Members' latest posts

The week has finished up particularly nicely, with a bit of banter up at my mate’s place, all to play for next week in the RL working world and the re-emergence of The Albion Alliance. What a lovely way to see summer out with this ripping weather too.

The Albion Alliance

I’ve had to reduce my commitment to an avid supporter for now because work commitments are just not letting me do as I wish. The boys have done a great job with the new site and I had a look the other day and thought it very informative and chunky, like a chunky democratic soup.

Apparently you can also access the AA on mobile phone, according to Ian, so that’s good. That URL again [please bookmark, add to blogrolls or update:

http://blog.albionalliance.org.uk/

As you can see, it is more like a thinktank now and I’d imagine that that’s the way it would go, with much to write about, come the post-September crash.

Incidentally, you might like to check this post and this while you’re about it.

Rough fencing waiting to be sanded and painted.


Visit the home page for great black and white photography from around the world.

Adam Wagner, a barrister and former colleague of Mr Justice Foskett, applauds the judge’s decision to publish his rulings in the Sharon Shoesmith case online.

The case was always likely to be full of controversy and complexity as well as salacious detail. This is not in itself remarkable: public law is often the cutting edge of social and political issues. What is unusual is the manner in which Mr Justice Foskett approached his task by looking outwards to the general public, as well as inwards to the legal system.

At every stage of this case, barristers’ submissions, judge’s remarks and a full summary of the 176-page judgment have been made available through the judiciary’s new website.

As Mr Wagner says, this is an encouraging development and it would be good to see more legal judgments posted online. However, I think he is being a bit optimistic here:

A more open judicial system would help the press, prevent hasty reporting errors spreading via the internet, and improve access to justice for the general public…

The judgment from the original hearing on 23 April, in which the judge expressed his unease about Sharon Shoesmith’s dismissal, was published online too. It didn’t stop the Sun from printing this twisted spin on his ruling or a whole host of mini-me bloggers from simply regurgitating what they had read in the tabloids.

Many people had already made up their minds about Sharon Shoesmith and they filtered out anything that contradicted their opinions – even the comments of an eminent judge.

Overall, though, I agree with Adam Wagner. Publishing online judgments is a positive step. It allows members of the public to read the reasons behind legal decisions and make up their own minds. Most importantly, it enables people to see through the distortion and truth-bending that passes for reporting in some of our newspapers.

I once read a book and I was contaminated by its contents...
Now within the cage of my chest there beats a second heart.
An arcane construct, engineered in miniature brass rivets and braided copper membranes, silver tubes, gold valves and steam hissing subsonic.
No blood here; the medium being pumped is an abstract rendering of emotion; a word on the tip of my tongue; a memory of perfume.
I am no mystic; no third-eye me; but the feelings evoked by this machine bypass what I say I am and what I patently am not.
As the heart runs its tiny articulated spider-like fingers over maps creased from being folded closed for too long; makeshift bandages over ancient wounds unhealed; I lift my hand to wipe the tears in which my vision struggles to swim.
As chambers echo the erosion and the lifelines, the rusted clock cogs and toys without eyes, the memories that exclude words, I cry out to the night and to the howling moon.
And having read the contours of my life the heart proceeds to project an avatar of that life upon the screen of my day; adding street signs at left turns unturned and tinting the lens of my calling.
I am no more than a simulacrum for the days I have that lived and the mistakes I have made.
I once was content for the book to read me...

It seems we have quite a little music corner going here, thanks to all:

Brandi Carlile
Giuseppe Torelli
Here’s baching at you
Hiawatha Rag
Silencio
Four hands

A little measure of Brandi will help you see the day.

Turpentine                                                        Brandi Carlile

During the late 1970's through to the early 1990's I was a member, a section steward, a branch secretary and a district chair of a trades union known as NUPE (The National Union of Public Employees). The union represented health service employees, local government employees, the ancillary staff of Universities and weirdly, junior Anglican Clerics and Methodist Ministers. NUPE was affiliated to Alwyn ap Huwhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06194724336424525283noreply@blogger.com2

This week I managed to lose the 1.5lb that I put on last week. *Phew*

I have had a bit of a hassely day with my brother who was trying to set up some new technology for me.  It should have been fairly simple but there was a need to call customer services and those call centres don’t work very well when the person calling them (my brother) knows more than they do! Anyway the new technology seems terminally ill and will have to be returned. Why is nothing ever simple?

My brother visiting also led to a meal out and another weight loss challenge. I decided to go back to The Gate which I visited recently.  This time I was able to choose a very healthy option; chicken breast with spring onion mash accompanied by seasonal vegetables, it was delicious.

According to National Geographic men with chronic insomnia have a higher risk of early death than "normal" male sleepers who get more than six hours sleep

After decades of mixed findings, the new report shows that insomnia is a "serious disease with significant physical consequences, including mortality," said study leader Alexandros N. Vgontzas, director of Penn State University's Sleep Research & Treatment Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Study leader Vgontzas and colleagues randomly selected 741 Pennsylvania men between 20 and 100, with an average age of 50, to participate in the initial phase of the study, between 1990 and 1995.

First, the volunteers identified themselves as either insomniacs or non-insomniacs. Then they spent a night in a sleep lab, where scientists confirmed how long the subjects slept.

By combining the subjects' self reports and the lab data, the team determined that 6 percent of the men had chronic insomnia.
Between 1994 and 1997, the sleep researchers studied a thousand women with a similar age range to the men. The team found that 9 percent of the women had chronic insomnia.

By the time the scientists checked in on the subjects in 2007—14 years later for the men, 10 for the women—51.1 percent of the male chronic insomniacs who slept fewer than six hours a night had died, versus 9.1 percent of the normal male sleepers.

The findings suggest that chronic male insomniacs are four times more likely to die early—even after taking into account risk factors such as smoking, obesity, and sleep apnoea,


There was no such link between insomnia and premature death in women—insomniacs and healthy sleepers both had a mortality rate of just over 2 percent during the study period.

Causes of insomnia are still poorly understood—it may be that some people are just "born poor sleepers," Vgontzas said. But even more mysterious is how to treat the condition.

For instance, insomnia medications are mostly geared toward combating occasional sleeplessness, and psychological interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy don't seem to work for severe insomniacs, he said.

Oh bugger now I’ve got another reason to be awake into the wee small hours!

Today is the birthday of Freddie King, the legendary king of blues and funk music, and in time the man who redefined the blues culture not only in the United States, but largely across the world!

Best known for his hit singles Have you ever loved a women and Hide Away, King continues to remain a Godly inspiration for modern day blues musicians who adapt his style and elegance in an attempt to etch themselves a name in the genre.

Following a proclamation in 1993 by the Governor of Texas, September 3rd has been declared as Freddie King Day! King passed away on December 28, 1976 in Dallas, Texas at age 42.

Footnotes:

Official Website - Feddie King

Image Courtesy: The Official Freddie King Site

Casa Natale di Luigi Pirandello
Here is my personal pick of last week's Italy Magazine articles:
Let's kick off with a story that Simi liked, about the dog lifeguards that patrol Italy's beaches.  She wants to learn to jump from a helicopter!  Still at the sea, how would you feel if you went bathing and found a Roman cargo boat? 
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni caused much outrage last week when he promised that Italy would be even tougher than the French on the Roma.  ["Roma" is a term often used by the Italian media and politicians to refer to Romanians as well as to the nomadic peoples of Europe.]  The issue is still being hotly debated.
I decided I would like to see this festival but no way would I take part!
For my personal Patti Chiari column, I continued the story of how books brought me to Sicily.
I hope you enjoy these stories.

From JD:

From Dearieme:

From me:

Further to the Beslan/Chechnya question, this Washington Post article must be one of the first western articles to consider that those we side with might sometimes be the wrong ones.

An expert witness for the prosecution testified Tuesday that Islamic charities based in Saudi Arabia, including the one an Oregon tree surgeon is accused of smuggling money for, were regular conduits of funding to Muslim fighters in the volatile Caucasus region.

“A significant portion of the aid from these charities almost certainly does go to good causes – widows, orphans and refugee camps,” Kohlmann said under cross examination by defense attorney Bernie Casey. “Up to a third of the money is skimmed off and diverted to other causes, including paying the salaries of foreign fighters.”

This is an issue which requires more than a Sky News grab along traditionally prejudicial lines.

The recent, and rather absurd,  High Court case about The Stig’s identity – known to countless people and available on the net for some time -  has brought into sharp relief the issue of suppression of information, commercial interests and the controllability of the media. The High Court’s writ has only ever run in England & Wales.  Scotland has a separate legal system. The world has many legal systems.  In pre-internet days it did not matter that much – newspapers could be (and still, to some extent are) cowed into withdrawing publication of  ‘inconvenient’ information by a letter from a specialist firm of libel lawyers.

The chilling effect of a libel letter is known to many. Libel tourism, libel reform and the whole issue of a right to privacy is very much in the frame for debate and law reform.  It is widely believed that there at least three superinjunctions out there protecting the commercial interests / private lives of leading footballers granted in recent weeks / months. I don’t know.  In fact, none of us are supposed to know.  That is the point of a superinjunction.

As an aside – I don’t buy into the ludicrous claim by Harper & Collins that their victory in The Stig case is a victory for freedom of speech. My view is that it isn’t.  That case is all about commercial interests and the claim by the publishers demeans the noble ideal of  ‘freedom of speech’ when it really matters.

Guido Fawkes published information on his blog about William Hague and his SpAD (see the follow ups on his blog). This has led to a great deal of vitriol and Hague issuing an emotional statement about his private life – which, being fair, is his business and his alone.  Sundry kneejerkers got in on the act and published tablets of stone on their blogs, some even , absurdly, criticising Guido for what they had themselves, in earlier times, done!  – their motives for doing so, possibly honourable, possibly self aggrandising.  It matters not. I am getting to the point..

Today, in The Times, Frances Gibb wrote a fascinating piece entitled “Law struggles to keep up with bloggers”. I can’t give you a link – because The Times is now behind a paywall.

Frances Gibb argues…”Is the internet and its blogosphere killing our laws? When print or even broadcasting media ruled supreme, a lawyer’s writ had a powerful reach. The courts, too, could grant injunctions – binding on not just one newspaper but every media organisation.  But now the law is struggling to keep pace as stories, or just rumour, surface on the internet, with a global reach in seconds.”

Gibb notes the Hague / Myers case raised by Guido – and now countless others.

Mark Stephens, a well known media lawyer with Finers Stephens Innocent makes the point: “The internet is not a law free zone…but once material is out there, it is very difficult to put it back”.

I suspect that Mr Justice Morgan in The Stig case had this phenomenon in his mind – I will read the judgment.  I have not done so as yet.

Frances Gibb  then quoted Dan Tench, another very well known media lawyer – from London firm Olswang. Dan Tench is reported as saying

“The lack of accountability dilutes the impact of what is said.  People can’t rely on it. The traditional media is accountable to the law – and that is its strength.  What is has to sell is its authority – and that is the difference.”

Dan Tench is a very shrewd and experienced lawyer – but I am going to disagree, without being critical of him, with this proposition in three ways:

1. I am not at all sure that the supposed lack of accountability of bloggers et al dilutes the value of what they say. Bloggers (who may not be worth suing because they have no money) often have wider reach (and knowledge)  than some quality specialist newspapers and even broadsheets in the case of the leading political bloggers.  This is particularly the case for political bloggers.   They also have an audience, net savvy, who repeat the information and, thereby, dissemination is remarkably wide for big issues. I am not at all sure that people regard the writings of journalists from politically biased newspapers as any more authoritative than independent (but politically aligned) bloggers.  This may well come as a shock to traditional journalists and TV autocuties – but life in the internet age has changed influence and the dynamics of  commentary on the events of our times. The days of reading the news in a dinner jacket are long gone – thankfully. Do ‘people’ really rely on the information in newspapers and TV broadcasts these days? I’m not so sure they do to the extent that Dan Tench, impliedly, supposes.  I regard the leading political bloggers as being  better informed and capable of sharper analysis than many of the journalists writing in the newspapers.  I have also found this to be the case in the field of finance, economics and science. That, of course, is a personal view and not ‘evidence’!

2. The traditional media is accountable to law.  Unfortunately / fortunately, for bloggers and users of twitter – so are we. So that is not the forceful point it seems to be – but I will admit that a newspaper or TV station  is an easier target than a host of bloggers, libertarians, conspiracy theorists, nutters and anarchists – some of whom are very poor and neither contactable through anonymity or worth suing.

3. What it (Traditional media)  has to sell is its authority – and that is the difference. I don’t really think I need to comment on that.  You will draw your own conclusions on the reality of that statement.

Frances Gibb did note in her excellent commentary “Mr Stephens said that rather than trying to make futile attempts to control the media, the law should defer to the “innate good sense of the crowd” – in other words, people will make up their own minds about allegations on the internet.  “You can’t stop debate, he said”

And… if you really want to make a complete hash of things, involve lawyers,  and try to suppress the unsupressable - just be warned about The Streisand effect. Trafigura and others have found out about that to their cost.

The genie is out of the bottle – but the law is not being killed. It will simply have to adapt to accept a reality.  I don’t, personally, think that that is such a bad thing.

As always – for I am merely a commenter not a pronouncer – your comments will be most welcome.

***

Note:  Mark Stephens and I plan to do a podcast very soon – it would seem that we have many things to discuss.  Coming soon….

After the innuendo and various challenges on Guido 's blog this week William Hague denied having had an "improper" relationship with his special adviser, Christopher Myers, who had resigned earlier
He cited "pressure" put on his family by the "untrue and malicious allegations" circulating on the Internet.
 Today David Cameron declared his "100% support" for,Hague;who  also has had the backing of his local constituency party chair
At a press conference this morning Hague refused to be drawn on his decision to appoint Myers, or respond to the suggestion that he had exercised "poor judgment" in sharing a hotel room with his assistant.He said: "Yesterday, I made a very personal statement, which was not an easy thing to do. I am not going to expand on that today."
He was still being pushed on  Myers's eligibility for the job, and why he had given Myers the job despite already having two special advisers.Apparently there had been unease in Downing Street at Hague's judgment in appointing a 25-year-old graduate with little apparent expertise in foreign affairs.
Was the statement the wisest way to respond to Guido's rumours. Somehow I think he would
have been wiser to keep quiet. Hague admitted to "occasionally" sharing hotel rooms with Myers during the election campaign. But he added: "Neither of us would have done so if we had thought that it in any way meant or implied something else. In hindsight, I should have given greater consideration to what might have been made of that, but this is in itself no justification for allegations of this kind.
Is this sort of death by pen the way we want to see society being steered. I certainly don't.
Mr Hagues sexuality is his business.His lack of judgement is another ,and as Foreign secretary a matter that he needs to reflect on.
What about Ffion Hague in all this, is she really the sort of woman who would be a front for her husband if he was gay.I wouldn't have thought so .She is a significant author, businesswoman and broadcaster in her own right, she’s nobody’s second fiddle.
She  was born in Cardiff. Took her first degree, in English Literature, at Jesus College, Oxford and her second (an MPhil) at the University of Wales.Worked as a policy civil servant, a director of a national charity and, since 2000, has been a headhunter specialising in main board appointments and board evaluation.She holds a number of advisory positions in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors and has recently published her first book, The Pain and the Privilege, on the women in Lloyd George's life.
It will be interesting to see if Guido backs off,especially as some big name bloggers have had a go at him over this.Or will it just spur him on.

I’ll let you choose the last B word.

I’m in the middle of birthdays and building masses of flat-pack furniture and so no time for any blogging other than my music posts.

Next Sunday is looming again and I await inspiration although that may have to be substituted by sweat.

Thereafter I hope to see a bit more of time for me.

Completely trashing his previous claim to be un-intellectual, the HRD has a post up at XpertHR in which he quotes Jean Paul Sartre. The subject of the HRD’s post is, ”If I could change on thing about HR…” part of an ongoing series at XpertHR to which I will contribute if I ever get my brain in gear.

The HRD argues that the image of the HR profession is in the hands of HR people themselves. How HR people decide to behave determines how others will see them. As Sartre says:

We ourselves decide our being.

[T]he coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero. What counts is the total commitment.

There is some truth in this. As a colleague of mine said to me years ago:

We invite people to see us in a certain way. We do it before we have even spoken.

This is why first impressions are so important. We love to put other people in boxes; it helps us to make sense of the world. And we do it remarkably quickly. For example, if you join a new team and take on the completer-finisher role at the first meeting, people then label you as the completer-finisher. Before long, you’ll find yourself doing the minutes every week and writing up the flipcharts. Or, if you adopt a stance where you rely on your technical expertise, you will be boxed off as a technocrat and, while you might frequently be asked for your professional opinion, you’ll probably be excluded from the more strategic discussions.

It can be hard to change this because both our behaviour and other people’s judgements of us are often sub-conscious. If you go into a meeting and adopt a subservient role it is probably not a conscious decision; it is driven by your self-image. Somewhere deep down you believe yourself to be subservient and so you act accordingly. Likewise, your colleagues might not even be aware that they have pigeonholed you as subservient; they have simply reacted to the signals you have sent out. By your actions and your behaviour you have invited them to see you in a certain way. You shouldn’t be surprised if they take up that invitation.

Once this pattern has been established it is extremely difficult to change. This is why people who go through deep personal development programmes then decide to change their way of being can often run into problems with their colleagues. If Mrs Mouse who always makes the tea and writes the flipcharts suddenly decides she wants to chair the meeting and lead the next project, her colleagues could be forgiven for feeling a bit uneasy.

The HRD offers another Sartre quote:

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Apparently that sentence was seen as an advocacy of violence against repression – because the people who have an interest in keeping you in your place will resist your attempts break out of it. Once people have made something of you and put you in a box, they cling to that image and it takes a lot to change it. A radical and deep-seated refusal to conform to what others have made of you might not require violent resistance, at least, not in the corporate world, but it may well lead to conflict. I have seen people forced to leave organisations because their colleagues and managers had typecast them. Having been pushed into the same roles over and over again, they found that their only option was to go and play on another stage. For any number of reasons, it can be in other people’s interests to keep you in the box to which they have allocated you and they will fight hard to make sure you stay there. If it is useful to someone else to have you performing a certain role, they will use everything from emotional blackmail to naked intimidation to keep you in your place.

So, while I agree with the HRD that “there is nothing stopping you from being what you want to be” and that “it’s never too late to change the way in which you act”, we should acknowledge that changing the way we are and the way we behave may disturb and even threaten those around us. It is likely that they will react accordingly and may even oppose the changes we wish to make. When faced with such resistance it’s not surprising that many people just take the easy way out. They forget all the resolutions they made on those personal development programmes and revert back to their pre-assigned roles.

Of course, it’s much better if you invite people to see you in the way you want to be seen from day one. That’s why new leaders have to stamp their personalities on their organisations quickly. It is especially important for new HR directors, with all the baggage attached to their profession, to start behaving as they want to be seen on the first day in the job. If you want to be thought of as powerful, business focused and strategic, you have to be powerful, business-focused and strategic from the moment you walk through the door. If you’re not, they’ll have you making the tea and handing out the tissues again before you’ve even attended your first board meeting.