Frydmania

How did they do that?

Here’s how to re-invent a tired old corporate identity.

Add comment March 29th, 2007

Like something almost being said

“The trees are coming into leaf // Like something almost being said”…
…and I feel a need to quote Philip Larkin.  Have been leaf watching every morning on the way to work, and now, thanks to clocks change on Sunday, even on the way home too.  The wonders of evening daylight.
For Fall in the States, they call those who come to view the trees leaf-peepers.  That could hold for the state of my gaze in the mornings.  But spring leaves are different.  Perhaps because we wait so long for the spring, we of the north who have already braved it going dark at 3.30 in the winter, and have come out the other side.

This leaf watching only started last year.  I think the need for spring increases every year, probably related to slight increase in SAD symptoms year on year too.  The going home in the dark again is hard to bear.  But the arrival of the leaves is a good one, particularly from the top of a double decker bus, coasting through some fairly green parts of Edinburgh, on the way into town.

Once the leaves are out, suddenly it seems as if they’ve been out for ages.  The excitement wears off a bit.  But for now, I’m convinced I can spot each new nobble, each new growth on the trees’ branches that suggests a leaf is there, hiding under the bark.

What else was it Larkin said about spring?

“Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”

Add comment March 28th, 2007

Animal magic

Britain is reputedly still a nation of animal lovers….(although the title also refers to a BBC children’s programme of the 1970s).

The reason for this post is just to comment on some of the great animal sculptures around Edinburgh.  Urban sculpture has been on the increase in Edinburgh over the last few years, but most of the recent examples have been animals, presumably because they are less controversial? Easier to understand?

The public certainly seemed to understand when it came to last year’s Cow Parade.  A similar set-up has happened in other cities around the world with model cows. In this case, various organisations and businesses sponsored the making and decorating of over 40 fibre-glass cows, most full-size, that were then put in various public sites around the city.  (There were also a few mini ones, suspended between pillars of the Scottish Gallery of Art on Princes Street).

The cows were wonderfully decorated, many done by school children, or youth groups, some by individual artists.  Many were given cow-themed titles, with plenty of puns.  Later in the year, people (or again more likely, organisation) could vote to buy a cow at auction, with proceeds going to VetAid.

I’m not sure who has ended up keeping a cow - except that the office I work in overlooks a certain pizza restaurant, and they have one of these cows on the roof of their building. I think you could only tell from a higher building, as it can’t be seen from the front.

At least one person I met over the summer had made a school holidays outing out of touring the city and taking pictures of themselves/their kids next to as many cows as possible.

The other ones I see regularly: two giraffes outside the Omni entertainment complex at the top of Leith Walk.  I recently learned from a friend that these are made out of car scrap metal.  There are more traditional sculptures in sandstone in Holyrood Park, the area next to Holyrood Palace and which includes the hills Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags.  A beautiful sandstone lion is very close to the palace - and simultaneously to the front entrance of the Scottish Parliament.

My final plug is for a statue that has been around for longer.  A collection of small plump pigeons are permanently in place on a pavement near the top of Leith Walk, looking rather fine in copper.  As they remain for longer, they’ve already aged to a gentle green.  Subtle, but perhaps the most effective - one of the more likely visitors to an Edinburgh pavement.

If anyone has plans for a seagull sculpture along similar lines, let me know.  The area around our home would be no bad place for it…

Add comment March 27th, 2007

Enneagram and The West Wing

I was thinking the other day about the Enneagram - something that Alison and I have been reading about off and on for a while* - and wondered about the characters in the West Wing and what their types are.  To my absolute amazement, there seem to be no real posts about this out in Blogdom or on the Enneagram websites.  There’s stuff for Star Trek and Star Wars, but not for the West Wing.  So, here goes.  Please comment if you know Enneagram and the programme:

President Jed Bartlett: 6w5: He’s really stable most of the time but can become a bit counter-phobic and needs pressing to make important decisions.  When he’s depressed he  really goes to his 5 wing - very studious and introspective.

First Lady Abigail Bartlett: 3w2: This was a tricky one as she’s an exceptional scientist so could also be a 1 (perfectionist), an 8 (the boss) or a 5 (scientist), but I think she’s an achiever with a helping wing.  Interesting how she interacts with CJ who I describe below as a 2w3.  When Abby’s pushed - she moves towards caring - when she’s her own woman - she climbs the heights of her field of medicine.

Leo McGarry: 8w9: First of the strong character types - he’s the boss, but has some of this rounded off by being a bit of a peacemaker at times.  He’ll challenge Bartlett at times, but he’s a mostly reformed 8.  His motivation for anger has been channeled into the love of his country and serving at the pleasure of the president.  He respects decisions made by his staff as long as they can stand up for them.

Josh Lyman: 8w9: I think Josh is the same as Leo - which is what makes their working relationship so intriguing.  He is so, so angry - particularly with Republicans!  He can’t seem to form any kind of romantic bond properly and we see two relationships with strong women either not start (Joey) or fall apart (Amy), until right at the end of the last series (won’t say who in case you’ve not seen it all, but you can probably guess).

Toby Ziegler: 4w5: He’s a very introspective, emotional type who goes to his 5 wing (perhaps why he and the president can communicate) when pressured.

Sam Seaborn: 1w2: I’m pretty sure that Sam is a 1 - a total perfectionist.  He might be a 5, but I can’t quite figure that one out.  His wing is likely to be a 2 as he’s very much the helper than the peacemaker.

Donatella Moss: 9w8: I think this is a particularly funny one as we have friends who are 8w7 and 9w8 - almost Josh and Dona, but not really - they’re much nicer. Dona brings a lot of peace to Josh’s anger - though can also go head to head with him and gives as good as she gets.  She likes things to go well, but will stand up for herself.

CJ Cregg: 2w3: I’m not sure about CJ.  I think I need some help on this one.  She’s very caring and does what she thinks is best - but often is overtaken by events in her job and can become quite spiky.  Push a 2 and see where they go - do they seek to overcompensate by achieving or do they try to be perfect?  I think that when CJ’s pushed, she tries to stand her ground and make sure people tell her that she’s good at what she does.  Alternative is that she might be a 3w2.

I don’t know if I’m putting too much emphasis on their wings in order to make up for not knowing enough about their personalities, but having spent the last seven years with them, I think I know them a bit.  Perhaps you know them a bit more - or know more about the Enneagram.  Would love to know what you think.

4 comments March 25th, 2007

Environmental taxonomy

The second area Gordon could have worked some tax wonders was with the environment.

It’s easy to say that the polluter should pay - though does this really work? We all think that multinationals like BP, Shell, etc., should pay more if they pump nasties into the biosphere, but what about us? If you take the principle to the logical conclusion, we should pay more tax for the amount of rubbish we produce and pay more tax on the fuel that we use.

I wonder whether consumers are motivated more by ease and pleasure than by saving money. We could all save a lot of money by not going on nice holidays to somewhere warm and most of the people I know who drive could save lots by driving smaller cars - but the thing is - we don’t.

2. Reduce tax for good behaviour - 1p/£1 for each category
If we were to be encouraged to do good rather than punished for being bad, I wonder whether we’d do better. We could get tax breaks for doing good stuff. Perhaps a penny off income tax if you use public transport, another penny off if you reach recycling targets and a penny off if you switch to alternative energy use.

Companies could be encouraged by doing the same - less corporation tax if they behave well - rather than considering it as an extra cost. By giving a carrot rather than a stick, consumers and companies would have a reason to do good.

If you meet all the good criteria you have more money to spend to boost the economy (potentially inflationary) or to put into pensions / investments / savings.  You will probably have spent some money to achieve some of the criteria needed to get the reductions in tax.

It might be that the reductions in your own pollution comes off your council tax rather than your income tax, but then that’s a topic for the next post . . . how to get your tax from you.

Add comment March 25th, 2007

Of pressure and policy

It’s that time again - post budget and pre-end of tax year - we’re being bombarded with messages about saving in ISAs. It’s a good thing that it’s there to do tax free, etc., but it suddenly feels like a lot of pressure. In the past I’ve never really paid much attention to it, but this year we could indeed lump all our savings in that direction.

I’ve been thinking of putting money into some funds that give a high return, but couldn’t be described as being environmentally friendly (natural resources) or ethically sound (China), but would produce a good return where I could then decide what I do with the profits.

Up until recently it was a bit of an academic point, but with the approach of the ISA tax-free deadline I have to decide what to do. I’m probably going to wimp out and keep the money in the bank - staying liquid and giving myself the option to buy a car instead. It’s all about long-term gain vs short-term benefit and for the moment I don’t feel like being particularly high-minded.

Brown’s budget this week didn’t set a particularly good example. He’s made the tax system more complicated than ever and made it easy for his political enemies to make accusations that it’s only about winning votes. Unfortunately it was a lost opportunity to win more people around - the people who are likely to switch from Labour to the Conservatives when he’s Prime Minister.

So, what would I have done if I was Chancellor? Well, that’s a question I’ll answer over the next few days. I’m going to start off by suggesting that we have a flat rate of tax - a particularly easy one to suggest, but one that I think would kick start our economy in a massive way, so:

1. Flat rate of tax
20% for everything - all income tax, corporate tax and inheritance tax
Let the government play with the allowance levels, not the rates. That makes it easier for all of us.

More to come . . .

Add comment March 24th, 2007

Pseudohistories and pseudoparodies

I’ve just had one of those “You what?” moments in reading some nonsense online. It came about from looking up something on YouTube and then happening on another link.

The link was to do with a historic theory called New Chronology from a pretty wacky Russian mathematician called Anatoly Fomenko. He reckons that the dark ages never happened, that Jesus was born around 1050 and that the smart cookies in the Renaissance actually invented the histories of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Sounds crazy, but you know what(?) it’s even crazier.

There’s some very, very warped logic at work and the guy completely ignores accepted chronologies. It’s almost as if he was bored one day and thought he’d come up with this by sitting in the library and looking at some old charts. Fomenko can’t have actually been to see Ancient Rome, Greece or Egypt, but since he couldn’t comprehend the times involved he just made up his own view of history and then tried to use some historical data and science to back up his theory. That people are reading his work and taking it at all seriously is quite disturbing and more than a little annoying (architectural historian speaking here).

Taking a backward step - or three - it dissolves from being evidently crazy to being very, very funny.

From pseudohistory to pseudoparody - read Morten Monrad Pedersen’s account of his experiments with Fomenko’s techniques in his article on the way the Danish Royal chronology was falsified as recently as 1947 and how Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy were actually the same person . . .

Add comment March 24th, 2007

(Making sense of) life and work

A new departure this week: sat and read the Church of Scotland regular publication for its members, Life and Work. As Dan is set to continue working with the Scottish Bible Society on their website, and had made reference to this magazine, thought I’d have a look.

One particular comment struck me from a column written by the Rev Jock Stein: “It is important that poets and composers who happen to be Christian are left to write good poems and good books, and not pressured to write ‘Christian books’ or ‘Christian music’.” He goes on to say “if Christians are to be salt and light in our culture, we need books, articles, films, music written by Christians, not some tame product with a Christian label.”

Have been musing for a while about a pattern for my own life: how to make sense of what I currently enjoy doing, but also what I sense might be around the corner. It all seems to come back to story: the importance of expressing the good, and bad, in our lives and longings.

Growing up, I loved books and music from an early age, and was lucky enough to be given both in good measure. Like many other teens, there were diaries full of angst, and a good few poems too, some with angst and uncertainty, others amazed by the world around me.

Becoming a Christian at 19, it seemed like I now had the answers. There were, and still continue to  be, answers that I need.  But I didn’t know what to write about  - what I had written before (including doubt and uncertainty) no longer seemed to fit, even though I was still experiencing these things at times.

Perhaps it wasn’t coincidence that a day or so after reading the article, and hearing the news of friends having a new baby, I found myself looking in poetry anthologies for something to put in their card. Not finding anything that seemed to work, I took up my pen…and wrote a poem for the first time in ages.

Was it any good? No idea. But it said what I wanted to say to this new life. It was, as I wrote to the little girl’s parents, a gift of words.

What excites me at the moment is that this idea of story is making sense of my current communications projects at work. It’s making sense of my musings on my own story, and what God may be saying. It allows me to think about other people’s stories, through counselling. And perhaps there may even be a chance for that early love of story to come back through creative writing.

The stories are still about struggle. Uncertainty. But also overcoming these, and seeing who we become in the process. Finally, I may just have something to write about again.

1 comment March 18th, 2007

Who is my family?

Out last night to the leaving do of three work colleagues: two who have been with the organisation 30+ years and are retiring soon; another who has been with the office 15 years and is moving to our Manchester office.

We’ve known of the retirement coming up for a few years; celebrated the guys’ 60th birthdays with them  a few years back etc. The office move for S has also been known about for a few months too.

The speeches included mention of a few of their foibles, and a lot of care for and support of others, some of whom really needed the chance to make what they could of their lives, through the education work that I too am part of.

Today, my mind is full of images of the previous night: the smart frocks (for a change), the dancing, the people who made a big effort to come back and who we used to work with a few years ago.

BC tends to be likened to a family, and it’s certainly an image that works. Around 100 different offices; the chance to step into a new country and have people to relate to who have the same kind of goals as you. The chance to meet more ‘family’ when there’s someone you are both connected to; or to regain family when someone comes back.

I’m aware that this kind of family is a bit like the kind professionals often find - a surgeon working in country X may have more in common with his counterpart in country Y than among his neighbours. What was also special was the number of ‘externals’: people working in related organisations who value the colleagues we were honouring; who through shared activity and goals have become part of the family too.

I wanted to say something today in the blog about the mix of ideas that goes around my mind for these people. Like family, sometimes they are the last people we want to be with. We see them too often. We seem to have the same goals - but very different interpretations of them. We are meant to be going the same way - but we don’t necessarily like doing it together…

And yet, and yet. These are the people I spend so many hours of my days with. The ones known to Dan through many conversations, some of whom he’s met. We share each others’ aspirations, frustrations, sorrows and joys.

Whenever we are asked to look at the pictures of the church in the Bible, and to deal with a similar situation of people we are thrown together with, but who are part of our family, I am challenged to look at how Christian community is different. Many of my colleagues, with a different faith, or none at all, are out making a difference in a way sometimes I feel I only aspire to. They are the ones who notice quickly when I am weak. They look out for me, with no Biblical message to spur them on to doing so.

I am grateful to have this situation, to learn from them and to continue to ask: how am I viewing this ‘family’ I’m placed into? How am I communicating with them? How much can I learn from them for how I can interact with my church family?

A Bible verse came to mind today: Matthew 12: 46-50, where Jesus is told that his mother and brothers are waiting outside, after he has been meeting with a crowd. He responds, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” He concludes that the disciples with him are also family, as are any that do the will of God.

Who is my family? Perhaps particularly strongly for me today, my family includes those I work with, who I am called to be with. Whether or not they know God, whether they are trying to follow His will, they are the ones around me. And at a time when there’s a lot of change, a lot of people leaving, I feel more of a sense to stay, to be there for this family too.

Add comment March 17th, 2007

Book fair a go go

So, the latest Peebles book fair again, and a happy Saturday morning was spent by me and Dan, plus my parents, browsing a huge stock of second hand books.

The proceeds go to a range of charities - even though last year’s fair was partially snowed off on the Sunday, they still raised £8000 over the one weekend.  Hope they’ll do even better this year.

As we’ve been for a good four years now, we develop different techniques to stalk our prey.  I move in for the kill on the children’s books section (not to the kids, naturally), and was able to claim a few new ones to fill gaps in the collection.

Others (the men) tend towards the hard backs first.  Is this a greater prize?  Don’t know, but Dan reckons he bagged the only two science fiction reads in the hall.

You can also search by categories such as biography, Scottish-related books, as well as fighting past the multiple copies of “The Full Monty” on video on the entrance hall.  There’s generally a good antiquarian section too, although no special finds this year.

When it comes to bagging the collection, I favour the fairly brazen technique.  “I’ve brought my own bag, I have X amount to spend, and I don’t want any change.  How many of these can I have for my money?”  They’ve not refused me yet.

1 comment March 10th, 2007