My own father worked hard to gain telecommunications qualifications when such technology was in its early days, and climbed his way up the salary scale. He eventually bought a pleasant house in London, then sold it at a huge profit to buy a bungalow in Norfolk for his retirement. If people ever said to him how 'lucky' he was, he would bite off their noses. In his view, he'd earned every penny of what he possessed, and 'luck' didn't come into it. Which was fair comment.

I agree with all that, Sen. I have no doubt of the hard work, and that the benefits from it were earned.

But there is still far more luck in it than it first seems. Take, for example, how the how prices between London and Norfolk changed. That was luck. And take the choice to study telecoms rather than other equally attractive subjects around at the time that turned out to be dead ends. For example, when I was still at school I visited the local Technical College (now a University). They had different courses for people studying digital computers and analogue computers. And, at the time, it was not clear that one would become massively dominant and the other virtually disappear. Those who were 'lucky' chose one course and those who were 'unlucky' chose the other.

Luck - or as I would prefer to say, chance - plays a huge part in all our lives, whether we are successful or not.