Those remarkably wealth Australians!

Canadian historian Christopher Moore's piece on 19 July, History of being richer than them, begins:

Canadian journalist Stephen Marche caught the US by the ears recently with an article noting that Canadians are now richer than Americans -- and crediting the difference to Canada's "hard-headed socialism."

Canadians obviously take a certain malicious pleasure in that after having been so looked down on by their US neighbours.  Washington Post journalist Dylan Matthews decided to investigate further. He found that if you took median rather than average wealth, Canada was even further ahead. But the graph included with the story had another remarkable feature, leading Christopher to remark:  "Canada ahead of the US, but how'd the Aussies get so rich?"

Sunday Essay - "Eish babba": time, memory & vengeance

This poster came via a South African Ndarala colleague, Philip Van Zyl. It was pure accident that it made sense to me.

A week back, I happened to read a South African Broadcasting story on the failure of some South African schools to open because there were no text books. More precisely, the schools in question had no text books. If you don't have access to history books, then you don't have access to history. As the girl says, "Eish babba! Don't know this Verwoerd. I don't have a History text book yet...."

Just at the moment, my reading has taken me in the direction of time and our perceptions of time. Central to that is the process of forgetting.

Some of my somewhat older Australian Labor Party friends, essentially those in the fifty plus bracket, are sometimes distressed to find that the younger generations have no real recollection of the events surrounding the dismissal of the Whitlam Government. To them, the 1972 It's Time campaign that elected the Whitlam Government and subsequent events have achieved iconic status.

In fact, they are a little lucky, for those events are better remembered than many simply because they were important to people who wrote or filmed.

I have written before that three generations is about the maximum for any event to remain in living memory. That's true, but its also true that only major events or broad impressions remain alive. In practice, we only really remember events that happened after we were born because they are the only things that we have experienced. Our memory of earlier events is always second hand.

In the hunting and fishing or agrarian communities that between them constitute 99 per cent of the human experience, historical memory was largely passed from one generation to the next through personal contact, although written texts became more important in the most recent centuries.

In Aboriginal Australia, the young listened in the flickering light of fire beneath a vast dome of sky made brilliant by a million stars. Today, the sky is dimmed by bright city lights, while young people's busy lives leave them little time for verbal learning or even extended casual conversation outside immediate peer groups. "Eish babba, I don't have time to listen!" The experiences that all Australians once had of the broader natural or even human life are compressed into obligatory excursions.

To be human is to forget. The present always crowds out the past, even that past that we have ourselves experienced. There are good practical reasons for this. Among other things, our memories would become unbearably crowded if every single experience was retained in front memory.This hold especially true for bad memories. "Eish babba, I don't want to remember."

In a very strange way, current life gives us the worst of both worlds.

According to research, our positive memories do have a practical physiological effect. A remembered quite scene that we loved, the sound of water falling on a tin roof for example, slows our brain waves, Equally, a continued bad memory recreates the physical reactions we had at the time. Today, there is little quiet time for the good, while we reinforce the bad through constant publicity and obligatory counselling.

When Shakespeare wrote "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones" he wasn't far wrong. Any reading of history shows that the memories of the bad carried down through the generations reap awful subsequent results. Mind you, I would also argue that the good carries on. It's just that we forget the good, accept it, while vengeance stains the human record in a very visible way.

The King James version of the Bible states: "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord". We live in a modern secular world in which many regard the very concept of a God as an arrant superstition, so let me phrase this another way.

If you seek vengeance as opposed to justice, if you make vengeance your personal responsibility, then you can be pretty sure that the evil you do will live after you. We remember Nelson Mandela because he put vengeance aside.  

"Eish babba, you have become far to serious." I think that's right. I really hadn't intended to turn this Sunday Essay into a sermon!  

Postscript

In a way, this particular post has taken me in directions that I hadn't wanted to go, although the issues were on my mind because of my latest train reading, David Christian's Maps of Time: and introduction to big history (University of California Press, 2005), as well as subsequent developments linked to the Father F case (Four Corners, the Armidale Express and Father F).

At the time I wrote the post, I hadn't properly focused on a somewhat related piece by Winton Bates, Should punishment be about retribution or deterrence?. Winton has now added a postscript linked to this post.

I fear I have very confused views on some of these issues. I just can't see things in black and white terms, something that means that I am very out of touch  with, or at least at variance from, current attitudes. I also have severe problems with some of the more abstract discussions.

My end discussion on vengeance, on the sometimes advantages of forgetting, partly reflected but my own values. But it also reflected an empirical judgment based on my understanding of history that vengeance or revenge carried down through the generations wreaked havoc on those generations.  

If we look more broadly, all groups, all societies, have ways of punishing wrong doers defined as those who break that group or society's codes. This was true in Aboriginal Australia and is equally true today. In human terms, the idea of either justice or the rule of law is a relatively modern phenomenon linked to the rise of the state. In those ideas, an abstraction is created that exists independent of the individual or the group or even the state. This is an important ideal in limiting the growing coercive power of the state. Yet as soon as you scratch the surface, drop below, instant messes emerge.

The idea of deterrence, of the use of punishment to deter wrong doers, is a very old one. Yet it has also been a very limited concept, for the idea that punishment should deter is actually a purely empirical issue. Does it do so? If so, at what cost? It is also a complicated issue because it is inexplicably entwined in practice with the idea of retribution, of sanctioned revenge. Winton defined this in these terms: "Retributive justice is concerned primarily with giving criminals the punishment they deserve – the crucial variable is the degree of moral outrage the crime engenders." Now Winton qualified this a little later, but to my mind it is still sanctioned revenge.

Things get more complicated still because we need to add to the mix the ideas of contrition, rehabilitation and redemption. These are linked but different issues that actually sit oddly within the justice system.

Some years ago, a friend was found guilty of a significant white collar crime connected with the collapse of his company. I was interviewed as part of the pre-sentencing process. Did my friend display contrition for his crime? They didn't think so.

I really struggled with this. My friend had pleaded not guilty, and still believed that he had not committed a crime. So he wasn't contrite in that sense. However, he was certainly sorry for the losses inflicted and wondered what he might have done better to avoid the collapse. But this was not contrition as defined in the criminal justice game.

If you look at the history of the NSW child welfare system, you will find a constant tension between the weighting placed upon deterrence, retribution and rehabilitation. You will also find a continuing tension between the child welfare system and the criminal justice system, between a system concerned with the welfare of children and that concerned with the punishment of children.

There are no right answers, just a constant balancing over time. Today, we regard the English criminal justice system that transported young petty criminals to Australia as inhumane. In practice, I am not sure that there is much difference between that and the Northern Territory's three strikes legislation. At least the convicts had a chance of a better life.        

Access Economics, Michael Pascoe & the end of The Australian Mining Boom

On 23 July the Australian media carried stories reporting on an Access Economics report that the Australian mining boom would end in two years. Peter Martin's Mining boom forecast to end in two years is an example. The following day, this led a very snooty piece from Michael Pascoe in the same paper: Accessing a headline opinion.  I quote from the start of story:

Well this is embarrassing. The future of the private economic forecasting industry is under threat. Some cruel spoil sports have been keeping note on prior forecasts that failed. So what will Deloitte Access Economics do for free publicity?

The Deloitte Access Economics brand was plastered across media yesterday thanks to its forecast that the resources boom is all over in two years and that the federal budget surplus is no more.

Trouble is, it seems Access has been forecasting the imminent demise of the aforementioned boom almost since it started. Who knows, maybe this time they will be right.

Not nice, Michael!

During the what is now called the GFC or global financial crisis, I almost went ballistic at what I saw as headline scare mongering by Access's Chris Richardson. On 28 January 2009 my Armidale Express column was headed Access Economics feeds the herd instinct.

I watched Australia just before Christmas. There is a spectacular stampede scene where cattle being driven to Darwin are deliberately spooked by the bad guys. Once started, all the cattle go with the herd in a blind panic.

The release of the latest report by Access Economics on the Australian economy made me quite angry because it played to the herd instinct. And we don’t have a little kid to stand in front and bring the mob to a halt.

I have a deal of respect for Access.

Sometimes known as the Treasury in exile, the firm was founded by former colleagues from the Australian Treasury. Their economic reports go into the board rooms of all the big firms in the country. Their reports also attract media attention, a great deal of media attention if, as appears to be the case here, they carefully craft their words to attract that attention.

The single message that came through the media reporting was that the Australian economy was buggered. Access says so.

The previous September I had been in Shanghai as handbag at, of all things, an international conference of insolvency practitioners. As the crisis deepened, conference numbers dropped sharply as people went back to work. I left a confident Australia and came back to gloom and doom. But whichever way I cut the the numbers, I couldn't see that that gloom was justified in local terms. In January just before Access released its report, I wrote in part in Australian Business Solutions Magazine: 

While Australia could not hope to be immune from the global downturn, we remain a remarkably lucky country.

Although affected by the global financial crisis, our banking system remains stable. Australia has no net Government debt at national level, while the Howard Government built up consistent budget surpluses. Further, the decision by former Treasurer Keating to float the currency means that our exchange rate has depreciated at just the time we needed it to do so to provide a domestic buffer.

Influenced in part by this depreciation, our net trade position itself has turned around at just the time we needed it to do so.

In recent years, the balance on goods and services (what Australia sells internationally less what the country buys) has been negative. This has been funded by private overseas borrowings especially by our banking system, creating a channel down which the effects of the US sub-prime crisis first flowed.

The most recent trade statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show a very important turn-around in this position. In simple trade terms, Australia moved from a net consumer to net saver at just the right time, thus cushioning the effect of the global financial crisis.

My conclusion was that things would be okay. I got some things wrong. I didn't see some elements of the fragility of the global economy, nor did I forecast the Euro crisis, but my view of the domestic economy was spot-on. So Access was wrong and I was right.

This time, and while I haven't read the Access report, I agree with Access. To understand this, you need to understand that Australia has experienced two related but very different mining booms.

The first is a demand side boom, the second a supply one.

On the demand side, the country has benefited from the best terms of trade for a very long time from high mineral prices. This is the boom targeted by things such as the resource rent tax. It is also a boom that started coming off the boil quite some time ago.

On the supply side, a demand boom leads to new investment. This is the second boom, a rapid expansion in investment in new supply. It is this second boom that still has a little while to run, that is presently helping hold up the economic numbers. Yet it has also been slowing down.

Big investment projects have long lead time. The investment now underway dates back some time. The new investment due to begin over the next few years has been choked off by a combination of reduced prices with a rapid escalation in Australian costs. Australian resource development is now, on all reports, the highest cost development in the world. So existing development projects will continue, but the pipeline is emptying.

This doesn't mean doom and gloom for the Australian economy. It does mean that there are some issues that we need to address. 

Postscript

Two thoughtful related pieces from the Sydney Morning Herald.

In Resources boom not ending, but changing, Ian Verrender takes a positive view of Australia's economic outlook:

The first part of the boom - the construction investment frenzy - may have peaked. It may have just a few more years to run. But the ongoing part - the bit that involves decades of vastly increased mineral exports and export earnings - has yet to really kick in.

Central to his argument is the belief that while resource prices have come off the boil, Australia will still benefit from the extra production flowing from the resource construction boom.

In a related piece, Why the Reserve Bank governor is an optimist, Ross Gittins discusses the reasons why Australian Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens remains a positive glass half full person; there are problems, but Australia is well equipped to weather them.

Over on the ABC's The Drum, Alan Kohler takes a far more negative view. To his mind, deleveraging associated with high debt levels will continue to drag down global economic performance. I quote:

The point is that it (debt) hasn't come down one bit since the crisis of 2007-08. There has been a lot of talk of austerity, and passionate argument from economists like Paul Krugman that it shouldn't happen, but there hasn't been much of it yet, and certainly not enough to reduce debt.

I'm not suggesting there should have been - far from it - but if and when it does happen, watch out.

Maybe the world's savers will be prepared to forgive the debt, or do a debt for equity swap. No, they won't do that. Or maybe the debtors could print enough money to create inflation and reduce the value of the debt that way. That won't work either because the creditors would simply demand higher and higher interest rates via the bond market so that the debtors wouldn't be able to service the loans.

But cutting debt the old-fashioned way (spending less than you bring in for a while) risks setting up a feedback loop. The "paradox of thrift" applies, which, as John Maynard Keynes explained, states that if everyone tries to save then aggregate demand will fall, which will result in total savings actually falling because of lower consumption and economic growth.

I am in the somewhat funny position of broadly agreeing with all of them! Talk about a bob each way!

In commenting, let me start with a comment from Ian Verrender that I strongly disagree with:

No one, least of all those closest to the action at the big miners, saw the China slowdown coming. Until two months ago, the world's biggest miner and Australia's biggest company, BHP Billiton, had committed itself to the greatest capital expansion program in global history, $80 billion over three years. Now it is having second thoughts.

That first sentence is just not true. Michael Pettis, among others, saw a slow down coming. Even yours truly could see it. The second sentence may be correct, although my impression is that BHP has been signaling growing market weakness for some time.

Michael Pettis argues that the structural imbalances in the Chinese economy are such that pain does lie ahead. Pettis also takes a very negative view on Europe. His most recent post, The unacceptable behavior of the market, manages to combine a negative view of Europe and China. Whether he is right or not, the probability is that Chinese growth will continue for the present, even if at a slower rate. By contrast, Europe's leverage problems will continue as an economic drag.

The critical issue from an Australian perspective is just what all this will mean for the Australian economy. How can one plan in the face of so much uncertainty? What if the worst happens and we have that perfect economic storm in which Europe and China both crash, bringing the rest of the world down with them?

Nobody can plan against a perfect storm except by not going to see. Indeed, attempts to do so are likely to just make things worse. The most probable outcome is that Australia will continue its run of luck. Assume that Europe stays in recession, that Chinese growth does drop. Our export prices will drop, but production is still likely to grow because of growing capacity combined with our relatively low cost of production. We will simply increase market share. To the degree export receipts do drop, then the value of the Australian dollar will decline, cushioning the fall.

So the mining boom may be ending just as previous booms have ended, but it need not mean economic disaster. I suspect it won't. In fact, it might be quite a good thing, because presently severe adjustment pressures - the hollowing of other parts of the Australian economy - will ease.

The role of editor in an on-line world

Two week's ago, I reported (What do you want to know about e-publishing?) on my decision to enrol in an e-publishing course. While I haven't said anything since, the first two sessions have been as good as I hoped. Our tutor, David Henley, is good, while those enrolled are an interesting group including Dexter Dunphy who is interested in publishing his poetry on line. 

I will write something more on the things that I have learned a little later in the course just to help me consolidate my thoughts. For the moment, I mention that Neil Whitfield has put up his own post on e-publishing, E-books and editing–opportunity and hazard.

Over on Facebook, Helen Dale (skepticlawyer), wrote "Helen Dale had forgotten how difficult it is to edit to length for purposes of journalism. She is being reminded - with some force - why she hasn't done any opinion-editorial work since 2002." Helen is no mean writer, she won a Miles Franklin award in an earlier life; I feel for her!

In his post, Neil wonders (among other things) about the role of editing and the editor in an on-line world. All forms of publication, and e-publishing is just another form, have their own rules dictated by the structure of the medium. Because e-publishing is apparently so easy, it leads to real quality control problems. Neil gives one example.

To my mind, editing and the role of editors is just as important in the on-line environment as in print. The form of editing is changing, for the opportunities and constraints of on-line publishing affect the way words are presented and combined with other elements. Yet in a world that contains an ever growing volume of really bad crap, something that I referred to in a different context in Sunday Essay - is the internet drowning in it's own excreta?, a good editor can be vitally important in giving you that edge that allows your work to stand out.

Of course, these things are never clear cut. Some badly written pieces will sell because they appeal to to a particular market. Indeed, a good editor may even be a problem here! But I think that my comment is still true as a generalisation.

Some years ago, I read a biography of English writer Somerset Maugham. For the life of me, I cannot remember the title. That's a pity, because it was a very good book! I do remember, however, the descriptions of the sometimes complicated relations between Maugham and his editor. It was Maugham's work, but it gained from the editing.

As I write, youngest is using an editor to check her first book. It's not the first unpublished novel she wrote, just the first to be edited. Clare is a very good writer, different from her father, probably better than her father, but different. Despite her ear for dialogue, her grammar is so bad that it distracts from her writing.

That comment is not a criticism of her schooling. Clare works in bursts of enthusiasm and, when writing, just writes. It's very much part of her personality. Commenting on her preferred sporting role as hockey goalie, I once commented that the role suits her perfectly: long periods of nothing to do but gaze at the world, followed by intense bursts of excitement! So editing provides a check and a discipline.

Her father, too, could benefit from a good editor. Neil notes that much of what we regular bloggers write is actually first draft. Get it written, get it out. Sometimes that leads to painful results, but it's the reality of what we do.

The world changes if we want to turn our scribblings into something more. Now we have to consolidate, revise and edit. Now we could benefit from an editor, an external critic.

For the moment, the changes that have been taking place in publishing directly threaten the traditional role of editor. Editors are being retrenched as print publishers contract. My feeling is that this is just a transition, that the editor will re-emerge as an important element in the mix. The detail of the role will change, but the core elements will remain.

Postscript 24 July 2012

My friendly unpaid research assistant kvd drew my attention to these pieces by the Sydney Morning Herald's Judy Prisk. She occupies the apparently new position - at least new to me - of  Readers' Editor.

• 11 July 2012 Slow and steady no longer wins the race.
• 25 July In the frenzied world of digital-first news, a quick fix is essential.

I'm writing while eating tea after my return from the latest session in the e-publishing course. Two things stand out in my mind.

The first is the need to flow chart the e-publishing process. I find that this helps me understand. I will do this over the next week or so, get it checked, and then post it here. I should warn you, it won't be flash. My graphic skills can best be described as miniscule!

The second is the limitations in the e-publishing world as compared to either print or the broader internet. There are many things that you either can't or shouldn't do because of the problems they create. Like tables! You must work to the limitations of the medium.

I won't be posting today beyond this postscript. I fear that I need to settle down with some estimates spreadsheets due tomorrow.

Are critics of The Shire just showing their age?

After watching the first episode of The Shire (What did you think of The Shire?), I was determined to watch the second. I lasted less than five minutes! Look, I accept that I am the wrong demographic, but even so. Watching the twitter feed, I think that best thing the show has going for it (apart from bits of the soundtrack that I rather like) is that so many people seem to be watching it so that they can bag it.

Mind you, looking at the tweets and also the media reaction such as this live blog of tonight's episode, I am not at all sure that the older members of Gen Y or the younger members of Gen X who appear to dominate the feeds are at all representative of Ten's target demographic. Maybe just too old! Ouch.

In the meantime, I leave the last word to ‏@KelynnWolfe - "Australians I implore you. Don't watch #theShire anymore!! Even ironically. Let it die quietly!"

I think it time to return to a more fulfilling topic, the economy. 

Sunday Essay - Keddies and the importance of values

Quite a bit of my professional work has involved advice to professional services firms on ways to improve professional and business performance. In that advice, the nature of billing practices has been one common theme. Firms have to capture value for time, yet time based billing can create a real incentive for overcharging.

Keddies was a major Australian law firm specialising in personal injury matters. Back in July 2008 (Corporatisation, Keddies and professional ethics) I reported briefly on growing allegations about overcharging by Keddies. In October 2008 (Keddies case threatens legal billing practices) I reported that Keddies had been forced to retrench staff, while the whole legal billing system in Australia was now under review. Then in November 2010 (Keddies, Slater & Gordon & the law.) I noted the sale of Keddies to Slater & Gordon for a very large sum. I wondered at the time about the wisdom of the purchase. 

Since then, the matter has dragged on and on through multiple court cases, leading to the actual or potential bankruptcy of former Keddies partners and a fairly unsavoury unveiling of the practices involved in what John Grisham wrote about as ambulance chasing.

Now ABC Radio National's Background Briefing has provided a full update on the saga. You will find audio and transcript here.

I will write a fuller professional update on another blog. For the moment, I just want to make a brief personal comment.

In the ABC report, a former Keddies partner was quoted as saying, in effect, that you had to spend money to make money. Paraphrasing, you could charge x and get the client y. But if you invested more time and resources, you could get the client more. The problem was that the extra costs involved meant that the proportion of the additional payment going to the client fell. The client was still better off, in some cases significantly so, but the ratio between charges to the client and the final cash to the client looked bad.

I have some sympathy with that viewpoint. Keddies problem and now the problem for the whole profession is that the real examples of overcharging, and they do seem to have been very real, mean that you can't tell the difference between overcharging and the case where extra effort gets the client more, but at a price. The bills might look very similar.

A few years back I went to some staff functions put on by lawyers Turner Freeman. Turner Freeman has practices in related areas including especially dust diseases cases. In this case I was there in my handbag role. I may have been there as handbag, but it didn't stop me listening with my professional hat on.

Law is a competitive business. Lawyers like to win. To the extreme gunslingers, winning including charging for winning is the very stuff of life. You can see this in shows like Boston Legal. The thing that struck me at the Turner Freeman functions was the important role played by values in constraining what was done.

In talking about values, I am not talking about formal codes of conduct, but about values as felt operational realities that had meaning, that affected what was done. Essentially, we can't do that because....

In the Keddies case, the game seems to have become everything. Values fell away. Winning and charging for winning became central.

Values can't be imposed: they have to be created, learned and internalised; they have to be constantly refreshed. The single most important test of values is whether or not a person will be rewarded for acting consistent with them even when it is against the firm's immediate interests.

As a management consultant, this is remarkably easy to detect. You only have to listen to staff.         

Saturday Morning Musings - just a flicker in time

Just at the moment I'm bogged down in a question of geology. Rod Holland kindly gave me access to a copy of this PhD thesis.

Sounds dry, doesn't it? Yet it gives me some basic information that I need on New England during the Pleistocene and Holocene periods. Mind you, to get that basic information I actually have to learn what some of the words mean! Then I have to write it up in ways that non-geological noddies like me can understand.

My main writing priority at the moment is to complete a first working draft on Aboriginal New England, that section of my history that deals with human occupation of the North up to 1788. It's not the first study that deals with this topic. I am writing a general history and could not do so without standing on other's shoulders. However, it will be, I think, the first attempt at a full synthesis of a pre-European history of a particular large region within Australia. That's quite exciting.

Humans are pattern animals. Just as New England's Aboriginal peoples sought for patterns in the world around them, so I am seeking the patterns in their lives over the millennia since they first arrived in what would become New England.

We just don't know when the first human being set foot on New England. My best guess at the moment is between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago. That's a very long time. Our lives are short. It's only when we stand back and look over millennia, over generation after generation, that we get a real feel for transition and longevity.

The first families that entered the new territory never seen before by humans did not just enter a different world, although to them it was probably not so much different but a transition from an adjoining area, they entered a world that was very different from that we know today.

I say transition because human expansion across the globe was really a movement from one place to a neighbouring place. I say very different because the long period of human occupation of New England provides plenty of time for basic planetary forces to work their will. What we think of as the present coastline, a line that we try to defend, is just one dotted line on a map that has varied hugely during the human occupation of New England.

The certainties that modern humans have as to place and the appearance of the world around them are just a flicker in a process of eternal change.    

Conformity, simplicity & personal down sizing

This image came via Neil Whitfield. It is only loosely connected if connected to tonight's brief comments. Bit what the hell. It made me laugh!

Little Boxes was a hit in 1963. It attacked the conformity of middle class society, as does this cartoon in a way.

Despite my sometimes fulminations, I have a more positive view. Western middle class society has been a considerable success measured not just by the passage through life, we have been living in an age of unparalleled abundance in historic terms, but in terms of contribution to others.

My train reading has switched. I won't give you the book at this point, but it deals with time, history, intensification, entropy and the rise of complexity. In a way, it triggered my last post, Systemic complexity and the need for simplification. Technology has allowed us to manage complexity in a way never seen before. Yet the same technology embeds complexity into our systems that, arguably, makes revolution if not collapse inevitable.

I guess that's my point about simplification. We have to simplify to survive. While I have been a supporter of things like the slow food movement, I am not a supporter of the modern trend to clean out our possessions, to down size to smaller places. It's not just that I love my stuff - another modern word - too much. To my mind, all it actually does is clean up our home spaces so that we can do more outside home. In other words, it's an integral element of modern complexity. We alter to give us more personal space to go faster.

Our house ceases to be our home but, instead, becomes just another launch pad.   

Systemic complexity and the need for simplification

I enjoyed this graphic that came from Donn Garrett via Lynne.

What is normal indeed! mention this now because it links to my last post, Has true innovation in Australian education declined?. There in a comment I wrote in part:

Current administrative systems are incredibly dense and complex. If you want to get a feel for this, try mapping them using Microsoft Project building in steps, decision points and estimated lags. It's actually surprising that anything gets done. It's not surprising that a lot of time is involved.

Then experimentation depends upon space to experiment in, resources to experiment with. The idea that systemic rigidities can impede new things is not knew. The term skunk works widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works.

The problem in education is that scope for experimentation has narrowed, while its harder to find resources. There is no educational equivalent of a skunk works.

I suppose that I have always been a reformer. Here one of my weaknesses in a professional sense lies in the struggles I have had to ensure that my advice or my actions are set within the bounds of the current normal when I know that there is a better way.

There is very little point in saying to a client, a manager or a board or council that they could do things in a better way that falls outside the iron jaws set by normal processes and procedures, unless you can actually show them a path to get round those jaws. It's not helpful. It just adds to the frustration often experienced by people who know that things could be done better, but can't do anything about it. Rarely, and these have been the greatest satisfactions of my life, happenstance means that new things are possible. Then the dam breaks and real change occurs.

The forces of entropy are strong. Big organisations require rules - policies and procedures - to make them work, to allow the whole to hang together. This can conflict with a simple administrative rule, the need to push decisions down to the lowest practical level. The actual act of doing is best managed by those who have to do. The problem is that this creates mess, untidiness, lack of uniformity that can be difficult to accept or manage. How do you control something when the real act of doing is out of sight or indeed measurement? What happens when things go wrong?

One of the very simply messages that I have tried to get across in my writing is that complexity rises, action slows, with every additional step in decision processes. That was the point of my Microsoft project example. If you actually chart the various decision points and the interactions between them, you get a very complex web.

Take a simple decision to build a house in a particular area to meet a social need. That simple decision may need to go through more than sixteen major decision points and in so doing comply with a similar number of laws, rules and protocols. Once the contract is let, the physical act of building may not take time. But the time involved in getting to actually let that contract may exceed the building time by a factor of four or five or even ten fold.

My message is simple. If you want real improvement, forget in-principle arguments, although these are important; just chart what actually happens at a detailed process level. Then simplify. This will help you break free from the trap of the normal, to pose more fundamental questions.          

Has true innovation in Australian education declined?

I was at my e-publishing course tonight (What do you want to know about e-publishing? ) and time is limited.

In tonight's short post, I want to pick up just one important point from my last post. There I wrote:

Winton's Can democracies adapt? actually deals with a pretty fundamental problem. If you can't make mistakes, how can you advance? And how can you do things if everything has to be evaluated first in terms of risk?

In extending the argument, I want to make two points:

1. Experimentation is important in testing new things in a controlled way.
2. Experimentation has become more difficult, at least in the public sector.

If you look at the history of education in Australia, you will find that innovations that had long term impact often came from particular individuals who had ideas and who, by happenstance, found themselves in a position to test their ideas. You will also find constant find constant borrowings between jurisdictions as experiments that  seem to have worked in one jurisdiction were tested in another.

If you look at the history of education in Australia over the last twenty years, the period since the Dawkins reforms, you will find the opposite. The Dawkins reforms themselves were truly revolutionary, although their implementation was not. Since then, we find an emphasis on:

1. National standardisation that has greatly reduced the capacity of individual jurisdictions to experiment.
2. Command and control management systems including an emphasis on particular types of measurement that have greatly reduced freedom to experiment. People can do new things, but only if they fit within the existing rules.
3. A rise in administrative overheads associated with compliance that increase costs and reduces resources available to actually do new things.
4. The use of officially mandated pilots - controlled experiments - to test, but which must occur within narrowing bounds and whose primary purpose is actually to justify and refine previously made decisions.

Am I unfair? Maybe, but I would like to see a counter argument.   

Tennis, Father F, The Shire with a dash of other things

I was going to continue my new ways of working series tonight, but I played tennis with my girls instead!

The photo shows Clare and Helen at the Eastcourts courts. We try to play tennis every Tuesday, but the combination of bad weather and other commitments has made this hard recently. So tonight, just a short meander on personal and other issues before I go to bed.

I don't know about you, but while I know that I need more exercise, I find it hard to do. I'm not good at exercising alone. So tonight I made arrangements at the courts to add Friday social tennis to the often missed Tuesdays with the girls. That way I also get to meet new people, and I like that!

  The matter of Father F that I covered in Four Corners, the Armidale Express and Father F drags on and on. That post is by far the highest traffic post of all my recent posts.

In case you hadn't worked it out, I know Father F and indeed was in email contact with him and even had dinner with him in Armidale two years ago. Ken Parish had a very honest personal piece on Club Troppo, Me and the Catholic Church: A Roger and two Franks. I promised in a comment to write a companion piece, but I find it all very complicated and not just because of my own experiences.

Bob Brown who was a primary school friend and in the same class at Armidale Demonstration School  suffered a very bad experience there. We had two teachers in the period Bob was there. One was one of the greatest teachers of my life, the other I disliked. I don't actually want to find out who the bad teacher was.

On  a happier note, this is a photo of youngest, Clare, at a recent function. She has arranged for someone to edit one of her manuscript novels.

It's a terrible thing to be in rivalry with one's daughter! In this case, the question is who will get the first book out. And how. This is where What do you want to know about e-publishing? comes in. I want to set up my publishing systems!

My post on the latest Ten TV show, What did you think of The Shire?, drew some tart comments from kvd and Neil. This has been another high traffic post, although still some distance behind Father F. The acerbic comments that I picked up on Twitter were reflected in today's main stream media coverage. The initial ratings for Ten were not bad but not brilliant. Still, the channel has got the coverage it wants. 

The next graphic comes from Young Writers via Clare. I think that it's pretty right. If you want to be a writer, you have to write.

It's getting late and I really need to go to bed.  So just a few final comments.

Winton's Can democracies adapt? actually deals with a pretty fundamental problem. If you can't make mistakes, how can you advance? And how can you do things if everything has to be evaluated first in terms of risk?

And, finally, Lorenzo in Debt, doom and despair has some pretty interesting graphs. Mind you, I think that I disagree with his conclusions on the Australian debt graph. But that's another issue.

What did you think of The Shire?

I watched The Shire tonight. I kind of felt that I should. Then perhaps I shouldn't haveI

Eldest has a predilection for certain popular US TV shows, so I have actually watched more of this type of show than you might expect. Many more, in fact.

The official web site describes the program in this way:

Set against the backdrop of the Southern Sydney region that commands the loyalty of its residents like no other, TEN’s brand new ‘dramality show’ The Shire is the latest daring addition to its schedule.

Screening Mondays at 8.00, The Shire isn’t another contrived piece of TV faux-fact; it’s true unscripted Shire life-through-a-lens. The entertaining cast of characters may seem larger than life, but they’re every bit as real as the relationships they share.

From Mitch, the ‘Peter Pan’ surfer boy who never wants to grow up, to Nikee, the glamour model who wants nothing more than to settle down, seeing what makes The Shire’s personalities tick and what ticks them off is certain to make compulsive viewing.

Some you’ll love, some you may loathe, but you’ll all be talking about them when The Shire hits your screens. Are you ready to meet them? Find out who's who on The Shire!

Mmm! The show begins like a tourist promo, then switches into the "story". I can only manage so much shopping in Dubai with Daddy's credit card, and I probably learned more about botox that I cared to. Now on the US shows I have learned about the Housewives, even the real housewives, of Orange County. I have seen the most amazing manipulation of parents by seventeen year old girls spending enough on their birthday party to retire half the Greek debt. But I wasn't bored. And here I was, except for rare flashes. 

Now accepting that I am not in Ten's target demographic(!), accepting too that Twitter is not a good guide given those I tend to follow, I did what any sensible person would do, I went to the official Facebook page. Wow, some of the negative comments there would make Tony Abbott look like the Gillard Government's greatest promoter.  Angie wrote: "Thank you 'The Shire' for reigniting my will to hang myself."

So I went to the official Shire Twitter hash tag. Oops!  According to Chris: "BREAKING: RTA says Tom Ugly's Bridge bumper-to-bumper northbound. Residents fleeing. More detail in Late News". Peter thought that the show was making Being Lara Bingle look like Q&A.

Mind you, even as I wrote the last two paragraphs eighty new tweets came in. They included this one: "If you missed ‪#TheShireTV‬ tonight, this image basically sums it up. pic.twitter.com/69CEnQ9x " Ouch!

Mind you, and as one twitterer noted, its seems just so bad that everybody is likely to switch in next time just to see what the fuss is all about. Now Ten may want that, be seeking it, for if the next episode is better then people may stay. Better? I don't mean high drama, just something that fleshes everybody out in a more interesting way.

Still, what do I know? I will put this post up on Facebook to see what reaction I get. But then I'm not sure that most Easties actually talk to anyone from The Shire. In the meantime, Channel Ten can send me a cheque for promotion!