I knew Richard Cousins the CEO of Compass Group who was killed in the seaplane crash in Australia, along with his fiancée and her young daughter, his own two sons and the seaplane’s pilot. We were colleagues at his previous company BPB Plc.

Debates about how much FTSE-100 CEOs get paid are for another day, but I just wanted to record what a good bloke Richard was. I don’t do social media so please forgive this indulgence. Richard’s wife died tragically young a couple of years ago, so he was trying to rebuild his personal life. The only crumb of consolation in this is that his wife isn’t having to bear the loss of her two boys, but no doubt there will be many other people now grieving within the three families affected by this event.

Thank you.

Palace since 19 August 1972. Palace 1 (Tony Taylor) Liverpool 1 (Emlyn Hughes)

This is truly tragic.

They always tell you that air travel is safe but accidents are a numeric certainty and it's all about who gets the s***e luck and who doesn't.

Whenever you stick your whole line in the same carrier you roll a dice.....a dice heavily stacked in your favour but a dice all the same.......Then again, luck is just a fact of life and we can all recall near misses.

I remember Seth MacFarlane (the creator of Family Guy) talking about how he was once ten minutes late for his flight and then learning that the plane had been hijacked and flown into the World Trade Centre.

We hate to think about it but luck plays a massive role in all of our lives....from where we are born, to who we are born to, to even what genetics we get.

Luck is front and centre.

Edited by Stirlingsays (22 Aug 2018 11.57am)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Many years ago I shared an office with a young lad who was a private pilot and he was killed along with his passenger Michael Bentine's son when the two seater that he was flying crashed

It was. His two brothers get £1m each apparently.

The smaller the aircraft, the more risk generally.

Optimistic as ever

I don't want to turn this into a thread knocking charities as they do good work. I think I heard the interview on the radio this morning? The chances are that a charity like Oxfam can never have enough money due to the many problem areas of the world, famines, civil wars etc. I think if the guy had said something like that it would have been a better interview rather then him appearing to be evasive.

One more point

Wow - what a thread. Terrible loss and the fact that so much was left to charity says a great deal about the moral compass of the CEO concerned. Wise and true assessment from Stirling.