that would stick their elbows in and stamp on your feet, but Bennett always stood up to that. He was just solid."At number two, Smith has gone for another cult hero - the 'red and white tractor' John Kay."He got that nickname in a game against Leeds United," he explained. "I remember when Peter Haddock came off, Howard Wilkinson said it looked like he had been ran over by a tractor because of the stud marks down his chest."I always knew his reputation, so playing practice games against him was quite intimidating."I remember sticking a ball through his legs in a practice game once. He told me not to do it again but, thinking nothing of it, I did it again. He then told me he was going to break my legs and, the next time I had the ball, he absolutely wiped me out."But who has Smith crowned as Sunderland's greatest 'hard man'?Find out on BBC Sounds now - or come back to this page a little later today
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Crash in Meade County leaves 1 dead, 2 fighting for life in hospital
BRANDENBURG, Ky. (FOX 56) — A crash in Meade County on Saturday night led to a 20-year-old Battletown man being killed, with a passenger in his car and the driver of another vehicle flown to a Louisville hospital in critical condition. Troopers with Kentucky State Police (KSP) Post 4 in Elizabethtown were dispatched around 11:15 p.m. on Saturday by the Meade County Sheriff's Office, which asked for help investigating a two-vehicle crash near the 4100 block of Payneville Road. Man accused of attacking 2 with knife in Berea Crash in Meade County leaves 1 dead, 2 fighting for life in hospital 2024 Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan snaps 5-race losing skid with win in Blame at Churchill Downs An initial investigation showed that Robert Eldridge, 20, of Battletown, was driving a 2014 Ford Mustang heading west on KY-144 when he tried to pass another car before allegedly hitting a 2025 Toyota Tacoma driven by John Kay, 44, of Louisville. Eldridge was pronounced dead at the scene by the Meade County Coroner's Office. Kaw and a passenger in Eldridge's car were flown to the University of Louisville Hospital for treatment of life-threatening injuries, per a news release. The area of the crash was closed for several hours to allow troopers to reconstruct what happened. An investigation into the deadly crash remains ongoing. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Forbes
30-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
What Leaders Can Learn From 50 Years Of Economic Insight
Almost everything we think we know about business is wrong. So argues Sir John Kay, one of Britain's most incisive economic thinkers. His latest book, The Corporation in the 21st Century, is a treasure trove of insights for leaders seeking to navigate volatility and uncertainty in today's markets. I recently had the privilege of participating in a conversation with Sir John Kay hosted by the University of Oxford's Kellogg College and Skoll Centre. Professor Joshua Getzler, Visiting Fellow Suzanne Schneider, and Professor Jonathan Michie OBE joined in the discussion of Kay's analysis of the transformation of business over the last half-century. His is a call to rethink not only what business is, but how we talk about it. Kay's reflections are both timeless and acutely relevant. What can today's leaders learn from his work? I offer three key takeaways. Kay reminds us that the dominant time horizons in business today – quarterly earnings, rapid investor turnover, short CEO tenures – are fundamentally at odds with the time horizons required to build the industries of the future. Supply chain resilience, energy security, and food security are but a few examples of the multi-generational challenges leading global businesses must solve to stay relevant. And yet, short-term incentives and flimsy governance mechanisms for long-term commitment continue to hamstring even the most forward-thinking companies. Part of the reason for this, Kay observes, is that corporate ownership has fundamentally shifted. Citing examples from airlines to Amazon, Kay points out that today's largest firms own little of the capital they deploy. Rather, capital is treated as a service, rendering the very concept of 'owning' a means of production outdated. This creates a fundamental mismatch between the investment horizons of businesses and the timelines on which the industries of the future depend. Kay's idea is this: If we are to build businesses that are truly resilient and trustworthy, we must reorient corporate governance around long-term value creation. In what I found to be the book's most compelling chapter, Ambiguity Is a Feature, Not a Bug, Kay addresses what he calls the need for 'moral imagination' in modern business. His comments call to mind the work of Elizabeth Anscombe, one of Oxford's most celebrated female philosophers, who argued, 'Our moral imagination is the ability to conjure what lies beyond our direct experience'. This is Kay's call to action for leaders: from scrupulously researched historical examples, he builds a compelling argument that stakeholders are not mere inputs to be managed, but ends in themselves. This reframes the conversation, inviting leaders to move from transactional to relational approaches to strategy. Rather than reducing debate to the tired binary of shareholder versus stakeholder capitalism, Kay invites us to ask a deeper question: 'How can a corporation create value in a way that is durable because it is mutual?' His conclusion is simple but profound: 'If the corporation is to flourish, it must contribute to the flourishing of the society in which it operates.' This is not sanctimonious. It is systems thinking, and it is smart. Perhaps Kay's most lasting legacy will be his insistence that today's business language – the metaphors, models, and assumptions leaders use daily – are anachronistic. The language of principal-agent, of command and control, of the firm as a machine – these no longer describe business well, if they ever did. In today's business landscape, they obscure as much as they explain. This matters because language shapes imagination. Imagination shapes action and innovation. If we want to build institutions that are fit for this century and the next, we must begin by speaking differently about what they are for and whom they serve. Kay's book is not merely a critique. It is an invitation to imagine better. In a time when the word 'capitalism' itself is often deployed as a rhetorical device rather than an analytical term, Kay calls for precision. His critique—that 'capitalism' means wildly different things in different contexts—is not pedantic. It is a vital insight. From the deregulated markets of the late 20th century to today's state-led capitalism to data-driven global economic giants, the realities of 'capitalism' differ starkly. So too should our analysis. Business has fundamentally changed since the last century. Remarkably, most of the vocabulary we use to describe it has not. And that, Kay argues, may be our greatest liability. Leaders must grapple with meaning. Today's leadership challenge is to build businesses that are not only efficient and competitive in the short term, but credible, trustworthy, and resilient over time. Sir John Kay's work is a masterclass in how to begin.
