Companies contradict themselves. In fact communications companies are often the worst at communicating. Especially the telecoms people.

Similarly, IT companies always boast that they are about agility, reacting quickly and empowering their staff to make decisions. Then they panic if a journalist even asks them for their name, job title or a photograph. Either that or they send out a hapless untrained engineer to do a 'tech' interview.

The opportunistic violence that we've seen on the streets of London over the past few days has no place in today's society and for those of us who are proud Londoners brings shame upon the nation's capital.

It’s widely believed that nice people are doomed in business. Rumour has it there’s a book coming out soon, advising people to 'Get in Touch with Your Inner Psycho'. The logic of this rotten manifesto is that sociopaths thrive in times of uncertainty and flux because they lack the guilt and human empathy that holds the rest of us back.

Sport is so regularly used as a metaphor for business that I’m surprised telecoms regulators haven’t tried to devise an offside rule. Being American, many of the sports analogies used don’t stand up in Europe although I’ve seen many a journalist who relishes the chance to ‘step up to the plate.’ Conference rule number One: Never feed the press until after the interview. If you can manage it, keep us hungry until we've filed our stories…

As deputy police commissioner John Yates faced a home affairs select committee, Channel 4 was showing Carry on Dick.

Was this a coded message from the broadcaster? Possibly not, but as a communications expert, I was all over the select committee hearings like Glen Mulcaire in your inbox.

Ed Miliband’s had a good scandal hasn’t he? Despite the fact that he was the political advisor to Gordon Brown for 13 years, he’s emerged as some kind of guardian of high standards in public life in the last few days. Which is quite an achievement, given the number of News International social events he and Gordon Brown frequented.

People keep asking whether Stuart Downing is really worth £20 million. Who knows? Surely they’re missing the point anyway.

Any commodity is only worth whatever someone is prepared to pay for it. So, if someone is prepared to pay half a million quid for a studio flat in Penge, then it’s worth that much, no matter how unacceptable this is to the local property market expert who missed out on the commission.

So, in the grip of a crippling recession our Government decides to spend a whopping £110bn on green energy. That figure will cost you and me an average of £1,000 per year on top of everything else we currently have to fork out for.

Some people might rejoice at the demise of The News of the World. I think it’s rather sad.

Of course I’m not defending phone hacking, especially the appalling cases that have recently emerged. But let’s be realistic – only one or two desperados would have carried out these actions, and I am sure we all have a sneaking suspicion that they aren’t just limited to the NOTW.