Ben Lowry: Bigwigs should realise that there is no holiday before retirement

OK, so he was on holiday.

OK, so this drama arose before anyone knew for sure that Kabul was about to fall.

But if you are the prime minister or hold any of the key offices of state, you have to work on the assumption that you will never get a guaranteed holiday.

Of course you will get days off.

You might even be lucky and get the odd uninterrupted full week or two off. In such a post you will be under so much pressure that you will certainly need rest.

But you are always on call. Just always.

That should be clear to everyone from school age.

After all, even a child knows that those distant, authoritative figures, head teachers, are always on call. If something serious happens, they will emerge soon enough to sort it.

It is the same with newspaper editors. If September 11 happens or Princess Diana dies and you are on holiday, you will just have to end it.

Some foolish leaders seem not to realise this, like the former BP chief Tony Hayward, who said after the Horizon Oil Spill, ‘I want my life back’, or the Environment Agency chair Sir Philip Dilley, who holidayed in Barbados during the floods in the UK.

I think bigwigs deserve big pay and big status, if competent. But they must realise that there is no guaranteed holiday until they retire, to enjoy their riches.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter acting editor

• Ben Lowry: Unionists are more vulnerable to the fall of Stormont than republicans

Other articles by Ben Lowry below, and beneath that information on how to subscribe to the News Letter:

• Ben Lowry Aug 16: Exam grade inflation is rooted in sentimentality about education and school pupils

• Ben Lowry Aug 16: The collapse of Kabul to the Taliban will be seen as a sign of western weakness

• Ben Lowry Aug 9: Covid has been a bewildering and humbling pandemic

• Ben Lowry Aug 9: Now I understand those older people who want cooler summer weather

• Ben Lowry Aug 2: Three points to keep in mind when arguing against the NI Protocol

• Ben Lowry July 31: The last NI housing boom was disaster, and we need to beware a repeat

• Ben Lowry July 24: Republican terror atrocities are increasingly being partly blamed on the security forces

• Ben Lowry July 24: Hot weather ought to be welcome in NI but this is extreme

• Ben Lowry July 17: UK has tipped into an amnesty after a long approach to IRA that lacked bite

• Ben Lowry July 15: We should be honest as to how we have arrived at a Troubles amnesty

• Ben Lowry July 10: We will find soon if UK is for once going to criticise Ireland

• Ben Lowry July 10: I once always wanted England to lose, now I want them to win

• Ben Lowry July 3: The mild DUP response to the protocol will cause Boris little concern

• Ben Lowry July 3: The extreme heat in Canada shows why we might come to like Northern Ireland’s mild weather

• Ben Lowry June 26: Neither Dublin nor IRA have been put under any pressure on legacy

• Ben Lowry June 26: A slight sense of sadness as the days again begin to shorten

• Ben Lowry June 19: Somehow the appeasement of Sinn Fein got worse

• Ben Lowry June 12: Now above all, when unionists are winning the argument on the Protocol, is time to stand firm against it

• Ben Lowry June 5: It is clear that Edwin Poots is not taking the DUP in a remotely hardline direction

• Ben Lowry May 29: There is much confusion in unionism, so here are some suggested core pro Union principles

• Ben Lowry May 22: Instead of ‘moving on’ from IRA funeral, we still need proper answers

• Ben Lowry May 22: If Joel Keys, 19, wants to help unionism he should get a law degree

• Ben Lowry May 15: Edwin Poots and Doug Beattie will offer two distinct shades of unionism

• Ben Lowry May 8: Formal UK ideas for an amnesty are almost exactly 20 years old

• Ben Lowry May 8: Let us hope that the brilliant Eoghan Harris keeps on writing

• Ben Lowry May 1: Unionism can’t just be about managing long-term defeat

• Ben Lowry May 1: Arlene Foster was given huge opportunity by DUP after her exit helped ruin UUP

• Ben Lowry April 24: NI seems to rely increasingly on just one pollster for data on attitudes to a border poll

• Ben Lowry April 17: DUP still has to choose between managing this disaster or total rejection of it

• Ben Lowry April 10: His enduring marriage to the Queen was key to our understanding of Prince Philip

• Ben Lowry April 3: Radio grilling of UUP leader exposed folly of unionists blaming Simon Byrne for funeral

• Ben Lowry Mar 27: There should not be an Irish language act, but it is too late — the DUP has agreed one

• Ben Lowry Mar 20: We have made it through the worst of the dark, dreaded winter lockdown

• Ben Lowry Mar 20: MLAs lost control of abortion by rejecting modest law reform

• Ben Lowry Mar 13: Whatever future Boris Johnson adopts for Northern Ireland seems set to lead to a crisis

• Ben Lowry Mar 13: Scotland tunnel isn’t fantasy, but something kids of today might see

• Ben Lowry Mar 6: The cost of victims’ pension has ballooned without explanation as to why 


• Ben Lowry Feb 27: Unionists have fully turned against Irish Sea border because they’ve seen the scale of disaster

• Ben Lowry Feb 20: We still lack answers as to why IRA funeral got special treatment at Roselawn

• Ben Lowry Feb 13: Peter Robinson has long experience of what is and is not politically feasible

• Ben Lowry Feb 6: There is barely any unionist support for violence, despite justified anger at sea border

• Ben Lowry Jan 30: At last, clear reason for UK and unionists to stop being weak towards Ireland/EU

• Ben Lowry Jan 23: Lockdown sceptics have been undermined by crazy theories, but sensible criticisms haven’t gone away

• Ben Lowry Jan 16: The Irish Sea border was imposed because UK knew unionists would take it

• Ben Lowry in 2020: Last night unionists celebrated a move towards Irish unity

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Acting Editor