A Chief Executive once told me: "We have a sustainability programme in place, but getting all the employees engaged remains difficult. You have commitment at the top and middle levels of the company, but below that people don't care. The bricklayer does not think about waste and landfill when he works. He just wants to lay bricks and go home."

This comment confirms the untold truth that when it comes to sustainability, the only measure of success is behavioural change, not the number of glossy Sustainability / Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reports published.

Last week the Design Council's 'Design Summit' brought together by former Chairman, Lord Michael Bichard and Chief Executive, David Kester, outlined some of the lessons of good design cultures.

Figures such as Jonathan Ive, Senior VP Industrial Design, Apple, referred to as 'the most successful designer on the planet'; Dr Ralph Speth, CEO luxury car producer, Jaguar Land Rover; author, broadcaster and designer, Kevin McCloud; together with design gurus Ian Callum, Design Director Jaguar, and Gerry McGovern Design Director Land Rover; formed part of a line up assembling world-leading figures from architecture and design

Little noticed by those that lived away from a broken down scene that epitomised British industrial landscape forty years ago the Chinese were busy buying up anything useful that closed British manufacturing operations had cast aside.

There's been a fascinating debate in the Birmingham Post over the last few months over the M6 Toll road, fought out in the letters pages.

As readers will know, the M6 Toll road was opened in late 2003, with the stated public aim of reducing congestion on the M6 around Birmingham which was and still is often grid-locked (as I know well from going up and down to visit my mum near Stoke). Hence the road's original name, the 'Birmingham Northern Relief Road' (BNRR).

This new toll road was designed to take up to 100,000 vehicles a day but is now running at about one-third capacity and well below forecasted traffic levels.

Down and now possibly all but out for the count - can anything save Swedish automaker Saab?

One message to delegates: Don't wait for governments, changes start with you.

nice graph. by Scriberia.

This week saw the publication of the government's overdue review of waste policy in England. Its launch has been notable perhaps for the chorus of condemnation by an unusual mix of trade associations, retailers and campaign groups.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said earlier this month that "we are seeing too many company takeovers which reduce or destroy value and are driven by the fat fees earned by the lawyers and banks who facilitate them. I have made it clear, post Cadbury, that there have to be changes".

Those changes are yet to be made clear but I have a sinking feeling that Mr Cable is about to 'bottle it' on genuine reform and may instead opt for the timid proposals now on offer from the city's own self-regulating Takeover Panel. Put simply, these are proposals not nearly enough.

"Just think what we might have achieved if we'd put just a fraction of the £850bn required to bail out the banks into manufacturing?" asks Mike Whitby. The Conservative Councillor and Leader of Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, is in discussion with both Charles Morgan and myself at the Morgan factory in Malvern.

The idea is unthinkable. Yet this is the official cost of the bank bailout, revealed by the National Audit Office last year. But then Mike Whitby is a Conservative politician who thinks the unthinkable. Or perhaps you'd call it thinking out of the box.

I'm still shaking from something of a life-changing event. Today is Father's Day, so I feel putting pen to paper may be therapeutic. For the last 30 years my father has been the devoted owner of a Citroen. Not the same one, obviously, but a succession of Citroens which have given him unrivalled driving pleasure.