Black Patch Park

We had a good meeting - we reckoned who were there - about the Black Patch; with Nick at Sandwell Council.

Winding up the meeting: Friends of Black Patch Park at Sandwell Council house

"It's very chicken and egg. All about momentum!" said Nick twice, as we wound up a meeting that lasted a good hour. We'd explored and aired the continuing problems of lack of public money, the marginal location of the Black Patch on the Birmingham-Smethwick boundary; that there's not a single resident who opens a window on to the park. Nearly everyone who lives beside the place has been 'decanted' elsewhere. Black Patch has no obvious local constituency of users, but it is the focus of  significant communities of interest - rather than of place; urban explorers, industrial historians, Travellers, footballers. It has four schools nearby, connects to the Midland canal network and the SUSTRANS network; a wildlife haven amid industrial dereliction. It's haunted by Queen Henty...

A conversation with Bridget and Michelle on the Black Patch - June 2011

Nick, himself enthused by our separate presentations, will seek to widen interest in the Council. In the current situation we can hope for nothing better than that we, and all involved, should via a mix of luck and endeavour, arrive at a critical mass, a tipping point that brings serious attention to the meaning and significance of this neglected place.

Outside the Council House: "Are we agreed?" asks our Chairman Ron "It was a good meeting"

My message this morning to committee members of the Friends of Black Patch Park

Dear All 

BLACK PATCH PARK LINKS

Can we get these links to Nick ASAP - with brief explanations. 

- Draft history tour of the Black Patch mentioning it as the birthplace of Charlie Chaplin and the links to the Soho Foundry - key place-marker in the birth of the Industrial Revolution 

- The Wikipedia article on Black Patch Park 

- Song on YouTube by Bryn Phillips about Queen Henty's curse 

Best, Simon

Soho Foundry today

Going home from the Council House in Oldbury Phil gave me directions for getting home off the roads, so I cycled past Sandwell and Dudley Rail station - where I'd arrived after a 20 minute journey from a morning appointment in New Street - and came to a sloping alleyway that led me to the Birmingham Mainline canal, whose narrow towpath widened after Galton Bridge, a greenway into the centre of Birmingham on which I saw a heron, dodging me by yards, unfrightened; also geese, duck, seagulls, coots and moorhen and a few walkers and one other cyclist and greenery galore.

Under and over on the Birmingham Mainline. Those are pillars for the M5 motorway

From the mainline I turned off at the Soho Loop to cycle home past Winson Green Prison, via New Handsworth Road, the Soho Road, Ivy, Lansdowne and Broughton Roads, dropping in on the Victoria Jubilee on the way. I am enjoying just seeing my allotment and in a while will set to scything my neighbours overgrown plot...

Dear Jeevan/Gill. Can I get my scythe to to the seeding weeds all over my neighbours' plots? Plot 13 and 15. Best wishes, Simon 

Hi Simon, Plot 13 can be trimmed as it is now empty but plot 15 has a new tenant, his name is Rxxx so please don't cut this one. all the best, Gill

*** ***
The walk we planned in  Handsworth Park started late. Amy and Liz arrived with their children. Oliver had turned poorly with a temperature, clingy and weepy. We headed for Summerfield drop-in centre - a projected two hour wait.

Liz, Sophia, Oliver and our pregnant Amy 

I bought some Kalpol so Amy could dose my slightly reluctant grandson. She used a squirter to get two teaspoons into his mouth. Fifty minutes waiting with me doing some babysitting for Sophia and Amy's name comes up on the clinic TV screen.
It was all simple.
"He's probably fine. Keep an eye"
So now we headed for Handsworth Park, Linda joining us along with Oscar. So now we have hardly three weeks before the entry into the world of a grand-daughter.

Handsworth Park

Our picnic at last. Lin made the sandwiches

*** ***
As a result of a two day course I helped lead the other day I've been sled to do a morning for officers in a northern council:

MANAGING WITH POLITICAL AWARENESS 

Training for officers in xxx Council  (date to be agreed)

A morning seminar focusing on skills and values for working in a politically led organisation. It will:

• assist you to read and maintain your knowledge of the political scene,
• explore the skills and values basic to political-management working,
• develop and fine-tune your feel for the boundaries between political, managerial and professional work,
• add to your vocabulary of political concepts, offering models of competence and integrity in politically sensitive situations.

PROGRAMME

Brief introduction - overview of the morning

Reading the Council’s political environment: facilitated exercise

Defining political awareness: skills and values; talk and discussion

Work on ‘critical incidents’: facilitated exercise

Summary and feedback: Q & A

Tutor: Simon Baddeley’s expertise lies in the study of working relations between politicians and managers in local government. As well as in the UK, he’s taught and researched in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Japan, and Canada. During the morning Simon will stimulate interest in the skills and craft involved in managing with political awareness, as well as facilitating discussion among participants of the local political environment and its implications for officers.

**** ****

Dear G. Can I get my scythe to to the seeding weeds all over my neighbours' plots - Plots 13 and 15?  Best wishes 

Hi Simon, Plot 13 can be trimmed as it is now empty but plot 15 has a new tenant, his name is xx so please don't cut this one. all the best, G 

Understood. But xx's grasses are growing as high as 13’s. Any chance you could get him to get in touch with you re the impact of his ‘weeds’ on me and everyone else. S

Hi Simon I sympathise as I have the same problem but xx has only just taken on the plot so perhaps we need to give him a bit of time. He has been down so he is keen but I will talk to his plot rep and ask them to keep an eye on things. All the best. G

I've started scything Plot 13

A strimmer or, even better, a power scythe would do this job faster, so why rely on a traditional  scythe? I enjoy the process; the judgement involved in selecting the right blade, setting its angle in two dimensions, and positioning the handles of the snath, tailored to my height and the length of my arms; the physical skill of getting and keeping up a scything rhythm; knowing how to sharpen the blade, keeping it razor sharp with a whetstone every few minutes of work; the pleasure of hearing the slice of the blade as it fells the grass, its fallen smell and the quietness of the work. The ability to deal with chips and dents as a result of striking stones in the undergrowth. That's the process of peening with hammer and jig, which also ensures a sharp edge as a blade gets older; the sheer pleasure of owning, looking at, and holding, so simple and so ancient a tool.
A friend told me of an old groundsman in Birmingham who could shave down to bowling green standard with a scythe. I tried it on our front lawn last year and realised how it could be done - a blend of blade set, sharpening and rhythm.

• Margaret Prothero War and peace springs to mind.......... the only real satisfaction in life.(?)

  21 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Margaret Prothero satisfaction the wrong word. Peace (?)

  21 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Simon Baddeley Ah! Kalinov meadow! Margaret thanks so much for reminding me of perhaps the most important thing - the effect on the spirit of using a scythe - and your reference to War and Peace... Part 3:4 of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina when Levin to settle his temper takes up a well sharpened well-set scythe and mows http://ypmuseum.ru/en/2011-04-13-17-27-29/87.html
  

  
  

  Kalinov Meadow

  ypmuseum.ru
  

  Kalinov Meadow is the largest and the best meadow for mowing at Yasnaya Polyana....See More

THE PERSONAL matter that absorbed Levin during his conversation with his brother was this. Once in a previous year he had gone to look at the mowing, and being made very angry by the bailiff he had recourse to his favourite means for regaining his temper,—he took a scythe from a peasant and began mowing.
  He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at mowing since. He had cut the whole of the meadow in front of his house, and this year ever since the early spring he had cherished a plan for mowing for whole days together with the peasants. Ever since his brother’s arrival, he had been in doubt whether to mow or not. He was loth to leave his brother alone all day along, and he was afraid his brother would laugh at him about it. But as he drove into the meadow, and recalled the sensations of mowing, he came near deciding that he would go mowing. After the irritating discussion with his brother, he pondered over this intention again.
  ‘I must have physical exercise, or my temper’ll certainly be ruined,’ he thought, and he determined he would go mowing, however awkward he might feel about it with his brother or the peasants.
  Towards evening Konstantin Levin went to his counting house, gave directions as to the work to be done, and sent about the village to summon the mowers for the morrow, to cut the hay in Kalinov meadow, the largest and best of his grass lands. (Anna Karenina 3:4)

TWO TO TANGO

2nd DRAFT

POLITICAL-MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP:
CREATING GOOD GOVERNMENT

ABSTRACT: For over twenty years the author has been scrutinising relationships between senior politicians and managers by filming them talking to each other about how they work together. The author comments on extracts from these conversations to explain how politicians and managers recognise and negotiate tensions arising from the overlap of their roles, and how, jointly, they draw on the professional base of government to make policy in a complex world. He concludes that the coalescence of politics and management is inevitable, their complete separation maintained as a convenient and confusing fiction by politicians and or managers unwilling or unable to govern. As well as offering a descriptive theory of ‘political-management’ leadership, the author will offer prescriptions for developing skills and values for leadership at the political-management interface. Practitioners are invited to consider whether their working relationship compares to a static and comfortable co-dependency or whether they take part in a tango where the best of politics and management combine to be greater than the sum of the parts.

INTRODUCTION
Through a large part of my career I have been fascinated by political-management working relationships, mainly at the top of local government. I have filmed hours of conversation between senior politicians and senior managers who work together, creating a rich archive for exploring the skills and values of joint leadership by politicians and managers in government (Baddeley and James 1987a, 1987b, 1989, Baddeley 1998, 1992, Baddeley and Wall 1998). I was a member of the 2005 SOLACE∗ Commission on ‘Managing in a Political Environment’ and I work with managers and politicians, jointly and separately, running in-house workshops on ‘political-management working’. My focus is not on managerial leadership – important though that is - but on how politicians and managers between them create and sustain good government...

Leadership in government

My initial interest in political-management leadership began with an observation by John Stewart - government is a political-management system in which ‘the vote’ legitimates one of its two dimensions.

I've listened to many politicians and managers describing the nature of their working relationship. All have views on the relationship of politics and management. It is described as a bridge, a point of tension, a blend of political and administrative contributions, a trading space. What emerges most strongly is the tension between overlap and separation. If it could be covered by the codes of conduct that everywhere define member-officer relations, this might not be - but the fulcrum shifts. There's a fluid coalescence of politics and management. In the ideal relationship politician and manager know their jobs are separate - must be separate - but that they need to inhabit each other's worlds. They can be friendly but while they work together there must be no friendship.

This widely acknowledged contradiction between formally regulated separation and pragmatic overlap maintains the intensity of my interest. Weber wrote that the ‘the tension between democracy and bureaucracy creates one of the most profound sources of tension in the modern social order.’ Churchill said ‘the English never draw a line without blurring it.’

One enduring comedy and two government enquiries – Hutton and Butler - attest its consequence. Lord Hutton’s enquiry in January 2004 claimed that the scepticism of one set of managers about information presented to politicians by another set, had not reached the politicians. An important political decision – to make war - was based on the judgement of MI6, rather than the co-ordinated reservations of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

Lord Butler, reporting in July 2004, analysed a précis by a policy advisor of evidence collated by the JIC about the likelihood of WMD in Iraq. That summary - the dossier - had ‘put a strain' he said 'on the JIC in seeking to maintain their normal standards of neutral and objective assessment’. Continuing, in the passive voice to avoid direct reference to the subject, Butler added, ‘more weight was placed on the intelligence than it would bear.’ The political decision that followed was catastrophic - its future consequences unfathomable.

Any study of public sector leadership that does not recognise and endeavour to unwrap the intricate confusions and subtle tensions that arise from the overlap of political and managerial spheres of action and thought is pointing their torch in the wrong place - focusing on managerial or political leadership but not on their combined dynamic – especially the content and style of conversations in political-management space.

Despite the sense of humour that makes us laugh at 'Yes Minister' and the national disquiet that prompted those enquiries, none concludes there's ‘something rotten in the state’. No-one poured poison in anyone's ear. Briefings, précis’s, summations, even dossiers, that seek to capture large amounts of information from myriad sources and present them to politicians in a form that allows them to make informed choices are, inevitably, selective and so prone to the problem described by the enquiries.

Were the events that prompted Hutton and Butler not so grave, it is likely that the enduringly fuzzy line between politics and management would not have received such attention. Yet attention is just what is needed, if we are not to leave the study of leadership in government to historians, playwrights and novelists.

I got sent another copy of The Peloponnesian War yesterday with a note from an old bonesmen buddy in the flyleaf 'Ho Sibad. Wish I'd read ole' Ducididipops b4. Haven't got to the end yet so won't spoil it for yer!"