Developing a creative network of friends.....

So, I've mentioned before that a part of the reason for this blog is to explore my creative side through writing about a whole panoply of ideas, thoughts, ramblings and musings, but something interesting is coming out of it as an additional creative benefit. As the blog grows and the number of people reading it increases I am starting to develop a following, and from that following I am starting to get critiques coming back, as well as suggestions for new articles. It is an unexpected and welcome boost to the whole process, and has come as something of a surprise. I've never really had much experience of getting feedback from other people, I've never really worked collaboratively or had to consider an audience beyond perhaps one or two people, and I'm not very good at social interaction, which this, in a sense feels like.

It is coming as something of a surprise that I am actually enjoying the cut and thrust banter of having to justify my position on certain issues, and trying to come up with articles bnased on other peoples suggestions rather than whatever happens to be in my head when I sit at the keyboard. It seems to be having an impact in both my mental state and interestingly in my work interactions. As part of my work at Dwarf Web Design I have to work with clients and with internal developers and creatives and I am finding that understanding better how people perceive my style of communication through my blogging is making it easier for me to tailor my style of communication in a work setting as well.

It seems that by developing a network of people who are willing and able to give me feedback and to develop relationships I am finding it easier to grow and to develop my skill sets, and the process is happening more quickly than I could have hoped or expected. So, perhaps a little cheesy, but a big thank you to all of you reading this, and a quick note to say, all criticism, good and bad is always welcome.....

Back to work after a long weekend....

I'm quite keen on work in general terms. I started working whilst still at school, paying for my horse riduing lessons by helping out at the riding stables and around the farm it was based on. I was about 13 and every weekend and school holiday I would be putting in 14 and 15 hour days. This continued when I left school and went to University. I filled up all of my free time with work, earning my keep as I studied. After University I went straight into employment, starting out temping in accounts department before making the breakthrough into sales and starting my career proper. I managed to stay in continuous employment until I had to take a career break to nurse my father through terminal cancer. I would never describe myself as a workaholic, but I do enjoy work, and the time I had to give it up hit me really hard. I became depressed, or perhaps more accurately my depression had been masked by constant work, and when that was taken away the depression revealed itself.

Eventually I managed to find work again and have been at it ever since, and gradually getting to feel better and better about myself but I have found that if I stop for any length of time, even for a long weekend I can end up in quite a dark place and it can be difficult to drive myself out of it. This was one of the reasons for writing this blog in the first place. It gives me an outlet to explore my thoughts and express my feelings, and to maintain the flow of work when I am away from the office. It has also opened a world of opportunities in terms of socialising online. As part of writing this blog I am exploring more fully the online world, and particularly facebook, and I'm starting to get some really good constructive and creative feedback on my writing which is making quite a difference to how I'm feeling.

By having something to keep me occupied when I can't work, I am finding it easier and easier to keep the work flow going and to keep myself towards the higher end of my naturally depressive state. I would thoroughly recommend finding a creative outlet of some sort as a means to a healthier turn of mind. Perhaps not as excessive as this particular blog, which is getting to the stage that it is approaching 50,000 words in three months, or to put it another way, getting on for a decent length novel! But as an exercise in self-therapy, doing something constructive seems to be better than doing nothing.....

Inspirational performances.....

It has been a lovely bank holiday weekend here in the UK with some great sporting events to watch. We had the Belgian grand prix with a great result for Michael Schumacher, and some fabulous driving from a sporting legend. Then the World Three Day Eventing championships from Germany with some wonderful performances from some of the older competitors, one of the few sports where the over 50's can compete on a even footing at international level, and of course the World Athletics Championships from Deagu with some amazing performances, particularly in the 400 metres, and particularly from Oscar Pistorias the South African double lower leg amputee competing against able bodied athletes and managing to reach the semi-final. Truly inspirational stuff.

I'm not sure what it is about sports men and women that really works for me. Perhaps it is my own experience as a young man. I was always heavily into sports, playing rugby at county level, swimming at national level, and competing as a horse rider at junior international level. I know the commitment that is required to be competitive at the upper levels of most sports and the sacrifices that have to be made, and I revel in the hard work that is required. In my case, my sporting career was cut short by injury, but I still try to maintain my involvement in sport both as a spectator and as a competitor at less physical events. There is something about the single minded dedication that is required that for me is something that we could all benefit from. That sense of purpose, the sense of competition and the humility and suppression of ego that comes from understanding that there are times when all you can give is your best, and there are times when that will simply not be enough.

It may seem surprising that an athlete would consider suppression of ego to be a benefit. We are so used to seeing super-egos in the press, but I guarantee that in order to be the best, and to have that ego, there has been tremendous pain and suffering and humiliation along the way, and that process is what I think makes us stronger. To know and acknowledge weaknesses and strengths and to have the dedication to overcome them and drive forward is a wonderful thing. I raise a toast to all of those men and women who find the passion and drive to strive to be the best, not just in the field of sporting endeavour, but in any walk of life, from stay at home parents dedicating their lives to their children to business leaders driving the economy with their passion and commitment to political leaders making supreme sacrifices for the betterment of society.

To anyone who goes out of their way, and outside their comfort zone, may your strength never diminish and your passion never die, and may you continue to inspire and lead and motivate, and to those who are considering whether they have the strength to make those commitments, the only way to find out is to try.....

How conspiracy theories work.....

So, I am watching the Da Vinci code and I begin to let my mind drift as I tend to do, and I start to see connections and interlinks and strange coincidences. Dan Brown writes fiction, the first page of his book contains a caveat that the book is a work of fiction. He references another book, "The Templar Revelation" by Lynne Picknett and Clive Prince as source material and these authors appear in cameo roles in the film. The scene they appear in is on a bus journey as the protagonists of the story realise that the tomb they seek is that of Isaac Newton - Picknett and Prince also worked on a book on Hermetic Scientists suggesting Newton was one. Just a coincidence perhaps, but then we look deeper and see that Picknett and Prince based their book on another book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and we realise that the character of Lea Teabing is an anagram of two of this second books authors. "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" was published by the same company as "The Da Vinci Code" which means that the controversy over the plagarism claims and subsequent court case served to provide publicity to both camps and increase sales of both books, additionally earning fees for both sets of lawyers, both sides being paid by the same publishing company. You can begin to see the links define themselves.

Then we look more closely at Picknett and Prince and see that amongst their other books is one called the Stargate Conspiracy. Perhaps nothing, but maybe not. Particularly when you realise that Ron Howard who directed "Da Vinci Code" probably knows Kurt Russell who starred in the "Stargate" movie. How wierd is that? If that isn't some sort of plaot I'm not sure what is. But of course as with all good conspiracies what we have to ask is where is the money? Secrets are nothing if there is no money to protect. Now obviously the Vatican is a fairly wealthy state with a lot to protect but if we are talking serious money and therefor serious conspiracy we must look for the links that tie Dan Brown to JK Rowling and again we see the hands of PIcknett and Price at work here.

They author esoteric research amongst which are books of hermeticism and alchemy, one of the Harry Potter books references the philosophers stone, an alchemical tool clearly there is a link here that should be investigated. Newton and Da Vinci may have been alchemists so that fits too and they were both grand masters of the Priory of Sion so Dan Brown is part of this conspiracy of authors that is slowly releasing dis-information, confusing and bamboozling the public with gradually less and less penetrable works of fiction, and when we follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to the bank and see who is making all the money, we find it is the authors themselves, along with their entourage of legal advisors, or as David Icke would call them, half human lizard hybrids!

If this blog stops suddenly, you will know I am on to something, and perhaps someone brave enough will take up this baton and run with it until the conspiracy theory writers who are the true conspirators have been brought to justice.....it is not for nothing that all of these writers at some point use the same creative devise - hiding things in plain sight! You have been warned.....

Why conspiracy theories are so popular.....

It seems that no matter what sphere we are considering, it is impossible for people to accept that there may be no more surprising of esoteric reason for a strange or sinister event than coincidence or happenstance. There are even people who deny the possibility of coincidence at all. Whether we are looking at something as innocuous as the drop rates of bonuses in a video game, or the destruction of life and property in a natural disaster, or even large scale conflict there are those who see the evil manipulation of circumstances to create these events. It seems to me that there is often little evidence for a conspiracy, but this doesn't seem to make much of a difference. There also seems to be little evidence that the supposed controlling groups, be they NWO groups, Bilderbergers, Masons, Templars, Illuminati or hybrid alien lizards actually exist but again that makes little difference.

What is interesting is that impossibility of these things not being conspiracies, and the implications that that leads to. I think it is related to the previous post on blame culture, in that if we don't have a conspiracy theory, we potentially have no-one to blame, which implies that we are at the mercy of random events, which in turn leads inevitably to a sense of fear and impending doom simply because it removes our ability to control our own lives. It seems to make little difference that very few of us actually have any real measure of control over our lives beyond very basic day to day decisions, but there you go.

It seems to be a part of what makes us happy and able to cope, this idea that someone is in control of everything, that the possibility of effecting change exists, that there is someone to complain to and we are not just at the mercy of random chance. I wonder if it relates to our predisposition for faith based religion, and even if conspiracy theory is a natural consequence of the decline in religion in the Western World. It is certainly something that bears thinking about for me.....

Why I love War Metal....

I've played a few online games in my time, and what I look for is a good mix of gameplay, strategy and community in the right balance. For a variety of reasons I am not great at socialising in real life, and sometimes I find it difficult online as well. I get easily confused by context and subtle meaning when I am reading messages, but just occasionally I find a gaming community that meets my criteria, and a game that matches my style of play. There is a game on Facebook that seems to offer the best of both Worlds for me. That game is War Metal. Now, I'm not usually that big a fan of military type games. Having had some exposure to its reality, it can seem a bit questionable to glorify war of any type, but War Metal doesn't seem to have this issue. There is a story arc that runs through the game that creates an imaginary landscape that gives a purpose to the battles, and even when fighting player versus player there is little of the aggressive overspill, as the game feels more like chess than bloody conflict - although chess can get a bit brutal sometimes!

I think that the reasons the game works for me are several. Firstly there is a vibrant community on the game forums with a healthy mix of experienced and novice players, and it is perfectly possible to get good advice from some fascinating people. Then there is a nice touch in that the developers respond to players on the forums which gives a real sense of wanting the players to be involved in how the game evolves. Something that adds to the overall enjoyment is that it seems to be one of the few games where those who can afford to invest with the developers to gain advantage are not so far ahead of those who for whatever reason play for free, Sure they gain some benefits, but the game is not too skewed in favour of those who have disposable income to invest. Then there is the game itself. There seems to have been a lot of time and creativity invested in making a cast of characters, an arc of missions and a range of villains that really works as a cohesive whole.

Sure, there are issues, there are people who are dissatisfied with the game, there are people who like a good moan on the forums, but you get this in every game, and I have never been put off by anything I have seen, and I'm pretty picky lol! So, come along, join in the fun, meet the players and try your hand at a game that needs careful consideration of strategy, careful selection of units, cunning gaming and in returns offers great fun, great community and a really nice way to relax after the stresses of the day....

How to jump through hoops.....

Here's a question for you. What do performing circus animals and people have in common? Other than all being mammals? Well, the title of the post does rather give it away, but in case you missed it, we all have to learn to jump through hoops. It doesn't matter whether you are on welfare or the CEO of a multi-national corporation, there are endless rows of hoops through which you have to jump on a daily basis. These hoops have generally been put in place by successive legislative bodies and are intended to serve a valid and useful purpose. They are, in the main, intended to protect society as a whole from sharp practices, fraud, illegality and so on. So the CEO is ultimately responsible for making sure that her corporation conforms to health and safety policy, or to put it another way, jumps through the health and safety hoop, to protect her workers and the wider community from the actions of her company. The welfare claimant has to provide evidence of the reason for their claim and their inability to work, again jumping through hoops, but with the purpose of protecting the national budget from un-necessary drains on resources.

For the person doing the hoop jumping, it can often seem like petty minded officiousness, and in some cases I am quite sure that it is, or if not simple officiousness, then at least excessively time consuming. It should be remembered though that there is a secondary side to this. If this hoop jumping is a pain for the person doing the jumping, imagine what it must be like for the person holding the hoop, day and day, week after week, month after month as almost every person jumping through it complains about having to do it. Imagine having to deal with complaints about a system you didn't put in place, you may not necassarily agree with, you may not even fully understand, but you have to keep holding that hoop. When you look at it from that side. perhaps having to do the jumping isn't so bad after all.

Looking at it from both sides can be useful, for one very good reason. The purpose of this post is to give you, dear reader, an insight into how to get through the maze of hoops, and the very best advice I can give is to do your absolute best to give whatever information is required. Fill in forms correctly and in the correct colour pen, when doing it by phone, remain polite and calm, give full but concise answers, and above all, be honest. It may not feel like it at the time, but by trying to help the person who has to process your hoop jump, they are far more likely to help you and reduce the number of subsequent hoops you have to navigate. Always remember that in the main these hoops have had to be created because someone, somewhere tried to play the system and lost, badly enough that the system had to retaliate and punish everyone, in the manner of the school teacher keeping the whole class in because of one disruptive student. It isn't a perfect system, it isn't necessarily fair, but working with the system rather than fighting against can pay dividends in the long run....

Internet marketing as a tool for business development....

One of the most crucial first steps in any new business is letting your potential customers know that you exist. In the very early stages this is often done by word of mouth, many businesses being set up to fulfill an existing need in a given marketplace. This is fine for the initial stages, and for some companies can be enough to sustain them in the short to medium term, but for most companies there comes a point where there is a need to expand the customer base, to bring new products and services to market, to reach out and engage with the wider community, and the way in which this is done can be crucial to how successful that business becomes. Historically businesses have had a couple of routes to market. Telesales has long been a favourite, but there are also postal campaigns, leaflet drops, word of mouth referrals, business networking and so on.

Over the last ten years or so there has been one marketing tool that has begun to take pre-eminence for many businesses and is set to become increasingly important as we move forward. That tool is the internet, and for many businesses it is a tool that you ignore at your peril. The internet can be a tremendous resource, and is rapidly becoming consumers first port of call when they are seeking out products and services, and these are not just Joe Public consumers but business customers as well. I know anecdotally from my circle of friends that if they are sourcing something, the first place they look is online, normally with a Google or Yahoo search, followed by a scan of the companies listed. Put pretty much any search term into one of these search engines and with the vast size of the internet you are almost sure to returns several hundred thousand or more results. Realistically no-one is ever going to scroll through page after page of results, and resaerch has shown that the majority of internet users seldom go past the first five pages. If they haven't found what they want by them they type in a different search.

So, it is clear that if you want your business to function online effectively you need to position it so that when people search for things that you do, you appear in the search engine ranking, and ideally that you feature as early in those rankings as possible. None of this is new information, but it is becoming more and more crucial because the search engine owners also know that people generally don't search beyond page five or so, and they are working hard to refine their search engines so that they can match websites more and more accurately with what people are looking for, thereby reducing the amount of inappropriate or less useful sites that appear on those first few pages. The stated Holy Grail of the search engines is to refine the process so that no matter what a user searches for, the results they get are ranked in accordance with what will be most useful to them.

A brief note at this point may be useful. When you, or I or anyone else types a search query into a search engine something quite magical happens. The search engines transforms your query into a mathematical formula using a search algorithm, and then uses that formula to rank websites according to their relevance. These algorithms are what are constantly being tweaked and modified to return ever more accurate and relevant results. It used to be the case that if you had a domain name that was relevant to your business, lets say www.carsales.com for a  company selling cars, that would be enough to get you a high search engine rank. Technology moved on and the domain name became less relevant as it was seen as a barrier to market entry as the best domain names were snapped up, so it became necessary to but keywords into your website, so as well as having the domain name www.carsales.com your website would have titles and page names that referred to selling cars. Technology moved on again and the search engine algorithms began to  scan the actual website content for relevance so there was a need for the website owner, along with their website developer to make sure that on page content was relevant and useful.

The process is becoming ever more complex, and yet at the same time, if you understand the process, more accessible. The trick is to understand the process, and what the search engines are looking for. It takes valuable time to do that, particularly for people who are not necessarily tech savvy, and for many businesses there is an increasing requirement to have a specialist look over a website to make sure that it will work with the search engines to achieve a valid and sustainable page rank. There are all sorts of companies out there who can offer these services. Some are better than others, some understand the process better than others. As with everything else in life making a cool and rational decision on what works best for you, and who you feel comfortable working with is vital to making the most from your online presence, no matter what your business aspirations are.....

The best way to deal with distractions....

We all have them, and it seems that they are increasing as we become more technologically connected. They interrupt the flow of work, they take our minds off our jobs, they make tasks take far longer than they should....They are not doing us an favours no matter what the advertising companies may tell us. They are the things that in my opinion have done more harm to work productivity than anything before them....They are distractions. They come in many forms, from the subtle vibration of a mobile phone seductively hinting at that most urgent of events, a text from a mate telling you he has just got back from the shops to the quiet beep of a non work related e-mail landing on your desktop telling you a "friend" is asking for you helping raising a barn on Farmville. The modern working world is hectic and facepaced and pressurised, and there is a requirement to be on top of your game at all times. Add to this the reaserch that has shown tht when we are distracted from an activity, not only do we lose the time spent on that distraction, but it takes us time to get back into the working mindset having been distracted.

I can still just about remember the days when someone out on the road selling had to find a phone box to call back in to the office, when mail still arrived in a big bag into the post room, when phone calls only came to the phone on your desk and were only about work. Now, as I look around my office I see everyone beavering away at their tasks, being productive or creative or effective until.....<PING> an email comes in with an alert that suggests urgent attention is required <RING> a mobile phone goes off, usually a personal call <VIBRATE> a facebook status update appears on a colleagues mobile phone leading to a cross office discussion about last night X-Factor....and so it goes on, and on, and on, and on......

Many companies have chosen to block certain websites from office computers, many companies have a no mobile phone policy on the desk, but all this does is push people to spend the time at break or lunch catching up on their gossip rather than grabbing something to eat, maybe a coffee, maybe preparing for the next work period in a productive way. The purpose of breaks in the working day was a consequence of the rise in use of computers monitors and the need to encourage people to take a rest period to avoid eye strain, not to spend that time staring at an even smaller screen on their phone. I am aware that I probably sound about 80 years old at this point and quite cumudgeonly, but I have to wonder where it will end up, particularly when this post is only about the impact at work and hasn't even touched on the damage that our super-connected World does to interpersonal relationships - couples texting other people over a romantic dinner anyone? - or the safety issues of pedestrians walking out into traffic because they were too busy on the mobile to bather to realise they were walking off the kerb? The list goes on and on, and is only going to get longer and the effects yet more devastating until we realise that we have become to slavishly bound to our communication devices, our distractions.......

A celebration of facial hair.....

As the occasional wearer of facial hair, I do get a sense of community spirit when I see events like the World Beard Wearing competition. These are chaps who understand dedication to style and aesthetic for personal satisfaction against public opinion. It is quite interesting to consider the way in which beard wearers are perceived. There has, in recent times, been a shift in public opinion from the view of the beard as indicative of maturity and wisdom, to a mistrust of people with beards. As is seen with people who are obese, beard wearers are often considered lazy and lacking in moral fibre as is suggested here but this is not always the case. As one who ranges from clean shaven to flowing beard and back I am aware that public perception of my facial hair varies as the beard grows.

I tend to get interested looks as the beard first starts to grow through the stubble stage. Then depending on how the beard is trimmed, the looks change. If I trim to a goatee I tend to find that people distance themselves more than if I keep a neatly trimmed full beard. By the same token, I find that as the beard grows longer if it is left to flow and appears natural I get a better response than if I try to keep it in check. I find it fascinating that people have a reaction at all to something which is a perfectly natural process, and makes no difference to anyone particularly, although this may be a function of my personal worldview. It could well be that because I don't read faces when I am communicating face to face I don't see the impact of changing or hiding facial features. perhaps someone who is better attuned to reading faces, and therefore relies on them more heavily to establish trustworthiness would be affected more significantly.

Could make an interersting research project one day.....

Do we need best practice in social networking?

Following on from a comment by one of my readers Jane, pointing out that there may be issues around when it is and isn't appropriate to use social networking I thought a little piece on appropriate, and inappropriate use of these new technologies might be worthwhile. We have already seen, here in the UK, two very good examples of inappropriate use of twitter, firstly by jurers during a criminal trial, a situation in which the jury, as part of their commitment to the legal process are bound not to discuss a case that they are sitting on, and secondly the use of twitter by politicians during a debate in the House of Commons. I think we are at a stage when, loath as I am always to suggest this, we need to look at a revamping of legislation around communication devices, rather than simply looking at etiquette guidelines.

I am reminded of the ongoing situation with mobile phones, where as they became ubiquitous and there was a marketing push to suggest that we should all be constantly connected, a situation developed where you would see people checking their messages and texting during meals out in restaurants, using the phone whilst pushing a baby carriage across a busy road, and the most obvious one, using mobile phones whilst driving. This latter one has now been legislated against, using existing laws regarding being distracted whilst driving, and we are seeing more and more places such as restaurants asking clients not to use their phones whilst dining. So we have legislative and etiquette based controls. Anecdotally I would suggest that legislation is proving more effective that etiquette, as one would expect.

I do not like the idea of using legislative power to control a situation that should never have arisen in a polite and respectful society, and certainly not where legislation is already in place as in the case of criminal trials and the behaviour of jurers. I think what we need is rapid re-education into appropriate use of this quickly growing technology, and a better understanding of how this technology should be used as it was intended. Or perhaps I am just finally becoming the old cummudgeon that I secret suspected I would. I guess a major factor is the constant drive for ever more success, whether that be in a business context or in our personal lives. Certainly, within my own business sector I am finding that it is increasingly difficult to achieve any really effective downtime, simply because the demands on my time are so great, so I am guilty of picking up email and messages and texts at all hours of the day and night. Perhaps we need to look towards working smarter and becoming better at delegating and outsourcing. I believe that I could free up some of my time if I was better at passing on some of my workload that I am not so efficient at to another company, so maybe that is something to consider.....

Thoughts on the European Human Rights Act.....

Watching the BBC's "Sunday Morning Live" today and the first discussion was with regard to the Human Rights Act, with the question being raised, is the act being used to unbalance the British legal system, and if it is, should we withdraw from it and come up with our own National bill of rights? The discussion was not particularly good being twisted to the point of incomprehensibility by one panel member with a purely anti-european slant, as one would expect from this particular panelist, but the question is non the less an interesting one. The act was put in place in 1998 to enshrine in law the rights to protection from state or personal infringement of civil liberties. It protects against torture, violence, mis-carriages of justice and the like, and in so do is tremendously important, particularly in  a society which has lost faith in the criminal justice system. But in so doing it also allows for those who chose to break the law to invoke the act to reduce or in some cases remove punishment for criminal acts.

I think the point that was not raised but perhaps should have been is that as is so often the case, it is not the legislation itself that is at fault, but the way in which it is interpreted. The act can be twisted and made to present some highly questionable decisions, and here we have a major problem as a sovereign nation. This act is European, although it was primarily written by British lawyers, and based around the British legal system, and as such, interpretation and what can be suggested as mis-interpretation is difficult to address on a national level. Given that this is the problem, perhgaps the discussion should have focused on how we can better manage the legislation and how we can ensure at the national level how we can modify and improve the act to better serve its intended purpose.

By using European legislation in British courts we risk losing some of the national freedoms that we should be focused upon. As a nation we already had an effective human rights legislation in place before this 1998 act and we had the freedom as a nation to adapt and change and improve it, a freedom that doesn't exist when that legislation is not nation based. I struggle with the concept of agreeing with a BBC TV panel in any way, but in this case, the concept of a nation state being unable to directly change legislation that is subject to mis-use is absolute anathema. There is no doubt that we need human rights legislation, but it must be centred on the individual nation and modified by the process of legal presidence as has been the case in the UK since 1215 and Magna Carta.....

Disaster recovery strategies are useful things....

I tend not to have too many disasters in my life fortunately. One of the reasons for this is that I tend to be quite organised and have plans in place to keep up with things like maintenance and health checks and car repairs and so on, but occasionally something comes out of the blue to really mess up your day. Like yesterday for example. There I was last night, minding my own business, watching a bit of tv and having a snack when all of a sudden there was a loud bang and all the electrics went off. A quick check at the fuse box showed that all the fuses had blown and wouldn't reset, indicating a more significant problem than I am equipped to deal with myself. A cause for some distress I think you will agree, but something that can be dealt with if handled in the right way.

Being an organised kind of person I have already over the last few years built a portfolio of local tradesmen who can be called on in an emergency such as this, but given that it was getting on towards one o'clock in the morning I was a little unsure as to response I would get. I chose a local company, naturally, and decided based on the company name and the website address. The name really said just what I wanted to hear as it is wefixit247, a lovely little company called Waterspark, electrical, plumbing, heating and building maintenance company, offering a twenty four hour emergency service. One phone called, answered very promptly I may add, and within an hour I had a thoroughly pleasant and efficient chap at my door looking at my wiring.

There was no sharp intake of breath in that cliched tradesman style, no forlorn shaking of the head, just a prompt and efficient service, rewiring the fusebox, tracing the fault to a mouse chewed bit of cable, replacing said cable, removing the unfortunately ex-mouse and there it was, fixed. As the name says, wefixit247 and they certainly did, and very reasonable it was too!

The cult of celebrity revisited…..

So, we have a new series of Big Brother starting on Channel 5 here in the UK, and as a warm up, we are seeing the celebrity version begin. The cast list for this drama is, some might say, the usual mix of lower grade celebrities desperate for some extra limelight, so we see the ubiquitous serial advertisers and X factor joke votes Jedward, alongside the wife of the House of Commons speaker Sally Berkow and the ex-wife of David Hasselhoff, Pamela Bach. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as there is a suggestion that some of these people may be somewhat media hungry and willing to play up for the cameras.

I wonder how much good this sort of thing does for our society. How much the drive for fame, and the assumption that it will bring fortune and by extension happiness is a positive thing? I suspect that it really isn’t such a positive thing at all, and it will be interesting to see how perhaps the archetypal example of the damaging effects of fame and fortune, Kerry Katona, gets on, for yes, it is true, she is in there as well. What might be interesting would be if she chooses to use this platform to discuss seriously here rise and fall, and perhaps to give some insight into the dangers of the path that she took.

Of all of the celebrities that have been selected I am most interested to see how Jedward get on, not from any sense of cynical amusement, or even shadenfreude but simply because I genuinely believe that of all of the recent manufactured celebrities, they actually understand what they are. They make no real pretence of considering themselves talented, they don’t seem to have bought in to the cult of celebrity in terms of inflation of ego, but what they have done very successfully is to commercialise themselves and make a lot of money whilst they can. Consequently I would rate them as the most successful of all of the reality celebrities, and wish them the best of luck….

Keeping pace with the social networking wars….

Following on from my earlier post about the upcoming battle between Google and Facebook, and the implications for users as both sides try to expand their offerings and enhance user experience, it is interesting to note a couple of changes that are already starting to cause ripples amongst the Facebook community. The first is the addition of a live feed when playing games on Facebook to tell you which of your friends are playing which games, which is all well and good if you use Facebook for fairly serious online gaming or you use games to develop friendships, but it does have a negative impact on the way that Facebook runs, slowing things down quite significantly.

I am unsure whether this is a move towards positioning the site as more of a gaming portal, or just another bolt on feature to try to maintain users, but it seems an interesting development. The other major change that has come around is a little more subtle. There has been a change to the style and function of the like button. This will not have a major impact on users of facebook, but could have quite an implication to companies like this who work with clients to provide social networking presence and generate increased buzz and consequently web traffic and ultimately enquiries. Particularly for those web design and SEO companies who work with entertainment companies, pubs, clubs, restaurants and the like this is going to become more and more important as the number of people who like a site or profile impacts on search engine results.

The way these changes develop and the way in which marketing and website companies respond to them could well be a deciding factor in the way in which this clash of the internet Titans plays out and I for one will be keen to see how it develops…..

A useful application of the ideas of neuro-linguistic programming…

Whilst it should be noted that neuro-linguistic programming is an unproven psychotherapy technique which suffers from a tremendous amount of misconception and misinformation, it should also be noted that if we drill down to the core of the principles behind it, there could be something useful underlying it. The principle is a fairly straightforward one, in that the human brain can be re-trained or re-programmed to think in certain ways by positive, repetitive reinforcement. Certainly we understand that the brain is a complex network of neural pathways that are constantly being formed, destroyed and reformed, and it is considered that this is in part the way that learning and memory work. As we learn new skills or strategies the process of learning forces new neural pathways to develop and over time and repetition these pathways become “preferred routes” for neural signals. It can be imagined as a network of roads which have developed from simple single lane paths through wider tracks on to tarmac roads then dual carriageways and finally trunk roads and highways.

We can see a potential aspect of this in someone learning to play a musical instrument. As a person learns to play the muscles develop around the movements required to play the instrument. At the same time, the brain is being reconfigured so that auditory signals are interpreted differently, the neurons controlling muscles become refined and recent FMRI research has shown that the neural connections across the left and right hemispheres of the brain are increased in both quantity and efficiency of communication. This would suggest that it should be possible to train the brain in other ways, for example in a business setting to condition the mind to think about problems differently, perhaps to see them as challenges rather than obstacles. There has been similar work in the field of linguistics into how the use of certain words triggers certain responses, and again we can see that there is potential for changes to be made here, not simply in terms of finding better language for use in office situations but also in terms of how that language is understood and acted up on by the listener.

I can see a commercial application for such training done correctly but there will need to be a lot of work done to reduce the number of people currently involved in NLP who don’t really understand either what they are doing or the underlying psychology….

Two minutes to midnight and all that jazz....

Iron Maiden wrote a song back in the mid ‘80’s called two minutes to midnight, referencing the much vaunted “atomic” clock used by scientists to assess the threat level of nuclear war and the destruction of civilization. The hands on the clock being set closer to or further way from midnight depending on the political situations around the World. During the Cuban missile crisis the hands had been set at two minutes to midnight as tensions rose and fingers were poised over those infamous red buttons. Since the end of the cold war between Russia and America there has been a relaxing of nuclear tensions, based around the SALT nuclear arms reduction treaties, but of late the clock has been dusted off and is one again in use. The reason for this is clear. There has been an increased awareness of the threat of other countries developing and having access to nuclear weapons. At one point only Russia and America had atomic weapons, although these were based around the World, but always controlled by the superpowers. We are now in a position where we see Israel, India, Pakistan, China and North Korea with nuclear capability, and the potential for states such as Iran, Saudia Arabia and the former Russian states joining that group is significant. Further it has been discovered that significant quantities of enriched Uranium is not where it is supposed to be, and may have been sold on the black market. The possibilities of dirty bomb terrorist attacks is considered significant, as is the use of limited yield tactical devices in border disputes in the developing World.

There was an interesting programme on Channel 4 in the UK last night regarding this issue and there are in my opinion two angles to be considered. It is undoubtedly the case that nuclear weapons are proliferating rather than being reduced, and it is also almost certainly the case that they are proliferating in areas of questionable stability. Ranged against these conjectures is the issue of lack of credibility in global leaders in regard to issues such as these. In the UK there is a feeling that we were drawn into the first and Second Gulf War against Iraq on a false premise that Saddam Hussain held stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, particularly biological and chemical weapons, but also potentially nuclear weapons. There was a fraudulent dossier passed by the CIA detailing black market trade in “Yellow cake” or enriched weapons grade Uranium through Nigeria that was used spuriously as evidence. With a background of misinformation it is perhaps understandable that there is some question over the validity of the threat, particularly given the use of such threats as a perceived excuse for the erosion of civil liberties.

The need for constructive, rational debate over the implications of security of fissile material, and rather than sitting on stockpiles of weapons, move towards a truly global unilateral disarmament. There is no place for nuclear weapons in our World, and nor will there ever be. This is one genie that needs to be forced back into the bottle…..

Social networking gets aggressive….

The battle lines are drawn between two superpowers. Forces are arrayed on both sides and the peacemakers are trying their utmost to find solutions before small border skirmishes escalate into all out conflict. This could be a scene anywhere in the Middle East currently, and indeed some would argue that it is, but it is also a scene being played out in corporate America, and more importantly, on the internet. The growth of social networking has been spectacular. We have all seen dotcom bubbles grow and burst, but this looks like that rarest of beasts, a genuine long term phenomenon. Facebook has generated enormous revenues for its developers, and has taken a stranglehold on the online social marketplace. It has already seen of one rival, Myspace having been relegated to the status of a third world charity case desperately trying to find a niche to cling to, but as with any growth market with an obvious way of making serious money, there is a very strong desire for others players to enter the game.

The latest player to enter looks to be a very serious contender indeed, and for the first time it appears that Facebook is actually worried. This new player is a battle hardened veteran of many internet skirmishes, and has been successful in their own arena against some very big players already, and now they have Facebook firmly in their sights. This warrior of the internet is non other than the King of the search engines, Google. Having already largely won the war for search engine use, and expanded into the marketplace for browser dominance with Google Chrome, one of the fastest growing browsers in the World, they are now currently in beta testing of the latest Google offering, Google Plus. Targeted squarely at facebook as Googles own social networking site, and looking to offer the best of facebook with none of the downsides it looks an interesting proposition.

We already know that Google have the technical skills and certainly the resources to make a serious bid for at least a fair fight in this marketplace, and it does rather beg the question, is there room for two major players in this arena? To the casual observer, and indeed to the casual user, I would guess that there is little to this question beyond what is best for me as an individual user, and who are most of my friends using? However, it can be argued that there is something more to this than might first appear to be the case. There is a reason for the military allusion beyond its function as narrative. Over the last 12 months there has been increasing use od social sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter to disseminate information from war-zones, highlighting the plight of ordinary people in these areas. Both Facebook and Twitter have tended to keep communication lines open and allowed the majority of posts from these regions. By contrast there is some evidence that Google has made agreements with the Chinese government to surpress news stories that ran counter to the party line, and to limit access to human rights internet content. It will be interesting to see if this makes a difference as we move forward….

A tale of two sports....

An interesting weekend for sport in England with two extremes demonstrated. As a nation we are very proud of our sporting heritage, and of our national teams as well as our regional teams, and on a global stage, the sports that we brought to the world, particularly football, cricket and rugby union are considered priority. Over this weekend we have seen two very different performances from two of our national teams. Our Rugby team played Wales, a match that we would expect to win, particularly in the run up to the World Cup next month, and our Cricket team played India, the World number one team, a match that we would expect to be far more of a struggle. I managed to watch both matches and the differences were very obvious. Our cricket team, playing at Edgabaston, excelled themselves beating Indian by more than an innings with some spectacular, record breaking scores, completing a series win three games to nil. By comparison, our Rugby team lost to Wales with only one try in the game being scored by the Welsh side.

What was perhaps most interesting was the passion, or lack of it shown by the two teams. At international level there should be utter pride in playing for the national team, and it should be shown from the singing of the anthem through to the final whistle. With the cricket match we saw a level of determination from the England players to not simply beat the Indian side but to demolish them. As each wicket fell there was a calmness to the celebrations that demonstrated a mindest that was solely focused on getting the job done. By comparison the rugby team were lacklustre from the outset. Simple plays were not completed, passes were wayward, tackles were missed and the team were not at any point being outplayed by better opposition but were simply unable to compete effectively. Sure, the Welsh team defended well, but there were far too many mistakes.

In situations like these there is a requirement that is inherent to the success of a team. That requiement is leadership. The cricket team was led by Andy Strauss, a player of passion and commitment who leads by example and manages to control and organise the team whilst being heavily involved in the action. By comparison the rugby team were led  by Mike Tindall, undoubtedly one of the most passionate players in modern rugby, always committed, always full of energy and drive, but often so wrapped up in his own performance that he is unable to take a clear overview of the bigger picture and consequently is less able to take the tactical decisions that were needed to run the team effectively.

When I look back over the great sporting captains and the way that they organise and manage the way ames are played I think of a commanding presence, not simply comfortable with managing their own performance, but also comfortable managing everyone elses at the same time. The same can be said of great managers in business. It relies on being so complete in ones own role that time can be allocated to enhancing and mentoring others to bring the best performance from the team as a whole. I can only think that Mr. Johnson the England rugby team manager will be somewhat disappointed by his captains performance, and will either work to fix the problem or appoint another captain for the World Cup matches next month....... 

The internet as an repository of knowledge.....

A friend of mine has spent the morning at an antiques fair, and come back with a rather nice little silver pendant. It is the figured of winged Isis, the Egyptian mother Goddess in the form of a stylised animal figure but on the reverse is a runic script which translates as Celtic Magic Isis Design. So we have an Egyptian deity with a norse inscription and a Celtic motto. Beyond that it is hallmarked sterling silver. My friend wanted to find out a little more about it so I got on to Google and ha a little trawl and within twenty minutes I had found the maker, the date and the symbolic significance of the item. It transpires that it is a part of Masonic regalia that has been modified for use in magical ceremonies as an altar piece.

It is quite amazing how easy it is to find information online about the most obscure or specific subjects given a logical turn of mind and an understanding of the way search engines work. It also never ceases to amaze me how many people struggle to find the information they are looking for even on fairly common topics. The trick, I believe, is to treat the internet, and search engines in particular as you would a child. Make your instructions and requests clear and concise, have a good idea about what information you are looking for so that you can filter out the wheat from the chaff. There is a skill involved in effective searching and in analysing the results.

Work is constantly ongoing within search engine companies and University Computer Science departments to come up with more and more complex search algorithms to refine searches and even moving towards "learning" algorithms on the verge of artificial intelligence to refine search processes further, and to make searching more intuitive. We have a long way to go to perfect the system, but the internet is a truly useful learning resource when used effectively, and will become even better if allowed to grow and develop as an open source resource. It will be interesting to see where it goes....

Healing our broken society.....

So, the majority of the country was quiet last night after four nights of looting and civil disobedience. There will be all sorts of claims as to what has calmed the situation, vigilante groups claiming they scared off the looters, police numbers increased and police orders changed will be claimed too, as will the weather, and the difficulties of sustaining civil unrest of this type beyond four days. The wider community will claim that it was the calls for calm, and the religious types will claim that it was the power of prayer. Whatever the cause, and it will almost certainly have been a combination of effects, I welcome this peace with open arms, and trust and hope that it will continue. Walking through Birmingham city centre this morning I saw so many shops and pubs damaged and boarded up, so many businesses large and small that will be paying the price of the troubles, so many lives negatively affected, not just financially at this difficult time, but also in terms of confidence and a sense of security.

I feel that it will take some time to come back from these events, but what we have to look to is why this happened in the first place. As we look at the types of people involved we see not only the usual subjects of blame, the disaffected youth, the unemployed, the bored, thugs, but also young people who have jobs, who are building careers, who may have just been caught up in the moment, but it could also be the case that the disatisfaction with society goes deeper than people believe. We are seeing a primary school teaching assistant, a graphic designer, students people that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be involved. My gut instinct is that there was a tremendous amount of opportunistic looting going on, and that it was almost certainly organised at some level. I think that the purported reason of a young man in London being shot, whilst it may have been part of the catalyst was only a small part, the remainder being made up of people seeing an opportunity for mayhem and disorder.

These people are known to their local communities and one of the key ways that we can work together to deal with this situation is by being strong enough within our communities to address these people and to interact with the police to deal with them. In many communities affected this will present issues because trust and faith in the police has been systemically eroded over a number of years, but in order to make progress olive branches must be offered and trust re-established. This can only be achieved slowly and with the help of respected community leaders building bridges and taking their communities with them. It will also require the police being more open and confronting the failings within their own ranks and with the broken links to local communities. By working together, all of us, we can rebuild our society stronger and better than before, and be in a much better position to face the challenges that are coming over the next few years.....

The consequences of our actions cause more ripples than we can count....

Last nights violence across the country brought the inevitable cost here in Birmingham with at least three deaths resulting from a brawl on Dudley Road as local people confronted looters, trying to protect their shops, livelhoods and communities. Young people are being killed on our streets because of what exactly? I am hearing all sorts of excuses and reasons for the current civil disorder, but at root, what is the real cause? I am sure that the causes are many and nebulous and complex in many minds, but in mine they are clear and boil down to one thing. We have lost respect for one another and for the communities and societies in which we live. There is no evidence of respect for property, livelihoods even life. We have cheapened ourselves and each other to such an extent that nothing matters anymore, and it saddens my heart. As I watch the images of looting and violence, and experience the aftermath first hand on my way to the office, seeing pubs I drink in smashed up, my local community torn apart, friends and aquaintances hurt and their businesses damaged I can't help but wonder, what next?

We have a little rain here today, and there is a hope that this change in the weather along with a quieting down of the trouble in London may quieten things down here tonight, but London is quietened as a consequence of being on pretty much complete lockdown. I wonder if we have the policing resources in the West Midlands to do the same. The boys in blue seemed to be having a tough time of it in parts of Birmingham last night. I guess we will just have to see what happens.

I would like to take this opportunity to make a personal plea to the communities that I live in, and to the people who are out on the streets causing this situation, for the sake of our city, and the sake of our people, to bring an end to this before more people like Shazad Hussain, may the peace of the prophet be upon him, lose their lives and leave families shattered. This has already gone too far, and it needs to stop right now. Whatever point may have been the catalyst for this has been lost, whatever was hoped to be achieved has been lost. There is no benefit to be derived from this, to be honest there never was, but it is time to end it. I pray for peace, and would ask all those of faith to do the same. There will be a lot of energy required for rebuilding both physically and emotionally after this is over, and we will need to be strong. I have faith in humanity and in our communities, and I have faith that we can overcome this by working together. This is a great and beautiful and vibrant city and we are better than this.

Where London leads Birmingham follows…..

So, I was in the centre of Birmingham last night, planning to attend a social event that I run at Scruffy Murphys pub in Dale End. I had been seeing convoys of police vans blues and twos going for a couple of hours when at 19.45hrs I got a phone call from a friend who I was meeting advising me to look at twitter and maybe think about not being in town. Out came the trusty Blackberry and a quick shuffty at facebook, twitter and tumblr brought me to this site which has subsequently been providing me with information on the ongoing situation. Having seen the trouble in London over the past three nights it came as no surprise that opportunists would see a chance to do a bit of free shopping in the second city. The decision was taken to tactfully withdraw from the city centre and wend my way home instead. I got out just before the public transport network shut down.

It is quite an interesting situation, in that it appears that the city centre was over-run by multiple gangs of youths intent on looting rather than rioting, and that the looting was organized to the extent that mobile phone messaging appears to have been used to co-ordinate activities. Reports suggest that the police deployed mobile phone jammers in some areas, and that the network providers and Blackberry were working with the police to limit use of mobile devices and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if message logs weren’t subpoenaed and used in evidence, and if you don’t think that is possible, think again. It was probably a consequence of shutting down the mobile network that led to the looting of Maplins Electronics, not a natural choice I wouldn’t think, but useful if you have a sudden need for, lets say, two way radios and scanners. Just a thought.

With the police otherwise engaged in the centre of Birmingham, trouble flared in the usual hotspots of Lozells, Handsworth and Perry Barr as well as more unusual areas like Walsall and Wolverhampton. It appears that the worst of the trouble was in Handsworth but this has always been a bit of a tinderbox. The next twenty four hours are, I think, crucial. We need to see if this blows over, or if there is more trouble tonight. It may be quite hard to track as it appears that the media are under at least a partial D notice with reporting limited to occasional mentions on the main news networks. This is understandable to an extent, but doesn’t really help in terms of confidence in our boys in blue or in our political leaders.

The next few days will be interesting I think…..

Growing and nurturing strength and confidence....

Running a business can be a challenging process, rom controlling the finances, to driving sales to chasing payments to maintaining creativity and developing the business strategies, to managing staff and client requirements and so on. In order to draw all of the strands together and make the business cohesive and effective, I would argue that one of the most crucial pre-requisits of a business owner is to have the strength to drive the business, and the confidence to make quick and effective decisions in often difficult and pressurised situations. This may sound obvious, but personally I feel that it can be one of the biggest challenges to any business owner. Let us take a hypothetical situation. You are running a business and you discover that a staff member, who you had considerable confidence in, has been commiting fraud against both your business and your clients. Obviously this is unacceptable, and there can be no question that this warrants instant dismissal for gross misconduct.

However, this employee has been with the company for 10 years and apart from this one lapse in standards has been the rock around which the company has grown. The implications of his or her actions have not changed, the decision should also not have changed, but the decision is not such an easy one. Now lets add in the information received from the employee that the reason for the fraud was because they felt so under pressure from you as an owner that they felt they had no other choice but to act in that manner. In fact they felt that they had your implicit approval for the fraud even though you know that they didn't. Already the complexities become much more difficult to weave between. It should be noted that this is not an uncommon situation by any means, and is one that can become much more complicated still. The employee could be desperately trying to support a dying relative, the stress of that situation clouding their judgement at work, just as an example.

In terms of a business decision this person has still acted in a way that could leave the company liable to legal consequences, and has also breached trust to such an extent that their position is not tenable, but you can see that the decision is not going to be necessarily a straight forward one. The decision must still be made however, and the original decision is still the correct one, probably.....

Business is a part of life, it is subject to the same complexities, the same challenges, the same ethical considerations as any other part of life, and this is where developing ones confidence and strength to make the tough decisions is absolutely crucial....

The power of the media.....again....

Over the past couple of days we have seen the press pack reporting on the financial situations both in Europe and America in quite dark terms. There have been stories of the difficulties faced by Italy and Spain and how the cost of their borrowing has risen and the damage that is potential being done to the whole of the Euro zone. We have seen the reports coming from America on the hammering that the financial markets have taken over the last few days. What is interesting from my point of view as an external observer of the financial sector - I try to avoid having any direct contact with it - is that the markets tend to respond to media speculation just as much as to trader speculation. My concern is that we seem to have a disconnect between the reporting of the situation and the reality of the situation.

I think it is pretty clear to most observers that we are still in the depths of a financial crisis and will be for at least the next five years. Our situation is precarious and the measures that are currently being taken by our political leaders are at best applying a sticking plaster to a gaping wound. The banks are all in trouble and are pulling in their horns, companies are extremely wary of increasing much needed investment. The consumer marketplace is significantly compromised by the reduction in available credit and by the reduction in disposable income, and the level of confidence throughout the system is low. This situation has not changed radically in the last two years, nor is it likely to significantly change, and yet we have a media reporting the current round of difficulties as though they were earth shattering news.

I understand that there is a need within the media industry to sell papers and television advertising slots, and that the reporting of "news" plays second fiddle to scaremongering and hyperbole. It was ever thus, but I feel that in the current climate some level of restraint would perhaps be a better way forward. A frank and open policy of reporting and open-ness from our political and industrial leaders would allow for a more constructive approach to seeking resolutions to the problems that we face, rather than rushing headlong into panic and the poor quality of decisions that that mindset invariably brings.......

Pleasant surprises and dispelling misconceptions....

There has been a tremendous amount of media coverage both from journalists and economists and industry experts bemoaning the state of British industry and the decline of our manufacturing sector and the rise of the service industry. Personally I work in the service sector for my day job, creating copy for clients websites, generating news stories and articles and press releases, and generally creating a buzz around client businesses, but what is interesting is the number of manufacturing companies that I am working on behalf of. Given the negative press that the sector gets, when I started doing what I do, I fully expected to be producing work for service sector firms, but that just isn't the case. I think what we are seeing is an undoubted decline in large scale industrial processes particularly in terms of the car industry or shipuilding, but a transferance of those industrial processes into a vast number of small industrial firms, all contributing to a significant overall whole.

What is intersting to the historian in me is that this is a similar position to my home city, Birmingham, at the dawn of the industrial revolution a couple of hundred years ago. Birmingham used to be the city of a thousand trades, and it feels to me that we are returning to that situation with a great number of small firms starting to work collaboratively so that networks of entrepreneurs get together to share ideas and skills and talents to create wonderful products. It is fascinating to see how small gaps in the market are being exploited in new and interesting ways to generate significant economic contributions. Once you start to drill down into what these businesses do, and start to get to know the people who run them and work within them you get a real insight into just how much creative talent there is in our business communities.

We should celebrate more the entrepreneurial spirit of our small manufacturing and engineering companies, both those who have been established for a hundred years and those who are only just starting out. Rather than bemoaning the fate of our manufacturing sector, I would strongly suggest that our political leaders get out and about, start talking to the people who are going to be the long term saviours of our economy, not just on the high profile enterprise parks, but in the industrial back streets and alleys, and they might just be surprised at what they find.....

Teamwork is the key to successful business.....

......and communication is the key to successful teamwork. Within any organisation in a modern business setting it is pretty much impossible for one person to do everything. As the business grows and succeeds and becomes busier the ability to delegate and to allocate tasks becomes increasingly crucial. This leads to a potential issue. People have certain ways of doing things, and certain ways that they like things to be done. This can be expressed in timescales, work ordering, aesthetics, designs all sorts of ways, but if tasks are allocated and not done in that same way, or are not done to the same timescales this can cause friction. As with so much else in life there is a requirement for understanding and compromise, but more than this there is a requirement for communication. If the message of what jobs need doing, in what order, and to what timescales is correctly conveyed, and vice versa if any reasons why these cannot be accomplished are also conveyed back up the chain of command, then things tend to run more smoothly.

This sounds like fairly simple common sense, but you may be surprised at how difficult it can be to effectively convey information. Ask anyone who has stood in front of a class of schoolchildren giving a talk but who isn't a teacher. Ask someone from a business background who occasionally gives lectures to University students. There is a reason that it is considered that an ability to teach is a talent. It is because teaching is all about conveying information in a way that is understandable. The same is true in the business world when disseminating information or tasks. Let me give you an example. If I ask you, dear reader, to upload a website onto my company hosting using my ftp account login you may or may not know how to do that. If I assume that you do, I am making a mistake. Do you have the necessary login details and passwords? Do you have the necessary technical skills? Do you have access to the files you need? You may, but you may not. If I don't clarify exactly what I need you to do, how I want you to do it, and give you the tools you need to do it, I am in trouble.

Being able to communicate effectively is a skill that everyone should learn. It should be fundamental to our education system, both verbally and in writing. It is at the core of successful relationships, both personal and professional, and it is what keeps us, as a society moving forward with some kind of goal or dream in mind....

Fraternity and Sorority and developing a strong sense of group identity....

Not too long ago I was priviledged to be invited to a stag party for a very good friend of mine. I was going to be officiating as high priest at his fandfasting (a pagan wedding) and as such the stag weekend took on additional signifcance, the animistic principles inherent in the event name having specific relevance to the beliefs of those involved. as a group we took ourselves off to the Welsh Gower coast to an area of woodland. We were going to spend the weekend in the woods being taught by a local outdoor pursuits company to build shelters, friction fire light, nap flint, fish and track game. We arrved and began by setting up a camp adjacent to a range of caves that archaeological investigation has revealed to have been in occupation for about 15000 years. The sense of place and history was almost overwhelming, and as we began to gather firewood and prepare shelters, and the group began to work together with clearly defined common aims we began to get a sense of purpose and achievement.

I come from a grammer school background, a single sex boys school where there was a strong focus on team sports, particularly rugby union and I must confess to missing the sense of team spirit and bonding that came from a game well played. I enjoyed winning and the school team was successful, but I more fully embraced the ethos of playing to the best of ones ability and drawing the best from the team-mates around you. I was also at this time in my life heavily involved in the equestrian world working at livery stables and exercising and competing peoples horses. The equestrian world is heavily female dominated and as such I found that I was quite happy in all male, predominantly female and fully mixed groups in a working environment, but the only one I really miss is the all male group setting. Having spoken to female friends who have a similar background I have found that they have similar feeling, missing the sense of sorority and community, that they had at school.

Of course, I am seeing this with rose tinted glasses. As a high achiever, and what my American friends would call a "Jock" I was held in some regard by my peers and probably had a better time at school than many, but even allowing for this bias, I feel that the strength of the bonds I built at school take some beating. So, given that I miss that fraternal bond quite significantly, what am I doing to address this? I considered joining the freemasons, both as a means of recapturing that sense of belonging and brotherhood, but the associations with the ceremonial side of the magic that I practice (many of the forerunners of the ceremonial magic movement of the late victorian era were masons and many of the rituals that we practice have a masonic flavour as a consequence) so I decided to look for that same feeling through experiential paganism, establishing a strong group of male pagan intellectuals specifically to practice as a male coven group and to discuss the deeper male aspects of the pagan paths.

So far it seems to be working, but only time will tell if it is successful long term....my guess is that that depends on the egos of those involved.....

Social responsibility is crucial....

As we, here in Britain, face unprecedented cuts in public sector spending, both on a national and local level with budgets being cut in health, education, defense, the arts and pretty much every department there has never been a more crucial time for people to develop a sense of community and the attitude that we must look after each other. We have seen of late an attempt by the coalition government to trigger this response by creating "The Big Society" but personally I am disinclined to engage with this project for a number of reasons. I feel that attemptng to drive people from the top into acting in a society focused manner is a non starter primarily because it smacks of passing the buck, particularly when the people at the top doing the directing are mistrusted by the populous in general. We have, for a while now, been in a position where our political leaders are seen as at best ill-advised and at worst corrupt, and this is not a strong enough position to encourage people to help out.

The only way to really engage people in community action is to lead by example. If you look at the community projects that have enjoyed a measure of success, such as on the estates of Tower Hamlets and deprived areas of Birmingham and Manchester we see time and time again that it is someone within the community in question, generally not someone who is initially seen as a "leader" but who carries that mantle well, but someone who is a driving force, leading from the front by consitent example, creating a buzz within the community with their energy and enthusiasm, often in the face of strong opposition and apathy.

These movements are almost invariably bottom up, grass-roots movements, formed out of a sense of desperation and a knowledge that things can be made better and driven by the strength of character of someone who has successfully struggled through life. By trying to turn this process on its head I feel that the government runs the risk of alienating and dis-enfranchising the very people that it needs to better support and work with. In the main, these people at grass roots level find their strength in independence and in a can-do attitude that is seriously limited by outside interference. Far better for our dear leader to understand this and to get out and about into the communities that are most in need of help, and not for photo opportunities but to actually engage and interact with those who are at the sharp end of the cuts that are coming. This will involve talking to people properly, and talking to real people rather than a selected handful of supporters picked by the local political party. Unscripted, unrehearsed, uncontrolled interaction with the voters.....question is, does Mr Cameron have the cojones to actually take this step, without entourage, without media and with little chance of praise or thanks. Or are we just going to get more of the same until we are forced to take action ourselves, thereby allowing him to take the credit for a system that has worked in spite of rather than because of his big society idea?