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Dear friends and colleagues, 20 January is nearly upon us. This is a personal post in which I just wanted to reflect some brief thoughts for this particular day.

When I’ve been engaged in public service in my career I have been asked to sign up to the Nolan Principles of Public Life. For those unfamiliar, they are as follows:

1. Selflessness – acting in the public interest

2. Integrity

3. Objectivity – acting and taking decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias

4. Accountability

5. Openness – Acting and taking decisions in an open and transparent manner

6. Honesty

7. Leadership – including actively promoting and robustly supporting these principles and challenging poor behaviour wherever it occurs

They sound like good principles, don’t they? The challenge of course is whether they are put into practice.

Now with reference to public interest that of course refers to the many, not to a privileged few. In turn it surely asks for account to be taken of the diversity of characteristics and circumstances of which the public is comprised.

Call me naïve but all this suggests the sort of leadership that would support the sustainable development goals. There are seventeen of them. Here are just three:

Quality education. Reduced inequalities. Climate action.

I don’t think quality education means book bans, does it? I don’t think reduced inequalities means increasing disparities between the rich and the poor, and backtracking on DEI efforts, does it? I don’t think climate action means a call to ‘drill baby drill’. Does it?!

I will continue to respect public figures who support sustainable development. I will continue to admire people in all walks of life who can relate to a mantra of ‘Make Earth Great Again’.

Sadly, it cannot be taken for granted that the leadership of our time necessarily plays to the tune of these words. Indeed, it can feel as though a darkness descends.

But organisations, institutions and society itself are made up of individual humans. We all have a part to play. And playing a positive part can then make a difference.

So today I’ve lit a virtual candle since, as the saying goes “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness”.

Take care in the times ahead, and best wishes.