blogging & comments

I've been way too busy to slow down & blog for the last few weeks.  Not that I haven't slowed down, but when I do, I like to get out & surf, swim, run & ride, rather than sit at my computer, full stop. Today is Sunday the 3rd Oct & the Rugby League Grand Final is on.  I'm in the strange position of having my two teams, Eastern Suburbs - The Roosters, & the St George Dragons, doing battle against each other today.  It's a wet & shabby day for October so no better way to pass the afternoon than in front of the big screen, food handy, a cup of tea & in control of the remote.

I have a problem with my blogging & that is that I'm not sure how to make the most of the blog.  I'm trying to add others to my list & I'd love everyone to have access to the Comments that people have been posting in response to the blog. I'll consult with Etienne & see if he can enlighten me. Our wonderful daughter Jade, working as a scientist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, has posted some thoughts on racism & equality in this part of the world & compared it to her experiences in New Zealand & working in the NHS in London.  Her comments are well worth the read as soon as I figure it out, unless you can find a way to the comments section yourself.  A great mate & relentless campaigner for justice & understanding, John Ward, now the resident sage of Huon Valley in Tassy, responded to the piece on religion with a brilliant short history of the Crusades, the derivation of Hip Hip Hooray & a call for sanity which is apparently hard for most of us to hear in the face of the static produced by Murdoch & his media monopoly on thought. So I'll see how to get you access to the comments section.

Talking of thought, our colleague and friend in London, Lucian Hudson, has written two Blue Papers on our work; one on Collaboration and Respect in the workplace, & another on Restorative Justice & the need to expand it's role in the criminal justice system in the UK. The papers are written and published as Thought Leadership pieces (a great turn of phrase). Once we get the readers (decision makers in government & elsewhere) thinking aloud with each other, we then make it our business to turn that thought leadership into policy and action. The first paper presents a cogent argument for collaboration in times of fiscal austerity. It does so by using evidence from our Australian clients, following their decision to bring us in to build disrespectful  behaviuor and confront dysfunctional behaviour in the workplace. The second paper acknowledges the powerful arguments available for introducing Restorative Justice Conferencing into the English Criminal Justice System, following the independent research (using a randomly controlled trial) that provides overwhelming evidence in favour of our work when compared to more traditional approaches to crime & justice. I'll be working in London in late December 2010 and early January 2011 with Lucian and am looking forward to it.

That's almost it for this little blog. It's a long weekend.  I went for a ride with John Garrigan yesterday morning. He recently bought a new TREK bicycle  (that's the brand Lance rides) & all the gear to go with it, so we did laps of Centennial Park & had a good workout. He's got legs the size of tree trunks so I had to push on the straights to keep up ( & he's just started riding), but I was comfortably in front going up the hills.  Unlike Enda & Marc however, he's quick going downhill & I suspect that once he's bike fit he'll show up as a natural on wheels, much like the Branagan boys.  I followed that with a swim at Bondi & a very large breakfast.  It's a great way to start the weekend.  I'll get a swim, ride & run in tomorrow & if there's any surf I'll put the knee brace on & have a wave. The next event for our little team is a 10km run at Homebush finishing in the Olympic Stadium. Between now & then Gene is ready to get back into the water & start swimming training while Ange is going to need a tiny bit of coaxing, & then it's all about gearing up for the Huskie Triathlon in March 2011.