Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you're the mayor. The bad news is, now you're the mayor.
The bad news in our most cosmopolitan and vibrant cities is that many middle-class people can no longer afford to live in 'middle-class' school districts.
The brains of humans contain a mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news.
Islamic fundamentalism in its activist manifestation is bad news. Religious fundamentalism in general is bad news. We know about religious fundamentalism in South Africa. Calvinist fundamentalism has been an unmitigated force of benightedness in our history.
I do miss Glasgow but Malibu is home now. I love it here and when I do go back to Scotland it takes me a bit of time to acclimatise. I am a spoilt so-and-so. I live in the mountains of Malibu in the most gorgeous house and I phone my mum every day and tell her that I have got bad news - that it is only 70 degrees here.
I can't see what's wrong about assuming intelligence in your audience and what's bad news about being rewarded for assuming that.
The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.
Offbeat questions are nearly impossible to prepare for, and they don't achieve the interviewer's objective - to test out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to perform under pressure. That's the bad news. The good news is that companies are moving away from them.
Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.
You need to set a tone at the top that inspires trust - and encourages open and honest 2-way communication. So you hear the brutal facts, and you listen to the good news and the bad news - so that, in the spirit of continuous improvement, you can make changes.
Well-reported news is a public good; bad news is bad for everyone.
