Job losses in black & white and blurring lines in grey

We should stop talking about when travel retail as an industry or sector will recover but break it out country by country, or more accurately country to country.

The slayer who ran looked a lot like me

Roll on ten years and my business is fighting, like so many others, for its life, but I am in rollicking good health. I know which scenario I prefer.

Raising the bar every day to a ceaseless, magical rhythm

We think we have created something ground-breaking not just in travel retail terms but within the whole digital world.

Kia kaha Canterbury – stay strong

Kia kaha indeed. In these dark COVID-blighted days, it seems as apposite a phrase as it was back in the dark moments of 2010 and 2011.

Sunshine through the fragrant harbour (and COVID-19) haze

It is now reasonable to expect that better days lie ahead, not on some distant and perhaps mirage-like horizon but in the relative near term.

Toy Town, Trump tosh and quarantine roulette

Perhaps the oven analogy will strike home for Boris. After all, most of his government’s response to this crisis to date has been half-baked.

Untagged in Hong Kong as the space race heats up

Sputnik is the Russian word for satellite. The choice of name is apt, for many have likened the search for a vaccine to the space race contested by the Soviet Union and the US during the Cold War.

Taking time out in Tung Chung

“It is what it is,” as President Donald Trump said in his already infamous interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios on HBO this week. Yes indeed, Mr President and it isn’t good.

Boris Johnson said that the government had “underestimated” the extent of asymptomatic transmission and didn’t fully understand the coronavirus in the “first few weeks and months”. But now, 45,762 deaths later, they do understand. So that’s alright then.

Miscellaneous