Last week I received an automatic reply from a man I had tried to contact saying ?he was “away from the office with limited access to email”. I ignored it.

The same day Adam Parker, head of US equity research at Morgan Stanley, received a similar message, only he didn’t ignore it. He sent out a cri de coeur to all clients, explaining that it was his job to interpret the world for them and he was ruling that the “limited access to email” excuse was baloney. There is virtually nowhere left on earth, he pointed out, unreachable by email. What the phrase actually means is: I’m feeling tired or lazy and think I’ve earned the right not to reply.

Mr Parker is right – this excuse does not work any more. But he is wrong to be so disapproving about it. We all are sometimes tired or lazy or on holiday or otherwise disinclined to do something we have been asked to do. What we need are better excuses.