I’m coming around to an idea first explored by Bernard Mandeville in The Grumbling Hive (and to a lesser extent, Jerry Seinfeld in Bee Movie) that it is our vices rather than our virtues which bind us together as a society and that if we are nice to each other and treat everyone fairly, the hive in which we all toil will fall apart. In other words, were we to rid ourselves of vanity and pride and greed and so on, there would simply be no incentive to get things done.

It is the hankering for worldly stuff and secular glory that drives the wheel and time spent helping people up John Landy-style is time spent not thrashing the opposition by an even greater margin. Being way out in front when you cross the finish line is what progress is all about and that’s why you want arseholes in charge.