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A Chair's Function Is Not Just To Provide A Place To Sit; It Is To Provide A Medium For Self-expression. Chairs Are About Status, For Example. Or Signalling Something About Oneself. That's Why The Words Chair, Seat And Bench Have Found Themselves Used To Describe High Status Professions, From Academia To Parliament To The Law.

-Evan Davis

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A Chair's Function Is

Evan Davis

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A Chair's Function Is Not Just To Provide A Place To Sit; It Is To Provide A Medium For Self-expression. Chairs Are About Status, For Example. Or Signalling Something About Oneself. That's Why The Words Chair, Seat And Bench Have Found Themselves Used To Describe High Status Professions, From Academia To Parliament To The Law.

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All Socio-political Phenomena In The U.k. Come Laden With The Baggage Of A Class-based Theory Or Two Attached To Them. In The Case Of Gay Tories, There Is One Particularly Silly Variant Of The Category, Which Asserts That Gayness Is Bred In Public Schools And Thus Fits With Conservatism Like Hand In Glove.

But Beginners To The World Economics Forum Have To Understand There Is No Single Davos Experience, And There Is No Single Davos Community Either. There Are Numerous Tribes Who Interact Only At A Minimal Level.

The Key Thing About Me Is That I'm Really Not Very Interesting.

Very Interesting

It's Amazing, If You Know What You Want To Say, How Fast It Is To Write.

I Don't Want To Sound Like 'chirpy Evan' Who's Just Bouncing Around With His Unrealistic Views And Doesn't Understand What's Going On.

What Comes With A Job As A Staff Member Of The Bbc Is A Certain Self-censoring That You Get Utterly Used To. You Don't Say Everything You Think. You Hold Back On Some Things.

I Swing Both Ways. I Can See Things From A Kind Of Conservative Point Of View And From A More Socially Liberal Or Left-wing Point Of View.

We All Know That Americans Love Their Statistics - In Sport, Obviously. And In Finance Too.

Personally, I'd Like Us To Have A Few More Women On The 'today' Programme.

At The Bbc We've Had Plenty Of Women In Good Management Jobs. It Comes And Goes But There's Been Plenty. On Air, I Think There's Quite A Bit More We Can Do.

Art Can Help A Town By Attracting A Certain Bohemian Population That Adds Life To The Bars, Character To The Streets And A Buzz To The Name. Employers May Then Follow. But Art Can't Do Much If Every Town Does It. There Aren't Enough Bohemians.

Interest Rate Cuts Have An Effect In Stimulating An Economy By Directly Or Indirectly Making Someone, Somewhere, Spend More Than They Otherwise Would. That Extra Spending Increases Demand And Ensures That We All Carry On With Work To Do, Without Us Having To Slash Our Prices Or Our Wrists.

Once We Are Fed, Heated, Housed And Healthy, Our Extra Consumption Inevitably Has An Element Of Luxury About It. And Once Luxury Enters The Scene, The Practicalities Are In Trouble, As Women Who Wear Expensive Stiletto Heels Can Testify.

It Doesn't Annoy Me But I Think Of Myself As A Presenter Who Is Gay, Rather Than A Gay Presenter. It's A Subtle Distinction, But That's How I View It.

But Sometimes It's Good To Dare Yourself To Do The Unthinkable. And Rather Than Stand In Front Of An Audience With No Clothes On, I Decided To Have A Go At Stand-up Comedy.

The New Industries Are Brainy Industries And So-called Knowledge Workers Tend To Like To Be Near Other People Who Are The Same. Think Of The City Of Hollywood. People Cluster. This Means You Have Winning Regions, Such As London And Cambridge, And Losing Regions. The People Who Want To Be Top Lawyers In Sunderland Are Hoovered Up By London.

Someday We'll Look Back On This Moment And Plow Into A Parked Car.

When A Population Saves A Lot, The Funds Are Invested Outside The Country As Well As Inside. If The Japanese Invest In The United States, It Pushes Their Exchange Rate Down And Makes Their Manufacturing More Competitive.

If You're Not Making Some Mistakes, It Probably Means You're Not Trying Hard Enough.

Phyllis Is One Of The Tunnel Boring Machines For Crossrail And One Of The Most Extraordinary Characters I Met, Visiting Some Of The Most Exciting Infrastructure In Britain. Crossrail Is The New Railway Which Will Run From West To East Right Across London. It Is The Biggest Engineering Project In Europe - And Phyllis Herself Is Not Exactly Dainty.

The Two Questions That Anyone Ever Asks Me Are: 'are House Prices Going To Go Down?' And 'is It A Good Time To Fix My Mortgage Rate?'

I Don't Particularly Like Going On About Being Gay Or Making A Big Thing About It, But I Think It's A Bit Of A Pain To Be Secretive About It.

Some People Harbour An Awkward Clash Of Feelings - Homosexual Attraction On The One Hand And Shame Or Embarrassment About That Attraction On The Other. It Is Well Known That The Mind Struggles To Sustain Conflicting Views.

One Of The Key Problems Is That The Germans Know What They Do Because Everywhere They Go There's A 'made In Germany' Label On It - They Can Feel Proud Of Volkswagens And Audis And Mercedes.

Interestingly, Human Irrationality Is A Hot Topic In Economics At The Moment. Behavioural Economics It's Called, On The Cusp Of Economics And Psychology.

Historically, The British Have Always Been Rather Wary Of Grand Engineering Projects - Perhaps Understandably, Given That Many Of Them Have Been Delivered Late And Over Budget.

I Rarely Come Away From Presenting The 'today' Programme Without Some Sense Of Regret. There Is Always Some Question That I Should Have Asked, Or Some Point That I Should Have Made. This Is Annoying But Not Surprising. Perfection Is Hard To Achieve In A Three-hour Live Programme.

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Most People Hugely Underestimate The Amount Of 'empty Space' We Have In Our Country. Fly Over The U.k., And You See That Human Settlement Does Not Fill Up The U.k. At All. It Accounts For Something Of The Order Of 15 Per Cent Of The Landmass.

Men Don't Know Much About Women. We Do Know When They're Happy. We Know When They're Crying, And We Know When They're Pissed Off. We Just Don't Know In What Order These Are Gonna Come At Us.

What Is So Striking About Liberia Is That In A Place Where There Is So Much To Be Done, I Have Never Seen So Many People With Nothing To Do.

A Chair's Function Is Not Just To Provide A Place To Sit; It Is To Provide A Medium For Self-expression. Chairs Are About Status, For Example. Or Signalling Something About Oneself. That's Why The Words Chair, Seat And Bench Have Found Themselves Used To Describe High Status Professions, From Academia To Parliament To The Law.

I've Always Been Scared Of Advertising Folk. I've Met Them At Parties And I've Been To Their Offices And I've Always Found Them Intimidatingly Cool. At One Company I Visited, They Held Their Meetings In A Caravan That Had Somehow Been Installed In The Place, A Rather More Exotic Place To Gather Than The Typical Bbc Glass Box.

I Don't Keep It Secret That I Live With My Partner Gio. I'm Very Proud Of My Gayness. But There Is Lots I Wouldn't Want The Press To Write About Me... It Is A Matter Of Regret That Being Gay Is The Most Interesting Thing About Me.

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Even Though Disciplined Sleeping Habits And The Adrenalin Of Live Radio Ensures That We Are Very Awake While On Duty, There Is Evidence Of A Phenomenon Called Circadian Desynchronosis Which Causes One's Brain To Function Slowly At Those Times Of Day When It Thinks It Should Be Asleep, Regardless How Wide Awake The Body Is.

Now Undoubtedly, We Face Some Very British Challenges When It Comes To Infrastructure. We Rightly Cherish Our Back Yards And Green Spaces, And We'll Defend Them Passionately When Projects Are Announced. We Live In A Democracy, And We Like To Debate These Things, Often For Many Years.

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Everyday Things

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Nice Guys Finish Last, But We Get To Sleep In.

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Mistakes Are Nothing To Be Ashamed Of.

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Black Friday Is Not Another Bad Hair Day In Wall Street. It's The Term Used By American Retailers To Describe The Day After The Thanksgiving Holiday, Seen As The Semi-official Start Of Christmas Shopping Season.

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