Entries from October 24th, 2013

 

Blog, Staple Stories

A Bottle of Orange Squash – Balancing the Books

When I was a student I worked as a volunteer in a hospice serving drinks to the patients and their relatives. One morning I went into a room and met a young mother who was clearly 30-40 years younger than any of the other patients. She asked me if I would buy her some orange squash and as I was back in the next day I readily agreed.

That afternoon I went to my nearest supermarket and bought the best and most expensive bottle of orange squash. The following day I went back to the hospice and gave the bottle to the woman. She asked me to take the money from her purse and I explained that it was fine and was a gift. I then stupidly had an argument with this dying young woman about who should pay for the orange squash.

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Public Defender Service – A Level Playing Field?

I tried for many months to get answers from the MoJ as to whether their PDS offers the tax payer value for money. My MP Stuart Andrew has supported my attempts to gain answers by sending several letters to the MoJ and ministers.

Two things happened last week. Firstly I received another letter from my MP – “It appears, somewhat conveniently when considering the Department’s failure to fully address your concerns that my letter dated 17th July was never received.” He is pursuing the department for answers. More worryingly I picked up a link from the JRS website that the PDS have appointed a silk as Head of Advocacy.

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Coming Crisis

I recently learnt  that the Chinese symbol for “crisis” is represented by the two Sino-characters for “danger” and “opportunity”. Is that why I have heard such contrasting views from two highly respected business leaders this week?

In October, as part of the ILF I heard Duncan Bannatyne almost preach that “now is the time to start a new business”. Yet the following day at Leeds Business School I heard David Scott present an overview of our debt crisis and share his view that “Europe may be on the brink of a 10 year depression”.

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Developing My Website – Vienna

Over the past few months I have learnt a great deal and also had to recognise my limitations and where I need help. My friend Paul (who designed my identity) suggested a WordPress template that would be ideal for my initial website. So at the beginning of September I sat down and hit a brick wall of frustration. Given my lack of any real IT skills – it was my worst nightmare of incomprehensible, technical instructions. The lyrics from Ultravox’s Vienna came flooding back – “This means nothing to me” coupled with the dreaded, déjà vu type, recurring memory of a statistics exam at university! 

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