New for 2020 – Podcasts!
From January 2020 I’m recording each post as a podcast, in addition to the written version which you can continue to read as usual. I’m also gradually adding selected posts from the archive (going back to 2009) as podcasts. Click here or on the Podcasts tab in the navigation bar.
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This blog is called A Few Kind Words because the word kindness originally meant being kin, or kindred, or of the same kind. And since we are all humankind, we should remember to be kinder to one another when we communicate. The alternative is to be unkind, to use language which fails to connect or even alienates. The choice isn’t hard. (The header artwork is by wife, Sarah.)
Twitter Updates
- @HI_Voices My young adult novel The Witness is set at the time of a future civil war in the Highlands and was short… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 3 months ago
- Looking forward to talking (and playing) with my old chum Pete Clark as we discuss the life and play the tunes of S… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 months ago
- RT @jolilford: @timiswriting @DarkAngelsWrite @26characters School exams, for grown up writers. https://t.co/m7VCEr5WgX 5 months ago
- I'll be running this through May with my compadre @Lucidcontent - join us for serious writing fun and games twitter.com/DarkAngelsWrit… 5 months ago
- RT @JNSim: Here's a great listen for all who can hear. @neilbaker talks about why creative writing for business matters, the @DarkAngelsWri… 6 months ago
Tag Archives: corporate speak
Dark Angels
Each new year John Simmons, Stuart Delves and I meet in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s comfortable rooms on Edinburgh’s Queen Street, as we did today. It’s our annual Dark Angels partners’ meeting. We have a bar lunch, a bottle … Continue reading
Memorabilia
My maternal grandfather, a retired admiral, could recite The Hunting Of The Snark in its entirety. As a young midshipman he had committed it to memory and there it had stuck for the remaining seventy-odd years of his life. I … Continue reading
Tagged business language, corporate speak, emotion, headcount, heart, Memory, mind
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Out of the darkness
On Wednesday evening, as the Chilean miners emerged one by one from that hellish, six-hundred-metre-long metal tube, President Piñera, who seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of bons mots, declared that his country’s most precious resource was not copper or … Continue reading
Why fiction?
‘Why should I read fiction?’ This was a question put by one of our students in Spain, a couple of weeks ago. It’s a good question, and a reminder for me that not everyone has the passion for stories that … Continue reading
Cable news
When the business secretary Vince Cable yesterday announced his plans to shine ‘a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour,’ the director general of the CBI, Richard Lambert, went on the attack, saying: ‘It’s odd that he thinks … Continue reading
A Few Kind Words 