Ok Computer

I appeared briefly and led with my chin on last night's late and live; I found the experience much warmer in both temperature and in terms of the meeting and greeting and general down to earthness than I experienced with my last televisual on Nolan live. That experience is embedded in my brain like the bit in Starwars when Princess Leia is having her chain yanked by Jabba the Hut.

The heat in the studio was horrendous and I got to wondering just how well the wacky baccy would grow is such balmy climes - puts a whole new connotation on chilling out in the green room. I also wondered if my less than thick thatch would expose a shiny expanse of blood pudding coloured scalp under those unforgiving lights. I also had my comment on the current economic downturn and the responsibility of our Government to resource organisations like mine to support the newly unemployed published yesterday in the Belfast Telegraph I was pleased with it because it was balanced and complimented the comments by John Simpson and The MD of the Construction Federation - Not quite a media luvvie but anything that keeps the issue up there is a plus.

I need 12 portable PC's, 2 external drives to store files, a hub and ideally internet access wherever they go. Software wise MS Office, foam-filled on wheels suitcase sized flight case, 50 headphone sets will 1,000 disposable ear covers, and 50 memory sticks oh and 12 wired mouse. Oh yes and ideally a portable electronic whiteboard and a few gangs of four and some disk imaging software. This is my wish list for Mobile-IT (say it like mobility) I want my colleagues to be able to offer the same service to unemployed people out in the community via community organisations but not all in fact not many at all have enough working kit to allow us to deliver our programmes off site. I have set myself a challenge to try and get this equipment or the £10K to buy it - I have looked at leasing but we don't have the money to do this. This seems like a tall order but I believe it is doable. Any ideas would be very gratefully received :o)

Escaping the rant race

My comment on unemployment appeared today on page 5 of the Belffast Telegraph and hopefully they will follow up with the advice piece which I feel will be of help to people not faced with unemployment before now. They have also given me an opportunity to publicise our service to the newly unemployed which will hopefully act as a catalyst for other organisations to do the same. By pure coincidence I was asked to participate in the audience of Late and Live on UTV tonight and whilst my only other television appearance was in 2004 on Nolan live (my friends and colleagues told me I soothed his savage breast) when I was being grilled, nay filleted on his spit regarding social housing; I held my own on that one so I hope tonight will be less challenging. Whilst I have no major hangups (apart from my lantern jaw which one could use to hang one's Gannex on an inclement day) about my looks, size and advanced age, I much prefer to be behind the scenes and 'a good face for radio' seems apt.

I remain seriously concerned regarding the impact of the current economic downturn/employment situation and the potential for racial tension turning to racial violence. I have had a few preliminary discussion with colleagues and I am going to try and do more.

Home thoughts from a broad

I have decided that to do nothing about Mr Facile and his racist comments would be letting myself down. I sincerely hope I don't have set eyes on this bigoted little twit again but when I pondered on things I realised that Mr Facile might not be alone in his views and that there might be others of his kidney venting their racist spleen when working to supposedly support community development.

When I apply for government funding, European grant aid or submit tenders to deliver services, I have to demonstrate my organisation's equal opportunities and diversity policy and often how my organisation meets the needs of section 75 groups (section 75 of the Northern Ireland act) I have got to thinking that if consultants working with community organisations and undertaking government/public/European funded work like evaluations, business plans and feasibility studies, in order to be elegible for this public money, must complete mandatory equality and diversity training. I know its only an on paper thing and a lot of racists and bigots are savvy enough not to overstep the mark but at the very least it lets them know that they could be in the frame if someone likes me complains.

I am going to contact a number of our political representatives tomorrow and start the ball rolling. I am also going to speak to the Equality Commission and see if they will support me.

Watch this space.

Mind your PQS'

I waited for a while before comitting my claws to the keyboard on my return from attending a community planning day. I was there because my organisations provides services to each of the communities/neighbourhoods involved the the activity. In the interests of respect for those attending I don't wont to give much concrete detail except to say that I attended because I have a lot of respect for KO and his colleagues and wanted to offer my support.

It wasn't an easy meeting as those attending and the communities and organisations they represent are at different places and colloborative working whilst on the service is alive and well, there is understandably ethno-centrism and apprehension over pooling resources for a common goal and the possible resulting loss of resources for area based activities. However, there is a willingness to try and there has been a lot of effort from community activists to get things to the point they have got to. Some have different ideas on the focus of the joint activity and unfortunately, this took a lot of time to bat about with the emphasis on another model which has it merits but needs to be adjusted to reflect some fundamental differences - not least location. Anyway, getting to the focal point the group used a facilitator who specialised in business improvement (which also as an aside happens to be my MSc)

He didn't really help; no in fact, he hindered and was at best naive about how community deve lopment operates and at worst (we'll get to that in a moment) downright patronising and offensive. I felt sorry for KO and his colleague who had worked so hard to drive the project and found it back to first base. I think that can be fixed but they need the right project champion someone who knows how to negotiate and consensus build.

Anyway, Mr Facile who I will incidently not be attending any further meetings with, during one of his gambits spoke of how a particular community needed to be wary of the encroaching [insert minority ethnic community here] and followed up with a post qualifying statement that he wasn't being racist it was a reality. Oh dear; I very quickly told him that I found his comments offensive and I found it unconscionable that he should choose to single out any minority ethnic community as taking over an area;

This is Northern Ireland we have a bit of level on the prods and micks stuff but hey there we have one heck of a leap to make in terms of how we create a sense of belonging, equal opportunity and not least a safe place and space for minority ethnic communities and migrant workers;

Racism and xenophobia which manifests itself in the same intolerant, violent and murderous behaviour as witnessed here over the last near as damn 40 years, is alive and well in a town near you and me. We may have skimmed some plaster over the sectarian stuff at least enough to stop most of the murders and bombings but those same mindsets are alive and well and waiting to be applied to the next threats - this time to our economic freedom i.e. "They are over here and taking our jobs/over loading our health care and schools and taking our houses and benefits"

That a consultant should choose to jump on this bandwagon sickened me to the stomach. I think he thought he was ok among the white faces but It wasn't just me who was shocked and sickened and I hope he learned that you don't need to be in a green room to end up with a red face.

Inter-dependence day

I scared myself today; not by bungee jumping, cleaning false teeth (long story that one) or checking my bank unbalance. Yesterday, my work email account started to go a bit booga wooga. I was tantalising myself watching the emails coming into my blackberry and not my work inbox. By 5pm everyone in the office was having the same problem and despite doing all sorts of stuff to the server and our IT boffin doing his thang remotely, not an email got through.

I worked from home this morning and again they were a popping into my blackberry but the old in box was as empty. I felt the panic rise; we were waiting for stuff and had to get other stuff out; ok I could use my gmail account and click my claws on the minsicule blackberry but this only provided a bit of a solution. European funding applications, partner organisations depending on stuff getting to them and the hassle of having to send everything with a I am sending this via my gmail account as we are experiencing problems with our system, please reply to......

The problem was fixed at 4pm today but the damage to my nerves was done.

I realised today just how much we depend on email. I was forlorn today and didn't know what to do with myself as most of the documents I was working on and created were either received by email or I needed to send them out by email. Even formal letters tend to be sent as templates as attachments - I probably only send out one letter a week. I had 148 emails in my inbox at 4.20pm this afternoon and of course, I had to look at them all even the ones I had already squinted at on the blackberry.

I am very fussy about sorting and storing my stuff and archiving it but today was a wake up call and left me wondering how I would run my business if it all suddenly went back to letters and faxes. The idea of having to communicate with 15 European partners by letter, fax and telephone does not bear thinking about when I can click 'send' and reach their in boxes in 2 or 3 minutes and also using google groups for discussion forums and document uploads for projects.

When I was an office junior in 1973 a calculator was a luxury and photocopiers and faxes not there yet. My next job had two directors who invested in new technology and we had a computer the size of a transit van and a telex machine with binary tape and electric ibm golfball head typewriters with inbuilt correction tape I thought I was in tomorrow's world. Today was strange but as well as scaring me in terms of how dependent we are on email/internet communication it made me realise that tomorrow's world very soon becomes all our yesterday's.

From my own correspondent

I have a good friend and colleague (who has given me permission to quote them here) the wonderfully talented KO as I shall term him who needs to be blogging too. KO gave me some comments on my blog generally and also some feedback on the current recession here in Norn Iron - KO doesn't pull his punches :o)

Yes, we have the biggest rise in unemployment in thirty-seven years – yet, unsurprisingly, given the piss-poor standard of public administration in Northern Ireland, complacently favourable comparisons are being made with levels in the sceptr’d isle. Maybe we shall all be treated to the vision of the sun being eclipsed by massed squadrons of flying pigs and late evening and night time vistas of thousands of blue moons - accompanied by the receipt of the resources you need. Eh? What do you think? Like, do you think it’s going to happen?

The question is what would KO and come to think of us the rest of us do?

Opportunity Knocks but it also costs

There is an assumption that Northern Ireland is not experiencing the battering of recession currently being experienced by our close neighbours here and across the shuck. We are certainly not a safe haven and it has to be remembered that our starting point in terms of productivity, skills and employment and in particular the highest levels of economic inactivity (call it long-term unemployment in a yellow mac and sou'wester) which sit at circa 27% of the working population and are more like 50-65% in some of the most deprived areas in Belfast.

Hence we have a push and pull - the push, well more of a gentle nudge really, given the needs profile of the folks we work with and the personal, social and emotional employment barriers we are working with them to address and the pull - ensuring we work our little cotton socks off to ensure that the newly unemployed are not a feeder into a shiny new category of 'New long-term unemployed' both present similar challenges but need a different approach to dealing with issues of confidence and self-esteem; those in door marked 'Push' require help and the dignity of risk to build theirs and at the same time access to employment and training opportunities and lots of one-to-one mentoring support. Those in the door market 'Pull' require help to retain their skills, confidence and self-esteem and at the same time receive support to market themselves in the current labour market. Sounds similar? it might be and we have staff with the skills to work with both - unfortunately we don't have the resources to work with all.

That is the dilemma without support the Pull will become the Push and the Push will be pushed further back.

I had the opportunity following yesterday's blog and by sheer coincidence to write a piece for the evening paper. My thrust was asking our NI Executive to demonstrate leadership and innovation in giving organisations like mine and dedicated, experienced people like my colleagues the resources and flexibility to both push and pull - otherwise we all might as well shove off.