Nobody can manage what they cannot understand. It is a common principle, enshrined in many business aphorisms. “Stick to the knitting”. “You get what you measure”. “Keep it simple, stupid”. The list goes on, but the underlying idea is the same. At the same time, the world grows more complex. Supply chains are ever more international, and so is finance. New layers of technology sit upon older layers of technology, creating pyramids that nobody understands from top to bottom. Training and education can deliver staff with increasingly niche and specialist skillsets. In the midst of this, businesses still pursue universal goals, whether delivering profits to owners, pleasing products and services to customers, or motivation and satisfaction to workers. The trick to handling complexity, in order to keep businesses understandable and hence manageable, is to break businesses down into units, and to understand how these units fit together and affect each other. This is the essence of modularity.

Modularity may seem so straightforward that it is obvious, but it is rarely obvious in practice. Employees may only know about their department, and know little of what the rest of the business does. They may be completely divorced from the customer’s experience. Managers may have an idea of how things fit together, but are rewarded for fighting their individual corner, not for doing what best helps the whole organization. An outsourced function is not part of your company, but it may be just as integral to business success as any function performed in-house. Suppliers may be separate companies, but their failure may cause the failure of your business. Long-term business success will often depend on relationships within the company, and between the company and others. These relationships may change over time, but will greatly influence the health of the business.

Teaching managers to think of business in modular terms is not simple. The biggest obstacle is the time and effort spent working out what each part of the business does and all the interactions between the modules, including those that sit in other companies. Working out the model for an individual business is time-consuming, and the benefits are all indirect, so it would be hard to spend the time and resources needed to do it well. In contrast, generic industry models are abstract. They need to be tailored to the relevant circumstances of individual businesses. There is also the challenge of getting rival businesses to pool efforts and devise a common model; some may prefer not to contribute but merely to wait and see if they can use the finished work. Despite the obstacles, there have been successes. In software development, frameworks like the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration have gained popularity. For telecommunications providers, the TM Forum’s Solution Frameworks are the de facto standard for planning major business-wide transformation. One difficulty with frameworks is that they can end up seeming just as complicated as the businesses they try to describe. However, they do help management in several important ways, which are briefly described below.

Distinguish the success of a part with the success of the whole

Poorly chosen targets, corporate politics and poor data can all conspire to encourage the business to reward units that act ’selfishly’. A selfish approach may seem natural, because businesses compete with each other. But the IT department should not be competing with the Sales team or the people who work in Customer Service. Targets and performance criteria for every module should be based on the benefits to the business as a whole. That means understanding how the modules connect and complement each other.

Measure the performance of a module based on what it controls

You would not blame customer-facing staff for spending a lot of time on refunds, if products are faulty because of poor quality control on the production line. Even so, it is sometimes difficult to link measures back to root causes. Modularity encourages a better understanding of what each module controls and does not control. This in turn encourages performance to be linked back to root causes, so improvement is focused where really needed. The correct approach is to measure the performance of each module based on the value it adds, and to set targets accordingly. Where the failure of one part of the business causes issues downstream, ensure that there is accountability and the resolution is taken right back to the source. Understanding the performance of each module, and relating this to the products and services supplied, will identify those activities that drive profits and customer satisfaction, and where there is the potential to cut costs.

Standards help everybody

Standards are an aspect of modularity. To define how modules interact, it is necessary to set standards. Standards can be limiting, but in large businesses the loss of freedom is offset by the vital improvement in the consistency of how the business works. Adopting broad standards in the performance of work is a good way to train people and make them feel part of a team. It is common to adopt technical standards, but many other activities can be standardized. Idiosyncrasy in how people work can be discouraged by having staff change around and do different jobs, at least on an occasional basis. Giving everyone an overview of what the business does will help to foster a sense of team spirit that reaches beyond departmental boundaries. If tasks are performed in a standard way, it is easier to cope with staff turnover. If staff have some familiarity with performing a variety of jobs, they will be better able to cope with new requirements at short notice.

The more standardized a business, at every level, the easier it is for suppliers to meet its needs. Standardization also makes it easier to shop around and find alternate suppliers. A modular approach works for services just like manufactured goods. The ease of swapping in new parts for old parts makes a business more flexible. Bringing in temporary staff or a new source of components may be vital for handling a surge in demand. The same kind of flexibility also helps with managing reductions in capacity when sales are poor. Suppliers are an extension of the business, performing modular roles per expectations defined in a contract. The supplier’s service levels can be monitored by extension.

Focus on what you do best, give fair rewards for the rest

The driving force behind outsourcing is that some tasks can be more efficiently handled by letting an outside, specialist business perform them. The best known examples are inherently modular. For example, the payroll of a manufacturer has a lot in common with the payroll of a bank. In contrast, managing payroll has very little in common with the core business of a manufacturer or of a bank. Common and regularly recurring tasks are obvious candidates for outsourcing. However, there may be ways to incentivize and engage outside suppliers for more risky or creative challenges. Take Apple’s iPhone Apps Store. Apple created an environment that ensures third parties get a transparent share of reward in exchange for the risk they take. In doing so, they handed over the risky task of developing new content for the iPhone, whilst creating a new feature that attracts more customers for their product. By giving a reasonable return to the modules outside of Apple’s company - the third party apps developers - they both outsourced risk and reaped a greater reward for their own business.

Summary: recognizing limits

For an intelligent, successful, and confident executive, the hardest challenge may be to recognize his or her own limits. But the human mind has limits. Even the versatile minds of a Benjamin Franklin or Leonardo da Vinci would be overwhelmed by trying to understand the intertwined complexities of money, machines, markets, laws and human behaviour that determine the success of a modern large corporation. Failures of big businesses show that risks can be underestimated and circumstances can outrun the company’s ability to change. To solve complex problems, it is necessary to break it down. There must be trust to recruit and delegate to managers who handle their individual part of the puzzle. Top level management is there to ensure the parts fit together to form the whole. By being modular, businesses become more adaptable. Identifying the important relationships between each module, establishes the key criteria for the success and profitability of the business. Knowing limits drives businesses to acquire the data needed to make effective decisions and plan ahead, instead of just responding to short-term variations from expectations without understanding what has caused them or if they represent more fundamental problems. Modularity keeps business intelligible, and by keeping the business intelligible, managers can manage even the most complex businesses with confidence.

Regular readers of Halfthoughts will already know I receive letters from Prince Karl Zeis, of the deposed Royal Family of Delfthia. For those you unfamiliar with this tiny but proud nation, it lies midway between Macedonia and Bulgaria, and its finest hour came in 1745 with the victory of Delfthia and their Prussian allies at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg. During the battle, King Augustus IV led the two hundred Delfthian Dragoons in a surprise attack at the rear of the retreating Austrians, catching them completely off guard and allowing them to capture two thousand of the enemy. Some historians claim the Delfthians were supposed to be allies with the Austrians but, arriving late and discovering how badly the Austrians were doing, Augustus IV opted to swap sides. Prince Karl, however, insists this is an unfounded slur against his family’s name. Whatever the historical truth, the exiled Prince Karl wrote to give a much more recent account of events in his homeland…

Dear Eric,

It is with a heavy heart that I must share the news gleaned from my stealthy return to my motherland, Delfthia. As you appreciate, the current authorities consider me persona non grata; they fear I will lead a popular uprising and take back my crown. I have harboured no such intention, but seeing what they have done to my precious Delfthia, I can now say they were right to fear. Seeing what has become of my beloved Delfthia leaves me saddened and enraged in equal measure. The jackboot of their tyranny has marked my people’s soil for eternity. There is no time to waste. I am left with no choice but to make immediate preparations for a visit to the United Nations, whereupon I will petition the general assembly to restore me to the throne of Delfthia. I do this not for myself but for my people. Even a day’s delay will only leave my poor country even more irredeemably scarred than the day before. I beg of you to share this missive with your readers so they too can find out the horrible truth of what has happened to the beloved land of my birth. The world must hear of what has happened to Delfthia and I shall not rest until they do.

Woe, your name is Delfthia! Accursed tyrants have blighted your green and fertile meadows and darkened your blue and cloudless skies. Greedy wretches have befouled the streets of your magnificent cities and desecrated your pretty villages. Shameless supplicants have given over their lands and freedom to the despots that now disfigure the once beautiful land of Delfthia. Delfthia, how I remember the small boy I once was, running barefoot over your hills and through your valleys…

Prince Karl keeps this up for a couple more paragraphs. I hope he will not mind too much if I summarize by saying the Prince is more than a little upset at what has happened to Delfthia since he left. We will skip to the part where he starts detailing what he discovered on his arrival.

For the final leg of our journey, my valet and I boarded the overnight sleeper train from Vienna. This meant an early rise from our bunks, as the Delfthian immigration officials were scheduled to board the train and check our passports upon reaching the border at 6.20am. I awoke after a fitful night’s sleep, spent turning in my bunk and imagining how Delfthia had changed in the decades since my departure. Even so, I was up bright and early, giving me time to shower, shave and comb my hair before putting on a clean shirt and making myself presentable. As you can imagine, I found it distasteful to travel using an alias, but there was no alternative. However, just imagine my distaste when the immigration officer, looking for all the world like it was he, not me, that had just risen from bed, proceeded to interrogate me about my personage. There was a time when the hospitality of Delfthians was famous from Brussels to Baghdad, yet this slovenly oaf asked me all manner of questions, the relevance of which was beyond me.

“Where are you staying?” “In a hotel - do you think I travel first class and then plan to sleep on the park bench?” “Write down the address.” “Why, will you be contacting them to verify my answer?”

“How much cash do you have on you?” “None.” “Then how do you expect to pay your hotel bills?” “The valet will pay with the cash he carries for me or I will pay with my credit cards.”

“Do you have a communicable disease, social or mental disorder or are you a drug user or addict?” “Yes, I have a profound aversion to nosey parkers and to the insufferably rude. They give me a headache and then I have to take an aspirin.”

“Do I intend to engage in subversive activities leading to the overthrow of the government?”

Well, as it turns out the answer to that question is now ‘yes’, but what kind of nincompoop expects an honest answer from anyone who would contemplate such a thing? You might as well ask Mossad agents if they are traveling under a stolen identity and if the purpose of their visit is to assassinate someone.

This incident on the train was merely an omen of what was to come. After disembarking at Delfthia Central Station, we took a taxi to our hotel. I am sure the taxi driver took us an implausibly circuitous route, all the while proclaiming that he did so to avoid the worst of the congestion. If that were true, I shudder to think what the worst would be like. From the back seat of the taxi, I saw our fair capital’s streets were choked with cars and fumes that backed up and blackened every junction. Even so, I was glad of the detour, as I longed to see what had become of the buildings. What I saw filled me with horror. The pretty facades I remembered from my youth were now covered in advertising hoardings, with giant photographs of David Beckham selling his underpants. International brands of pizzerias and burger joints had taken the place of our cafés and bistros. The corner shops, run by local people that you knew, had disappeared completely.

It was with relief that we finally arrived at our hotel, the Hotel Metropole. This was the establishment that had, for a hundred years, welcomed heads of state from around the world, back in the days when Delfthia was a place that world leaders looked forward to visiting. Sad to relate, standards had slipped even there. The décor still impressed, but much had been lost. A horrid gift shop had taken the place of what I had remembered as the Augustus VI room for gentleman smokers. It sold chocolates from Switzerland and watches from Belgium (or perhaps the other way around, I am too upset to remember clearly) but there were no local goods, like our fine Delfthinian flaxxon hats or the famous mountain pipes played and made in the Delfthinian highlands. Hungry after our journey, I decided to enjoy a bowl of our glapclava, a dish that is never prepared correctly by the few overseas restaurants I have found will serve it. To my amazement, the hotel restaurant now only offered Thai food. Surely if I wanted to go somewhere that offered Thai food, I would holiday in Thailand? Disappointed, I retired to my suite and decided to order room service instead. That menu was equally desultory, offering all manner of club sandwiches and chicken madrases, but not a single Delfthian dish of worth. It was quite enough to cause me to lose my appetite altogether.

I consoled myself that I was out of sorts after the sporadic sleep of the night before, and that a nap would raise my spirits. After my nap, I awoke refreshed. Feeling rejuvenated, I told the valet to have the rest of the day off whilst I ventured out for a walk around the streets of Delfthia. My first stop was at the tourist information office, situated in a hideous concrete bunker directly opposite the Hotel Metropole. I asked about craft shops selling locally-made flaxxon goods. There were none, though the lady behind the counter suggested a superstore with some similar products imported from China. I enquired about the weekend polka dances in the park, but they had long since ended. This weekend there was a jazz festival, which sounded rather jolly. I mentioned that if I wanted the finest in jazz I would have gone to New Orleans or Chicago, but the lady assured me they had flown in some fine musical acts from overseas. Then it transpired the headline entertainment was James Blunt and David Gray, so I naturally gave her a telling-off for misleading me about there being ‘jazz’ music on offer. Depressed, I asked her what other tourists did to enjoy themselves. There was an IMAX cinema, showing the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie from someone called James Cameraman. I shook my head and asked about shopping for Delfthian antiques. The lady said the old market was closed for refurbishment, but that I might be disappointed with the ‘tat’ on sale there anyway. She instead suggested I could enjoy myself at the air-conditioned shopping mall, at which I would find Gucci, Armani and Jimmy Choo stores, and if that was not to my liking, they also had a Topshop, Starbucks, Boots and even a Virgin Megastore. I commented that I did not see how it was possible to have a Virgin Megastore, as all the British Virgin Megastores had been sold off, rebranded or even closed. She responded by sniffing in a very off-hand way and handing me some leaflets that promised reduced entry to an artificial ski dome and a waxworks museum featuring a new dummy of the diminutive Nicolas Sarkozy. Perhaps the waxworks were running short of wax.

Utterly deflated by this dreadful experience, I thought it best to drown my sorrows with a tipple or two or our Delfthinian wormwood liquor, or failing that, a little absinthe. Imagine how dejected I was when the only bar I could find was an Irish-themed pub, covered in shamrock wallpaper and with a big TV screen showing English Premiership football. Their beverages included no wormwood liquor nor absinthe, so I mulled a choice between Guinness, Fosters or Budweiser. I settled for a Guinness and, reconciling myself to my torpid travel experience, I found comfort in the thought that the Irish say their Guinness does not travel well either.

Dear reader, it seems you can never go home. I tried, but it was no longer where I once left it. In the place it should have been, I found myself surrounded by the tyranny of the familiar. Those rogues in the Delfthian government had sold out our national heritage for a Hallmark gift shop, a Dunkin Donuts and a Gordon Ramsey restaurant. These are all very fine establishments, in their own way, but not so fine that I never want to be without them.

Yours Sincerely,

Prince Karl Zeis of the Royal House of Delfthia

Some movies are just so good that when the plot twists and turns, you may fail to notice that it also disappears up its own backside. Carried along with the moment, you may never see the incongruity amidst the events on screen. Here is my top five of film stories with holes that gaped just for a moment, but where you may have missed the holes when you blinked…

5. The Shawshank Redemption

Andy, played by Tim Robbins, is going to escape from Shawshank prison by using his little stone chisel to make a great big bloody hole in the wall. The guards never see the hole because it is covered over using a poster of a cinema sex symbol. Andy hides his chisel in a bible, and in one tense scene the warden is holding the bible whilst they search Andy’s cell. Fortunately, the warden never opens it up, although he talks about bible stories at length. But why hide your chisel in a bible, when there is a bloody great hole in the wall big enough to hide the chisel plus an elephant or two?

4. Star Wars

After a stirring escape from Death Star, and from the TIE fighters sent to chase after them, Han Solo and the crew of the Millennium Falcon at last feel like they can relax. Princess Leia, though, knows better. ‘Too easy’ she says, and announces the evil empire must have put a tracking device on their ship. If the heroes fly back to the secret rebel base, then they will lead the empire back there too. So what do they do? They fly straight back, in the hope that they will find a weakness in the Death Star which will allow the rebels to blow it up. Flying in the wrong direction and changing ships would have been a less risky plan.

3. The Prestige

Two warring Victorian magicians, played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, scheme and counter-scheme to upstage and bamboozle each other. In a masterstroke, Bale allows Jackman to ’steal’ his secret diary. The secret diary leads Jackman halfway across the world, to meet with the inventor Nikola Tesla. The diary reveals that Tesla is the man who made a machine that can transport a man through space, making him reappear at a distance from where he first started. However, the diary is a cunning connivance by Bale - he actually performs his disappearing and reappearing trick with the help of a twin brother unknown to the rest of the world. The foolish Jackman believes the diary and tracks Tesla down in the US, finally persuading the reluctant but penniless inventor to meet with him. Desperately needing Jackman’s money, Tesla agrees to build Jackman a transporting machine, which works pretty darned well (apart for one unfortunate side-effect). How unlucky for Bale! He intended to send Jackman on a wild goose chase, but in the end he pointed him at the one man in the world who could build a machine that actually does magic. What were the odds on that?

2. Alien

In space, no one can hear you scream. You are being chased by an alien monster. It is strong. It is covered in armour. Its has a tail that can slice you in two. It has an extra set of jaws for biting you when the first set does not get the job done. It has acid for blood. To sum it up, killing this alien is going to be hard. But in space, no one can hear you scream because there is no atmosphere. So how do the hapless humans try to fight off this one-alien apocalypse? They use flamethrowers and other weakling weapons. Why not try switching off the atmosphere and allowing the otherworldly bugger to suffocate instead?

1. The Fast and The Furious

The starter for this high-octane car racing franchise starred Vin Diesel as the gang leader who boosts a lot of electronic equipment to pay for the modifications that boost his automobiles. However, in the craziest scene of the movie, Vinnie needs to escape the police following a street race. He hides his precious car in a garage, then high-tails it away on foot. A police car spots Vinnie and chases him. Remarkably, Vinnie manages to outrun the police car, and he makes his getaway. What were the moviemakers trying to say with this incongruous scene? Perhaps they were saying that feet are fleeter than the furious automobiles of this car-studded feature. Or perhaps they were saying that Diesel is faster than petrol…

Four years ago, a meeting of high-level representatives of the government, military, and the intelligence services sat down to address matters of growing concern. After 9/11, 7/7, avian flu, swine flu, foot and mouth, cyberattacks, superbugs, and tsunamis, they were worried at repeated failures to anticipate and plan for unforeseen dangers to the state and to the public. Their response was to a create a super-secret organization, codename Dionysos. The motto of Dionysos is ’specto subitus’ or ‘expect the unexpected’. Dionysos is dedicated to forecasting and preparing for contingencies that nobody - and they really mean nobody - has ever worried about before. Believing that Dionysos was planning for an alien invasion, ufologists infiltrated the organization. The truth was even more shocking than they had dared imagine. What follows is a transcript of a secretly recorded meeting held by the Dionysos governance committee.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Shall we begin? There’s some coffee at the back if people want to help themselves.

Colonel Spindle: No biscuits this time? Are we making cutbacks? I’m famished. I need a bourbon, or a custard cream or two.

Lady Mantlebrat: No, no, the absence of biscuits has nothing to do with budgets. We’ve had to suspend biscuit buying pending further investigation.

Prof. Palindrome: If I may, Virginia. Colonel, it occurred to us that the cream filling of certain kinds of biscuit - like the bourbons and custard creams you mention - could be deliberately tainted with genetically-modified psychotropic substances that are keyed to the DNA of a specific individual. In most cases the biscuit would be perfectly harmless. But if the individual with the matching DNA ate the modified biscuit, they would suffer powerful and disturbing hallucinations. The hallucinations would be so vivid and emotionally compelling that they make an LSD trip seem like an animated movie by The Beatles. Onlookers would assume the victim had gone completely mad and would have no way of telling it was down to the biscuit, as they would have eaten from the same biscuit plate but be completely unaffected.

Colonel Spindle: Didn’t the CIA try the same thing on Castro? Something about spiking his cigar in the hope he’d smoke it, go on telly and seem totally off his rocker.

Prof. Palindrome: Yes, but the cigars were crude and it was easy to detect the drugs. The beauty of the DNA-encoded biscuits is that the drug would be very hard to detect and there would be no effect on others eating the biscuit. So if one of us went complete bonkers, nobody would suspect that the real culprit was the chemical cocktail hidden in the custard cream.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: But I thought those Beatles films were supposed to be rather like an LSD trip… not that I’ve ever had one myself… with all those stories about blue meanies and yellow submarines and Lilly flying her kite.

Prof. Palindrome: By the standards of their day, The Beatles’ flirtations with drug culture were very radical, but modern teenagers are not so easily impressed. If it’s not a 3-D epic by James Cameron about giant blue people piloted by virtual reality, then the kids simply don’t treat it as realistic.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: What about ginger nuts?

Prof. Palindrome: Excuse me?

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: Ginger nuts, or digestive biscuits - surely they’re safe as they have no cream filling?

Prof. Palindrome: Until we’ve devised a foolproof test, we think it’s better to err on the side of caution and avoid biscuits of any description. We can’t be sure if the drugs are limited to cream fillings as we’ve never had an actual case of this happening and there’s no proof that the technology exists. But we’re still urgently working towards the method to detect it. Better safe than sorry.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Weren’t we supposed to be investigating something to do with that three-dimensional thingy… what was it? Something about the potential to send even more powerful and undetectable subliminal messages to viewers because each eye got a different blip-coded instruction that only makes sense when combined with the blip-code instruction received by the other eye?

Prof. Palindrome: Ah, yes. You see… (interrupted)

Lady Mantlebrat: Gentlemen, please, let’s get back to the agenda, shall we? I’ve asked Dr. Delia Dingle to join us today, so she can talk to us about the risks of collisions with objects from outer space.

Colonel Spindle: So where is she then?

Lady Mantlebrat: I don’t know, and that’s what I’m worried about.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: Do you think she could have been kidnapped?

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: What about jaffa cakes then?

Lady Mantlebrat: Willie?

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Jaffa cakes. Strictly speaking, they’re not biscuits. Are they safe from the super-LSD-DNA stuff?

Colonel Spindle: Good idea, Willie. Let’s get some jaffa cakes in, shall we? They’re not biscuits and I really am famished.

Prof. Palindrome: Whilst the jaffa cake is, indeed, a cake, I think it still poses a risk.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: We need to ask ourselves if any cake can be considered 100% safe. I’m inclined to think not.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: The question is moot, as we do not have departmental budget to serve cake.

Prof. Palindrome: Marjorie makes a good point. We should extend our research, and our internal ban, to cover the possibility of DNA-encoded hallucinatory cakes in addition to DNA-encoded hallucinatory biscuits.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Jaffa cakes could be bought under the biscuit budget, surely?

Colonel Spindle: This doesn’t sound like an especially new threat to me. In my youth I visited Amsterdam and purchased some baked goods - brownies I think they were called at the shop - that were made with marijuana in them. I think they called them hash brownies.

Prof. Palindrome: These new DNA-encoded psychotropic… (interrupted)

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Please, please gentlemen. If you wanted to talk about biscuits you should have put them on the agenda. This will have to wait to Any Other Business.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: I thought biscuits were a standing item for this meeting (chortles to himself).

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Willie, please let’s return to the agenda, shall we? We need to consider what might have happened to Dr. Dingle.

Colonel Spindle: Maybe she went to the movies and got a subliminal message telling her to fly to Moscow or some such.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: Maybe there never was a Dr. Dingle. She could have been a robot imposter.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: What about birthday cakes? Surely we’ve got budget for that? Does the ministry expect us to chip in and buy the staff birthday cakes out of our own pockets?

Prof. Palindrome: I think we also need to consider another, even more chilling possibility. Perhaps Dr. Dingle is in the room with us, right now.

Colonel Spindle: How so? Are you saying she might be invisible?

Prof. Palindrome: Not just invisible, but completely out of phase with ordinary matter, so that she wasn’t interacting with any devices that could be used to detect her presence. If she had been converted to dark matter, then Dr. Dingle would have no interaction with the universe as we perceive it. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility - she was working in the field of dangers from outer space. Perhaps she was the target of aliens who wanted to stop her work?

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Really, Professor. I think you’re getting a bit carried away. She was investigating what to do about comets and meteors hitting our planet, not alien invasions! And you know full well that contingency planning for alien invasions is outside of our scope. Responsibility for that lies with those nice people who work in New Mexico and who we otherwise don’t mention.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Might I possibly be a robot imposter?

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: No, Willie. You’re all too unique.

Colonel Spindle: We should still take a look into this dark matter conversion theory of Professor Palindrome. If somebody made of dark matter would not register on any scientific device, they would travel through our world completely undetected. They’d be the perfect spy.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: If I understand correctly, the thing about dark matter is that it doesn’t interact with anything else, like ordinary matter or even light. So if light passes right through a dark matter person, that would surely mean they must be blind - because the light wouldn’t hit the back of their retina?

Prof. Palindrome: Ah, yes. Good point. Perhaps we can afford to discount the conversion of people into dark matter for the moment.

[Dr. Delia Dingle enters the room.]

Dr. Dingle: Sorry I’m late. My train was delayed.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Oh, there you are. You didn’t call to warn us you wouldn’t be on time.

Dr. Dingle: (Pulls out her mobile phone and waves it) Didn’t you get my message?

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: No. No I didn’t. (She reaches into her handbag for her own mobile phone. After searching around she pulls it out). That’s funny - there’s no signal in here.

Prof. Palindrome: I’m afraid I hadn’t had chance to warn you about that. As you’ll see, it’s item number eight on the agenda: mobile telephony safety risks.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Professor, our purpose is to deal with the unexpected, not the expected. Surely there are plenty of mainstream researchers looking into the health and safety aspects of mobile telephones - and what exactly have you done to block my reception? It was fine yesterday.

Prof. Palindrome: Very true, Lady Virginia, but I was more concerned that the signals might be intercepted and decoded.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. Might they be used to hold this dark matter stuff?

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Please Willie, I don’t think The Beatles did a reliable geographic survey for the sake of writing ‘A Day in the Life’.

Colonel Spindle: (Angry) Of course mobile radio signals can be decoded. The thing is, only a blithering idiot would do such a thing. Have you ever listened to what the average person jabbers on about whilst on the telephone? What happened last night on Eastenders and who’s next for the bushtucker trials on Celebrity Come Ice Dancing. Who’d want to listen to all that guff? In the secret services we’ve got thousands of people employed to listen in to ordinary people’s conversations, and speaking as someone who’s listened in to them listening in, I can tell you, it’s a complete waste of time. So you can bloody well switch my phone back on, right now.

Lady Virginia Mantlebrat: Colonel, Professor, please, please.

Prof. Palindrome: Does the rest of the committee agree with Colonel Spindle…?

[Mutters of approval.]

Prof. Palindrome: Very well, I’ll stop jamming the signal as soon as the meeting is over.

Colonel Spindle: Can’t you do it now, and fetch some sandwiches whilst you’re out? I’m surprised you can’t all hear my stomach rumbling.

Lady Mantlebrat: Now, please, let’s get back to the agenda, shall we? Dr. Dingle has kindly joined us today to tell us about the probability of an object from space colliding with earth and causing a disaster. Dr. Dingle, if you please…

Dr. Dingle: Though it’s the stuff of movie blockbusters, the possibility of a comet or meteor striking earth…

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: (aside) Yes, that ‘Abattoir’ movie by David Cameron. 3D. Very good. Went with the grandkids. Slept right through it but the littl’uns said they loved it.

Dr. Dingle: … is so small we can effectively ignore it…

Lady Mantlebrat: Excuse me, but I don’t think we can. Everyone else can ignore it, but we at the Dionysos Institute can’t. We’re here to consider all those outlandish possibilities which, when they do happen once in a blue moon, cause people to say: “somebody should have planned for this” even though nobody else would. And that’s what we do. “Specto subitus”!

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Virginia’s absolutely right. Roads freezing over and needing grit, bankers getting big bonuses after we bail them out, making a pigs ear out of the Olympics and finding someone in the private sector to take the blame - we need to think the unthinkable and do the undoable.

Lady Mantlebrat: No, no, no, Willie! None of that has anything to do with us. All of those are perfectly foreseeable which is why we allow others to take responsibility for those foul-ups. We only take responsibility for foul-ups that were so hard to predict that only an insane person would worry about them. That’s why we have to plan for collisions with comets and the like, even if the possibility is so small we should ignore it.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: You’re right, Virginia. I spoke out of turn. We’re here to consider the inconsiderable but not to ignore the ignorable.

Lady Mantlebrat: Quite.

Dr. Dingle: Well you don’t really need to worry about space collisions, because the Russians have a plan that involves using space probes to change the trajectory of any large object heading towards earth. They intend to slowly and steadily divert its course so it will miss. It’ll cost them billions of rubles to implement, so it’s better to leave it to them.

Lady Mantlebrat: We can’t afford to allow the safety of taxpayers to be left to a foreign power. That’s why we’ve already agreed on funding to create our own solution. Isn’t that right Professor?

Prof. Palindrome: It is. In fact, we’ve recently doubled the amount we’re spending on it.

Colonel Spindle: Doubled, you say?

Prof. Palindrome: Yes, we redirected the money saved on biscuits for meetings.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Am I wrong, but I thought the New Mexicans dealt with dangers from space, not us.

Lady Mantlebrat: They only deal with aliens, Willie. We deal with non-living threats from outer space.

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: What about spores?

Lady Mantlebrat: What about them?

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: Spores from outer space - do they count as a living or non-living threat? Spores are inert but they have the potential to create new life.

Lady Mantlebrat: Well, Marjorie, I’d have to consider them as living threats rather than lifeless threats, but you raise a good point. I’ll take an action to speak with our friends in New Mexico who we otherwise don’t mention and ask if we or they should be dealing with spores from space.

Colonel Spindle: I’m very sorry, but I’m terribly hungry and it’s almost lunchtime. I motion that we adjourn to the Old Bull and Bush and reconvene after we’ve had a spot to eat.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Seconded.

Lady Mantlebrat: Gentlemen! It’s only ten to twelve. I’ll tell you what, let’s quickly run through the items to add to the new threats list and then we can go down the pub with Dr. Dingle; she can explain to us more about averting meteor strikes whilst we’re eating.

Colonel Spindle: Very well. I’ll get the ball rolling by offering some new threats to consider: virulent new strains of rabies infecting sheep and causing them to go on a killing spree; Twitter being taken over by foreign governments and used to disseminate 140-character messages of propaganda; terrorists using tunneling machines to plant bombs underneath important buildings; red ants mating with killer bees to create an unstoppable army of killer red bees.

Lady Mantlebrat: Thanks Colonel. As always, some good suggestions for the threat list. Marjorie?

Dame Marjorie Marjarom: I was reading on the internet about how a blogger cloned himself and sent his clone to upset proceedings at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Also, I wonder if global warming will cause snow to become sticky, causing skiers to flip over headfirst and break their neck.

Lady Mantlebrat: Really, Marjorie. You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. But I’ve just been back from a ski break and now you mention it, the snow did seem a bit stickier than usual - it’s something we should look into.

Prof. Palindrome: My turn? I’m worried about the potential for Benny Hill repeats to be shown on television. This might encourage an increase of bald men being slapped on the top of the head, causing brain hemorrhages. Also, it will encourage the chasing of scantily-clad women wearing high heels - we don’t want anyone falling over and twisting their ankle. We should destroy all copies of The Benny Hill Show just in case. (Pauses for a long time, then bursts into laughter).

Lady Mantlebrat: (Chuckles) Very droll, Professor, but seriously, what are your suggestions?

Prof. Palindrome: Brainwashing from secret messages hidden in the sound of car alarms that go off ‘accidentally’; perfumes impregnated with hormones that encourage crocodile attacks; odour eaters soaked in drugs that your feet find addictive; the training of chimpanzees in sign language and to be household servants, leading them to form a competitive society and eventually to enslave all humans; exploding cigarettes; exploding nicotine gum; exploding ordinary chewing gum; and the retirement of the soothing Terry Wogan leading to an increase in stress levels and much higher numbers of heart disease and gang fights. Oh, and I nearly forgot… we should start the central monitoring of the number of cases of spontaneous combustion, just in case it’s on the rise.

Lady Mantlebrat: Willie?

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: What about machines turning us all into living batteries - using our body heat as energy source they can live off - whilst our minds are locked into a computer-generated fantasy world without our realizing it. My grandkids were telling me about it from a movie they’d seen. I think it was one of the ones in the Harry Potter series.

Prof. Palindrome: Your grandchildren were talking about The Matrix, and it’s not scientifically possible. Whatever energy humans give off as heat, there would be more efficient ways to get the energy directly from the food fed to the humans, or from the energy sources used to make the food.

The Right Hon. William Whiteslosh: Is that so? Well, then my only new worry for this month is that we’ll get a mutant strain of flu that combines the worst of bird flu with the worst of swine flu. We could call it ‘pigs will fly’ flu. (Laughs).

Lady Mantlebrat: You are a card, Willie. For myself, I’m very worried about the possibility of someone inventing an impervious cloth and hence devastating the fashion industry. Just imagine how many much-needed jobs would be lost in sweat shops around the world. And pigeons that contain miniature bombs. Imagine the panic that might cause…

‘The War on Terror’. It is not a phrase you hear much any more. The reason for its decline in usage is simple enough. We lost. If we had won, we would have never have heard the end of it.

The War on Terror was never going to be won or lost the same as other wars. Tell-tale signs of who wins or loses a war usually come at the end. It comes in the form of who surrenders, where the new borders are, how many bodies are buried, whose anthem you are made to listen to and whose flag you find yourself saluting. Not so with the War on Terror. The War on Terror was not a fight over land. The War on Terror was a fight over freedom. Apparently we had it, and the terrorists did not like it. They were going to take it away, by killing a few of us and scaring the remainder. That means that a victory in this war is measured in increased freedom. And that is why I am sure we must have lost.

The truly scary thing about terrorism is the idea that you live your meaningless, hum-drum and generally unexciting life and suddenly - boom! - you are dead. You get on a bus or plane or train, walk down the wrong street or into the wrong building and there you come to an abrupt end. One minute you are considering what to eat for dinner. The next minute you are never going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature or become an international playboy or win the lottery or a million other things you were never going to do anyway. Whilst alive, you have hope. When dead, your story is over. The terrorists will randomly, meaninglessly, cut your life short. Of course, people lose their lives every day because of a million-and-one random, meaningless acts. Your car crashes because the accelerator got stuck. You fall off your skis and hit your head. You do not visit the doctor and ask her to check that new lump. You live in Haiti and there is an earthquake. You live in the Congo and a mosquito bites you. So why no War on Skiing? Why no War on Malaria? Why no War on Earthquakes or Cancer or Toyota? It is because we do what we want to do and we want to drive cars and to ski and to spend our time watching television instead of seeing the doctor or designing a better accelerator pedal. And it is because we live in a world with earthquakes and diseases and danger and we accept that. The difference with terror is that, unlike skiers or Toyota or mosquitoes, terrorists mean to kill other people, and if their tactics seem to work, they may do it more.

The problem with dealing with terrorists is they do not know what they want. Or rather, they know what they want, but have no idea how to get it. Terrorists want things like a planet where everyone thinks like them, or glory in the afterlife. Their ultimate goals are fantastic. They are unattainable and disconnected from what the terrorists actually do. The terrorists chances of success are as good as the chances of doctors finding a cure for cancer with bombs or the chances that Toyota will build better cars using bombs. In this world, it is perfectly possible for somebody to want something and have no idea how to get it. That somebody may then do something irrelevant and nasty in the false belief it will help them achieve their goal. We have seen this conundrum with the human race many times before. Worried about the next harvest? Sacrifice someone. Suffering bad luck? Burn the local witch. The terrorists are just the modern incarnation of the innate human propensity to foolishly attempt to solve problems through a futile murder. The War on Terror was a war on a method, not on a country. The method is flawed, because violence does not beget a better harvest or a brotherhood of man. But then, the method to fight terrorism is just as flawed. Killing the terrorists is pointless if new people are born who replenish the ranks of the terrorists. The education that murder is a potential route to success lasts longer than the fear of retributive violence.

We could allow terrorists to believe what they want to believe and then kill them if they act on their beliefs. A better approach might be to change their beliefs. In Afghanistan, the US scored a great victory over the ailing Soviet Union by giving weapons to people who, by most definitions, deserve to be called terrorists. I call that a kind of education - the education that terrorism can lead to success. When the Soviets were defeated, the American money stopped. A better US investment would have been to put dollars into schools. Education would have been a better long-term investment than waiting until the time to fight another war. The West started losing the War on Terror even before it realized the War had begun. We started losing by placing our trust in the wrong methods to achieve our goals. In that respect, we were just as misguided as the terrorists. We were wrong to believe that the threat of greater violence can stop people being violent. We were wrong to believe that spending on being violent to our enemies and spending on security at home is more cost-effective than educating people to stop being violent. Our beliefs were as wrong as those of the terrorist.

It is a poor doctor that treats symptoms and not the cause. We lost the war because we became preoccupied with symptoms and ignored the ailment. Terrorism is a cancer, but killing the cancer with violence only prompts more cancer. Better to live a healthy life and reduce the chances of getting sick in the first place. The discipline of freedom is that we must use it well in order to preserve it. We had the freedom to educate; we did not use it well. Now, we fight violence with violence and sacrifice the one thing we were fighting for: our freedom. We spend on spying on ourselves. We spend on listening to our own conversations. We spend on searching ourselves as we board flights. We spend and spend and spend, and mostly we spend to make ourselves less free, because we do not trust what the terrorist will do with his freedom. We could have spent on educating our potential enemies. We could have given our potential enemy something valuable that would have been diminished each time they kill: the loss of friendships, trade, knowledge, and of their own freedom. If these things have no value to the terrorist, we should spend more on making them valuable to all. Better that than spending on making them less valuable to us.