Beautiful Days Festival Year 8

Some pictures from the annual King pilgrimage to Escot Park in Devon.



Some of the bands in no particular order which I think are worthy of mention

• The Strange World of Arthur Brown : probably the best act of the weekend for me. Made my life one step closer to complete. Far, far better than I expected. Beauty and theater in one stage, go see him. In no way is he a past it old bloke.
• Levellers : no idea after the 60th or so time I have seen them play. I enjoyed the set, even though it was tipping it down with rain.
• James : great act, very poor set list. Apart from the last 3 songs, very disappointing
• Ned's Atomic Dustbin : Like the music, knew none of the songs.
  
• The Alarm : class as ever
• The Wallers : again, my life is one step closer to complete
• Dreadzone : class as ever
• 3 Daft Monkeys : lots of new stuff which sounded very good.
• Interview by John Rob of Penny Rimbaud of Crass (or was it the other way round) who spend some time talking about Wally Hope. It was very interesting how Crass became his vehicle to get some element of revenge, but also to promote some of his ideals. It was very interesting to hear him talk about aspects of his life and ideals, how he has tried to live by them and the admission he has not been perfect. While I may not align myself with the Crass view of the world, some of its underlying principles were interesting and worth thinking on. Agree or disagree, its good to have something to stimulate examining your values and beliefs.
• Port Izzac's Fishermans Friends : very good for the 1st slot on a Sunday (2 under 5's and the need to run on a saterday morning very much limited beer consuption). Usual joke about sucking a fishermans friend, but they did some really good traditional sea based songs in a interesting style.
  
• The Wirzzels : 79 year old drummer, drum and bass verison of Combine Harvester in a saturaday afternoon slot. Very good value and good fun. I had seen them at Glastonbury about 10 years ago and they were seemed old then, so it was not a step towards my life being more complete, but it was fun to watch.
  
• Myra gave very good reports of Bellowhead and Seth Lakeman.
  

Weather was OK, but it did tip down on sunday night. Though none of the mud baths of previous years.

Rush, rush, rush. I was in Sweden the week before, Myra did just about all the packing and we ended up bringing the wrong set of tent poles. I was musing on how to sleep 2 adults and 2 children in a VW Transports and mentioned this to the chap parked next to us, who produced a tent out of his van which he kept as a spare and let us use it. That is what I will really remember about this festival, the really good nature and general kindness.

Why living in Wales is great training for global business

Born near Aberystwyth to Irish parants, with school friends and other peers who all had English speaking parants, it is a high probability you will grow up to be English speaking. Lets set aside the merits or otherwise of learning to speak Welsh if you live in Wales for the purpose of this discussion. Welsh language education in Dyfed in the late 1970's and early 1980's was dire unless you were already Welsh speaking. Arguments on both sides, but in the end it is a personal choice and some people have more apptitude, need and opportunity than others.

Communicating in your own language with others who 1st language is the same as your is always more efficient for the parties involved. I am in Sweden at the moment, working with people who's 1st language is not English. When I am out of the room, they all talk Swedish, when I return, it reverts back to English. No point flying in someone to solve your problems if they don't understand what you are talking about. It works well and this is an unwritten protocol which occurs across most countries for business.

I have to admit that during my 37 years living in Wales, the principle of being able to choose your language for a minority has been more important than the other parties who want or need to be part of the conversation understanding what is being said. I just zone out to it and go do something else. I have found a couple of instances this week where I have wondered into a conversation, my very gracious hosts have recognised my presence, made an apology for speaking Swedish and carried on in English. I had already zoned out and not even noticed, years of living in Wales made it an unconcious reaction.

Some may say I should learn to speak the language of my hosts. So in the last 14 years, I would have had to learn German, French, Spanish, Italian, Africance, Hindi, Norwegian, Swedish, American English (the hardest of all), Hungarian, Polish, Arabic, Czech, typically at a notice of less than 48 hours.

I am very positive about the Welsh language and I am making some progress in learning it. After spending a week in a culture where every effort is made to welcome visitors(short or long term), I do question if the cause of the Welsh language is being damaged by a minority being less accepting of the need of non Welsh speakers to be part of their conversation.

Welsh Rail Travel treated in isolation

This document by TRACC on a strategy for Railways over the next 5 years is quite amusing in that it treats Wales in travel isolation. While being able to travel by train in Wales is important, they seem to have neglected that when making the choice of the medium of travel within the UK, trains do need to connect. So if you want to travel to London (A common designation for Rail travellers from Mid Wales I believe), at some point you need to change trains. No account of this is taken in the report and it is of strategic importance.

While there are discussions in the report of electrification, CCTV, etc, there is no consideration I could see in the 15 minutes I spent scanning it (I could have missed something) about using improved rail travel to help promote business and making it practical for people with jobs which require travel to obscure places (like London) to get to such places for a reasonable time.

A 1st train getting to Shrewsbury at 7.14 is not a lot of use if you have a meeting in London at 9.30am. Wales won't prosper if those doing strategic planning ignore the bit of land to the east.

Wales@home : sorry, I haven't a clue !

One of the sites I follow on a regular basis is Wales@home. It contains informed short articles, some of which are reprints of speeches or presented papers and some are written specifically for the site. They are all good, the vast majority are about Wales. The writers for the site are typically political types (A.M., various advisors) or journalists. The site appears to have been the idea of Duncan Higgit and a very fine idea it is to. I don't agree with much of what is written, but that is only goodness as it makes you think and often change your mind.

Duncan Higgit wrote part of an article (probably just a view) about the Afghan War and Wikileaks. What this did illustrate to me is that both the authors and most of those who left comments thought they knew the effect (good or bad) that Wikileaks will have.

I work on what are quite complex computer systems. The points of failure are quite obvious, and most parties that are effected will have a voice. While the diagnosis of problems can be highly non-trivial, you either know that you have fixed an issue very quickly or in 2 times the mean time between occurrences. My working life is a battle against cognitive bias, my own and that of others. We are not designed to deal with systems of this complexity, so we delete, distort and generalise, find pet causes and then look for details to support our pet cause. Here are documented many cognitive bais traits which I see (in myself and others) in my working life on a daily basis. Other than a degree of self awareness, there are tools like Kepner Tragoe rational process which help a great deal.

What Duncan's article and the comments made me grasp was that the Political class and Journalists are born more immune to the ravages of bias that effect us mortals. They work in a hugely more complex social system where the voice of many of the agents involved is not heard, the system itself is continually changing in subtle ways and the parties involved can't even agree on the problems that need solves, their priority and often don't involve experts. The experts don't fully understand their part of the part of the eco-system (think economic forecasts if you want an example). They have limited information about the subject areas, but can make informed correct decisions every time.

While my comments are somewhat opaque, I still stand by them.

1. We can't know the long terms future of Wikipedia and its legacy can't be known in advance. Good or bad, we don't know yet.
2. We can't know what impact the document leaking will have in aggregate
3. Wikipedia's morals can only be judged right and wrong in reference to your ideology
4. Duncan would be a fun chap to have a beer with

A gross generalisation I grant, but I think here lies a significant difference between the types of people involved in the discussion I mentioned above on the Wales@home site. I am dam sure I can't know the future, I struggle bringing some type of order to the chaos of much more constrained environments in the present. What do the Political class and Journalists know that I don't or are they just far better at putting forward credible arguments today which stand no better chance of being right when judged by history ?

I guess I have an advantage in that history won't be bothered to judge what I think.

Hugh Munro was a hard nut

I watched the BBC 4 programme on Hugh Munro and his legacy of a list where he did not manage the last three. What struck me was that during the time Munro (or A. E. Robertson) was climbing all of Scotland's 3000ft+ peaks, transport was a different scale of challenge than today.

Scotland is quite big, the roads are variable, so even today it takes some effort to travel between some of the more remote hills. When we today think of a long walk in from the road to something like Seana Bhràigh which has a 8 mile walk in we think of it was remote. How long must the walk in's in Munro's day been? Less roads, no cars, all travel by train, horse, bike or foot. The West Highland railway was opened in 1894, so the train would have been some some use in some areas. No Gore-tex, no light weight ice gear, GPS or even accurate maps. I expect he had more than 24 days holiday a year to explore, so did not have to try to get as many done in a day as he could.

I have done about 90 of the peaks over the last 20 years. I do a few a year and the vague goal of doing them all before I get put in my box is an excuse to explore and experience wild Scotland. How much better Munro must have got to know Scotland, not just the mountains, but the bits between.

Learn a language?

I was sent this by a Dutch Engineer I am working with. We had a misunderstanding in terminology and a good laugh about it.

A foreign diplomat, looking for directions, pulls up at a bus stop where two Americans are waiting.

“Entschuldigung, koennen Sie Deutsch sprechen?” he asks. The two Americans just stare at him.

“Excusez-moi, parlez vous Francais?” he tries. The two continue to stare.

“Parlare Italiano?” No response.

“Hablan ustedes Espanol?” Still nothing.

The diplomat drives off, extremely disgusted. The first American turns to the second and says, “You know, maybe we should learn a foreign language.”

“Why?” says the other. “That guy knew four languages, and it didn’t do him any good.”

Some links I found interesting or important : From Iran to Wigan to Newport

• Protest can be a very positive force - here is an example using Pink Floyd the Wall. Significant enough to get a segment on the Today Program.
• An very worrying example from 2 years ago of Police overuse of force against a serving soldier who it appears they mistook for someone else.
• I was in Newport waiting for a train 2 weeks ago and saw the Dragons being unloaded. I suspect I am not capable of understanding why the need to damage this objects exists, but it does. Newport centre is not the most upbeat of places and something like the Dragons does improve the feel.

The Office of Chief Executive

What is a Chief Executive? Lets try

The responsibility of the chief executive officer is to align the company, internally and externally, with their strategic vision. The core duty of a CEO is to facilitate business outside of the company while guiding employees and other executive officers towards a central objective. The size and sector of the company will dictate the secondary responsibilities.

Here are a few situations where I feel it is reasonable and right for the incumbent to call themselves or to be called Chief Executive or Chief Executive Officer.

• The employed head of a FTSE quoted company.
• The employed leader of a Regional Council. For Ceredigion, this is Bronwen Morgan
• The employed most senior executive director of a national or international charity. In the case of the Citizens Advice Bureau this is now Gillian Guy.
• no doubt there are other cases where the title is most appropriate.

However, I have noticed a trend for small charities (or local branches) to make give their most senior employed member of staff the title of Chief Executive. This is no doubt very good for the incumbents moral initially. Longer term, I have only seen it be destructive to staff and volunteer moral and service delivery.

The reason for having a title is to create an impression of gravitas and authority on 1st meeting. In the IT business the same happens, we have a mix of senior/principle/executive/consultant/director/manager/officer/engineer/staff/vice/architect/president (though the most impressive job title I ever saw was Rabble Rouser). Its a game which also applies in within large companies where "there person I report to is more important than the person you report to" game is played to remove(or in put in place depending on your disposition) roadblocks. Indeed, how seriously some groups take previously unknown individuals is inversely proportional to how many lines of reporting are between them and the boss. You see this play out in many organisations I visit.

For small charities I have seen a trend for boards of directors or trustee's (same thing) to suggest the most senior staff member is titled "Chief Executive". This probably does impress in some situations such as meeting government and when meeting other charities, it levels the playing field of every one else at the table has the title of C.E. When I was acting chair of Aberystwyth C.A.B. (great title, it means people sit on you and you have a personal financial responsibility if it goes bust) I went to a meeting (I was wondering round meditating on how to keep the place open) and meet a number of people who were the most senior member of staff in a Bureau no larger than ours and while our most senior employed staff member was titled "Bureau Manager", the equivalent post in some other C.A.B. centers was "Chief Executive".

I got a chance to talk to a few rank and file members who deliver the actual service and their comments were that it was OK when the manager became the C.E. for a few months, but then they started becoming inaccessible and treated people differently.

I was involved for a number of years with a charity as a volunteer. The previous most senior member of staff had the title "Project Leader" which very well described what he did. He was very approachable and the team spirit which included volunteers was inspirational. The "Project Leader" left (very sadly indeed) and a business manager was promoted to "Chief Executive" to run the charity. From my point of view as a volunteer it was fine to start with, little changed. Over the next year the C.E. became less approachable, and the staff had the same experience. The charity became a mediocre run business rather than a team of people all pushing in the same direction with enthusiasm. Given that the charity employes less than 10 people full time, it makes little sense for staff or volunteers to have to make an appointment to discuss matters with the decision maker. The decision maker will then miss opportunities and lack information about what is happening. Staff moral also drops through the floor and good staff leave.

As an example, I am an examiner for one of the I.S.E.B. exams. I get paid for this, but my contract with Sun and now Oracle means I can't take the money. However, I can donate it to a charity. I was unable to meet with the charity's C.E. to arrange for I.S.E.B. to be invoiced (we are talking about 1400 quid a year, so worth 10 minutes of most small charities C.E. time). Such was the difficulty in getting an audience, I ended up talking to the Aberystwyth C.A.B. manager who set the wheels in motion and it just happened with no hassle or need to make an appointment. While my 2nd choice in terms of where I wanted to the money to go, with hind sight I am now pleased it did.

It would take a strong character not to be changed by being given the title of Chief Executive, so in my view over time, it is bound to create a division and alienation between the C.E. and staff and volunteers. The responsibility for this lies with the board of directors/trustees in each instance. A simple fix for this would be to prohibit any government funding for organisations of less than 100 people which have the a member of staff titled "Chief Executive". Important? It probably is a small part of the reason that David Camerons "Big Society" is going to be a rock pushed up a steep hill.

Personally, my decision to give(money,time,expertise) to a small charity in future will be influenced in some part by the title of their most senior employed member of staff. Why? Because I know it has a significant effect on the ability of the charity to engage with its staff and volunteers, keep them happy and delivery an effective service over the long run.

IT NOW - less useful content than The Sun

IT NOW is the British Computer Society "The magazine for the IT Professional". I am a member (fellow) of the BCS, part of the degree scheme accreditation panel and an examiner for ISEB. Thus assume I am broadly a supporter of the BCS as a body.

IT NOW has less useful content for the computer professional than toilet role. Every month it arrives, I feel duty bound to at least flick through it and each month is has zero useful content. It is worse, they wasted my time when I could have been reading something that has content. They do pick some current and useful topics, but it contains so little depth or insight, that you feel it is being written by a failed marketing droid who just can't be bothered. They do however have lots of nice picture of people in smart clothes smiling or pretending to get on with each other. It does not have to have deep technical content, just some insight into the topics it covers by people who actually know what they are talking about.

On monday I intend to contact the BCS and ask for them to stop sending IT NOW until it stops becoming a waste of shiny paper which probably means a dramatic change to the editorial team.

I like the police

As a general rule and in principle, I like the police. They have a very difficult job clearing up after the mess society in general has left. If you wonder why your average police man is about as friendly as a despondent Jack Russel Terrier, they have had some bad experiences with "their customers" and regrettably apply the principle universally to us all.

I don't like being disturbed when sleeping in my car for a few hours when I have spent the 1st part of the night running over some hills as part of my BGR training. The statements that "anything could be happening" is rather strange justification for being curious. On the flip side we have a very good local officer Hefin who gets the big picture and the difference between people who want to see the Police as a service to work with and those who see the Police as stopping them doing whatever they want.

There does need to be a prosecution by the pushing Police Officer over the death of Ian Tomlinson for ordinary people to have trust that Police misconduct will not be covered up. The outcome of such as case is up to the jury, but that a case must be brought against the officer in question is very obvious. Other members of society have been before a jury by now, the Police can't be left off when appearing to step so far out of line. If the case finds the officer innocent, then its is an end of the matter.