The death of deference seems to be general at the moment, so everybody has to earn their reputation and trust all over again. You don't just get it by virtue of being a professor or a politician or anybody else.

The post-Second World War simple system of social democracy and organized labour has fragmented massively, but just because people aren't organized in workplace trade unions doesn't mean they aren't in associations with other people - work-based, place-based, culture-based, sport-based, faith-based - there's a bit of an old rainbow coalition argument.

Somewhere like Russia or China, decision-makers have far fewer constraints on acting than in more open systems.

We should look at how "the enemy" - people that you wouldn't necessarily agree with - have done change and see whether there's bits in there that we could learn from.

In any system, there will be change happening without you.

When you get talking to people in positions of power, you find that often their worldview is framed either in terms of their disciplinary studies at university and/or the country where they first got interest in development.

I see [activists] getting really angry that people won't just do what the evidence tells them, and that's not very helpful. You need to actually think why that is.