Blogs

Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall. What do aircrete blocks have in common with Andrex loo roll? Facing bricks with McDougall’s flour or PIR insulation board with rigatoni pasta and Dettol hand-wash? It’s not often you get to write all of those in a single paragraph, …

I think the king is but a man, as I am,: the violet smells to him as it does to me Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Alexander who really, really wanted to run the country. So, he went to a very expensive school and did …

What we have we prize not to the worth Whilse we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours. Eleven years ago, three organisations across the construction industry supply chain …

I have been here before. But how or when, I cannot tell. What have the following got in common with each other? Alok Sharma, Dominic Raab, Esther McVey, Kris Hopkins, Margaret Beckett, Gavin Barwell, Mark Prisk, Caroline Flint, John Healey and Charles Falconer? All of them have, at some point …

The greatest of all sins is stupidity Is it the fascination with the forces of nature? Or the feeling that one needs to beat those forces. Or a sense that ‘it’s just a bit of wind/rain/water’? Or the general question: what’s the worst that can happen? Whatever the reason, this …

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly past. After all the hoo-ha over whether we should pay half-a-million quid to have Big Ben chime the moment of the UK’s departure from the EU, after all the celebration parties and the candlelit vigils, I’m surprised  …

Gareth Osborne from Tarmac’s Cement and Lime business looks at corporate social responsibility and how merchants can best implement it. It’s not all about the bottom line: companies who give back can have better employee loyalty, engagement and productivity. Trust and business growth go hand-in-hand, and those with a successful …

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. April may be the cruellest month but January is definitely the longest. So it’s fitting then, that the ending of the longest, most drawn out political process …

I can only control my own performance. If I do my best, then I can feel good at the end of the day. What takes hardly any time at all, leaves you with a feeling of quiet satisfaction and could make either you or someone else very happy indeed? Of …

Here comes the rain again, Falling on my head like a memory Falling on my head like a new emotion. I want to walk in the open wind   The problem with the naming of storms is that some names are more, well, stormy, than others. Take Storm Ivan, for …