Category: Culture

Culture – the way we do things around here

  • FA Cup Final 2011

    FA Cup Final 2011

    Enjoyed watching the FA Cup Final 2011, this afternoon.  I do not support either side, but for the sake of football I was pleased Man City won. It  took  me way, way back to watching FA Cup finals with  my Dad.  Back in the seventies both ITV and BBC would cover the final and the coverage would start at breakfast time.  Slowly the atmosphere would build up.  

    The games did not always live up to the build up, but you couldn’t fault the build up.  It really was the golden age of the past, happy times, secure times and family times.  And after the match myself and some of the other boys would kick the ball around in the road, emulating our heroes in a completely carefree manner.  The game is so very different these days, one of the players was reputed to be on £220,000 a  week, something was lost in the translation.

  • Listening Exercises

    Listening Exercises

    Ah the rhetoric of listening exercises…

    The news media is like a William Burroughs cut-up these days.  I tend to surf many news websites and absorb bits of news as I skim the surface.  My deep engagement is missing, but it is how it is at present.  In my head, I mix up the coalition which initiated the military response in Libya with the conflict in terms of demonstrations in this country and the coalition government who are currently in power. It has all become sadly mixed up as I hear about demonstrators being shot dead and the coalition sending in fighter planes. It might be old age, but I feel like we are living through revolutionary times.  Although in all honesty some of the revolutions are the revolutions of my mind.

    In this country the coalition government have been unequivocal in asserting that they would not address demonstrators concerns.  We have to be grateful that we live in a democracy.  Strangely, the levels of public and professional  hostility towards the NHS privatisation have resulted in a listening exercise.  Apparently they are going to pause, listen and reflect. As they say I hear what you are saying, moving forward, blah, blah, blah.  And then I read that BBC Radio Question Time was cancelled because of a death on the railway line stopped politicians and the audience getting to the venue.  Another human tragedy. Questions go unasked, despite the highly publicised listening exercises, we are not really hearing the misery.

  • Blog Begins …

    Blog Begins …

    And so this blog begins, in this blog I intend to share my thoughts about ongoing  processes of changing both personal and organizational.  I am particularly interested in the perspectives of the past, the present and the future.   Woodland Decay refers to the interaction between the past (what was), the present (what is)  and the future (what will be).