Last year I went to a conference for trustees on charity investment. Most of the attendees were silver-haired accountants in grey suits so I stuck out like a sore thumb in my chocolate brown. One gentleman struck up a conversation with me, in the process of which I explained I was a writer and contracted my finance skills to not for profit organisations. “Nice little earner,” he said then his eyebrows shot up after hearing I worked pro bono for charities as it doesn't feel right to charge them fees if you can earn an income elsewhere.

His reaction was the general tone of the seminar. An investment banker had been invited to speak about portfolio management and advise trustees how to increase their investment income. He seemed like a very nice man: clean-shaven and as humorous as you can be in a room full of number-crunchers, talking about hedging and investment strategy. What did shock me though was his statement that he didn’t operate an ethical investment strategy. In fact he advised against it. One of his slides even had British American Tobacco as part of a portfolio. Given that the tobacco industry exploits poverty and children by selling cigarettes to developing countries, knowing that the poor smoke to stave off hunger, I was disgusted by his comment and even more disgusted when not one single trustee objected to his advice. It could be that they didn’t want to embarrass the host by saying anything, and nor did I, but more likely than not they were and still are profit-motivated over and above charitable principles.

There is nothing wrong with maximising income for your organisation but when trustees and investment advisers benefit from making others ill, I despair for the values we all live by. However, I can’t see a way to introduce ethical policy investment other than through legislation, as moving away from existing portfolios clearly isn’t anything trustees will change by themselves.

In the words of Rohini: You shouldn’t make people  ill so you can take their money.

Nelson Mandela’s recent illness got me thinking about the apartheid years in South Africa. Amnesty International didn’t recognise him as a prisoner of conscience because they only support those who have neither used nor advocated the use of force. From what I have been told, the ANC did initially target government installations, but not people like the IRA did, or more recently, the attacks on the Twin Towers. However their actions went against one of Amnesty's basic tenets because violence as a weapon is wrong, whether against physical objects or individuals.

This precept then leads to the question: should a hero be someone who has always rejected aggression? I don’t condone violence but have lived in the safety of the UK for most of my life. How do any of us know what kind of people we would be if we had been brought up in the brutality of South Africa’s apartheid regime? It would test even the most decent of people. Mandela said, "At the beginning of June 1961, after a long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force.”

Which brings me to Steve Biko who was also a political activist, killed in 1977 by the police, even though he used non-violent means to spread his message. It was he who coined the term, “Black is beautiful.” He was also one of the first leaders to tell blacks to start thinking of themselves as humans not slaves. Trained as a doctor, at the time of his death he had a wife and three children for which he left a letter that stated in one part: “I've devoted my life to see equality for blacks, and at the same time, I've denied the needs of my family. Please understand that I take these actions, not out of selfishness or arrogance, but to preserve a South Africa worth living in for blacks and whites.” Twenty-eight years separated the birth of Biko (1946) and Mandela (1918). In the 1960s, when Biko was a young adult and Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island, more blacks in Africa were given an education to meet the start of the country's white brain drain. I don’t know the individual characteristics of either man but I can’t help feeling that the better educated and enlightened black African made it easier for Biko to act peacefully.

As for the civil war in Sri Lanka, while I was researching my novel I came across Rajini Thirinagama, a doctor who was initially sucked into working for, then taking a lead role with the Tamil Tigers. She later denounced armed struggle and the LTTE after realising they were terrorists like the government; but she paid for it with her life when she was shot dead on the way home in 1989, aged 35 and a mother of two young girls. Like Biko she died while fighting for the rights and freedom of others.

It takes strength not to retaliate with violence against people who are savage towards you, so it would be easy to choose Biko over Mandela and Thirinagama as a hero. However, Thirinagama renounced bloodshed and should be recognised for her courage in publishing a book about violence in Jaffna, The Broken Palmyra, knowing that it would inevitably lead to her death. Similarly, under Mandela, the world has seen the power of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which when used correctly can bring about change for the better. Each of the three protagonists played a part in their country’s move towards justice and apart from Mandela’s global fame, it is hard to say that any one was or is more heroic than the other.

Sri Lanka is on the front page again and once more for the wrong reasons. @TherealNihal tweeted earlier in the week asking what Sri Lankans thought about David Cameron’s visit to Colombo for the Commonwealth summit. I saw his tweet a few hours after he posted it and in Twitter terms a late reply is as useful as a judge who won’t vote on the X Factor. So having missed the moment, I’ve brought my views here.

I should say from the outset that I'm sceptical as to the sincerity of any politician who now claims to be interested in the tens of thousands who were used as a human shield, then massacred by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) in 2009. The time for action was then but there wasn't any outside intervention. Everyone was glad for an end to terrorism in the North so even decent and reputable people dismissed the poor and the nameless who were sacrificed so others could live a better life. Thankfully there are organisations and individuals like Amnesty International and journalists who want the Sri Lankan government to be accountable for the right reasons.

If Cameron is genuinely interested in the Sri Lankan people, he was right to attend the summit and bring up the subject of the 2009 genocide, because dialogue achieves more than a refusal to negotiate ever will. Canada, India and Mauritius’ absence from the summit isn't really much of a protest. But rather than engaging in discussions, Cameron publicly threatened Rajapaksa with UN sanctions, which leaves him open to criticisms of hypocrisy as there is still a question mark the size of a banker’s bonus hanging over Tony Blair’s conduct in starting the Iraq war. As an indication of the scale in the two wars, the lowest reported killings that I've found is 100,000 in Iraq over 6 years and 20,000 in Sri Lanka in the final few months of the hostilities, which is the basis of the allegations of war crimes against Rajapaksa. Different timescales, different statistics but you get the drift. They're similar so warrant the same action.  (I should point out that both of these estimates vary widely, which is why I've picked the lowest, rather than risk overstating the issue.)

As for the effectiveness of any UN investigation, Russia and China have been dipping their hands into Sri Lanka since the end of WWII and are a strong force there. They’d veto any UN initiative, making the whole process less than useless. Similarly, if the unlikely happened and there was an UN investigation of Blair and Bush for the Iraq war, it would be stymied by USA. After all, Obama did recently try to block legal action against Bush.

So whether or not Cameron issues warnings in Colombo is irrelevant. He is only an irritant for Rajapaksa who has the well-known human rights activists, the Chinese, Russian and the Japanese on his side. If our Prime Minister wants to increase his global presence, he’d be better off trying peace initiatives, as were used to end the civil war in Northern Ireland, although the Rajapaksa dynasty is in a much stronger position than the IRA were.

In the words of Rohini: If you let your children be naughty, you can’t show off and scold other people’s kids when they do something bad.

When I was at school, a good English friend of mine made a comment about the number of immigrants coming legally to this country. She then realised what she’d said in front of me, apologised and said her opinion didn’t apply to me because she knew me. I wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. I’d come across prejudice before but it was the first time I’d had to deal with the hypocrisy of racism. I wasn’t sure if my friend actually thought I was different, was regurgitating her parents’ views or worse still, if she did believe I was an immigrant who shouldn’t be in her country. This incident was a generation ago and attitudes today are less narrow-minded because of the many mixed race people around but every few years or so, I am reminded that an opinion about others may not apply to someone you know.

I was recently talking to a charity founder who works full-time helping vulnerable children. She has just had a baby and is juggling motherhood with her vocation. When we speak about charity matters, I can hear her daughter in the background but it doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I enjoy it.

I mention this because when I have recruited people for a team in an office-based environment, I’ve been let down badly by working mothers and now am wary of taking on women with young families. I say this with caution because I know that many feel guilty about holding down a job and leaving their children with minders. However, my finance roles usually encompass tight deadliness and high stress environments and I don’t want to slave until 3am doing someone else’s job after I’ve finished mine; or not be able to easily speak to a colleague who’s been granted the privilege of working from home because they’ve got a young family. I can’t explain the frustration of being in an office, under pressure yet unable to have a professional conversation with someone because there’s a baby and a toddler in the background demanding attention. To get round this problem, companies should offer crêches in the office, subsidised or free if both parents need to work for a living. I do however have less empathy for those who chase high salaries or put career ambition first and expect others to regularly make sacrifices for their family.

I feel differently about the charity founder because she’s making personal sacrifices for the benefit of others, not herself. It also comes down to the environment I’m in. Most of my charity conversations happen while I’m at home and relaxed, whereas if I’m stuck in an office, surrounded by sober grey suits, I expect colleagues to have a business-like approach. It feels out of kilter to bring a family situation into the room, even if it’s over the phone, and it’s as disruptive as bringing children to work. If that happened, nobody would get anything done, including me. I’d be too busy playing with the kids. I also make more allowances for someone who thinks of others before themselves.

Which leads me to the £1,000,000 question. Without phoning a friend or asking the audience, do you hold an opinion about a group of people but make an exception if someone you know belongs to that group?

I know two people who have birthdays on Halloween. One is a lovely sweet lady I met on the internet through watching wildlife. She suffers from arthritis, is confined to a wheelchair and is surrounded by a loving, caring family. Her courage is an inspiration. The other person is someone I used to work with and who travelled to the office on a broomstick, with her familiar on a shoulder. She wasn’t skilled or first-rate at what she did, which is why she had to discredit colleagues to make herself look good. She often said she came from a not so wealthy background and that was what made her ambitious.

While motivation or the drive to succeed comes from what’s missing in our lives, insecurities are often used as an excuse for bad behaviour; but aside from extreme cases like with victims of domestic abuse, we all have choices in the approach we use. There are ways and means of getting what you want without alienating yourself from others. It's not about momentary lapses when you wish you'd held your tongue or kept your temper, it's about not treating others badly as a way to get what you want.

As far as motivation goes, middle class teenagers and adults often drift through life without a drive to succeed because they’ve rarely known hardship so they go with the flow; although they sometimes have a competitive side that shunts them through their career. They also tend to project confidence, which is more prized than skills. As a consultant, if your clients don’t believe in you, they won’t believe the advice you give. That’s why advisors often bluff their way through meetings then dash back to the office or ring a colleague to check they’ve got their facts right.

I know an IT manager who promised a client in a sales pitch that he could deliver a technical solution but he didn't admit his theoretical network was untested. Back in the IT lab, he realised his proposal didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of working. At first he lied to everyone then confessed. Because he’d delivered the presentation with confidence he was a hit with the client and they gave him time to come up with another solution. Had he been nervous at the pitch, he'd have been forgotten straight away. (He lost the client in the end though as he couldn’t deliver anything suitable.)

At the other end of the spectrum, a lack of confidence can be damaging both socially and professionally, especially when a young adult, in which case having friends who believe in you can bolster self-image no end.

Sometimes prejudice is a barrier to success. If you’re female or in a minority social group you will inevitably come across narrow-minded views from even a moderate colleague. There are laws to prevent this affecting progression at work but unless it’s a serious issue, you say your piece, pick yourself up and get on with life. That moderate colleague is probably also being unjust to ginger-haired and disabled people, in fact anyone who isn’t a clone of their own personality.

Success isn't only about what has been achieved, it's also about how you got there. Nor can it be easily measured because everyone has a different goal. For me, it's about having an impact, no matter how small, through my charity work and writing. While I have a free hand with fiction and can let my imagination loose, my charity work keeps me grounded. It also reminds me that my problems aren't that bad compared to a six-year-old child who runs through an African village in search of aspirin for his dying mother's pain.

For a few who have achieved a certain level of success, popularity can lift them above laws that apply to the rest of us. J.K. Rowling passed off her pseudonym Robert Galbraith as a military man in the security industry, which leaves a bad taste in the mouth because the military put their lives at risk for the safety of others. To trade on their reputation was wrong. Does it make Rowling a monster or the Harry Potter books less interesting? No, but there has to be one justice for all. As with the IT manager though, once you’ve reached a level of popularity, it seems you can more or less get away with actions for which others would be answerable. It’s not right of course but it is regrettably the world we live in.

To end, I'd say that the working environment, private, public or not for profit thrives on competition and plays people against each other to a certain extent. Unfortunately this induces dog eat dog behaviour as in the colleague I wrote about at the start of this blog. Even people who are decent socially can be unfriendly in the office. Survival of the fittest comes to the front again. It's not just about individuals and their insecurities, it's also about throwing everyone together with a common corporate aim but separate personal goals. It shouldn't be necessary to be like this.

In the words of Rohini: If you want something, you shouldn't try and get it by showing off and saying bad things about your friends. Except if they’re not nice then Buddha will forgive you.