The CEO of Rolls-Royce made a fleeting appearance here a few months ago and was dubbed a Super Good Egg. The news spread (not far) and I’ve heard his wife sometimes calls him an SGE. Well, I like to keep an eye on SGEs to make sure they are staying up to the mark.
Warren East has passed with flying colours. He has just put £850,000 into a charitable trust he has set up with his wife. He will now face his namesake’s (Warren Buffett) problem of how to allocate these funds. Buffett passed the buck, so to speak, to Bill Gates but my hunch is that Warren and Amanda will make their own, well-informed, decisions.
Now Brexit means, as you know, Brexit. I have been fobbing people off what it portends by taking a leaf out of Chairman Mao’s book. When asked about the impact of the French Revolution he is supposed to have said “it’s too early to tell.” However, I thought that I could see a likely outcome and, frankly, was looking forward to sharing it with you. And then … I read this. I’m not giving you the link before you have read the Health Warning. If you are a bit muddled about what the whole Brexit biz is, this may be information-overload, if you don’t fancy reading 450 pages, ditto, but if you’d like to skim read, it really does give an insight into the complexities the UK faces and bear in mind that this is from a pro-Brexit angle. If you must, click here for Flexcit. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was it destroyed in a day – that’s my Delphic opinion.
The Brexit trio, Davis, Fox and Johnson, remind me of Ping, Pang and Pong in Turandot. They don’t know if they are preparing for a wedding or a funeral.
Christopher:
I’m all in favor of charitable folks, but Warren Buffet has donated in excess of $15 BILLION to the Gates Foundation, not 850 pounds…
Gretchen
Warren East has time to catch up. He is thirty-one years younger than Warren Buffett. But I take your point.
It was Zhou Enlai not Mao Tse-tung who is credited with commenting that it was ‘too early to say’ in response to a question by Richard Nixon during his visit to Beijing in 1972. However it seems that Zhou Enlai (or the interpreter) misunderstood Nixon’s question which referred to the events in Paris in 1968 not 1789. A diplomat who was present at the meeting described it as a misunderstanding that was ‘too delicious to invite correction’. Good phrase.
While on your blog I can report that many regimental crests across the Empire went over to Edward VIII before he abdicated. I have a Sandhurst Christmas card from 1936 displaying EVIIIR. It is of some interest as the King abdicated a fortnight before Christmas Day. I had thought of sending you a photograph but Camilla and John thought it too boring and I always take their advice.
Good correction on “too early to say” background, thank you.
The Sandhurst Christmas cards would almost all have been sold and probably posted prior to the abdication. Nevertheless it’s another interesting bit of E VIII trivia.