What future?

I was more than a little depressed reading Mike Semple Piggot’s recent post in Legalweek.com’s Legal Village blog:

Law Society president Marsh talked to me about his views on how the profession would look after the recession – making a strong case in favour of firms weathering the present financial conditions better than many pundits are predicting.

Marsh, who has been through three recessions and says that he saw little difference between them, believes both City and high street firms are better positioned than in the past because of improved management and greater internal resources.

I am sure that Paul Marsh would like us all to be uplifted, and there is always the risk of talking things too far down: but his view is not quite how others see it (including me, and I reckon that I have seen as many recessions as he has). Admittedly it may be dangerous to think that because it is happening in the US it will happen here, but see Bruce MacEwen’s latest post The Human Toll in Adam Smith, Esq. In particular,

And it would be folly to predict anything other than that it will get worse before it gets better.

The promise of spring

For Caroline, today is always the first true day of spring. It is a point on which we agree to differ, as I always see spring coming much earlier. This year I was somewhat less certain, given the snow in early February. It has certainly been a varied four weeks, with bitter cold, which killed the Mimosa Tree in the garden, followed by heavy snow, which shattered the Magnolia Grandiflora, and then a warm change.

On Mardon Down, St David's Day 2009 Late afternoon we were on Mardon Down for our usual weekend walk, setting off from the cattle grid and walking clockwise: warm sun, and frog spawn in the ditches alongside the road. The in-country is now green, and smoke drifted in the tea-time sun over Moretonhampstead. Sunday afternoon is clearly bonfire time.

There was little birdsong as we walked the road around Mardon, but first one Raven in the distance, calling for its partner, side slipping through clear air, and then another and another, before a fourth. We have seen Ravens up here before, but never so many: four in as many minutes.

Last week we walked the Teign Gorge, downstream from Dogmarsh Bridge, before climbing the Hunter’s Path up to Castle Drogo. We heard a Raven but failed to see it. That afternoon the highlight was seeing a pair of Dippers nest building in a tree stump on the bank opposite the pub at Fingle Bridge.

Spring is here. The Jackdaws were squabbling on the garage roof this morning, chasing each other around, while a solitary Goldfinch, in full colour, was on one of the seed feeders.

Whither Plymouth?

I have just finished reading Justin Webb’s Have a Nice Day. In it the BBC’s North America Editor gives us a very different take on the US from the one we often get. It made me want to go on-line immediately and book our next holiday in the States. Read it.

Early on, in his Introduction, Webb quotes the Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland on what he calls the culture question,

That sense that Americans believe they are masters of their own destiny, responsible for their own country, town, village etc., that sense is still largely missing in Britain. It’s better than it was – there is more of a can do culture, partly fostered by the cult of business and enterprise etc. – but the semi-feudal passivity remains, I fear. You see it in the habit of looking upward, waiting for those in charge to sort things out.

The news last week that Paul Carroll is to leave Plymouth, and the Plymouth CDC, at the end of April had me wondering whether our failure to understand what makes Americans tick had anything to do with what the Western Morning News headlined as a ‘Bitter blow’ for the city’s revival.

One thing for certain is that despite the fighting talk by James Brent, CDC’s chairman, that “We have every intention that the CDC will survive and flourish and execute the work plan”, it will be that much more difficult without that American drive brought to Plymouth by Paul Carroll.

20,000 leagues and all that

Perhaps I should have kept up to speed with the feeds on my Netvibes page. Had I done so, I would have read Alex Barker yesterday afternoon, and his post Hunt for Red October and the sub-nuclear crash. He posted that

The New York Times raises the intriguing prospect that the submarine crash in the mid-Atlantic was actually the result of a war game.

But then finished with

Sadly, officials tell me this wonderful theory is completely untrue. Improbable as it may seem, the submarines really did just bump into each other.

I am still not sure I believe that.

Martin Lukes, where are you?

As always, a thought provoking article by Stefan Stern in the FT this morning on the trials, tribulations and place of HR. My eye was caught by this,

Also attending the meeting was Patrick Wright, professor at Cornell university’s school of industrial and labour relations, in the US. In his many discussions with business leaders he has found that there are concerns about the way ethical issues can get downplayed, or even completely ignored, because nobody else in a senior role will raise them. Guess who gets volunteered to do so? “The HR director is told: ‘You need to get this on the table’,” he says. Not easy – especially when you have little idea how much public support you will receive from your colleagues.

Perhaps, Prof Wright suggests, the HR director needs to become a kind of “chief integrity officer”, who could avoid being penalised if the chief executive’s appetite for integrity turns out to be limited.

It’s a very short step from here to Integethics™.