Any other business | 1 January 2011

In the land of my Flemish forefathers, I draw a key lesson for 2011: always have a Plan B

To Ghent, in the land of my ancestors, to address a conclave of ‘risk managers’. Though the mother tongue of most participants is Dutch or French, the conference is in English — and I feel obliged to explain that despite my surname that’s what I shall speak too, because it’s 200 years since my silkweaving Flemish forefathers moved from Antwerp to Norwich to take advantage of a tax scheme for migrant craftsmen that would no doubt now be banned by EU ‘single market’...