Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist.

In New York, I'm John Fassman.

And in London, I'm Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

David Brent, Basil Faulty, even Melvolio, fictional British managers tend to be comic figures.

Actual British managers are all too often not that good at their jobs.

That makes the firms they run a lot less productive.

And an ambitious survey is being carried out door to door, asking people across the UK

all kinds of things about sex.

Getting honest answers is one challenge.

Another is turning the results into useful public health data.

But respondents are surprisingly game.

You're stuck though.

The devastation brought by two massive earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria

a week ago is becoming ever clearer.

Millions of people have been left homeless or afraid to go even into buildings that are

still standing.

Yet more danger is posed by freezing overnight temperatures.

The stories of survivors being pulled from collapse buildings are becoming fewer.

In their place are stories of anger and frustration about the Turkish government's response to

the crisis and about why so many of the country's buildings came down.

The rescue effort continues, but increasingly it's beginning to resemble a mass exclamation

...