If you can keep your head

when all about you

are losing theirs and blaming it on you ...

In a desperate attempt to get Sprog4 into the habit of writing, I am nagging him mercilessly to post a blog entry, however small, each day. So it's only fair that I should do the same. Sadly, I have got out of the habit of collecting nuggets through the day to tease out into some words of wisdom later in the week. And I never got into the habit of dashing off a Deep Insight in five minutes. So I find myself casting around for inspiration. It occurs to me that "If" covers just about everything a human being can aspire to: I should be able to hang a cogent observation or two off each couplet.

We begin with the memorable lines on grace under pressure. A mother needs to get the children to school on time: one has lost a shoe; one is wearing odd socks and the dog has diarrhea. A middle manager is struggling to pull together a dysfunctional process while his burnt out staff abandon him faster than he can replace them. An accounting manager is looking at implausible results on the last day of the monthly accounting close while the systems are crashing around him and the Board are questioning what is going on.

Of course good planning might have avoided the crisis. Which is one of the reasons why you can legitimately be blamed. But that is not the point. The point is, can you handle it when you have to?

What does it take to keep your head?

In the first place, you have to have a clear head to keep. That is, you need to know what you are trying to achieve and how you are trying to do that even before things go wrong. Like a sailing ship, you can only manoeuvre if you are moving forward. If you are simply reacting to whatever comes along, you will lose control when the pressure mounts.

Linked to this, you need to take responsibility rather than joining the chorus of people simply seeking to avoid the blame. This gives you a mandate and inspires the troops. Though of course, it also opens up the possibility of highly visible failure. Nevertheless, the failure is rarely as visible or as catastrophic as it seems at the time.

Finally, you have to make a decision and follow it through. Making the wrong decision is forgivable (if you don't make a habit of it). Making no decision is not.

So you grab a handful of bananas, dig out the lost shoe from behind the umbrella stand, accept the odd socks and bundle the children into the car while calling the cleaner to tell her to stay out of the kitchen today. And on the way to school, you make it very clear that everyone will be hounded mercilessly out of bed at 6:30 tomorrow.

You explain to your internal customers that the process is broken and they won't be able to get any more fixed assets until it is fixed.

You make your best assessment of the potential errors in the results and that this is acceptable for now. You tell the Board the position and commit to a full analysis in the next two weeks.

And your children weep bitterly, but they know that they are in safe hands.

And your internal customers bitch and moan, but they know they are in safe hands

And the Board is officially unimpressed, though they know unofficially that they are in safe hands.

A propos the cat litter tray

My Love, may I express the hope
That we invest in Simple Soap?
Perfume's divine, but masks the fact
You've missed a spot of Derriere de Chat.

This Caught Mum's Bedey Eye

I've just spent a week with my ageing mum in Stornoway. The quality of care for the elderly is impressive, and it is clear that the community has a deeply ingrained respect for those of pension  age. However I wouldn't say that it goes as far as veneration. Whatever this flyer about help with heating bills for vulnerable groups might suggest.

Remember, Remember

Remember, remember
The fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

What is going on here?

When the nation comes together for its great Winter festival of light in the night, are we really still remembering that our state lives under the Damoclean threat of Roman Catholic insurrection? Or celebrating the horrid just deserts meted out to a freedom fighter black villain? 400 years ago?

Or are we coming together in good fellowship to share hearty food and mulled wine and to gaze upwards in simple shared delight at the balletic confections of fire and motion?

Just asking.

Seeing Wrong

I had an interesting conversation with +Xabier Ostale, who was arguing from painful personal experience that all religions are both wrong and evil. Furthermore, that if we do not actively fight them, then we are complicit in their mass crimes against humanity.

My position is markedly different. I see the issue as the ghetto. As soon as we allow ourselves to think of a group as "them" rather than "us", we are at risk. I recommend writing a sentence or two on a particularly gruesome outrage in the first person plural. And then reflecting on how this feels. Why are we shooting rockets at our fellow inhabitants of Israel? How can we tolerate generations of our fellow Israelis living in the squalor of Gaza and the West Bank? How could we bomb a funeral of fellow Irishmen in Omagh? What drove us to blow up a plane-load of innocent civilians over Lockerbie? How could we allow tens of thousands to live and die in misery in the Concentration camps of South Africa in the Boer War? Or millions in the camps of Germany, Poland and the Ukraine later in that woeful, warful century? Or hack our neighbours to death in Rwanda?

Did you try it? How did it feel? Bit of an unreal twinge?

Of course, historically organised religion has often been a major force for setting up ghettos. But this extends to any system of morality and government. (Though some people extend "religion" to include a belief in Democracy, Communism or Capitalism.)

On the other hand, individuals need a strong ethical framework to see when the system is turning toward evil and to resist this. And this framework is transmitted by the very systems which present such a threat. So if you live in Europe or America, even if you are not a practicing Christian, you live in the context of the values transmitted by the Christian Church, and these values equip you to resist its excesses.

Philip Pullman believes that the evils of organised religion outweigh the value of its payload. Rowan Williams, perhaps unsurprisingly, feels otherwise.

Now, here's the mashup.

+Robert Scoble points out that the front line of the tech war for 2011 and the foreseeable future is the battle to capture users' identities so that the internet marketing operations (Google, Salesforce and Facebook - he calls them advertising, but it will be broader than that - this will be about identifying what the market wants as well as facilitating the sale of product) can tailor what each individual sees to what they are most interested in- in the broadest sense. He calls this the Game of all Gameshttp://scobleizer.com/2011/09/11/the-game-of-all-games-content-and-context-why-mark-zuckerberg-marc-benioff-and-larry-page-are-carving-up-the-social-world/ .

So we are all to be lovingly and securely wrapped in an opaque yet invisible bubble woven from our own needs, fears and desires. Let's take care that our new internet overlords are well aware of our need to understand people whose bubbles are very different.

Night Comes On

A lovely, lilting waltz that chugs gently towards the terminus bearing its world weary freight, for all his attempts to get off early. I'm listening to this in Stornoway, the day before I head back to the world from a visit to my mum. Whilst it is tempting to make parallels, loose talk of marble and snow would, I hope, be premature.

The Wrong Question

From what I can make out, everyone is asking "what sort of person would take part in a riot?"

It seems to be a huge surprise to find that some people like to let their hair down and some people like free stuff.

The government line seems to be: watch out for people like this:

A solid scoop of ice cream sits in its scoop awaiting its fate with compliant resignation. But when it melts, it runs riot down your chin and clothes, causing both damage and distress.




Most of the time, most of the people do what they know they ought to.. But occasionally, some flashpoint is reached and the populace switches into a different state, where people do what they like.

How did that switch happen?