Capitalism is based on wanting things, rather than needing things. Communism presumed that it was based on needing things, and that if the state could just provide for needs, then the people would be happy, but they looked over the proverbial fence and saw people getting what they wanted, and found that they too wanted it.

Consumerism has always been more sophisticated that just supplying needs, then supplying wants. It generates its own demand through means such as built in obsolescence so that goods fail far more quickly than they really ought to. Then there is fashion, which is just a clever way of convincing people to buy replacements for perfectly good clothes. Perhaps it is no surprise that communism had people wearing uniforms, explicitly rejecting fashion. Then there is luxury, a form of conspicous consumption where the consumption becomes an end in itself. And finally there is the whole consumer society, where media shades into advertising and we judge people by what they own, and how they dress. So we aspire to the clothes and accessories, dressing up and pretending to be, just like when we were children.

But we are entering into a post-consumer society. It is now relatively open to people to eat as much of whatever they want to make themselves obese and ill. It is relatively easy to buy more books that you could read in a lifetime, more electronic gadgets than you could ever find time to use.

Our houses are so packed with physical things that now you can pay for people to declutter your house for you. Presumeably giving you the chance to then reclutter it up again, just as you can have the fat sucked out of your belly, ready to gorge yourself afresh.

The consumer society has responded to this by trying to create experiences, bundle them up and sell them. So that now we are paying for intangibles, like mobile contracts, ringtones, and downloads. We pay to go ballooning or race car driving. Going straight past all the tedious learning about something, and working up to it, just diving straight in.

But just as our homes are finite, so is our time and attention. Our lives are full up now.

And what do you do when you life is full up? Do you just liposuction out all that cheap crap, and get ready to gorge yourself again. Do you think of some more expensive way to fill up your life, with basically the same stuff that you had before, the stealth wealth people dressed just like everyone else, but so much more expensively.

If you look at old money, it was never just about stuff. Even a stately home fills up eventually. It was never just about experience, one Grand Tour was enough for most. You stepped back far enough to see things in generations. So that your family name prevailed, so that there was enough money there to not have to worry too much. And looking round now, how many of the best of opportunities seem virtually restricted to the children of first generation meritocrats. Paul McCartney might have went to a comprehensive, but Stella had the opportunities he never had.

For those unfussed with their progeny, there is the wider world, buy into Fair Trade and sponsoring, look at the whole world and try and shove it just that little bit in the direction that you would like to see it move.

The thing about a consumer society is that it is sticky sweet like candy. Designed to tempt and seduce, it fits us likea comfy chair, flattering us and beguiling us. The consumer society has all the best tunes because it pays handsomely for them. But we need to step back, and try to listen to that quiet voice within ourselves, what does it say is that change which we ought to make in the world, what does it say we ought to be doing with our lives. We need to struggle hard to hear that quiet voice, so quiet we might never quite hear it all our lives, until perhaps it is too late.

Somehow the power was cut to some railway signals at a key junction, so on Wednesday evening all the trains were cancelled.
All a bit galling, as my normal train was the last one to leave on time, but I had already missed it, picking up some watches that I had dropped off at a jewellers for new batteries.
First of all we all got on a train, then we were told to get off, but a replacement train was on the departure board without a platform associated with it. Then that too vanished from the board. Figuring that nothing much was going to happen any time soon, I got a hot pie for dinner, and picked up a complaints leaflet. Someone I worked with appeared, then headed off to catch a bus home. Still nothing much happening, trains appearing for departure but with no associated platform, then when they were due quietly vanishing from the board.
It was a wonderful sunny evening, which always cheers you up, so I just hung about waiting. I suppose I could have got annoyed, and to be honest if the assembled multitude had decided to start a riot, I probably would have been in there somewhere at the back, but I just found somewhere quiet to stand and let the time pass. A young drunken couple came by squabbling so I moved position, and someone asked me where I was going, and as we were both heading in the same direction, he was keen to share a taxi. The conversation quickly attracted a few other interested parties and by the time that we had got the the taxi rank there were five of us, ready to split a taxi fare, taking us in our various directions. Probably not a cheap option, but we were getting dangerously close to when The Apprentice started, and different people had plans afoot to pop the cork on their different bottles of wine and watch it.
So we chatted about the Apprentice, and one of us was a engineer from Canada, and painting when you have children, and swimming with sharks, though I preferred the idea of swimming with rabbits. And all in all a pleasant ride home, with people I had never met before and probably won't again.
Delighted that something so unexpected and enjoyable could be plucked from such circumstances, impressed by the person who had the confidence to gather us altogether, and surprised how much we all had in common, people who would silently commute past each other without a comment, none so different from each other, but all our own humour and stories.
And the lesson of this all, if you can be at all times relaxed and approachable, then opportunities will arise when you least expect them to. A smile can take you further than the stoutest pair of shoes.

Recently, I have been struck by the behaviour of some people. Firstly there was an elderly jogger stubbornly jogging along on the road, despite there being a perfectly decent pavement right beside him. He was jogging in the direction of traffic, but the road was quite quiet, so any traffic just gave him a wide berth. Then there was a woman cyclist who was stubbornly cycling along the road, but cycling into the traffic. I suppose that this had the merit that she was facing the traffic and could therefore take evasive action if required, and because the oncoming traffic was looking her in the face, it might treat her as a person, rather than dehumanising her.

These people made me wonder whether there would be benefits to all cyclists doing the same, cycling into the oncoming traffic. In terms of how much road it takes up, and safety, it might well be an improvement on the existing system.

Of course I did eventually see the drawback to my brilliant idea, junctions. You are going to hit problems every time you reach a junction, if you are on the wrong side of the road. Nonetheless, there might be some merit to rethinking such things. There is thinking around slowing down traffic, and this sort of thing could be part of that process.

Anyway, an idea to park for the time being, but possibly one to come back to.

Still thawing out.

This weekend has really breezed by. I missed a monthly meeting, of the local group for which I am secretary, so I am currently working through what feels like three months of paperwork. Thanks to a local councillor and the locality manager, we seem to be making some progress on the area regeneration, so it will be good to get our teeth into something substantive.

The reason for my frozen demeanour is that I was helping out with the local Scout Troop replacing a wall to their hut. Of course I was helping out in the sense that I came along, and did what I was told, with no useful skills to speak of. My wife also helped out, doing the teas, coffees, and sandwiches for lunch, which I am sure was vastly more useful than what I managed. Still hopefully with these things it is as much as case of showing willing, as what you actually manage to achieve.

Otherwise, the usual catching up with odds and ends, and playing with my computer. I've done quite a bit of refreshing of my website, with a lot of the old stuff being deleted. With RapidWeaver it is so easy to put up a load of content, that I am constantly knocking against the size limit for what I can upload with my demon account. I suppose I could upgrade my account and get some more webspace, but it does not feel like a major priority at the moment, and I always hate to commit to regular monthly/annual outgoings. While a lot of the subsidiary pages have been deleted from the website, the look and feel has been standardised with the same Kwix bouncy menu being applied to the main pages.

Things are all very turbulent in global matters financial. Reading through the financial stuff in the papers, they seem very gloomy on the future for some of the banks. Accordingly I have changed my mind about buying some more shares in Bradford and Bingley, and will instead start putting money into a European Investment Trust.

On the usual musings,

I wonder if we should be redesigning our housing to get rid of the gardens. Housebuilders are generally pretty canny about what people want, and nowadays the ones round here are giving people a small back garden, a large monoblocked front garden, with what is not monoblocked, covered in membrane, with fancy gravel, and a few exotic shrubs poking through. Net result, you look out your front garden to see an exotic combination between a jungle and a car park. Maybe local authorities should take some initiative in tarting up these sad looking council estates, with the same combination of monoblock and strategically positioned shrubs.

Also on council housing, instead of large estates, break it down into more but smaller units of housing. That would help prevent people being too isolated, lost within big developments. I don't think that poverty is really the problem for many people nowadays, it is more a case of being distanced from the jobs and lifestyle that others take for granted. I suppose that is the thinking behind the terms social exclusion, and social inclusion.

On the subject of project management, I suspect that recently I have been focussing to much on listing and completing individual tasks, such that I am losing sight of the actual project goals that they are contributing towards. I will therefore try and apply the higher level goals to the tasks that I am doing. The famous study of civil servants that talks about the degree of control that they have having a major impact on their health, might be capable of being subverted by applying more focus on the project goals than the individual tasks.

Just a thought.

And tomorrow is Monday.

The usual rather prolix update.

Worth restating my guiding principle for these blogs, I try and balance a reasonable frankness with avoiding offending and upsetting people. Which seems a fair compromise for making them reasonably true to my life, and reasonably readable. I put this into practice by being slightly careful about what I do write, so that I don't just rant on at who ever has annoyed me recently. As a longer term perspective has generally shown my judgement to be wholly rubbish, and folk that annoy me one day, turn out to actually be wonderful the next.

Also I don't intend rewriting past blogs, just to give myself the benefit of hindsight, so if I do have a rant about something, then I feel duty bound to "un-rant" myself in a subsequent blog. It is probably one of those things like nylon bedsheets, and school assemblies that is good for the soul.

Anyway, I was ranting on about hotdesking at my work. From speaking to people, it sounded like I would shortly be completely deskless, and reduced to sitting outside with a manky plastic bag, and some grubby Big Issues. However, although many desks do have putative occupants, they seem to be some way off, so with a mere modicum of ingenuity, it should be perfectly workable. I now feel penitent and suitably apologetic about my previous petulance.

Accordingly [one of my favourite words, which I use almost like a coder would to signify a change of tack] because of the fact that the work is interesting, and the people are great, I now want to stick with my current job.

Work week was not too busy, but getting to know my new colleagues better, and getting my teeth into some work at last. Not knowing much yet, I'm not much use yet, so I don't have much to do, so difficult to know how exactly to pace work. These half busy, half quiet times are much more difficult to pace, and I feel rather unmethodical and disorganised, till I hit a routine of working.

Usual darkness, in the mornings, in the evenings, which does leach your energies.


Slightly miffed that I had not made a punt on the Northern Rock shares, I was severely tempted, and clearly that was the rock bottom for them at the start of the week, I might not have doubled my money, but it would certainly have been possible to make a very quick substantial return buying early in the week, and selling a few days later.

Of course, this is all purely theoretical, as you would really have wanted to make a punt with around a thousand pounds, to minimise the proportion going out in commission, and I would only use less than a quarter of my portfolio, at most, for such punts, and I simply did not have the cash available to invest at the time.

However as my shares portfolio does build up, it might well be worth setting aside some floating monies, just for opportunistic punts.

Vexed by recent share fluctuations, but inclined to tough it out with my current shares, no point in selling at a loss if I don't like the shares, and the ones I do like, don't look set to fall enough to offset the transaction costs of selling to later re-buy. I will look at the next year as a time to just quietly buy more shares, like with housing, we seem to be at the top of the market, but it seems more likely to slow down, than to drop catastrophically.

I do try and think about how the basic economy is changing, and then use that to inform the shares that I invest in.

So, my quick predictions
UK property is overvalued, so not worth investing in
Banks and building societies, financials generally, the good will persevere, but room for fresh new blood, so avoid all but the really well run, overall expect the sector to decline
energy will get more expensive, but invest in those producing energy, including nuclear, not just those selling it, avoid the airlines
DIY will resurge slightly, as people make do with staying put, but not to previous heights
mining, worth a punt, but success relies on picking a winner, or getting in when there is mismatch between supply and demand, diamonds possibly worth considering

in terms of underlying structure, we are at the top of the market at the moment, however I would expect volumes traded to diminish, without actually leading to serious falls. However the market is excessively volatile, over discounting shares on bad news, and only correctly slowly. Hence the newsworthy suffer unduly, while dull plodders get away with their dull plodding.

There is a major issue of what to do with capital. There are the oil producers, China, India, building up massive surpluses, with relatively litle to do with the money, but invest in Western equities and the like. This has suited the West, because, we are not investing, we use credit instead of prudence. Accordingly needing to find somewhere for capital to go, has propped up the West.

One feature of this, is that in the West we own relatively little of the real wealth generating companies. Fine at an individual level we get a salary, but ownership of the real money-generators, the businesses themselves is drifting East.

Another feature is that investing in Western equities, rather forgets what equity investing was about, it was about generating capital for infrastructure. At its most simplistic, you raised capital to build and crew a boat, to go to the New World, to find gold, to come back, and make you wealthy.

We are now speculating on equities, but we have lost sight of them as their original purpose of a means of raising capital.

Why does this matter?

Well, now you look at an equity as a rival for a dull building society account. But as citizens of the UK, we should have a financial stake in the businesses that it consists of, if we don't, who will. And we do not look at equity as a risky punt, that might bring huge rewards, when the boat comes in, but could be dead losses, when the boat sinks.

In the East, they invested here because there was little else they could do with that kind of money. But, the world is shrinking. Look at Dubai, trying to reposition itself as a premier tourist resort, look at the infrastructure work going on across the world. Of course not all these infrastructure projects will work, but some will. These are opportunities we lack the ability to participate in, but for the East, they can use their capital to recreate themselves in new and improved ways. The economic victors of the second world war, were those countries that had been razed to the ground, had the educated people, and had to rebuild themselves.

What advantage does old money have, when the new money is smarter!

Accordingly, Western Equity markets are not the only show in town, they will decline in importance as the world remakes itself in the next few decades.

Another intriguing feature is the growth of businesses with no variable costs. In the past these were very rare, now they are increasingly common.

Elementary lesson in Costing -
fixed costs in a shop - the rent and rates, always there,
variable costs in a shop - purchase costs of goods, the more you sell, the more you need to buy

So, a farmer has labour variable costs associated with each tonne of barley he harvests
but Bill Gates, has virtually no additional costs associated with each copy of Microsoft Office that he sells. Additionally there is no limit to the number of copies that Bill can produce, whereas the farmer has finite land.

Once again, why does this matter?

Well it serves to accelerate the trend that money making potential is concentrated, rather than spread out. The successful business can make a huge amount, there are often fewer barriers to entry for the many hopefuls. The market is now more 'perfect' as knowledge is more accessible.

The issue is not just one for Microsoft, Jonathan Coulton recording music, Scott Sigler recording podcasts, developers of software, they can all now access a global market with relative ease, and at minimal cost. This is great for the bright and talented.

However the grunt work is not so necessary, it is lower paid, lower status, easily outsourced, or performed by migrants. The world will belong to a highly paid and highly skilled and well connected elite.

There is a limit to how many flat screen televisions you might want, but is there a limit to how many ringtones you can buy, or software plug-ins, is fashion and ephemera going virtual, as we live digital lives, spending online, and defining ourselves online.

One thing that is not scalable is trust, I remember at university the rich and well connected stuck together, they had gone to the same private schools, they went to the same classes, they would end up working in the same places. These networks are not easily broken into. I don't know which networks will be the crucial ones, it might not be the well connected upper classes. But we will need to pick our networks well, and use them effectively.

The old rules, plenty of experience, being here a long time increases status, you've paid your taxes, you are entitled, won't be so good in future, and might even be a hindrance to developing the skills and attitudes that you do need to succeed.


Anyway on the IT front, I have also been continuing to play around with various hardware and software. The problematic external hard drive from LaCie has been fixed and returned, and seems fine now. So that out of the way, I've ordered some additional RAM as it is cheap as chips these days.

I have also been playing around with Bento, which really is lovely, and the tech support is like the really enthusiastic support you get with shareware, developers participating really actively on their forums, and being bright eyed and bushy tailed, rather than dull and corporate. Not sure that it is really a database, in the dull boring sense, reporting and searching seem pretty rudimentary, but it is a lovely fun piece of software, and for home users it could very quickly become indispensable, for silly little things like tracking Christmas cards and the like.

I have been tracking some of the various things that seem to trigger my migraines, and in parallel with the Hawthorne Plant findings, the fact that I am noting these things down, seems to discourage me from doing anything that is too bad for me. The mere fact of knowing that the details will be recorded seems to make a difference. There might be scope for extending this slightly to some of the other things that would be good habits to have, but are difficult to make time for. One hint on these, is aiming for longer and longer sequences of good behaviour, so that if you do forget to do something, then you simply start again at building up a long chain of good behaviour. Like the signs on the building sites, we have been accident free for 100 days, because you are never accident free forever, so why get depressed over it, focussing on the negative.

I have also been playing around with RapidWeaver and the new plugin from YourHead, Kwix. Basically this is moving menu, that is quite fun. It is reasonably easy to set up, and does look wonderful. I've mentioned this before, but it does strike me as intriguing that there is now such an infrastructure of these things. To reiterate a previous posting,
RapidWeaver is a piece of software for Mac Users to code their own websites. It is not exactly basic, but there is scope for additional bells and whistles.
YourHead produce plug ins, which allow you to create more elaborate pages, including the aforementioned Kwix, which creates bouncy menus.
Henk Vriesll....?? then produces additional themes and icons that can be used within Kwix, so that you can customise it further.

Now RapidWeaver is a serious bit of coding requiring a decent team and support, but Kwix is relatively simpler, and a decent coder could probably create something similar themselves, but it would take a lot of time, and you would really want to know that you were going to get paid at the end, or love coding, before you would attempt it. Finally the themes and icons that Henk does would probably not be much beyond my abilities, but would probably require quite a lot of time and fiddling around, so I would be happy to pay for someone else having done this.

Having done the work, and set up the website, these people can then just let the money roll in. Obviously the market diminishes as it gets more specialised, there is no market for Kwix without RapidWeaver and no market for Kwix themes without Kwix and RapidWeaver. But the effort and support required is also correspondingly less, so there is probably enough potential income in relation to effort for each level of the ecosystem to be perfectly viable. And the more players within the ecosystem, the healthier it is, and the better for everyone.

Microtrends

I do enjoy the microtrends column that appears in the Times on Saturday, I have also just bought Microtrends by Mark J Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne, which seems to be unrelated. Not only that, there is an article of microtrends predictions in yesterday's Times Magazine.

However not to be deterred, I would like to add my own tuppence worth.

I think that the advent of most people having decent - always on - broadband is creating a huge change in the way that the world works. I would hesitate to make any radical predictions, but these days, simply managing to discern what is actually happening out there at the moment requires a lot of insight.

Software can now do its own updating, virtually on the fly, checking for updates, and asking for permission to download them. These can be huge files. There is minimal distribution cost attached. So software can shift as a beta, and update to alpha without any huge downside.

Obviously we can all browse and download music, and all the physical record shops are on the way out. Other media are easily digitised, perhaps books less so than some others.

Broadcast media can now be downloaded or stored, and you can timeshift to avoid tiresome adverts. I would not want to be in the TV business trying to fund broadcasting through an ever shrinking part of the advertising cake.

Always on - also means that cloudware, having your applications on some remote server, makes sense, more sense than running them off your hard drive.

Similarly off site storage is possible, why back up to a hard drive, when you can put all your photos on Flickr, back up your calendar, and contacts to .mac.

We will increasingly be able to, and take for granted the ability to transfer and download vast amounts of data, and one effect of this will be that we become less aware of whether we are uploading or downloading, just as we are unaware how our computer is working, we will become unaware of where applications are, where bytes are stored, what processes are behind our interaction with IT.

There is increased scope for dumb terminals, these need not be computers, a mobile phone as dumb terminal, point of sale gadgets as dumb terminal. Things that we barely think of as IT as dumb terminals, information at bus stops, smart washing machines that will opportunistically use electricity when it is cheapest, fridges that advertise products based on your previous purchases and offer on line ordering.

As in the Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come...

As one year is on the way out, and another is on the way in, it is worthwhile to pause a moment and consider the future.

One thought that lurks like an elephant in the room, is the impact of globalisation, and world markets, on our lives. Britain is no longer the manufacturer of assorted sundries for all the world. We are no longer the pre-eminent power that we once were.

And yet, too often we think that we exist cosily within a welfare state that will protect and nurture us all, regardless.

But exactly what competitive advantage does Britain have as a country. It is difficult to argue that we are smarter, or work harder, equally although some in Britain own capital, or land, most of us do not, in any substantial way. In fact, Britain is fast becoming a nation of debtors. Dependent on favourable interest rates, merely to stay afloat.

We no longer have the easy benefit of living in a pre-eminent country. Mere location does not carry the benefits that it once did. The fact that we live in Britain does not make us ready workers in factories. Likewise services are increasingly capable of being outsourced, just as manufacturing has been.

At the moment we are all familiar with the outsourcing of call centres, but our lives are increasingly digital. This Christmas the shops seem unusually quiet, as shopping increasingly shifts online. So retail need no longer be on our high street, if we simply order on line, who is employed, where. Orders could be managed and sent automatically, vast sheds could provide goods for delivery. Goods that are increasingly made overseas.

So JK Rowling writes a book, it is published by a UK company, then printed overseas, comes over by the container load, and is distributed by Amazon. Where exactly is the role for the British worker in this scenario. Likewise the entire country cannot make a living providing services to each other. We need to provide exportable goods and services, to balance those we import. But increasingly the exportable goods and services have very little staff component. The staff component is highly skilled/valued, a superstar component. JK Rowling, James Dyson, Whisky brands, top universities, there is a role, but increasingly it is a role for the rich few not the poor many.

And the few are mobile, there is not much that they need to stay for. Society is increasingly becoming divided between the prosperous few, and the unskilled many. The welfare society relied on an implicit contract between the generations, and the classes, that you put in, and you took out, at times you put in, at times you took out. But increasingly there will be people who have virtually opted out of the welfare society, they pay for their children's schooling and university, they never claim benefits, barely access the NHS, would never be eligible for benefits anyway. If these people are superstars, then the world is their market. They need only stay here while the quality of life suits them. Overtax, or under-provide and they are free spirits to move on, as they will. They feel no duty to provide endlessly for a feckless underclass, they spend their lives doing their best to avoid.


Having said all this, I do not think that it is a vision that we need to fall victim to. A superstar economy is not an economy that I want to live in, nose pressed enviously against a window, watching the conspicuous consumption. By and large, the high end, high value work is not individual work. It derives from a group. You might talk about superstar academics, but really academics exist in a campus. I've blogged before on how big companies like Google, and Apple are starting to talk about having a campus. Why not government departments, or R&D facilities. Who does not enjoy spending time at a campus. Fresh young people carrying books, and arguing about things that they believe in. Great people become great, by surrounding themselves with other great people.

If we want to have a superstar economy, then we need to think in terms of campuses. Creating networks of possibility, easy soft quick links between like minds, fast track ideas, and approaches. Hothousing ideas to see what works, testing different models.

In terms of government, a devolved model offers tremendous opportunities, for small agile nations to try out ideas, that would be incapable of implementation in a slower larger country.

All this thinking is of little benefit, if it cannot inform how we out to adapt to thrive, you cannot merely adapt to survive, that is a charter for extinction. You need to adapt to thrive.

There are probably no certainties, but certain things are doubtless safe bets;

networking - you should build and build your networks, your capacity to create, and draw on networks.

information technology - you should be a relentless and determined user of information technology to deliver your goals, though not necessarily as an end in itself.

acceptability - you should be capable of interacting productively with as wide a population as possible. This might mean languages, or simply a welcoming smile, or helpful demeanour. The future belongs to those who can move about easily.

curiosity - you should always be curious, always asking and trying. The curious mind is a nimble mind.

time poor - the libraries of tomorrow are endless, not mere shelves, nor libraries, but warehouses recreating themselves endlessly. We need to become adept at skimming and dipping. Comfortable in our relative ignorance.

balancing between an attention to detail, and being easily bored - willing to put the time into figuring out something, but quick to move onto more interesting pastures.


And I suppose on a personal basis, it is always useful to be fit, healthy, and have some money behind you. If I can manage these things myself, if we can manage these things, if they can manage these things ...


Finally in personal terms there is an interdependence between having qualifications, experience and abilities. You need to balance these, as on their own, each has its limitations, but together they reinforce and support each other. The qualifications reinforce the skills, but it takes experience to actually demonstrate them. Any personal development needs to take account of all three, if it is to succeed.

Addenda - I've just read the attached article, and much of it chimes with what I have said above, however, even beyond this, it is very thoughtful and worthwhile
http://www.scotlandsfuturesforum.org/The%20Goodison%20Group%20in%20Scotland/GGIS%20Final%20Report%202007.pdf

quite a lot to report

• how I am getting on with my new computer
• applying for new jobs
• starting to write Losing Definition
• Just like magic

how I am getting on with my new computer
After much effort doing installations (all trouble free, just time consuming) last weekend, my new laptop is now up and running, with the exception of Time Machine. I even ran software update yesterday, and applied a system patch, but still no joy, now TimeMachine. I've checked out SuperDuper and we are still waiting for an upgrade to that to allow it to ran with Leopard. So my backup strategy is now two-fold

• for my desktop computer - continue to run SuperDuper each week to back up the entire system into a partition on an external hard drive.
• for my laptop computer - all newly created documents to be kept in the same desktop folder for ease, and to be backed up from there.

It is now clear that routine maintenance for two computers, which for me, basically consists of doing a weekly backup, and a monthly run of Disk Utility and OnyX will become quite time consuming. However my first two computers both eventually crashed out with corrupt hard drives, which then needed to be reformated and reinstalled, so I am perfectly resigned to doing proper backups.

I also watched the OSX Leopard introductory tour yesterday, and I'm slowly getting my head round the new functionality of Leopard. A lot of it is not gee whizz new, but rather tucked away, and you have to go looking for it. Spaces seems interesting, but I've not quite got my head round it. I guess that I will just have to spend time playing around with the new OS, and browsing through material about it. A lot of it is selling functionality that I did not know I wanted, so there is the task of understanding the functionality, then understanding how to use it.

I ran the laptop, connected upto the internet router via an old ethernet cable, and the Mail worked fine, I don't think that connecting two computers to the same mail account will cause problems actually. Well not with received mail, I might need to be a bit cannier with sent mail though. I'll need to lash out on a longer ethernet cable, but it will be cheaper than buying a wireless router.

At the moment expenditure on IT seems to be a constant item, though in fairness, I am not spending on much else.

It is great being able to run two computers, it also means that I can spend an evening typing away on my laptop, while the rest of the family can use the desktop. Yesterday I was using the laptop, while Hannah was playing away on the Sims, and Sketchfighter.

If I am primarily using the laptop for typing, the screen is plenty big enough, it is light and easy to move around, the power cable with the magsafe link is easy and safe to use. I am persevering using the trackpad, and now quite like using the one finger for moving the cursor and two fingers for scrolling facility. No sure that browsing folders in CoverFlow is particularly quick, but intriguing none the less.

In terms of version control, I'm using the laptop primarily for stuff that does not need the internet connection, while the web-based stuff I do on the desktop. However I might be persuaded to upgrade to a family license for RapidWeaver in due course, just to make life slightly easier. Ditto other applications, probably just as easy buying family licenses for software from now on.

Despite all this positive stuff, with the absence of reliable backups, I am mighty glad that I am not running Leopard on my main computer, and do not intend to upgrade it to Leopard, because it might be a bit of a memory hog, I cannot back it up, and I really want complete no risk/no worry peace of mind on my main computer. Running two internet capable computers does feel a lot more secure than having one, and all the putting your eggs in one basket, that that entailed.

applying for new jobs
Actually quite a worrisome week, doing two workshop presentations on Monday, which was something that I had not exactly done before, though I had done similar stuff. As ever worry worry worry, but when the adrenaline kicks in, you just stick a smile on your face, and become larger than life, breezing through it. Just as well in this case, as some of the audience were really not used to or expecting a presentation from a government official, so there was a fair bit of questions, and issues raised, but between the adrenaline and past experience, I carried it off with reasonable aplomb. You certainly don't do these things for the hearty congratulations for the audience, but I think that we should be out there, being seen, speaking to people, and more importantly listening to people.

Then a quick briefing of the Minister, which I was leading, but I made sure that I was well prepared, and knew the points I wanted to get across, and the Minister was a real pleasure to meet. So after the initial worry that too went well.

Final worry out of three, for the week, was a job interview on the Thursday. Once again made sure that I was well prepared, even setting aside some time in the office to make sure that I was thoroughly prepared. I did apply for one other post recently, but this was the one that I really wanted, even although the other one would have paid better. This one fits in with my career plan, which is to find a post with elements of project management, working with external stakeholders, and negotiation skills. The team also looked to be a really good mix of people, and the actual work area seemed interesting. It rather reminds me of work that I was doing a while back, that was mad busy, but high profile, challenging, but you were learning so much all the time.

The job would offer a mix of building on skills that I already have, but also enhancing areas that I feel that I need to develop.

The interview went okay, not one that I felt that I had aced, but okay nonetheless. My problem being that it is difficult to demonstrate that you can do something that you have not done before, so I was delighted to be asked at the outset why I wanted the job, so I could say, probably in a gushy/enthusiastic sort of way, that I might not have all the experience on paper, but I wanted to get the experience, I thought I could do it, and I wanted the chance to prove that I could.

We use competency based interviews, which means that you have to talk about similar tasks that you have successfully done, which means that you want good high quality work to demonstrate what you can do, getting bogged down with low quality work makes it difficult to move onto a decent job. Just another aspect of the need to focus on work that delivers significant outcomes, and think carefully about what you put your time into. I am constantly amazed at the high quality of some staff, and that they are not better paid for what they have to do. I might be good at what I do, but there are a lot of really excellent people, so although the work suits me well, I won't rise effortlessly to the top.

starting to write Losing Definition
I have made a start on losing definition, writing it on VoodooPad. To date I have taken stuff that I have written in a previous start on RapidWeaver, only a few pages, and notes from my notebooks, and some poetry from the blog. I don't intend to duplicate the blog in Losing Definition, but it might have stuff that I can use. At present there is a lot of stuff there, that is just working notes, and will get edited out in due course, but I'm still not too sure where it is going, so it is not too obvious what is irrelevant yet. I'll push on with writing stuff, and trawling through stuff that I have already written to find suitable material.

I think the real art will be in the editing, rather than the writing, maybe there is an Ezra Pound who could create a Wasteland from my prose?

In any case, it will take a lot of work and iterations to arrive at something that I am happy with, but it will be a pretty dense mix when it is finished, Giorgio DeChiroco wrote a fishy paste of a novel, called Hebdomeron, which I have never read, and only just remember hearing about, but I feel like I am struggling to create some such 'mythical work'.

Context is of course everything, it will take shape, and it is time for me to get writing, rather that waffling on about it.

Just like magic
There is a famous quote from Arthur C Clarke about any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic. I think that the new Apple operating systems are approaching that level. In some sort of Harry Potter way, we can gesture, and make short incantations, to create magical works.

The geek as hero, arcana as power, a new alchemy.

Nowadays it seems like every home needs a geek, to provide technical support, the new BT adverts with Kris Marshall certainly seem to be going down this line, that there is something attractive and useful about geekery.

My first computer, a Powerbook 165c (introduced in 1993 and running System 7.1) was capable of being understood inside out. There seemed a pretty finite limit to the functionality, and the files and folders. Even adding in a works package like Clarisworks, you still had a pretty manageable degree of functionality, useful, without being confusing.

However skipping forward to my new laptop an iBook running OXS 10.5, the number of files and folders is probably over 800,000, beyond what any reasonable person would know or understand. In terms of functionality, there are now numerous perfectly legitimate ways of achieving the same end. You can customise and enhance, there is no single standard user experience. I can learn tricks and shortcuts limited only by my ability to remember them all, I can add on functionality like QuickSilver to create further magical abilities to shortcut through the complexity.

You really would need to be a genius to understand all of this, or even a decent chunk of it. Computing has therefore evolved into an art, where you need to make qualitative judgements, subjective decisions, balance issues, there are no single right answers, merely strategies that are more likely to succeed.

I often wonder who the future belongs to, it may well belong to those who can master these things. In the past work did not place a great premium on brain power, but increasingly you will need brainpower, and will be responsible for keeping your brainpower upto date, relevant and useful.

I have probably written this before, but I don't think we should be talking about information workers, but about understanding workers. It won't be about having the qualifications, or seniority, it will be about being able to do things.

I recently have got a copy of Against the Grain by Richard Manning, which covers some of the same questions that I studied at university.

What is it that makes humans so different from other animals?

Obviously we enjoy uniquely adaptable bodies, with skillful hands, a highly mobile head, and the ability to manipulate and focus effectively on objects close to us. Within that body, we are capable of making use of the benefits that derive from a larger brain. However, I think that the ability to pass information across your own generation, and down through other generations is vital. It meant that individuals were no longer limited by their own experience, they could draw upon the collected wisdom of their species. So although we consider ourselves as individuals, our real role, as with ants, is merely as a small component of our generation, collating and passing on our understanding.

Passing on your understanding is much quicker than trying to evolve your way out of a problem. It gives us an edge in unpredictable times. And in a competitive situation, an edge need not be large to be significant, when it comes down to it, the one with edge wins.

It would be interesting to study the proverbs, sayings, beliefs, religions, customs, of different peoples, considering them as cultural adaptations to the environment that they faced. What do these things tell us about peoples that are no longer there, how did they cope with their environment.

What is our cultural toolkit now, and what does it begin to tell us about ourselves?

It strikes me that Christianity is very much a religion for farmers, shepherds and fishermen. The lord is my shepherd, fishers of men. Celebrating the harvest home, and the joy of rebirth at Easter as the cold earth reawakens.

But we have been hunter gatherers for far longer than we have been farmers. I wonder what they believed, did they believe in gods, did they have creation myths.

Farmers have to work hard, plough the hard land, make sure that there is seed set aside for the next year. It is a life that favours hard work and prudence.

On the other hand hunter gatherers don't really work hard, it is quite a light life, with times of plenty, and times of scarcity, but one where you need to go with the flow of what nature provides. It is a life that rewards flexibility and an understanding of your environment. Perhaps their understanding of their environment was so close and implicit, that it was like guiding a sailboat before the wind. They did not mediate or complicate their understanding of their environment, they just observed it endlessly, and relied on it for their needs. Who needs a metaphor when you are living in the real thing.

One of my old bosses used to say, if you keep doing the right thing, things will come right.

The point being that you might be unlucky, and other folk might be lucky, but in the long term consistency and effort will win out over luck.

After a few weeks at work, where things were becoming rather alarming, things are now starting to fall into place, and I can once again see a way forward. I am repeatedly reminded of the value in doing things properly as you go along, rather than just cutting a lot of corners. Cut corners simply come back to haunt you.

Likewise with my voluntary work, things are once again falling into place, after a few alarming developments.

The garden is winding down for the winter, though now that it is too dark in the evenings to spend any time in it, I'll need to concentrate my efforts at the weekends.

Likewise this website is starting to take shape - though it has no clear role, or purpose, beyond giving me a chance to play with RapidWeaver, and the various add-ons that I am building up. Fortunately the structure is pretty simple, and one that I can add to. If it had simply grown like topsy, with mess of pages, it would be more of a worry.


I suppose that now is a time for re-appraisal, to look over things and figure out what my priorities and goals are.

It is too easy to substitute the feeling of buying something, for the effort of doing something. The most lasting benefits we experience are as a result of our efforts, but buying something is the easier option. There was an interesting article somewhere about how we think about our possessions. It makes the point that if you were the only person in the world, then you would not own anything. The idea of owning things is just a construct. Obviously it is quite a useful one, but when you think about it, it is pretty meaningless. Philosophically there is no particular quality that an item possesses that marks out who it belongs to. The object itself has no memory. I suppose that owning things only has meaning to the extent that they are useful or give you pleasure, or even both. Accordingly I derive pleasure from owning good woodwork tools, some I use, some I don't.

However the pleasure of owning things, needs to be differentiated from the momentary pleasure of obtaining them. I suppose as foraging hunter gatherers, we are programmed to enjoy the acquisition, the caveman feels pleasure at killing his mammoth, his family are impressed and grateful that he has brought home this mammoth, and they eat well, though after a few days they would probably be looking for some condiments. We get bothered about a turkey hanging around till New Year. They were probably eating the mammoth for months.

We are target orientated, we fixate, we hunt and chase down, then acquire, and bring home our prey. We are wired to think like this.

But in modern society, this wiring simply does not work. There is no particular skill or ability in spending money, you have money, you spend money, you acquire. If it was food, we would realise that we were buying more than we were eating. But much of the spending is for stuff that meets less obvious needs. You can always find room for more clothes, or books, or records. You do not generally need them in any sense at all. You simply would like to have them.

As in so many other things, our hunter gatherer wiring is poorly suited to modern life.

All that said, my understanding is that the wealthy traditionally saw little need to display their wealth through acquiring things, I suppose when you own a stately home, there is relatively little to be gained from a trip round IKEA. It is not going to make you feel better about yourself, that you now have an extra coffee table.

My argument forks here, I could examine what must motivate the wealthy if they are not prone to simple impulse purchases, or I could examine the desire to collect, or even how we use possessions to define who we are now. We define ourselves, the tribes we feel we belong to, by buying stuff. Even absurdly the desire to green consumerism, when the real green option is to make do and mend.

But I would like to finish this entry by reflecting on my time as a nomad, during the summers I used to go from archaeological dig, to archaeological dig. All you had, you carried. So more was not better. You bought a book, you gave away an old one. In such a situation you look very differently as possessions, you don't stop spending, but you do spend differently. At heart we are all simply nomads, traveling through, and we will take nothing with us when we go, perhaps it is better to travel lightly.

PS wedding anniversary weekend !!

There is a wonderful line in How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand,

the romance of maintenance, is that there is no romance to maintenance

I think that we have a different relationship with things now. Traditionally life was all about maintenance, for the very rich, they simply had more people to do the maintenance for them. A great country estate, was a machine to provide a certain lifestyle, with gardeners maintaining a high maintenance image of what the country should be, with housekeepers maintaining the house in all its splendour, with the kitchen staff creating complex and demanding dishes.

These people were never idle, they were always busy, trying to grow pineapples using manure to provide heat, polishing silver cutlery every day, locking doors, lighting lamps, tending fires.

For everyday people there was also a huge amount of maintenance, keeping yourself clean, polishing shoes, ironing shirts, blacking lead, waxing the floor.

The standard notion now is that all this work was drudgery, and we are well rid of it. Even for the very rich, it seems absurd that you would maintain a house, or even a garden in such a labour intensive way. I suppose we view the labour as demeaning, and the tasks as pointless.

We live in a period of temporary abundance. We still enjoy the benefits of cheap oil, which is after all, just that oxymoron of free energy. We have the billions of China slaving away to provide for our every need, regardless of how trivial. All the while we are drowning ourselves in cheap debt, while the more long-sighted minds of the East are slowing becoming our creditors.

We can all recognise, that for something we really like, for something we enjoy owning, maintenance can be a form of veneration, what else is the point of waxing a car each weekend, or polishing shoes daily, or obsessively keeping your garden weed-free. In its way, these things are an expression of your love.

Maintenance need not be mere drudgery, it is only a chore when you see it as pointless and meaningless. I really enjoyed having a wood stove, and although it was vastly more work than just switching on a fire, it was work that I enjoyed. It was tactile, you could smell the ash, and smoke, you took the ash outside where it was cold, and came inside to light the fire, which slowly warmed the house.

We are always looking to impose some meaning onto our lives. In our relationship with our possessions we can simply acquire more and more, better, more impressive possessions, or we can choose sufficient and useful possessions, that we are then commited to look after and maintain, and even to dispose of wisely.

If we are to cope with the coming environmental pressures, then we will need to be prepared to move to a different way of looking at possessions. Rather than simply adding more and more possessions to our lives, endlessly getting rid of the tired and shabby, which they all too quickly become, we need to focus on choosing wisely, and then looking after what we own.

This is not such a different attitude. After all, it is how you would treat people, you don't simply get a flashy wife, then trade up to a new model, you choose wisely, look after and nurture.

Over the past week I have been working in the garden in the evenings, and rather than finding the gardening a chore, as I did when I had to try and squeeze the whole garden into a weekend blitz, whenever the weather was fine, I have really enjoyed it. It is fine to just start in a corner and work through all that needs to be done. Knowing that what does not get done will always get done the following evening. After a day spent at my desk, or sitting on a train, some time alone, pottering in the garden, is precious, all the more precious for being a contrast with whatever else I have been doing.

I suppose that a garden is your little microcosm of what the world could be like, your own private section of some larger perfection, even if the larger perfection just exists in your own mind. There is nothing more natural than to tend your garden, to nurture and maintain.

Having more time to maintain the garden, I now feel less compelled to simply go out and spend money on plants. When you don't have the time, it is tempting to just throw money at something, so that you think you are doing something. Someone who never goes fishing, buying the magazines to read on the train. People who never do any cooking, spending thousands on a kitchen.

There will always be some tasks that you are not good at, have no interest in, do not enjoy. The world should include people who will work for you, nowadays it always seems cheaper to buy new, than to simply maintain, but if we start to make a conscious decision to keep things for the long term, to pay for their upkeep, then the costs, are just the costs. The cheapest way, is not always the best.

Maintenance is an expression of our place in the world, part of our relationship to it, tending and nurturing, like the parent, the gardener or the shepherd. It is the responsibility of ownership, rather than just the selfish pride of it.

Write about TwentyTwoBlog here.

Rather than my normal practice of writing this blog in the weekend morning before everyone else wakes up, I was pottering about with some other stuff on the computer this morning and never got round to writing this.

So I am writing this on Sunday evening, plugged into iTunes listening to some Monteverdi.

The benefit of writing this in the morning is that you have the sense of huge significance, that your every thought is of the greatest of moment, and infinitely deserving of being read by all and sundry, and preserved for posterity. By evening, some sense of perspective has returned and my meanderings seems less crucial.

So in the usual fashion, some random jottings.

I like to set my daughters a task to complete, today I had them out trying to find as many wild flowers as they can, with a promise of a small reward for every one that they can identify. Much scouring of a book of wildflowers, and they seemed to enjoy it, so a useful little challenge, with a pretty posy to finish with.

The weather has been a bit iffy this weekend, so I have had a chance for some gardening, mowing the lawn yesterday, and emptying out my home made big red composter, and putting in the slighty slimy contents from the usual municipal green composter. The good compost was taken and dug in, the soil is old clay, heavy and grey. I think I will be working to improve my soil here for years.

I have been out gathering pine needle mulch in the local woods, our soil is bound to be reasonably acid, but I am trying to grow some real acid lovers, cranberrys and blueberrys, so I am keen to give them even more acidity, with a mulch of pine needles. By the by, elsewhere in the garden I have found leaf mould tremendous stuff, I can't believe that some enterprising council does not sell it, simply gather up leaves in a chicken wire cage, leave for a year, and then you have a fine rotted mulch, and keeps the soild moist and amply boosts the organic content of the soil. I reckon on gathering ten sacks of leaves for my chicken wire cage each autumn, and this gives me a decent amount of mulch each early autumn when I empty out the cage.

My week off is nearly over. I have a bank holiday today, and then back to reality tomorrow. I think that using the GTD methodology, albeit, one that I have amended to suit myself, has been a success. In terms of actually getting stuff done, I don’t really think that I have achieved appreciably more than I would have done using my traditional daily lists. However the system has scored in letting me use my time more flexibly, finding tasks that can be completed whenever I have some spare time, rather than finding myself with dead time between work.

It has also been useful in clarifying what is important to me, who I am, and prioritising tasks to reflect this better. By having tasks listed that are not important enough to do, when a couple of them overlap and can be combined, it makes a lot of sense to just do them both. I suppose the greatest benefit is simply one of reducing the amount of feeling guilty and worried about everything that I have not done. I certainly feel like I have straightened out my thinking a lot in this week.

As I am going to be much busier in future, I’ll once again use this blog entry to mop up random thoughts, which I might work up further in due course.

you could use lollipop sticks for plant labels, though probably difficult to actually write on them

I find that carrying any number of items in my head, greater than three, feels infinite. Therefore for my own sanity I need to resort to a written list when I have more than three things to consider.

you should consider managing your own morale and motivation as a explicit task. What would happen if you wrote it down as a project, what would you do to achieve it. Too important a task to be left to chance surely.

If you work with other people, or in a family. Consider for each individual what options do they have if they want you to do something. For instance, if your daughter wakes up and decides she wants to go to the beach, how would she convince you to take her there. If the only options available to her, are ones that are not acceptable to you, for example, moaning and throwing a huff, then the reason she does that behaviour, is because that is the only options you have given her.

The same applies in politics, if a government ignores people until they strike, or until they starting rioting, ... then the blame lies with the government for not giving people easier ways of actually making their views known. Surely people would take the easier options if they were available to them. So before you condemn people, consider what other options they actually had if they wanted to get their way.

as a practical application we are giving our daughters more delegated decision making. For example we offered them the chance to ask for a treat that they were both agreed on, and if practical they could get it. They jointly decided and we delivered. Similarly a mobile with a pre paid card, or an itunes card, you can phone who you like, but within this financial limit, spend it too quickly and you will have to wait before you get another.

when buying shares it is important to limit your exposure to shares whose value is based on sentiment rather than business realities. I have invested in four shares, only one is such a speculative share, and it has certainly given me a roller coster ride lately, the others have been more predictable. Fortunately the easiest way to determine whether sentiment is at play is to look at the price to earnings ratio.

In theory you could address risk by assuming that your speculative share could lose half its value, say, and then ensure that it is a small enough part of your portfolio to allow overall growth as long at your low risk shares manage to match the footsie index. Depending on the circumstances you could increase or decrease your exposure to risk. The logic is easier to follow when your risky shares are losing money, when they are making money it is probably more important to retain the logic that you could lose much of their value, and ensure your share portfolio is allocated accordingly.

Personally I suspect that if any of my risky shares were to double in value I would be inclined to sell half my holding. That way I would retain the same value in the share, and the same exposure.

We should recognise that everyone makes their decisions for a rational logical reason. Thinking that other people are stupid, lazy or evil, does not help you to understand them. Try and influence the environment so that the right decision for them becomes more acceptable to you.

You can always catch more bees with honey than viniger.

I am currently having vastly more ideas than I have time to pursue. It is worrying and inspiring at the same time. I suppose that it is part of who I am.

Often people do not know who they are, or what they want. Because they don’t know these things, they tend to make non decisions, like watching the television, or aimless shopping. In effect these activities are just using up time and money, they seldom contribute much to anything you want to do, unless you put the effort into thinking of what you really want. We all deserve to relax now and again, but we should ask ourselves how we want to do it, rather than drift into habits, like the zombies in the shopping mall.

If you assume that there is no such thing as morality, and that criminal sentencing should be entirely rational, based purely on the cost to society of an action, then what would it look like? You could calculate the cost to society of a murder, or vandalism, even by extension domestic violence. You would need to ignore the cost of the police investigation, trial and prison sentence, otherwise you would create perverse incentives for government to criminalise people and then charge them for the privilege.

The sentence should then repay the full cost to society in some way. It would be illogical to insist on less than full repayment. Many crimes would therefore be beyond the lifetime of someone to pay.

It seems unfair to offer the ability to pay with money, rather than time, as it favours the rich.

You could hypothecate and treat the opportunity cost to the individual as the money you are notionally recouping. This would mean that the more likely you were to be in employment the more quickly you could repay, this would incentivise people to ensure that they maximised their earning capacity, it would also increase the pressures on the poor. You could make it fairer by applying rules, so that you incentivise behaviour that reduces recidivism, such as improving your literacy level and employability, without simply further penalising those already at a disadavantage.

As an side thought, are we creating perverse incentives for the NHS to make people ill? Sick people pay their salaries, there are no incentives to keep people out of hospitals or doctor’s surgeries.

To be fair, you could extend the argument to most public services, the incentives exist to promote certain behaviours and priorities, but these seldom match the actual needs of the society that they are serving.

it would be useful to make an exercise of comparing what the professional and salary incentives actually encourage and reward, and what the service should ideally be doing to meet the needs of society. That is the difference between business and the public sector, business knows when it gets it right, because it makes a profit. How does the public sector know when it gets it right?

Tags: gtd

My Personality

Neuroticism
62
Extraversion
42
Openness To Experience
63
Agreeableness
37
Conscientiousness
85
 



You are neither a subdued loner nor a jovial chatterbox. You enjoy time with others but also time alone. Stressful and frustrating situations can often be upsetting to you, but you are sometimes able to get over these feelings and cope with these situations. A desire for tradition does not prevent you from trying new things. Your thinking is neither simple nor complex. To others you appear to be a well-educated person but not an intellectual. You have some concern with others' needs, and are generally pleasant, sympathetic, and cooperative. You set clear goals and pursue them with determination. People regard you as reliable and hard-working.
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Compare and Contrast

How is my life different from that of my parents? Surprisingly little overall. In purely material terms, I live in a near identical house, with a near identical commute to my place of work. I can also afford a car, now fortunately more reliable than my parents could afford. Another improvement in our fortunes is that we now take annual holidays, although this does require some ingenuity, we cannot afford family passports, but we can afford Youth Hostelling Cards. In my childhood we only had a couple of holidays, but neither were overseas. However I certainly did my share of travelling with the Scouts, I loved outdoors stuff like camping and hiking. All of which my parents happily paid for.

As a child I did have the feeling that we had less money than most other people on the private housing estate where we lived, as a parent I now have a similar feeling. However now I suspect that people in traditionally blue collar work are more comfortably off than I am, with a traditionally white collar job. I am not suggesting that this is wrong, I don’t think of the level of someone’s earnings as any kind of moral judgement on their worth. However it is a change in society worth noting.

What is different, well I have two children, my parents had four. I have a far better paid job than my father. I am an established civil servant, now with twenty years of experience. I have a better education than my father, I have one honours degree, and two HNCs. However compared to when my father was working, civil service salaries have fallen dramatically relative to other salaries, and the financial rewards associated with qualifications and experience, now seem relatively paltry.

As a civil servant, I do have an assured pension, although this is at constant risk of being eroded, and it does mean I cannot change employer or work pattern without sacrificing my most significant financial asset. My wife works part time, but when the costs of supporting childcare are added in, it is uncertain whether this brings a net benefit. She does supply work with mentally handicapped children, in local schools. It has so far proved impossible to find a full time post, and she is doing nightclasses two nights a week, to improve her chances. She already has a degree, and substantial other training from nightclasses, and the Open University falling short of any recognised qualifications.

We have both had to move to find work, something my parents never did. Our first civil service postings entailed a substantial move, and we eventually moved back. The latter move probably meant that my wife could not undertake teacher training. She has been knocked back on numerous other occassions from teacher training, despite having two children, a relevant degree and extensive paid and voluntary experience with children. Basically she has spent her whole life working with children.

Somewhat unconventionally, I do not drive. With children, we could not manage without one car. My wife uses the car to ferry the children, and get to work, I rely on public transport.

We have to meet the increasing care needs of one of our parents, these needs already entail weekly visits, no significant support is provided by the Local Authority. The care needs are likely to increase. If we are to provide any significant financial support for our children when they go to higher education, it will need to be met from inheritances, we are simply not saving sufficient amounts of money at the moment.

My wife and I, both do substantial voluntary work in the local community, and have done for some time. I believe this to be well worthwhile, but it is unpaid, and there is no direct evidence that our employers place any positive value on this, or provide any significant support. None of our parents were involved with local voluntary work, although as children we benefited from the work of local youth organisations.

What conclusions do I draw from this?

We have done exactly what our parents generation would have recommended, we studied hard, we moved to find work, we chose secure, worthwhile jobs, we had children, and gave them the best possible start. We have also provided substantial support within our local community and our extended family.

In these terms we have made the most of opportunities that our parents never had.

Although our standard of living is ostensibly better than our parents, with the general advances in society, relative to the rest of society we are no better off than our parents. Society now feels even more unequal, and polarised, and it now seems even clearer that the wealthy can confer benefits on their children that other cannot. We have not achieved the social mobility that our parents would have expected of us, despite doing what they would have wanted us to.

As a parent, I am more concerned that I cannot provide more effectively for my children, and now believe that their chances of social mobility are no greater than mine, and that they will need to work substantially harder and smarter, to maintain the lifestyle that their parents had, or even rely on inheritances to get on the housing ladder.

It seems that choosing to be a parent means you choose not to have a “comfortable” lifestyle. Being a parent is hard, it is expensive. You can see why so many marriages fail. It is incredibly difficult bringing up children now.

As an individual, I feel that my life is substantially at odds with the world portrayed in the media, I can never aspire to the lifestyle that I see portrayed. Colleagues without children enjoy a far better lifestyle in material terms than I do.

I believe that if society expects parents to devote the personal resources to bringing up children that are required, then society and government need to do vastly more to support children and parents. The current shortfall in support for parents is a major driver for the current lack of social mobility. Children grow up on sink estates, and go to a bog standard comprehensive, or they can go to a boarding school because their parents run an international business. Bringing up children requires a vast amount of money to do properly, and if you need to substitute hard work and ingenuity for non existant money, you need a prohibitive amount of both.

Like all parents, I simply want to give my children the best possible start in life, and I feel that as a society we are failing parents.