So here are a few policies I think would be good to see politicians looking at:

1. instead of creating ever deeper and ever more complicated layers of CRB  bureaucracy, policy could change to go from doing endless background checks, to having a register where social services has a name list (no other details) which is updated each year, naming the people who come into most frequent contact with a child. That way, we can unchain children and parents to live with a little less fear.

2. Instead of forever trying to draw the bridge on illegal immigrants, we should work with the governments of those countries to create jobs for their people – why not? – not like you’d leave sunny climes for a rainy dark alien country for any other reason than to find safety and a good education for you&your family. That way, it could become easier to differentiate between legit asylum seekers and the rest.

3. Instead of having one MP per constituency, we should look at having 3 less paid locally selected power sharing MP’s. That way, more can be agreed on representation will be widened.

4. To encourage folks to try new things, local government across England should facilitate skills exchange sessions. oh, and subsidies for students wanting to study subjects that involve tangible skills such as welding, chip manufacturing etc.

5. There should be a tax break for venture capitalists investing in creative&digital start-up companies – we need to have a UK version of silicon valley.

6. Create national schemes for unemployed people where unless physically unable, unemployed men should work on the trainlines and updating the rail infrastructure. Work = benefits.

7. Cut down spending on arms drastically (800 mill for a navy boat…???) and with that money, buy assets in other countries including resource rich land, important and historical works of art.

That’s it for now. I’m sure there’ll be many more ideas that’ll come to me, and I’m sure some of these ideas will come to seem very silly and full of holes, but still, good practice writing them down.

If you have any suggestions, do get them on and let’s see what we get at the end.

Earlier this year at work, I was approached at work by a camera crew as a potential for a video camera interview.

Details aside, I initially agreed, but as we spoke (the interviewer&I) it became clear that the clip was being put together to go onto an important national website and worryingly, she had assumed (semi-rightly) that I was in a good enough (last minute) position to speak on camera about links between schools and employers. Was I flattered – of course. Was I scared – Yes…Suddenly glaring gaps began to appear in my knowledge of the topic at hand, and questions began to pop up in my head like speech bubbles – was I qualified enough to speak with authority on the topic? was it my place to speak on behalf of the city’s business, educational and creative&digital sector? why had the other more senior people not volunteered – did they know something I didn’t? Somehow (eventually) I managed to extract myself from the position of interviewee and nominate in my place someone who by title was in a better position to speak with authority on the topic. As it turns out, the eventual content came from the right source though perhaps something could be said for animation, which was perhaps the more sought after ingredient.

This moment helped to frame a recurring thought I’d been having recently – what value does silence offer? For example, have you ever heard of http://www.reckittbenckiser.com or other such global companies or their directors? How much do we really know about Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Nelson Mandela, David Filo, etc? And if we don’t know much about these people except from what they want us to know – is that to suggest that exposure that is not monitored and controlled can damage the reputation of one’s work in an individual or collective context? I find this difficult to believe as I always thought that successful people were so because they are loud and proud as it were on a specific topic of choice, with bully like tenacity.

So why is it that I sought to stay backstage and let someone else do the talking? Why is it that faced with opportunity to speak, silence seems the best answer? Personality – probably, Risk-aversness – most likely, and I could go on. It’s scary  when I think of the kind of information that people willingly share on social networking sites and I often wonder how all my statuses since joining facebook would read as a book and how I would cringe reading these back to myself like someone going back to their teenage diary uncovering epic insecurities, now laughable in the light of post-adolescence.

Anyway,as Ive been thinking about this, Ive realized that there seems to be an inbalance in everyday communication with speaking going on than listening,which is why I think I employ silence as a strategic tool. Not much of a confession really – just instinct based on catalogues of failures evident as one looks at the fate of folks whose quick words boomerang v quickly. Silence Ive decided is a useful tool to be used to stay in a game long term, whereas folks that like to ‘go all in’ as it were will inevitably either double up or double out, and one has to pick the right moment for a bold move in order to avoid failure. And this brings me to my next line of thought…the death of trial&error as a great way to learn.

Often we hear or read motivational speak summoning Thomas Edison and James Dyson and how many attempts they made and how many mistakes they made and how all of those eventually added up to products that changed the way we live. And yet,I wonder to myself – are there really people out there my age (26) taking risks and happilly making mistakes in their lives with big smiles to boot? Because I don’t see many if Im honest.the odd person moves to a different city,changes jobs,changes relationship status,yes,but where are today’s James Dysons’? Are they like me,the many who ended up having to take student loans to study, and as a result working steady jobs with the only concern being that of paying off their debts? if so, part of me thinks we may have missed a trick in educating the future UK workforce – instead of training folks that can go on to start world beating businesses, we now have a lot of overworked ‘fresh out of uni’ financial speculators in the city,ever younger&more stressed teachers, middle managers managing other people’s assets (not creating new ones), and in short a young workforce still awaiting the dawn of middle class middle wage comfort (whilst facing a nasty cocktail of societal,financial,&environmental challenges) and shy of the courage or appetite needed to breathe new life into a creaking economy.

Having some motivational guru telling a board of directors that they need to allow their young’uns rooms for trial&error is one thing, actually getting that to work whilst the bottom line determines what happens and what doesn’t is quite another thing altogether especially if the accountants have something to say about that! So, then it’s no surprise that very much like graduates with debts to service, UK businesses struggle to innovate&release talent (trial&error inclusive) in quite the same way as our US counterparts from a position of debt (tax cash cow). Why do people in the UK all use facebook,Twitter,google,linkd-in,myspace,yahoo,macs,iPods,iPhones etc. yet as a country, we have come up with no such meaningful home grown digital products (outside of tv spin offs) to export?

Just some thoughts, rant over.

I’m quite proud of getting this activated as this is a new year’s resolution for 2010 which has begun early.

I’m not quite decided on what I’m going to write about on this blog, but it will probably be a mixture of family news with pics&vids, thoughts on music, education, society, christianity, and technology.

Coming from a family of authors and academics, I’ve always had the urge to write myself and have been trying to reach this itch since writing my first poetry piece in high school. I’ll probably resurrect some of those old poems on this blog as well as use this space as a corkboard on which to paste my thoughts and ideas, from which hopefully I’ll also get some ideas back from you and other readers.

Eventually, I’ll figure out how to link this to facebook, tumblr, flickr and all those other jazzy sites. But for now, be satisfied in the knowledge that another dish has arrived on the menu.

I hope that you will be interested in following what I have to write about. I guess I see this as a journey of sorts where words will draw patterns that maybe even I don’t see though they come from me.

Yours sincerely

Philippe