Personal Reflections - 30 September 2007

Sunday morning, a bright day, and I find myself reflecting on the thoughts and activities of the week.

Clare's last week at school leading up to muck-up day formed the core of the week at a family level. Now for the HSC.

As those who read this blog will realise, my daughters have a great influence on me in a whole variety of ways. They keep me in touch, I use them as a sounding board for ideas (they can be amazingly tolerant) and they keep me constantly entertained. There was an interesting example of their influence during the week.

Helen has been talking about Facebook for a while. She persuaded Clare, a trend that started with Bebo and went to MySpace. Now I had also been reading about Facebook on LinkedinBloggers, a group I use to keep me somewhat in touch with blogging developments.

Anyway, a week back a colleague at work showed me her site. I then joined so that I could finally check it out, but with no real intention of doing anything.

Within twenty four hours I received a message from Helen inviting us to become friends. Now how could any father refuse an invitation to become friends with his daughter? Of course I accepted, but then felt obliged to do something with the system. We will see where this takes us.

At some stage I must write a post about this family's Internet involvements.

With Rafe volunteering, the History of Australian and New Zealand Thought blog got going during the week. Rafe has put up two posts so far, one on the Mechanics Institutes, a second on science in Australia. For my part, I have been looking at Professor Condliffe and the WEA in New Zealand.

I am actually thrilled to get this one off the ground because I think that it will meet a gap.

Neil's Friday poem this week was Kenneth Slessor's Five Bells. For the benefit of overseas readers, this is one of Australia's best known poems.

So far I have written a companion post for each of Neil's posts. This one threw me, forcing me to spend a couple of hours researching. Now I think that I know what to say, but on the new blog, not this one. In doing so, I think that I can also make a link to Neil's mum, a small but satisfying thing.

Now I am not going to say any more at this point. I know that Neil reads this blog as I do his, so he will just have to wait!

Still on Neil, he drew my attention to the success that Thomas had had with a post on the US Republican Ron Paul. Thomas is on my regular read list, but because he has not been posting on a regular basis I had not checked. There is a lesson there, Thomas! This is a good post and worth a read.

Since I am on admonishments, where are you Legal Eagle? It is now nine days since your last post, and your friends are missing you!

Largely through Legal Eagle, I have become a regular reader of Club Troppo. There are two series of posts there that I want to become involved in at some point.

The first series is by Nicholas Gruen on policy towards the development of Australian manufacturing. Nick won't remember me, but if my memory is correct I was an SES officer in the Department at the time he joined John Button's staff. I think that my wife who was also a staffer in Minister Button's office overlapped with Nicholas.

I started a series on industry policy some time ago. I think that I should continue it.

A second series on Club Troppo is that by Ken Parish on constitutional issues. Now Mr Howard says that the Australian people are pragmatic, and indeed they are.

Mr Howard also says that the Australian people do not care about constitutional principles.

There is some truth to this, too. But that does not mean that such principles are not important. Ken Parish happens to believe, as do I, that we need to discuss them. Again, if Ken is prepared to discuss issues, I am very happy to join in.

Over at the New England Australia blog I have put up a stock take post on New England demography.

To prepare this, I had to go back through past posts. This reminded me of just how many posts I had written on particular issues. I am a structure person. This has its weaknesses, but it also means that I do build evidence over time.

The point? I think that it is now time to do a review as to just how well the NSW Government has done under its Ten Year Plan.