The thesis that risk assessment itself is inherently risky is nowhere better borne out than in the area of high-consequence risks.

High-consequence risks form one particular segment of the generalised 'climate of risk' characteristic of late modernity - one characterised by regular shifts in knowledge-claims as mediated by expert systems.

Achieving control over change, in respect to lifestyle, demands an engagement with the outer social world rather than a retreat from it.

Martin Luther King did not stir his audience in 1963 by declaiming 'I have a nightmare'

To a greater or lesser degree, the project of the self becomes translated into one of the possession of desired goods and the pursuit of artificially framed styles of life. (...) Not just lifestyles, but self-actualisation is packaged and distributed according to market criteria.

The difficulties of living in a secular risk culture are compounded by the importance of lifestyle choices.

Lifestyles are routined practices, the routines incorporated into habits of dress, eating, modes of acting and favoured milieux for encountering others but the routines followed are reflexively open to change in the light of the mobile nature of self-identity.

The new mixed economy looks...for a synergy between public and private sectors.