“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

That is from Edmund Burke who was, like many great British men, Irish. (Many were also Scottish; shame we got the fag end in the last few years).

It is hard to believe that if the people suffering in Zimbabwe were not either black or old and white with no money, the powers would not have sent a task force in by now. Mind you, when the US did that in Somalia, what a mess they made. Someone did make a profitable film of it, though. Unreality rules, O.K.?

Of course the other thing required for evil to triumph is that bad men pretend it isn’t happening and even encourage it; and if you can think of a good man ruling any African country save Botswana and perhaps Ghana, give me a shout. It will cheer me up no end.

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

4 Comments

  1. No great names for you (although didn’t I hear good things about the Zambian lad?). But while intervention is a nice idea, if we tried it, it would make Iraq look like a cake-walk. Apart from not having the right navy or air force for the job, and it being an awful long way away, it’s one of those “who do we shoot” jobs. And that’s before we start unpacking all that imperialist baggage.

    Now, whether Zim’s neighbours ought to be getting stuck into this bloke… that’s another matter. What kind of dirty pictures featuring Thabo Mbeki must that old monster Mugabe have in his safe?

  2. I guess I’m personally affected by the whole crisis in Zim, since my fiancee is actually from the country…

    Even though she’s now over here in a better place her family’s back there. i could see first-hand the anguish… the dismay over funds rapidly drying up… and just the sadness over the destruction over the beautiful country she once knew…

    Mugabe indeed is a monster… truly, truly shocking…

  3. and yes…. the silence of the international community really is deafening….

    reminded me how I read somewhere that John Rambo did more for raising awareness for the Karen community in Burma then any governmental body…

  4. Britain is getting more and more like Zimbabwe everyday, a psychotic control freak leader afraid of elections, food prices soaring (by £800 pa for the average family in 12 months) and now fuel prices jumping 25% in a week.

    The Rix Garage in Kirkcaldy, the spluttering slob of Downing Street’s constituency, has been charging a staggering £1.45 a litre for diesel and £1.25 for unleaded petrol. We all know that the power crazed Cyclops doesn’t pay for his own fuel, we do

    The Grangemouth oil refinery is on the verge of shutdown as it looks like a two-day strike by staff will go ahead this weekend. This neatly avoids the government’s legislation that prohibits blockading the refineries.
    Queues of panic buyers all over the country worried that the 200,000 barrel-a-day Grangemouth refinery closure will force the BP Forties Pipeline System, which transfers oil from more than 50 North Sea fields, to be turned off are filling every container they’ve got with fule. Our local cash & carry has even run out of catering size cans of grape seed oil as this works a treat in diesel cars. If the dispute lasts more than two days, Britain will run dry.

    Mugabe (London School of Economics finest student) must think it noteworthy that the recently signed Treaty of Lisbon has quietly and without any publicity, introduced the death penalty for political offences, even as vague and undefined as ‘unrest’, but not for serial killers, rapists, paedophiles or child murderers.

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