At Roffey Park

Notes for a talk about political awareness - compressed into an hour and a half for round 14 very bright fast streamers from the MoJ on a shrewdly tailored Leadership Programme at Roffey Park on Thursday morning. I'd been worrying about this session, ever since CD, who'd been CEO of a County Council for which I done work a couple of years ago, had recommended me, now she was working in central government. I'd started with a plan...

UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONAL POLITICS

This session aims to refine your understanding of political-management dynamics, especially post-election:

• assisting you to maintain your knowledge of the political scene (e.g. learning about political environments; staying informed through ‘responsible gossip’)

• developing and fine-tuning a feel for the boundaries between political, managerial and professional work (e.g. practical understanding of protocols, conventions and guidelines; analysis of dilemmas that test those boundaries; recognition of ‘danger zones’)

• enriching your vocabulary of political concepts (e.g. practical ideas that capture the experience of working in the fuzzy area between management, politics and professionalism. “The English seldom draw a line without blurring it” Winston Churchill)

• offering models of competence in politically charged situations (e.g. ‘reading’ and ‘carrying’; integrity and game-playing)

...but in the end, because this was far too much for an hour and a half, extemporised. The memorable thing about the visit to Roffey Park - which I can't repeat on my second visit on 22 June - is that I was there just before and during the first Cabinet meeting of the first hung parliament in the UK in my life. The aptly named Christopher Hope lists reasons for optimism. Boris Johnson writes and speaks of 'a robust and interesting new specimen...a crossbred dog...' that will have 'fantastic hybrid vigour'. I need - needed - no encouragement to share such opinions, especially if they hasten a shift from a two-party system that has invalidated my vote since I was entitled to cast it.

What was especially good about Wednesday evening and Tuesday morning, was to be, for a few hours, in the company of men and women as collected and focused, yet relaxed, amid the intense negotiation and uncertainty of the last few days, as steelworkers around a blast furnace or live-line workers amid a cat's cradle of high voltage cable, or indeed as collected as Alan, as he goes coolly about the work of building our balcony. "Maybe it's possible" Johnson suggested "the British people have done something pretty brilliant."

I spoke more than I should - of reading and carrying and overlapping spaces, of responsible gossip and 'integrity', allowing too little time for conversation around half a dozen critical incidents, but I'm glad of the experience. I've a similar session later in June when we may see more of this novel political landscape. I might show those parts of my films of conversations that make government outside their local context.

** **

Alan, as promised, has sent us first pictures of building done since we left:

Hi, Simon and Lin. After you left I cleaned the area in front of the window and fixed the shuttering for the last two steps. As you can see photo 1 and 2 are ready for the concrete. Photo 5 is the stairs prior to concreting. Photos 3, 4 and 6 shows the concrete in place, wet and sticky. By tomorrow this will be hard enough for the men to install the doors, if they should show up to do it. After the doors are installed I will continue with the surfacing of the steps. It takes a couple of days for the steps to cure and I can only do three steps at a time, so it will probably be another week and a half to have them all finished. And then I can call the metal man to come and measure for the railings. I'll keep you posted with more photos. I hope all went well with your daughter's wedding. Alan

Amy's wedding's not until Monday and I've promised Alan, and others in the village who asked, to post some pictures next week. What Alan's done here - shown in photo 6 - is to begin marrying three remaining treads, one badly chipped, from the old staircase to the new one. ** ** ** I have impeccable excuses for not being there but I'm really vexed at missing the seminar programme in Corfu next week organised by the Durrell School - 'The History and Culture of the Ionian Islands' from 16–21 May 2010. It's programme is described on Jim Potts' blog, the prospectus on the DSC site by Richard Pine. It all looks fascinating but the day I'd especially like to have attended was Tuesday's programme:

THE HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS DURING THE PROTECTORATE: GREEK & BRITISH PERSPECTIVES

10.00 – 11.00 a.m. Session 4

ROBERT HOLLAND

Via or Vita? — The British in the Mediterranean since 1800

11.00 – 11.30 a.m. Break for coffee

11.30–4.30 p.m. p.m. Excursion 2

A visit to the SERBIAN MUSEUM followed by a boat trip (1.30 p.m.) to VIDOS ISLAND where we can see the Serbian Mausoleum, have lunch (2.30 p.m.) and go swimming (optional!). The meze lunch is included for those paying the full registration fee; 12 euros each for others; buy your own drinks).

4.30 – 6.00 p.m. Opportunity to return to your hotel

6.00–8.00 p.m. Session 5

ANTHONY SEYMOUR (paper read in his absence by Anthony Hirst)

How to work the system and thrive: Ionians and pseudo-Ionians in the Levant 1815–1864

GEORGE LEONTSINIS

The Ionian Islands and the Greek Revolution

ELENI CALLIGAS

‘A history of the peasants printed in gaol’ and other unknown texts by the

1849 Cephalonian rebels imprisoned at Argostoli: a first presentation.

I just hope that the papers circulated afterwards will come my way and I can delve into them, in continuance of my failed, but not fruitless, search for the 'petition' from Ano Korakiana that Thanassis Spingos and Kostas Apergis asked me to look for in England in December 2007 (slide 3 below)

* * * Amy phones to warn us about problems flying to Scotland tomorrow:

VOLCANIC ASH UPDATE 15 May 2010 Current media coverage is reporting possible closure of UK airspace tomorrow, Sunday 16th May until Tuesday 18th May. These reports are unconfirmed and subject to the rapidly changing weather situation. Please check the Arrivals/Departures section of this website or contact your airline for specific flight details. This page will be updated as soon as further information becomes available.

Maybe, suggests Thor Thordarson, volcanologist at Edinburgh University, this phenomenon and the disruption it is causing now will last far longer - decades even, peaking between 2030-2040. This paper was published 12 years ago by geologists at the Science Institute, University of Iceland:

Gudrún Larsen, Magnús T. Gudmundsson and Helgi Björnsson, 'Eight centuries of periodic volcanism at the center of the Iceland hotspot revealed by glacier tephrostratigraphy', Geology, October 1998 (26) 10, pp. 943-946

ABSTRACT: A record of volcanic activity within the Vatnajökull ice cap has been obtained by combining data from three sources: tephrostratigraphic studies of two outlet glaciers, a 415-m-long ice core from northwestern Vatnajökull, and written records. The record extends back to A.D. 1200 and shows that the volcanic activity has a 130–140 yr period. Intervals of frequent eruptions with recurrence times of three to seven years alternate with intervals of similar duration having much lower eruption frequency. In comparison with other parts of the plate boundary in Iceland, eruption frequency is greater, episodes of unrest are longer, and intervals of low activity are shorter. The high eruption frequency may be the result of a more sustained supply of magma, owing to the area's location above the center of the Iceland mantle plume. When combined with historical data on eruptions and earthquakes, our data indicate that rifting-related activity in Iceland as a whole is periodic and broadly in phase with the volcanic activity within Vatnajökull.

Reported on 17 May 2010: why we had to drive to Amy's wedding

Alain de Botton has imagined a flightless future arousing mixed feelings of pleasure, regret and puzzled recoilings from any suggestion that among those who are homo - occasionally - sapiens, growing numbers are devoting their lives to drawing down the curtains on the 'big, fast and ugly' show to create something more entertaining. I dream of a return to

airships - perhaps like the one imagined by the young Indonesian designer Reindy Allendra - his WB-1010 for KLM - a talented piece of imagining that might become less fantastical as we consign the hydrocarbon era to history, before it does the same to us.

* ** **

My neighbours, John and Jill Rose, went onto the site of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments via the new houses next to Handsworth Park this afternoon. The long delay in opening the site could just be over in a few weeks. "I've heard from the allotments man at the city that June 6 is the day." John had pressed him a little, "Is that for real?" "Yes"

The dark green gardeners' shed has been in place since earlier in the year. Now topsoil's been spread. The water supply's in place, along with hard surfaces for access and parking. The area's being landscaped, with the levelled laying fields for cricket and football included in the S106A now surrounded by a high guard fence to keep balls in play. "Any idea of take-up?" I asked. "It's up to 92." Though it's occurring in many cities, this doesn't necessarily mean we are already suffering over-demand on ther VJA's 80 plots. For newcomers lots can be halved or quartered and others will drop out when it comes to actually starting to garden. That said once the site is visibly up and running more will be seeking spaces. It's the way the wind's blowing. (More on the VJA and local food growing - scroll down, see links)

Entrance to the nearly completed Victoria Jubilee Allotments, Handsworth

** ** **

I've just had a letter from Jennie Constable at SWFTA:

Dear Simon. At last, I have worked my way through the backlog of urgent tasks and have now had time to give the Hargreaves collection some attention. It is rather embarrassing that it is nearly a year since Mr P. first contacted us, but I am able to report that we have made some headway over the past few months. First of all, we took the opportunity of having some overseas work placement students earlier in the year to give them the task of making a basic log of the films and tapes we hold. The result is the attached Excel spreadsheet which I hope you can view. It is by no means perfect bearing in mind it was compiled by students with questionable language skills and little if any knowledge of the television industry, but on the other hand it's not bad at all as a starting point. Secondly, we have now succeeded in making what we think is an acceptable DVD for Mr Hill (with a second copy 'just in case') but I have not yet sent it to him ... Perhaps you could let me have the address, ... Finally, we'd be delighted to see you for a meeting about the collection. It would have to be either before Thursday 20th May or after Monday 7th June. I hope you've had a pleasant stay in Greece and trust you arrive back safely without any volcanic intervention! Best wishes, Jennie

Extract from an Excel spread listing JH film at SWFTA

*** *** ***

From The Greek Financial Crisis blog

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have approved a nearly $1 trillion package to stop Greeces debt crisis from spilling beyond its borders into the rest of the eurozone. Stocks surged in Europe, Asia and the United States Monday after EU leaders agreed to a $960 billion package to contain Greeces financial troubles. Meanwhile, the austerity measures demanded by the IMF and the European Union as a condition of their loan are continuing to exact their toll. Greeces two main unions have continued to hold protests against the reforms. In a statement, one of the unions said, The crisis should be paid byall those who looted public finances.

May in Corfu

A jocund day. May in Kerkyra. To escape the roar of wall-busting Lin has her morning coffee round the corner of the house. Cats are unfazed, but flies, wasps, swallows stay away as he applies a kango hammer to reopening the original space for the balcony doors. The house vibrates. Alan complains “Instead of just bricking up where the doors used to be he’s concreted. Put breeze blocks in between. Hope it’s not the same inside.” Visions of dust invasion.

** ** **

This could be a moment for The Queen; what she does or - equally important - avoids doing, with her one constitutional prerogative. The especial conundrum of a hung assembly is that it’s not that helpful to look at what happened ‘last time’ – a coalition of talents against a powerful enemy threatening invasion – or indeed the hapless and more recent Lib-Lab pact. There are so many different ways of being hung, each unique in implication, history’s unhelpful, as we’re well aware from extensive local government experience of that condition over at least the last thirty years. Much turns on personalities, who, tied by party loyalties, must balance the consequences of reneging, during negotiation with other parties, on promises that delivered them their vote with the value they, and their supporters and indeed the voters, place on their being part of government. What many see as confusion – “The King is dead, long live the …er…um” – I can see this situation as good if it gets us PR in line with the majority of democracies across the world. [memo to study AV+ - the type of PR now being considered] I can see it as good if the civil service can line up sufficiently effectively alongside the different parties to act as honest brokers – some call that an oxymoron – between them when it comes to formulating policies the elected can agree, and which do not bear the impression that clever men and women, without a mandate, have been insinuating their own agenda into negotiating messages borne between the separate parties. Reply to Graham:

Now we must start reading up on PR in all its complex variety. MoJ oversee electoral procedure including project managing the implementation of any new system so they must fielding lots of practical questions about the implications including costs of PR. Civil servants, bar the Cabinet Office, can't now speak to Labour Secretaries of State – bar ‘Good morning’ - even if a Lib-Lab agreement is being negotiated, nor to Con Shadow Ministers re a Lib-Con one. What they can do is provide costings to different party reps of the effects of their decisions - such as implementing AV+. All approaches to any one ministry by any party are being referred to the Cabinet office who can pass them on undistorted to the negotiating teams. People assume that, as in Scotland, and indeed many other democracies where NOC, minority admins and coalitions are normal, once an agreement is reached, a protocol will be formulated defining relations between civil service and political leadership - and its "back to the day job".

Side thought on PR. Nearly everyone understands majoritarian voting systems. Few including those who administer it, understand PR, but it was found in Scotland that although most people didn't understand it compared to ‘first past the post’, they still thought PR was fairer (even though there were 1000s of spoiled ballots first time round) and of course PR has a way of delivering NOC, (see an exploration of the implications of NOC in Hertfordshire in 1994) and the need for rainbow coalitions (until the voting public learn to use it other ways. The wisdom of crowds etc...). Best, Simon

** ** **

James Carroll to whom I was pointed by Corfucius has interesting things to say about the 'illusion of control' – the essence, indeed the ideology, of managerialism (other ways of thought, especially the political, the religious and the professional, accept in different ways the capriciousness of life, have rituals for the constancy of fate, live with luck, with ‘sod’s law’ and have argot for its inevitability. Managerialism has instruments for clambering around the unknowable - ventures to offer nostrums for managing time, managing chaos, managing fate, and will, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, ‘in the endeavour to fly, hurl themselves at the ground striving to miss.’ Thus Carroll, whose column appears regularly in The Boston Globe, on Powerpoint:

Anyone who has ever sat through a PowerPoint presentation has seen how the speaker surrenders initiative to the machine, and how the prepared breakdown of information inhibits actual thinking. Because the speaker is not thinking, neither is the audience. …The degradation of rhetoric throughout contemporary culture, epitomized by PowerPoint, means that essential capacities for thought and communication are being lost. The sound-bite reduces experience to episodes shorn of context, when understanding what matters requires a honed feel precisely for the connection between episodes.

Instead of focusing on ‘causality’ there’s a symbol in the tool bar whose regular use corrodes connection between events transforming sequences and consequences into discrete - and manageable - ‘bullet points’. 'The moral imagination', writes Carroll,

is defined by awareness of how choice leads to consequence, which leads to a new and graver choice, which in turn leads to a larger and more fateful consequence.

As an occasional user of PowerPoint who came to it late, I’ve found it quite useful to kick off discussion about a proposition or a sequence of images – “among these pairs I’ve filmed which is the politician, which the officer?” – or an explanatory diagram - the overlapping zones of politics, professionalism or management – or a choice quote, ‘The English seldom draw a line without blurring it - Churchill’ - infrequently using more than three slides at a time but being able to jump round and select from a much larger repertoire of slides as discussion proceeds on just those things Carroll accuses the method of blighting. It's true, the schools of sophistry would have embraced PowerPoint. How Socrates would have teased them on ‘bullet points’.

***

A man's coming over tomorrow to measure up for the new set of doors that will open onto the balcony at the top of the external stairway. I've just grasped the intention, conscious or otherwise, of the previous owners of this house and their builder. It was to switch its orientation - the one being reconstructed by the steps and balcony Alan's rebuilding - from a certain neighbourliness that came with the house's sideways connection, via steps, a door and balcony overlooking Democracy Street to a private space looking south; from a public frontage looking west, from which to hold conversation with others, to a private one from which to enjoy 'a view'. Now we'll have both - but there's no question that Alan's work restores our connection to the village street, as well as doing at least two other things - joining up the originally separate houses that make up our property, and bringing more light through the recovered doorway to the interior stairs. Our house has recovered its 'face'.

Neighbours over the way, tell us we can have a load of old wood they want cleared from their garden. They've also carted an old boiler, radiator and oven to the edge of the street for disposal. I drag the wood - roof timbers, broken furniture, branches - over their garden wall, pile it on the path, then we barrow and carry it round to our garden to stack ready for sawing into logs for winter heating.

** ** **

In the garden Lin has been working on laying plaka, using a mix of tile cement that we found abandoned by bins and mortar she mixes. The stones are uneven in thickness and have to be separately bedded in the wet mix over the wire grid she's laid over a bed of gravel dug out of the apothiki. The idea includes a ramp from the back gate, tidying the space between apothiki and plaka, so it's easy to get a barrow in and out. Soil beds line the edges of the plaka and the wild orange tree in the centre cut down by the previous owners to make space for a satellite dish, is now thriving. Leftheris suggests grafting a sweeter orange to it next year. Meantime the vine that was also cut back to the soil has recovered well and is working its way up to our veranda and from there up to the balcony above. Leftheris has been pinching out the shoots without grapes, pointing to those we'll have by September.

It is still slightly beyond my comprehension that I have a share in a space where an olive tree grows and thrives; where I can collect lemons by shaking the trunk of the tree that grows from a flower bed outside our back door; that blood oranges fall on the shed roof in December rolling down the path beside the house; that vines bearing grapes are working their way towards the upper floor; that lizards sun themselves on the stones of our garden; gekko's stick to the walls of the house; that eagles circle from the crags above 'our' village; that bugs the size of olives - rose chafers - share our spaces; that hornets, big mosquitoes and scorpions are here (I saw my first a few days ago scurrying from my shadow) that bees are working everywhere on sunny days; that fireflies twinkle in the dark. Strangely it's not so foreign. Much of the flora and fauna we see here survives and thrives in hardier form further north and when it comes to the population my neighbours in Birmingham are signally more diverse than our neighbours in Ano Korakiana

No mean city: Soho Road in Handsworth, Birmingham where we've lived for 30 years

Laying concrete

Saturday, the day for the laying of concrete on and in the shuttering Alan’s constructed for our external stairs and balcony, began grey and cool – better to ensure the wet mix remained fluid and would not dry too fast. Yesterday and this morning, aware of the weight of wet mix the mould must bear, before the iron rods drilled into the house wall and woven into the new structure would - with hardening of the concrete - set into a robust structure, Alan and his new helpers, Miki, Aris and Ilias, were wedging in more wood and another scaffolding pole to ensure the shuttering would support the porridge of gravel and cement to be poured onto it. The first mix, waterproofed and strengthened with Revinox, went into the end support for the balcony – three vertical metres. As Miki tamped it down with an iron rod, concrete oozed from the bottom two feet of the shuttering, splaying them slightly. Swiftly Alan applied clamps that drew them flush and Miki nailed on strengthening wood at the joins that had begun to pull apart, shovelling away leaked concrete. Forewarned he also added a buttressing plank below the bottom of the stairs. Thus through the morning, concrete was poured at each end, like filling an assymetric vessel, with the final mix used for the floor of the balcony. People we know passing by along Democracy Street, seemed pleased and impressed by the work. Around two, the sun came out. Alan came round around in the evening to spray the concrete to delay its setting, and I’m to do the same at intervals from first thing tomorrow. Meantime we’ve started the tidying up we must do in readiness to return to England next week - barring further delays from volcano or strike. Alan’s found us doors to replace the present window that had replaced the French windows off the original balcony. “They’ll open out. With a lock so you have an alternative entrance. OK?”

**** ****

I’ve begun reading The Pickwick Papers. Like Don Quixote with which it’s compared, I’ve had several attempts to get started on both novels and as with a failed but promising soap that’s abandoned after the first series for lack of viewers, I’ve so far switched channels. It took a long Spanish holiday to get into Don Quixote. After a short while – or so it seemed with time more languorous - I was looking forward happily to the next episode while picnicking between swims off a deserted beach – the Galician coast, its rebellious population deprived of development by Franco’s disfavour, was like that in the mid-1970s - slow-munching crusty bread plus tinned sardines, ham or Spanish sausage, sipping wine cooled by the Atlantic. The novel's length now a reassurance rather than an obstacle - a promise of continuity inside Cervantes' imagination. Our pace, 40 years later, now serves Dicken’s first novel. I’ve just grasped that Sam Weller is to Samuel Pickwick as Sancho Panza to Don Quixote. I grasped what Wikipedia take for granted when I saw the line near the end of Chapter 10 in which Sam Weller first appears ‘Mr.Pickwick was a philosopher but philosophers are only men in armour, after all’ with a note from the editor.

* * *

And from an invaluable tipster somewhere in the vicinity of Pompey - surmising what I can't get from local BBC, Skynews or the net:

Dear Simon, You're right about the interesting part, and righter still (says me) about the yawning gap between "the national interest" (defined any of three ways) and the coal-face JFDI of making local administration (The Small Society??) actually work. And one further point: that the future electoral shape of the country should be in the hands of three guys knackered to the point of probable incoherence is utterly nuts. But here are some predictions...

The penny dropped with NuLab about 24 hours ago (after his phone rant at Clegg) that Irn-Bru is the roadblock to any possibility of the so-called Rainbow Coalition. As we speak, La Mandelson is bending the great man's ear. So far, he's agreed a yet-to-be -announced holding statement promising to be gone within eighteen months. By teatime, this will have shortened to "about a year". He'll in fact resign in a 09.00 statement tomorrow morning, vacating Downing Street for the caretaker premiership of HH. By now, Tory/Lib Dem talks have ended in deadlock after the Trafalgar Sq Electoral Reform rally. The markets are in freefall, NuLab are hastily organising a Leadership Contest (Balls v Milliband v Milliband with Cruddas and Johnson wisely ducking out), and a taxi containing the sainted Nick arrives in Downing Street. Under the increasingly stern/anxious guidance of Cabinet Office civil servants, talks begin. On the other hand, Clegg might show his true colours, do a deal with Dave, split the Lib Dems asunder, and flush out the uber-Tories for a proper bloodbath...

Either way, I suspect we may be stuffed. Three days ago exile in Greece seemed unwise. Now I'm not so sure...Best, Graham.

*** ***
Today the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) was agreed. What an exemplary bureaucratic monika for a political decision.