No.232 Of the Week Ahead

We have a big week planned this week at Legal-Island.

Our new training centre for Northern Ireland plays hosts to the very first of our Antrim Breakfast Seminars with Melanie Donnelly of Myfullcircle coaching delivering the first session this Tuesday entitled "Coaching Skills for Management & HR". She's a great speaker Melanie so I'm looking froward to the seminar myself.

On Tuesday I'm meeting Keith Pryde from Diskshred and Willa Mawhinney the next day. We have a meeting booked for the train back from Dublin being the only time we could grab between us. I'm also meeting Charles Garavan from the Memory Academy that day which should be interesting. On Thursday I'm meeting a rep from the Centre for Competitiveness about EFQM and Parity on Friday.

No.231 Of being angry and confused

So J.D. Salinger has finally popped his clogs. He's the guy who write "Catcher in the Rye" a book I read years ago when I was an angry confused teenager. The novel apparently is about an angry confused teenager but I missed that bit....

Well here's wondering how Tony Blair will get on today. Whether he does well or bombs (if you'll pardon the use of terminology) at least we can say that we have a political system in which our leaders are accountable. I couldn't see Putin being brought before an independent committee to scrutinise his decision to send the army into the Caucuses.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown recovers from his visit to Northern Ireland and his failure to get seasoned politicians to agree on what to many seems a relatively small issue. I wonder how he feels. Angry and confused?

No.230 Of Apps and Addie

I'm getting a digital makeover tomorrow or perhaps I should say that I'm just being "digitised". I'm getting an Iphone so I whenever I see shelves I can check they're up correctly with its spirit level App - oh and phone people too. I'm getting my jawbone bluetooth device working so I can call people in my car without fear of arrest or the person I'm speaking to asking me if I'm calling from the bottom of a well. I'm getting my MP3 player in operation so I can download a bit of Saturday night's Whispering Bob Harris show and play it loud in the Legal-Island gym at the crack of dawn in the week. I'm getting my multi purpose stop watch/ heart rate monitor in operation tomorrow too.

Saturday morning I shall wake up looking like Robocop but my, will I work!

No.229 Of Holocaust Day

It's Holocaust memorial day today. When I was 18 I visited Auschwitz in Poland. I remember it well. It was a beautiful summer's day amid a holiday that was probably the best I had ever had. I stood next to the ovens where the Nazi's had disposed of the millions of bodies they had murdered.

I left that day feeling wholly inadequate. For my mind was just incapable of even getting close to understanding or feeling the utter misery and horror that camp had visited upon millions of people.

I'd like to go back one day. Perhaps one day in the winter when it's dark and cold to give my mind another go.

No.228 Of Tolerating the Intolerable

I was listening to Radio 4 this morning whilst peddling away on the bike in the Legal-Island gym and reading my book (it's on Abraham Lincoln and becoming compulsive reading like every good book should be). Apparently, we are to be congratulated for the British are far more tolerant than we were 20 years ago. This mood of jubilation was tempered somewhat when one commentator came on and reminded us that the comparative survey also indicates that 38% of us still think homosexuality is wrong. Emmm.

Meanwhile our politicians are locked away in Hillsborough attempting to get a definition and system of policing in NI that both sides can tolerate.

No.227 Of Reviews & News

It was not a great start to the week. The padlock gate had frozen solid. Only a trip home and a boiled kettle finally got my into the Neverland Ranch at 7a.m..

This elongated journey to my desk this morning was made harder by listening to U105 and their latest breaking news item that Angelina Joli and Brad Pitt had split. It was announced three times in 10 minutes. Those wanting to know how many had been killed in the plane crash that plunged into the Med, whether or not NI is likely to have the same government in a month's time or the latest on the policeman blown up earlier this month by a bomb would have to wait half an hour for the news at the top of the hour.

Big week ahead for us this week. A proper week of work methinks now that the Performance reviews have finished finally.

No.226 Of Sunday Morning Board Games

I was listening to an interivew this morning with Ronald Dworkin Harvard Professor of Law and billed as the greatest living legal philospher. Having just Googled him I learn that he's 79 but his mind sounded sharp and his exposition was wonderfully clear.

I remember studying Dworkin at University. He was just about the only philosopher on the jurisprudence course that I ever understood. If I remember correctly he developed a theory based around what he called "The Original Position" which to me sound like a board game and quite a bit of fun. The idea was that you judged a law as good or bad by asking whether a group of legislators would have passed it had they known they were about to arrive on this planet but not know where and as whom. See, I told you it was fun.