The future of UK foreign policy: Sir Mark Allen

Entropy, though a term from the world of physics, seems an endemic feature of human affairs as well. To resist the inclination to disorder and degeneration, we feel the urge, from time to time, to put a new pulse of energy through our organisations and systems. Renewal, reform and realignment are the common slogans. Cynics often identify the campaign against entropy with the egotisms of new leading personalities who want to put their mark on organisations and, indeed, on history. And the cynics are often quite right. But it may also be that the newcomers are just sensitive to the entropy problem, even though they misjudge the language they use in addressing it.