Wednesday, out and about

Set off for the House of Lords for the Tomorrow's Company reception. Arriving early in Westminster, strolled up Whitehall to look at the horses. Many, many police, far more than usual, setting up for a demonstration about student fees. Decided to risk being the first to arrive at the event but found that there was already a queue at Black Rod's Garden Entrance - security is tight as might be expected but only one person checking so very slow. Chatted to others in the queue  who said that last year on the day of this event it had been raining which was much worse! Spotted several old pals in the queue.

A very warm welcome from my good friend Emma who is COO for Tomorrow's Company - she used to organise events at ICAEW. With the sun shining it was very pleasant on the terrace and the canapes were excellent. Good conversation with Mark Goyder, who founded TC, and his recollections of the Cadbury time. Met an interesting lawyer who surprisingly shared some of my heretical views about NEDs and board diversity, and claimed to have read some of my work. I don't think he was just being kind, he seemed quite familiar with it - trouble is, I no longer am! Stuff I wrote ten years ago is no longer easily retrievable from my memory bank.

Everyone looking at my badge had a comment about OBU, some sort of connection from being the father of one of our MBA administrators, or an adviser to one of our research groups to having a young relative who had studied with us. Several comments about our ACCA link, especially from the CIMA people who were out in force because they have linked up with TC.

The speeches were mercifully short as we had to stand and the marquee had become very crowded and hot. A lot of rather fluffy calls for ethical behaviour and sustainability (I have some sympathy with Simon Jenkins on this in today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/08/ethical-fluff-st-pauls-rowan-williams ) I was particularly interested to hear Lisa Buckingham, editor of the Financial Mail, as she wrote a great deal about Cadbury twenty years ago. I spoke to her afterwards: there was a small queue of people wanting to speak to her and she seemed rather pleased to be rescued from someone from UKSIF. She told me that she was with the Guardian at the time - she had been on maternity leave and wanted to work part-time but they weren't keen to let her. She offered to write about corporate governance, convincing her boss that it would be a really important area, and because no-one else was writing on the subject, she managed to concentrate her work in a family-friendly way. She seemed interested in the book so I may ask her for some more detail about her memories of the time.

I didn't linger because I was nervous about getting caught up in the demonstrations so headed back to get the bus. Dealt with email on the journey - it's great to be able to do that on my phone, no need to lug a netbook about. Phone calls bringing me up to date about events back at base - rather pleased I'm out and about this week.

An evening reading papers for Friday's ICAEW research board meeting.