The uncertainties and thrills of new directions

I realised today that I will be finishing up my current work round in just two weeks. Of course I knew this, but it has become real as we tried to squeeze things into this last short period.

I have mentioned before that I have been doing some project work. Back in early July in A blessed sense of relief I said in a post:

Yesterday as I walked through the city crowds I felt a blessed sense of relief. I had had to go into the city for a meeting, and then managed to squeeze in coffee with Noric. As I walked round looking at the people and buildings I gawked, just as I had all those years ago when Sydney was still fresh.

The relief came from the fact that I had resolved some things that had worried me. The renewed interest in things about me was linked to this, giving me a capacity to look at things anew.

The relief came from my decision that some work that I had been doing was at a natural end point. In turn, this gave me the capacity to look at the world afresh.

Since then, things have been a bit of a whirl as I have tried to transfer my knowledge to others.

Six more workshops round the state, writing up technical material, thinking about the next stage of the project so that others can carry it forward. Then in the next two weeks I am doing two more workshops, a train-the trainer session plus a training session for those who will be responsible for managing the help desk.

You will see why the fact that I am finishing has become somewhat submerged in the activity! Those who are interested will get a feeling for all this from posts I wrote while on the road in the first workshop round:

• A tired boy
• Diary of a travelling trainer - day one: Sydney, Tamworth, Grafton
• Diary of a travelling trainer - day two: Grafton, Sydney

This project has certainly brushed up my training skills. Delivering training in a new subject area where you may be the subject expert but still have to write material from scratch is always a challenge, as is the need to make sure as best one can that those you are training can actually do what is required. With two fixed go-live dates in a short time horizon, the project's success depends upon people's ability to do.

In all the activity I have not had time to properly address next steps.

I have been the primary child care for much of the last twelve years. As a consequence, I have chosen to work a lot from home. I mined this experience in another post, Teleworking - a personal perspective.

While there were costs, one was a degree of professional isolation, I gained much in terms of closeness to my daughters. The constant structure of kid's activities and the need to have meals on the table also provided its own structure.

All this has come to a a natural end. As I write my wife is in Melbourne on work, youngest is working. I think eldest will be home for tea after she finishes coaching, but I am not sure. She is home as I write, but not for tea.

After twelve years, I find the withdrawal of the old regime a tad unsettling. I recognise that it is also an opportunity, but I still feel a sense of loss. So I am in fact dealing with two changes, one a change in work direction, a second a change in personal life.

One thing that I am determined to do in this next phase is to maintain my writing, while building on the personal and professional base it has created.

Over the last two years I have been able to use my writing and especially my blogging to generate new ideas, to consolidate my existing thoughts. It has also opened some new worlds for me, new things that I can do.

The exact form of what I might do may still be unclear, but it's actually all very exciting.

Heresies, pleasures, procrastinations, pain and punishment

Photo: Girls with red flowers, Rome 2008

I have something to do that is critical but painful. I am behind on things that are pleasurable but not critical. I wonder which is winning?

Neil had an interesting post wondering whether blogging was on the way out. It is not, but it is changing.

The drop out rate from blogging is high. Sometimes this is painful when one loses old friends.

There are now perhaps one hundred million blogs. Obviously the standard varies.

The new social networking tools continue to gather strength. People migrate from blogs to them.

We are all time pressed. Blogs compete with a myriad of other distractions.

Blogs with their date postings are not suited to certain activities.

In all this, blogs and blogging are simply redefining their roles to those which most suit the medium. So long as they continue to make money for their hosts on one side, so long as they meet the needs of writers and readers on the other, blogs will continue.

In a comment, and with justice, Bob Q queried my delay in following up on my Kondratiev posts (here, here, here). Now there was a bit of an in-element in Bob's comment in that I do have a bad habit of saying that I will return to something and then not doing so! However, in this case I would plead that I have been thinking about some of the issues.

In this case, the question on my my mind has been the impact of the new computing and communications technology and especially the question as to whether the IT revolution has come to an end in terms of its major economic impacts. This links to Kondrtief cycles in that some of its proponents have argued that the ending of the IT revolution marks the downturn in the cycle.

I started exploring all this in Have we come to the end of the IT revolution? and then in End of the IT revolution - organisational rigidity. I am presently working on a somewhat counter post looking at ways in which the IT revolution might continue.

At a personal level I am not a technology leader. I like things to work. I am not greatly attracted to fashion. And I hate replacing equipment to gets something new if the existing equipment is still working. Despite all this, I am also a tester of new things, if with a lag. When I do, I look at how they might be used.

As a simple example, take facebook.

I am a member. I check my facebook five or six times a week. But I will never become a facebook fanatic. I dislike its clutter. I do not have the type of social life that might benefit from facebook. And its working systems are not especially friendly to the type of uses that might attract me. So to this user, facebook is a helpful but limited tool.

Blogging, by contrast, is a far more useful tool for my own interests. It allows me to write. It keeps me in touch with the broader personal and professional world. It forces me to question my own views.

I am a bit of a heretic, a tendency that has increased with age. I have seen too much to allow me to take any assertion for granted.

Just at present there is much debate about the parlous state of the mouth of the Murray. As I listen or read about this I ask a very basic question: what was the mouth like before? What is new?

The short answer appears to be that the modern Murray mouth appears to date to the construction of a dam near the mouth that changed the river, a change that created its own economic and social dynamics. The river mouth that we are trying to protect is in fact a relatively modern construct and is driven by forces created by that construct.

Just at the moment the media is full of Olympics reporting. This draws out clearly the way in which perceptions affect reporting.

One issue is the way in which medal tallies are reported.

Channel 7 news carried a story reporting on the way the US media reported the medal tally, adding the medal total together. This allowed the US media to report that the US was still in front of China. By implication, this was wrong, with Channel 7 suggesting that only gold counts. Yet Channel 7 itself totals the medals in the same way!

A second issue is the nature of reactions to Chinese Government developments and actions.

Let me make my own position clear. China is a one party state. Perhaps more importantly, it is an empire that now and then operates as an empire. It is an empire whose history has been dominated by tensions between central control and regional separatism. And it is also an empire whose history over the last two hundred years has been strongly affected by external intrusion that has directly attacked the centre of Han Chinese pride and sense of self-worth.

In terms of the broad sweep of Chinese history, the communist period is but a brief passage. The current communist government is simply the latest manifestation of broader Chinese historical trends.

There is no real recognition of this in media reporting, nor is there any recognition that the values that are held as self-evident by the western press are a minority view in both current and historical terms.

Again don't get me wrong. I share those western values. I just struggle with what I see as biased, insular, reporting.

Sunday Morning Snippets - Jiawei Shen, bogans and social change, our universities and the pleasure of positive responses

Neil's response to my post Saturday Morning Musings - the art of Jiawei Shen included a link to the National Portrait Gallery. There I found this painting, Guo Jian and Elly 1998, Collection of the Artist.

I thought that this painting was great. The Gallery has this to say about Jiawe Shen's work:

Jiawei Shen’s portraits demonstrate a masterly realism. in all his work, he brings traditional skills to bear in the rendering surfaces, the effects of light and the appearance of depth. Clothes, jewellery, hairstyles and the setting all tell something about the subject of a portrait, their social standing or job. Shen aspires to represent the sitter’s inner life, their essential character and virtues, but appreciates the difficulty of depicting more than just surface appearance. Thus, while his portraits are as realistic as a photograph, he inserts symbolic objects in his paintings that inform the viewer about the subject’s identity.

Over on skepticslawyer Legal Eagle has a rather good post, Snobbery and class. Here I want to comment on just one point, the continued use of the word bogan and what it says about Australian society.

Legal Eagle found about this word when she was 13. I was a lot older - I first heard some of my daughters' friends use it a few years ago and had to ask what it meant.

I have come to really detest this word. Use it in my presence and you are likely to get a very tart response.

Social class and snobbery has always existed in this country. However, in the past it was in some ways more benign than the current version.

To begin with, the strong egalitarianism that marked our language - what Hurst has called a democracy of manners - provided a natural control because it effectively rejected more extreme pretensions. Then, too, social structures had linkages to elements of our past and carried their own responsibilities.

No more I fear. I cannot put this really clearly because I do not properly understand it. However, as best I can, the old social structures have been replaced by new ones less tolerant of differences, more coercive, more complacent, structures now based on behaviour and brand.

I explored social change in Sydney a little in an earlier post, Saturday Morning Musings - everchanging Sydney. In a funny way the new Sydney social structures are based on evolving tribes that mix less, understand less of each other, than was the case in a world where social stratifications were in some ways more clearly defined.

I still mix with a reasonable range of groups. In doing so, I am constantly struck by the differences between them, by the absence of cross-linkages of the type that I have known in the past.

Still on social change, last night I went to a Sydney University alumni dinner, a gathering of different alumni groups. I am not a Sydney University person of course, I was there as handbag.

It was an interesting and enjoyable evening. Very well organised, even slick. My immediate dinner companion who was also there as a hand bag came from Grafton and had studied at UNE, so we had plenty to talk about.

A few things stood out from the evening.

Chatting with some of the academics including a dentistry group really highlighted the way in which social change is now affecting our ability to meet national needs.

We all know that we need more health professionals. The starting point here is the number of people in training. To increase this, you need to increase the number of teachers. Yet SU is struggling to find them. In fact, the whole system rests on an aging cohort still prepared to participate in teaching.

The usual answer to this is pay. Pay more, get more. This is the modern market approach. However, to my mind the real problem lies in the declining attractions of academic life independent of pay.

Academic life used to combine a substantial degree of social prestige with somewhat above average income. Academic salaries have declined in relative terms, but the social prestige has declined far more. Further, we have removed many of the trappings of academic life, while increasing performance pressures.

Less pay, more pressure, lower prestige, fewer trappings means fewer interested in teaching and research. This feeds through into the training of professionals we need for our national future.

In this context, Sydney's new VC had some interesting and very frank things to say about the modern university. It would be unfair to quote him directly, he was speaking to the broader SU family and I need to respect that. However, I can approach the matters he raised indirectly by linking them to things that I have said.

In many ways, we are milking our universities, living off our past investments. We have created a situation where universities are forced to battery farm some students for cash in order to try to cross-subsidise other activities.

I have spoken of the effects of this in the context of the University of New South Wales. There was another example of this last night, not from the VC, where a former student of another university commented on the low standard of the MBA he had done.

When asked if this had affected the market standing of his degree he said no. Just having the MBA on his CV met his needs. However, he was disappointed at a personal level.

This is the crux of the issue. In the beginning, you can get away with battery farming. However, sooner or later the decline in the total value of the university experience will follow through to market reactions. The MBA university in question has lost this former student for ever.

On a completely different matter, Kangaroo Valley David and I have been having an interesting email exchange on a couple of my stories. As part of this he wrote:

I forgot to pass on my thanks for another of your posts - about the poet-traveller Hugh Frewen.

I was fascinated by your comments, and your quotes of his words, so I Googled for more info re the book you were quoting from and ended up on the website of www.betweenthecovers.com (New Jersey USA) and hence in email contact re "a near fine first edition with slight bumping and wear to corners".

(aside: this bookseller description could very easily be attached to myself!)

Anyway, no more than four days later it arrived, and was presented to my business partner of many years who has since told me it is one of the most interesting little books he has read, and how he particularly loved the verse.

This post has got a very good response, including a comment from someone who used to live in Brede near the old Frewen Home.

Getting positive responses is always nice. As I said to KVD, I do try to write for my known readers, not just the google search engine algorithms!

Saturday Morning Musings - the art of Jiawei Shen

By accident, we tuned into the SBS program (5 August) on the Chinese artist Jiawei Shen. I knew nothing about the documentary, had never heard of Mr Shen, so had no expectations.

Jiawei Shen was born in 1948 in Shanghai, China. After showing promising talent in his early 20s he decided to cultivate his skills and build a solid career as an artist.

However, Mr Shen’s dream of becoming an artist was cut short as the Cultural Revolution engulfed China. Under Mao’s rule all art schools were closed down and the working class were shipped out of the cities and ordered to work on the land, leaving Shen to teach himself the craft which would become his livelihood years later.

With the death of Mao in the late 70s and a new pragmatic leadership in place, the art school doors were reopened allowing Mr Shen to study for two years at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

We joined the documentary a little after the start. Having no pre-conceptions, I will explain this a little in a moment, we took the program as a study of a Chinese artist and the relationship between his life and work. Here it pointed and counterpointed between Mr Shen's life and his painting in an absolutely fascinating way.

Both of us were struck by what we saw as the different influences on his work, sometimes impressionist, at other times what I sometimes call the Napoleonic style, patriotism and state triumphalism.

I use the term Napoleonic style because this was the mental label I created after my first visit to the Louvre where I spent several hours looking at French paintings from the revolution through to the giant paintings celebrating the triumphs of Napoleon and his empire.

There are parallels between this period and modern China. Both had ancien regimes torn down by revolutions that created powerful secular ideologies. In both cases, those ideologies morphed into imperial states.

To our surprise, the documentary then moved to Mr Shen's migration to Australia and his subsequent experiences here as he built a life as a successful painter.

I am glad that we did not know this. Had we known, and this is the way preconceptions affect perceptions, then I suspect that we would have viewed the first part of the documentary as a precursor to the second, the Australian experience.

The end of the SBS program description rather neatly captures this:

Apart from the normal demands of being a husband and father, the major challenge now facing Jiawei is the migrant experience. Jiawei is trying to create a place for himself as an artist in the Australian context. But this poses a dilemma. What does Shen Jiawei now paint in his adopted homeland? Displaced from China and its history he must now find new historical themes that reflect his current experience. It's through his art that he tries to convey a sense of the ongoing dialogue between his Chinese self and the Australian that he's becoming.

I am sure that this - the Australian experience - would have been our core focus as well. Instead, we really saw the program as two documentaries, each distinct in its own right, thus adding to our enjoyment.

I thought that the second half of the program was distinctly weaker than the first. The Shens' Australian story is fascinating. However, while the personal story was well told, I really did not get a strong impression of the way that Mr Shen's art had changed. The personal dominated the artistic.

I have tried to explore the relationship between the Australian artist or writer, environment and our history in a number of posts.

Central to this has been the interaction between a migrant community and their new land. Central, too, has been the way in which local artists have borrowed overseas styles and models. Both have melded to form new Australian forms.

So I would like to have learned more about Mr Shen as an artist, more about the way in which his art has evolved.

Assorted Posts

A partial list of associated posts on Australian art and culture follows. In creating this list, I realised that there were a lot - not all are here - and that I needed a way of categorising them so that linked themes could be properly drawn out. But this will have to wait.

• 3 September 2006, Cultural Activities in Regional Australia
• 7 September 2006, Cultural Activities in Regional Australia - information sources
• 9 September 2006, Winifred West - Frensham, Gib Gate and Sturt
• 22 January 2007, Australia and its People - a funny upside down land
• 25 June 2007, John Brack - an Australian Regional Artist
• 22 July 2007, A Message for Marcel
• 7 August 2007, Aboriginal Art - a personal note
• 13 August 2007, Sydney art - end of the angry young men
• 3 January 2008, Aboriginal art - relevant blogs
• 14 February 2008, The emotional power of the Aboriginal connection
• 5 March 2008, Australian History and the art of Herbert Badham
• 29 March 2008, Saturday Morning Musings - literature, locale and license
• 5 July 2008, Saturday Morning Musings - round the traps

Postscript

Neil has kindly put up a companion post to this one looking at other aspects of Australia-Chinese art. I suspect that there is a fertile field here that we have barely touched.

Blogging meanderings

Not a long post today because of the things that I have to do. I also have a dreadful cold, something that is slowing me down and has kept me home.

I have taken the opportunity to do a little updating on this blog. Nothing profound: I have resisted the dreaded template instability that continues to affect Neil! From my viewpoint, the template that I am using is the best blogspot for my purposes.

I must say that I stand in awe of Neil's blogging longevity. A blogger who was in action at the Sydney Olympics is a very ancient blogger indeed. A Methuselah so to speak! This makes me very young, something that I value increasingly as time passes.

As part of the updating, I have added Thomas's latest holiday post. I have also put in some ABS links, updated the side bar and reintroduced site meter. I lost all my previous stats when I removed the site meter code, so I am starting again.

Looking at the first round of the new site meter stats, I find it sad to notice the searches on Australian racism. I saw this pattern before. Australia is not a racist society by global standards, yet we sometimes feel obliged to present as though we are.

Returning to updating, I do need to spend more time adding postscripts to previous posts pointing to later material. My views change, information changes, so I should point to this.

Turning now to a few of the more recent posts that I have added on my other blogs.

I talked about sapphires on Fossicking, New England sapphires and the love of discovery. The post contains links to a series of sapphire posts. I do love sapphires. They have a special place in my personal history.

Closure of the Inverell Supercoat Petcare facility - 168 jobs gone is just as the title says. Job losses through economic restructuring in specific regional centres is a major problem, but gets little coverage.

I finally finished the series of posts on the visit Dee and I made to Canberra. You will find the introductory post here.

Overcoming chaos in the home office describes a practical problem much on my mind at present. I will write more about this one.

Well, I need to do some other things.

ABS releases new Australian historical population statistics

Referral patterns on this blog suggest a continuing interest in Australian population statistics. In this context, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released new population statistics covering the period from 1788 to today.

This contains a range of information that will appeal to history buffs as well as those inclined to share trivia with others at dinner parties. Like, for example, that Australia's non-indigenous population passed the million mark in 1858, then passed two million in 1877!

ABS will be releasing further data in September, including updated estimates on our indigenous population.

For an entry point to some of my ABS posts see The Australian Bureau of Statistics - a real national resource.

Grocerychoice - a strange site

For international visitors, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (the ACCC) is the body responsible (among other things) for consumer protection. The Government asked the Commission to carry out an inquiry into grocery prices. The newly established grocery watch site was one outcome.

Now for a site that is meant to help people make sensible shopping choices it is not of much use. However, for a statistics nut like me it has some interesting features. So come and explore.

You will find the entry point here.

The first thing that you have to do is to key in your post code or town. Alternatively, you can click on the map.

I live in Rosebery just at present, so I click in 2018. Here we find a table setting out average prices for various baskets of groceries for the inner Sydney east region. Average prices are provided for Coles, Woolies, Franklins, independents plus Aldi. Aldi prices are limited to just one category, basic staples basket, because of Aldi's limited range.

What does the information tell us?

Average prices at Coles and Woolies for the total of the baskets are much of a muchness, Franklins is more expensive, the independents more expensive still.

The picture changes when we look at the basic staples basket. Here Aldi is the cheapest by a significant margin ($61.66), followed by Woolies ($76.23). The independents are most expensive at $86.08.

In general, the broad price ranges do not come as a surprise. I do know my shops. However, I was surprised at the higher prices in Franklins, while the size of the gap between Aldi and the next cheapest in the basic staples basket was larger than I had expected. I tend not to shop at Aldi because I don't know the brands, so this is actually useful information.

All this raised the fascinating question, fascinating to me at least, of competitive dynamics. To the degree that people do visit this site, then I would expect it to have at least some effect on pricing policy, reducing average price ranges between chains.

Another thing that interested me was the way the site might reveal real variations in prices between different areas of Australia. For example, grocery prices in country areas have traditionally been considered to be higher than in Sydney because of the impact of higher transport costs.

To test this, I looked at average grocery prices in north eastern NSW as compared to inner Sydney east. Here there was a surprise.

The lowest price for a complete basket of groceries in inner Sydney east was $154.84, the highest $173.75. The equivalent figures in north eastern NSW were $151.09 and $164.98.

If we look at the basic staples basket, the inner Sydney east range is $61.66 to $86.08. The equivalent figures in north eastern NSW are $60.14 to $81.33.

In this case at least, country grocery prices are lower.

I have not tested this against other Sydney or country prices. However, what I think is clear is that the new site will provide another measure of regional price variations.

Postscript

The new web site has attracted substantial criticism, some of it misplaced. However, a comment by ACCC boss Graham Samuel pulled me up. Defending the site, he suggested that it would force the independents to lower their prices.

If correctly reported, this comment made we wonder about his knowledge of the sector. Anybody who shops around knows that the independents do tend to be more expensive, especially in speciality lines like snack-foods. There are solid economic reasons for this, reasons that will continue.

It's partly a matter of volume, partly of range, partly of location and market niche. So don't hold your breath waiting for independent prices to fall!

Postscript 2, 3 September 2008

I see that the smaller grocers are complaining that the new site favours the grocery giants. Most independents will not be as competitive for the reasons outlined above. However, the claim now is that lumping all independents together is in fact damaging those independents who do have the capacity to compete on price.

Thomas's tour de force (and in some cases, farce)

I must say that I have been enjoying Thomas's stories of his US trip. He tells a good yarn. For those who like an entertaining read, the posts to this point are:

• Holiday Road - Part I
• Holiday Road - Part II
• Holiday Road - Part III
• Holiday Road - Part IV
• Holiday Road - Part V
• Holiday Road - VI
• Holiday Road - Part VII
• Holiday Road - Part VIII
• Holiday Road - Part IX

Australia's $A74.5 billion not for profit sector

As the first post in the ABS statistics series, today the Bureau released new data on Australia's not for profit sector. I was surprised by its size.

At the end of June 2007, there were 40,976 not-for-profit organisations in Australia employing 884,476 people. In addition, there were 2,434,815 volunteers during 2006-07.

In 2006-2007, our not for profits generated $74.5b in income and spent $68.3b.

If you want more information, follow the above link.

For an entry point to some of my ABS posts see The Australian Bureau of Statistics - a real national resource.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics - a real national resource

I am very hard pressed for time just at present, making it hard for me to write proper posts. Yes, I know that I have complained about this before, but it does not stop. Only the points of pressure change!

In this pressure time I thought that one thing that I might usefully do for you (and me) is simply to record some of the new publications from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The ABS really is one of our national resources. Yes, there are lies and damned statistics, but the ABS does provide a constant stream of valuable information. Too often, and this holds even for a stats nut like me, Australians pick all this up from the daily press. Yet the press covers only that which is topical, judged worthy as news, and this is only a small part of ABS output.

Given this, I thought some short reports on the latest ABS releases might be worthwhile. I can do this in limited time blocks, leaving it to you and also me to follow up later.

ABS Posts

The following lists some of my posts on ABS statistics for reference purposes:

• 20 August 2008, ABS releases New Murray-Darling River Basin statistics
• 7 August 2008, ABS releases new Australian historical population statistics
• 5 August 2008, Australia's $A74.5 billion not for profit sector
• 21 March 2008, How to find and use Australian census data 2 - Creating maps and other nice things
• 20 March 2008, How to find and use Australian census data 1 - Languages spoken at home case study
• 19 March 2008, Sydney, statistics and the need for caution
• 16 March 2008, Belshaw posts on demography - entry page links to a number of posts using ABS data
• 20 February 2008, Australian Short Term Visitor Arrivals - January 2008

Andrew Forrest's 50,000 indigenous jobs

The campaign by Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest to create 50,000 new indigenous jobs is already attracting the nay sayers. I have the opposite view.

The first distinctive feature of Mr Forrest's proposal is that all those who undergo required training should be guaranteed an initial job by industry. The second distinctive feature is that the proposal is not driven just by remote area Northern Territory indigenous problems, but will be open to all indigenous people no matter where they live.

I suspect that Mr Forrest will get his job offers. The bigger problems are likely to be the capacity of our sometimes creaky training system to deliver on one side, the ability to find 50,000 indigenous people willing and able to participate on the other.

I noticed the media all zero in on the number itself. How, they ask, will you measure success? This is again the obsession with quantification that has damaged so much policy. By implication, if only 10,000 jobs are created, the plan will fail. What rubbish.

The 50,000 target is an aspiration, a big number to set a vision. It would be wonderful if we got to 50,000. But if even 10,000 jobs were created, I would say well done.

Postscript

Neil (Ninglun) had a follow up post on this matter that includes some useful links to further information.

An oi of Aussies? - and a series of disconnected matters

Helen does not normally drink beer, so I have to assume that this photo is for show!

What does one call a gaggle of Australians? An oi?

I ask this because Friday night we went to Elise's parents' place for dinner and a photo viewing on the girls trip. One thing both commented on was the sheer number of Australians they met.

I mention this for a number of reasons.

To begin with, it affected their perceptions.

While Helen's initial reaction to London was positive, she really did not feel that she was on holidays until she landed in Paris and heard French. London was just too like a larger version of Sydney!

Then there was the sheer mass of the young Australian presence throughout Europe. When I went to Europe for the first time there were still a lot of Australians, but nothing like now.

This links to something that I have written about before (here for example), the growing number of especially young Australians leaving the country. This has accelerated, so it's something that I want to revisit.

I also found it interesting that the fact of being Australian in a foreign country leads to mixing across divides in a way that does not occur at home.

This has always been the case. However, the social and tribal divides in a place like Sydney limits mixing among the young in a way that, to my mind at least, has become much more pronounced in recent years. I have to be careful when I say this because I am basing my comments on what may, after all, be an unrepresentative sample. Still, I do think that the trend is clear. So offshore mixing is a good thing.

I was reminded of this (variations) again last night when Denise and I went to Megan's fiftieth.

The party was held at the Boy Charlton pool on the edge of the Harbour. I had in fact not been there before. However, this proved to be an absolutely beautiful spot, with views across the water to the warships at the naval base and then the building covered rise up to Potts Point and Kings Cross.

We all see people in slices - the interactions between them and us - so it's always interesting to see them in a broader context. In Megan's case, those attending stretched from her days at SCEGS Darlinghurst through Canberra where she and her partner Caroline worked to Sydney. There was strong representation from the gay and lesbian community, as well as the welfare sector, government and non-government.

Chatting to a couple who had moved up to NSW from Victoria several years ago, I was struck by their comment that they found NSW a different country. To their mind, the way the NSW system worked (or didn't) with its tribalisms and obsessions with myriad programs was simply unreconstructed. Those who have read my various posts on the operation of government in NSW will understand why this struck a chord.

They also commented on the way that the NSW welfare system (and this includes the NGOs)tended to exclude its clients from the broader community. Again this struck a chord. I found it especially interesting because it provided a cross-reference to things that I had been thinking about.

In simple terms, I feel that the welfare system with it government agencies on one side and NGOs on the other creates silos that are then reflected in client groups or, to use the prevalent phrase, "customers". This can work to create self-sustaining pools of deprivation.

In saying this I am not being critical of the intent of those involved, nor am I suggesting that the problem itself is unrecognised. However, I am saying that welfare programs and those involved get locked into particular ways of thinking that affect outcomes.

While I have become interested in this area, I have not really been able to write about it because of the project work I have been doing. My current work comes to an end in a few weeks' time, so I may say something then.

The ageing of the population, another recurring Belshaw theme, has been in the news a fair bit over the last fortnight. I remain of the view that this is a key issue that we will need to address, yet it still remains just below the radar when it comes to public discussion. It's there, but it is not yet discussed with any degree of urgency.

What is, I think, beginning to happen is that organisations are responding, but still in an ad hoc way. Here I was looking at some planning material the other day that did discuss the problems involved in succession planning in a rapidly aging organisation.

This organisation will lose more than 50 per cent of its staff to retirement over the next twenty years. This may not sound too bad, but add to this total normal staff turnover and you have a real problem. The people may simply not be there to fill the gaps.

In theory, organisations can compensate by streamlining and automating work processes. In practice, organisational rigidities make this difficult.

Take, as an example, the use of IT. I can understand all the reasons why organisations have clamped down on certain IT usage. But we are now getting to the strange situation where home IT usage is becoming more sophisticated than office usage.

I am hardly a technology leader. Indeed, measured by some of my colleagues, I am an IT lagger! Yet I expect to be able to change my web sites or blogs on my own without having to fill in an application form. I use social networking tools as a matter of course. I am supported by a web (I am using this word in its old sense) of colleagues, sites and tools.

The recent Site Meter imbroglio is an example. A substantial slice of the web goes down. While I suffered great frustration, both the problem and the immediate solution (remove the Site Meter code) were picked up on the internet with astonishing speed. This is a 24/7 world far removed from the standard organisation.

I must stop here with a final note.

Writing as a management professional as well as a social commentator, the interaction between ICT and the results of demographic change raises some absolutely fascinating issues about the future of work. But that's another post!