johnbownas

Michelle's Birthday

2011-10-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

Michelle's Birthday

Stone cold killer!

the chakras at the next big thing

2011-02-09T12:22:00.001-08:00

The Chakras

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Local Authority Heroes

2011-01-19T11:20:00.000-08:00

Having worked at Croydon Council for over 14 years now I 've known dozens of colleagues - if not hundreds - who all count as heroes in one way or another. From the people who go out of their way to help keep the streets safe and clean to the officers who spend years of their lives caring for local residents (the young, the elderly or the infirm) with no recognition except for that of their clients and their colleagues.

The simplest action can have a huge positive impact, but all too often it's just in the line of duty. As a result these staff just don't think to get their story told, except in rare incidences like this one below. And this only emerged because I was lucky enough to pick up on what had happened at the time and caught the ear of a sympathetic Croydon journalist who recognised the news value: http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/localnews/8725678.Quick_thinking_street_supervisor_saves_shops/
I could probably swamp this page with individual tales from Croydon - all along these lines. Officers who have provided emergency housing for victims of fires in the middle of the night; security staff who have put themselves in harms way to protect the public; gritting crews who have walked dozens of miles to and from work to make sure the roads were kept clear of snow; building control officers who have risked their safety checking on dangerous structures after explosions - the list goes on...right down to the street sweeper who I saw the other night looking after an old ladies dog while she popped into the chemist to pick up her prescription.

But for every one of these 'compelling' stories there are many more 'mundane' ones that will never get told - but are none the less important for all of that.

These are the stories of the officers who genuinely believe in high quality public service and are happy to work away in relative anonymity because they feel that what they do is an important cog in the machine that keeps their community working.

My own grandfather (Oscar Clennell for the record) spent his entire life working in local government finance, and his authority (Basingstoke) so valued his input to the regeneration of the town after the war that they granted him the freedom of the city on his retirement.

This sort of recognition is rare these days (when he passed away recently at the grand old age of 98 I learnt that he was the last surviving freeman), so I for one genuinely and personally welcome this campaign and I hope that it reaches out to the wider population so that they can hear a few positive stories about the people who work for their communities twenty fours hours a day, 365 days a year.

If I have to vote for one person to single out in Croydon then it's a tough decision, but for me it is a lady by the name of Fiona - however I will save her accomplishments for a later post!

Talk is Tweet: The Great Escape 2010 - The Brighton festival in 140 characters or less - Festival Reviews | Virtual Festivals

2010-05-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

Talk is Tweet: The Great Escape 2010 - The Brighton festival in 140 characters or less - Festival Reviews | Virtual Festivals

The writing is on the wall for british yob culture

2009-07-16T04:58:00.001-07:00

Straight to the point.

2009-07-16T04:57:00.001-07:00

The graffiti is on the wall for yob britain

Smiley mike e.

2009-07-16T04:12:00.001-07:00

Smiley mike e.

2009-07-12T08:59:00.001-07:00

Guilfest makes of smile

2009-07-12T06:36:00.001-07:00

Nouvelle vague

2009-07-10T14:55:00.001-07:00

Dance to neck

2009-07-10T10:41:00.001-07:00

Neck at guilfest

2009-07-10T10:38:00.001-07:00

Four winds

After the rain

2009-07-08T01:13:00.001-07:00

The gang

2009-07-05T11:14:00.005-07:00

What gardening is all about

Yawn

2009-07-05T10:46:00.003-07:00

Purrfect day

Welcome home

2009-07-05T10:46:00.001-07:00

The 'where have you been?' team

2009-06-29T09:45:00.001-07:00

Closing early

2009-06-28T16:22:00.001-07:00

Contrary to this official looking notice Glastonbury ran its course! Off home now. Boo!

Where shall we meet?

2009-06-28T13:48:00.001-07:00

Under the elephant! It has to be Glastonbury

I see a sign

2009-06-28T13:45:00.001-07:00

Glastonbury - nothing quite what it seems...

Best Glastonbury food

2009-06-28T11:59:00.001-07:00

Just seen tony christie sing Road to Amarillo but could not get a good pic, so here is my favourite jerk chicken stall.

Will Young at Glastonbury

2009-06-28T11:05:00.001-07:00

He is so sweaty! Gig was well received though. He does have it

Glen and son

2009-06-28T08:59:00.001-07:00

Glen plays surprise set at Glastonbury avalon with his 6 year old son.

Wonderstuff

2009-06-27T15:54:00.001-07:00

Backstage in a hammock watching the band from the wings. A classic early years set.

Springsteen

2009-06-27T14:22:00.001-07:00

The boss at Glastonbury

Tinned tomatoes

2009-06-27T10:26:00.001-07:00

Steve and justin - don't take people so literally

Chilling backstage at the glastonbury dance village

2009-06-27T10:07:00.001-07:00

Beeeeer

A postcard from glastonbury

2009-06-27T10:06:00.001-07:00

Amy from hong kong

2009-06-27T07:32:00.001-07:00

My first live gig: amy over from hong kong for her first ever live gig. And it is glastonbury!

The problem

2009-06-27T06:36:00.001-07:00

The problem: our rainforests are in crisis.thesolution, monkeys with yo-yos

Backstage at Glastonbury

2009-06-26T17:50:00.001-07:00

The team chill out after a tough day in the mud

John peel team pic

2009-06-26T13:38:00.001-07:00

Vf crew down on the farm with friends

Queue here

2009-06-26T12:52:00.001-07:00

Glastonbury not what it was

Terrorvision: growing old disgracefully

2009-04-12T16:47:00.000-07:00

Approaching Shepherds Bush Empire for Terrorvision’s Easter Sunday showdown there is a queue snaking around the green.

But the crowds are massing for Walkabout next door and the revellers reeling on the road outside all have Aussie accents - not that distinctive Bradford twang. It's inside the Empire that you hear that northern drawl in abaundance, as that town’s favourite sons return once more from the self-imposed oblivion that they seem unable to sustain after originally disbanding back in 2001.

Opening for Terrorvision tonight are Rebel Yell – all punky edginess, dressed in designer catwalk good-looks and breathing the fire of Johnny Cash, Stray Cats, Elvis and The Cramps.

After a longer-than-comfortable pause the blue lights flash and Terrorvision are moving front and centre. Too late however for the first casualty of the night however as a plaintiff, ‘I can’t see…’ turns into a swoon and one young fan is pulled unconscious from the floor.

Growing old disgracefully, Tony, Mark and Leigh all have that arrogant swagger earned through years of hard gigging toil. David ‘Shutty’ Shuttleworth rages hard behind the drumkit – a little rounder than his bandmates, but still brimming with the anger of faded youth. Milton is the new kid on the keys – looking unnervingly similar to Alabama 3’s Spirit with a Towers of London style makeover.

Tonight is a playthrough of the seminal ‘How to Make Friends and Influence People’, and it is as if the album was originally written to form the backbone of a great setlist. The pace is almost perfect, as Alice, Oblivion and Stop the Bus drag the crowd kicking and screaming back into the mid-nineties moshpits of oh-so-many sweaty venues and festival tents.

Tony plays the crowd with his usual ease, turning his natural charm on like a lightswitch, seeming to hold half a dozen conversations with people in the front row at the same time as battering the packed venue with tune after tune. Every so often he hands over vocal duties to the crowd so that everyone gets the chance to be part of the ‘instant live’ recording that will be available immediately after the show.

Leaping like a loon his energy levels have not diminished with the passing of years, and he goads the crowd regularly to follow his lead and mosh or flail as if their lives depended on it. As the night moves on there are more and more bodies hurling themselves across heads towards the barriers, and security are forced to earn their keep.

After the Some People Say and What Makes You Tick round off the HTMFAIP experience the lights fade to black for a second and then flare back to reveal Rebel Yell once again perched on their mini-stage to the side of the drum riser. It’s time for another dose of Rockabilly Country Punk.

And then following this intermission we’re off into Tequila land and then the uncharted territory of a couple of b-sides and rareities (Suffocation and Mr Buskerman), followed by a return to the familiar world of Celebrity Hitlist, Josephine, D’ya Wanna go Faster, My House and Perseverance.

Tony wears a fetching shawl thrown on stage by a fan for the last number and treats another member of the crowd to some close-up photos as he grabs their camera and takes the time to get some candid close-ups of the other members of the band.

Overall this ranks as a top gig by a band who remain frozen in their prime. See you back down the front next time around!

200 banned words - the full unedited report

2009-03-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

Are we going to apply this

Across-the-piece

and if so will the decision be

Actioned

by a suitable

Advocate ?

Are our partner

Agencies

to be included, and what about the

Ambassador

scheme?

Maybe we should adopt an

Area based

or

Area focused

approach and give some degree of

Autonomous

control to managers.

Our

Baseline

position is one of having a strong

Beacon

record, but some more

Benchmarking

of

Best Practice

might be needed as well as some

Blue sky thinking

to create a

Bottom-Up

culture change

In order to achieve success in our

CAA

we will have to demonstrate a

Can do culture.

our

Capabilities

and

Capacity

to change our use of language may be limited, so

Capacity building

will be essential.

Cascading

this message must be a priority for senior managers.

The changes are

Cautiously welcomed

by the communications team, but the

Challenge

for embedding this into our daily routine is not to be underestimated.

Each manager will have to

Champion

this plain English campaign, and

Citizen empowerment

is at the heart of the vision, as our

Clients

must fully understand our messages to that they can be engaged in truly

Cohesive communities.

Cohesiveness

is a genuinely positive outcome that an be achieved through our

Collaboration

in stripping this awkward language from our formal vocabulary.

When

Commissioning

any reports or marketing materials we must therefore concentrate on the ways that use of plain language can improve

Community engagement.

It may be useful to draw up a

Compact

with our partner agencies to ensure that they are equally committed and that there is no

Conditionality

to our ambition in this regard.

A

Consensual

agreement is vital to guarantee proper ownership of this commitment, as we cannot allow

Contestability

to surface as a stumbling bock.

Contextual

analysis of some of the

Core developments

in communicating our

Core Message,

Core principles

and

Core Values

demonstrates

Coterminosity

In a range of

Coterminous

linguistic concepts.

Cross-cutting

reviews of our literature and

Cross-fertilisation

of ideas should be high priorities for all service managers responsible for

Customer

contact and communication.

Democratic legitimacy

comes from high levels of informed participation, and our

Democratic mandate

is strengthened if our

Dialogue

with customers is one of full and mutual understanding.

The

Direction of travel

has to be one that allows more people to be engaged in this fashion because it is evident that minority influence

Distorts spending priorities

and can even lead to

Double devolution.

Downstream

from this report we can achieve at least one

Early Win

by identifying

Edge-fit

instances of poor practice that can have this new approach

Embedded

fundamentally into day-to-day working practices.

Empowerment

of communities will clearly flow from clearer communication, and our success will strengthen our position as a key

Enabler.

Engagement

With many vulnerable groups in particular is damaged by poor or unclear use of language, and we have already made a firm commitment to

Engaging users

so as to

Enhance

the benefit that they obtain from our services.

The

Evidence Base

for making this commitment is a large one, and if we take the lead then we may become an

Exemplar

authority in the field of plain English.

External challenge

To our decision making will also be reduced if we can

Facilitate

Fast-Track

understanding of our core values and motivations.

There will also be less risk of

Flex

in our strategic vision if our intentions are clearly communicated in this fashion.

Our financial

Flexibilities and Freedoms

are in no way affected by this move, and having a solid

Framework

for enhancing customer understanding could provide the

Fulcrum

we need to lever in additional service

Functionality

and even new

Funding streams.

The

Gateway review

for this plain language campaign will assess progress and give us the justification for

Going forward

to develop more

Good practice

and improved

Governance

Guidelines

That will provide a truly

Holistic

approach.

Holistic governance

will mean that the project board can take the time to engage in a full and meaningful

Horizon scanning

exercise that should identify even more

Improvement levers

and means of

Incentivising

staff to work on developing solid and realistic

Income streams.

Indicators

of success will include the number of instances where staff begin to use their own

Initiative

to expand their

Innovative capacity

and where this can be positively demonstrated to the various

Inspectorates

Who will assess our

Interdepartmental

Interface

capacity.

The first

Iteration

of this

Joined up

approach will be to strengthen

Joint working

Between our communications team and the managers responsible for a lot of the current bad practice in respect of poor use of language.

LAAs

will feature the need to introduce a

Level playing field

that can provide the foundation upon which we can

Lever

in even more co-operation from our partners.
Leverage

of the mandate that we can obtain from more engaged

Localities

will minimise the

Lowlights

That might otherwise have adverse impact on our ability to deliver on our.

MAAs

Mainstreaming

this use of clear language is to some extent dependent upon

Management capacity,

however

Meaningful consultation

and

Meaningful dialogue

unquestionably require

Mechanisms

That deliver a

Menu of Options

And that can lead to effective

Multi-agency

and

Multidisciplinary

co-operation.

Municipalities

have increasingly adopted this

Network model

as a means of

Normalising

Outcomes

rather than simply focusing on

Output

measures.

Outsourced

options do exist for rationalising our communications function, however the

Overarching

need to shift the language

Paradigm

across the organisation means that we should try to deliver our goal within the

Parameter

of current organisational structures.

Participatory

budgeting is increasingly high on our agenda, and although

Partnership working

Will deliver this goal and it is one of our current strengths, our

Partnerships

will be made even more effective if our communication has a greater degree of clarity.

Pathfinder

status is something we may be able to achieve if we can successfully come through

Peer challenge

process that will be facilitated through the communications

Performance Network

that is due to e established shortly.

Place shaping

is yet another of our key target areas that will benefit from linguistic exactitude, and some of the

Pooled budgets

and

Pooled resources

that we have accumulated through this workstream will be able to be directed to assist with funding the initiative as a result.

The

Pooled risk

of working in partnership to improve our communications standards is judged to be almost zero.

Analysis of our diverse

Populace

shows the huge

Potentialities

that exist for

Practitioners

Who fully engage with this programme of improvement.

Predictors of Beaconicity

that have been identified to date are highly encouraging and only some of our

Preventative services

need

Prioritization

for

Priority

attention.

Proactive

and

Process driven

methodologies will allow us to

Procure

optimum solutions where in-house capacity is lacking.

Responsible

Procurement

can be one of the best ways to

Promulgate

best practice across the organisation.

Proportionality

does however need to be exercised and a robust

Protocol

will protect our

Provider vehicles.

The

Quantum

by which we measure our success will initially be the number of

Quick hit

and

Quick win

instances that can be identified.

Rationalisation

Of communications functions will entail some

Rebaselining

And a

Reconfigured

Approach to

Resource allocation.

In the meantime, associated

Revenue Streams

that are identified as being

Risk based

will have to show that they have

Robust

options to allow costs to be

Scaled-back.

Scoping

for the project has been carried out

Sector wise

to ensure that a broad

Seedbed

of ideas are incorporated into the overall plan and that

Self-aggrandizement

is minimised.

Service users

must be our

Shared priority

and secondary

Shell developments

will simply be used to

Signpost

those customers towards clear information.

Single conversations

that minimise avoidable service enquiries mean that

Single point of contact

processes must be maximised across the organisation

Situational

leadership where our key personnel are able to adapt to change will minimise

Slippage

on the programme and a series of

Social contracts

that set out our service level promises will lead to a reduction in

Social exclusion.

On a geographic analysis of our

Spatial

contexts the critical

Stakeholder

organisations will be those who can most readily contribute to a fundamental

Step change

in our

Strategic

position and our

Strategic priorities

will be

Streamlined

down to their

Sub-regional

elements.

Subsidiarity

will be a driving force as we decentralise communication roles to deliver

Sustainable

practices that can in turn support and nurture

Sustainable communities.

A

Symposium

is planned for later in the year that will look for

Synergies

in our shared communication functions and the

Systematics

analysis of our organisational diversity will create a new

Taxonomy

that will have been

Tested for Soundness

based upon

Thematic

elements created through encouraging

Thinking outside of the box,

Particularly from our

Third sector

partners.

The resulting

Toolkit

will give us messages that can be cascaded via a

Top-down

Trajectory,

with the first

Tranche

likely to cover our

Transactional

and

Transformational

language where there is particular need to deliver

Transparency

for staff.

Upstream

from here we expect to see an

Upward trend

In officers’ ability to

Utilise

Value-added

language that promotes our

Vision

and allows further

Visionary

thought processes to thrive.

We fully

Welcome

the contribution that this communication initiative will bring to the general

Wellbeing

of our communities and we believe that the current high levels of

Worklessness

will be reduced by he huge amount of extra time that is going to be needed to weed all of this inappropriate language from our vast reams of existing literature.