A day at the Scots’ Rugby Sevens

I spent most of Saturday watching the Scots School Boys Invitation Rugby Sevens competition.   It was quite fun. This shot shows the Armidale School (TAS) in attack against Canberra Grammar.

Rugby sevens is a spin-off from the main fifteen a side game. While still part of rugby, rugby sevens has a become a game in its own right with greater international penetration than the main game because its rules make it easier for smaller rugby nations to participate successfully. Reflecting this greater mass reach, the game is a Commonwealth and now Olympic Games sport.

While played on a full size rugby field, each side has seven instead of the usual fifteen players. This requires a modified game.  For example, because there are only three forwards as compared to eight in the main game, scrums, rucks and mauls are necessarily simplified.

For non-rugby players, when a player is tackled carrying the ball, you need a process for releasing the ball to one side or the other. In League, this is the play the ball, in Union a ruck. 

This photo shows a ruck in the Canberra Grammar vs  TAS game. The player who has been tackled, the TAS number 4, has placed the ball on the TAS side. He is allowed to do this, but he cannot protect the ball beyond that without incurring a penalty. The forwards have formed a protective shield to allow them to get the ball back to the backs.

I often write about the importance of, and impact of, rules. Rules and the breaking of rules determines how activities flow and form specific cultures. My frequent concern lies in the in the way that over-prescription of rules, regulations and penalties can affect what we do in often very perverse ways.

In rugby sevens, the smaller number of players on a full size field makes for a very fast game. The rules are designed to support this.

A smaller number of players playing a big game across a large area makes for exhaustion. To accommodate this, games are broken into two short halves. seven minutes with a one minute half time break. The final’s time is increased to ten minute, with a two minutes break. At Scots with school boys playing, the games had six minute halves, increased to seven for the finals.

A tournament in which a side came to play for just twelve minutes and then got knocked out would, from a player perspective, be a very dull game. Even with pools before quarter or semi finals allowing more games, it would still be dull for the losers. To accommodate this, many sevens tournaments have a competition for a cup, a plate, a bowl, and a shield. As a team is knocked out, they can continue playing for a trophy at a specific level. This allows many teams of different standards to avoid leaving empty handed. TAS won the bowl this year.

One of the reasons why sevens is so entertaining beyond the speed and spectator elements is that the action is continuous. As one game finishes, the teams for the next are ready to run onto the field. The Scots’ program had five ten minute breaks when nothing was happening, but beyond that action was continuous from 9am to about 5pm.

This allows a largish number of teams to participate. At Scots, there were twelve teams from four countries and four Australian states/territories participating. Because each team played a number of times, you got to know each team just a little adding to the interest.

In all, it was a fun if very tiring day.

The Baaa-Studs present "Extreme Shepherding"

This is one of those extremely clever advertising videos, in this case for Samsung LED television sets,that has gone viral. At first I thought that it must be digitally altered. Director James Rouse denies this.

Regardless, its very clever and really fun.   

Bogie or Bogey in Australian English

The Bogey Hole is popular swimming spot at Sydney’s Bronte Beach. In Newcastle, the convict built Bogey Hole is a heritage listed local landmark.

I knew these names, but had never thought of their meaning. They are, in fact, very Australian. The Australian National Dictionary Centre describes the word in this way:

“Bogey (also spelt bogie) is a borrowing into Australian English from Dharuk, the Aboriginal language of the Sydney region, where it meant 'to bathe or swim'.

The earliest records show the term being used in the pidgin English of Aborigines:

1788 Historical Records of New South Wales II: I have bathed, or have been bathing... Bogie d'oway. These were Colby's words on coming out of the water.

1830 R. Dawson, Present State of Australia: 'Top bit, massa, bogy,' (bathe) and he threw himself into the water.

By the 1840s it was naturalised in Australian English:

1841 Historical Records of Australia: I suppose you want your Boat, Sir; Yes, said Mr Dixon; well, said Crabb I suppose we must bogey for it. Yes, said Mr Dixon, any two of ye that can swim.

In Australian English a noun meaning 'a swim or bathe; a bath' was formed from the verb:

1847 A. Harris, Settlers and Convicts: In the cool of the evening had a 'bogie' (bathe) in the river.

1869 W.M. Howell, Diggings and Bush: Florence was much amused the other evening by her enquiring if she (Flory) was going down to the water to have a 'bogey'. Flory was much puzzled till she found out that a 'bogey', in colonial phraseology, meant a bath.

1924 Bulletin: A boar was discovered by two of us having a bogey in a 16,000-yard tank about five miles from the river.

1981 G. Mackenzie, Aurukun Diary: A bogey is the Queensland outback word for a bath or bathe.

A bogey-hole is a 'swimming or bathing hole'.”

Why should I suddenly discover this now? I have been reading Ian Hoskins’ Coast: A history of the New South Wales Edge (NewSouth Publishing, Sydney 2013).  One of the themes in the last part of my history of New England is the rise of the coastal strip, the fall of the inland. This actually happened quite suddenly and especially from 1980. So I was interested in if depressed by the phenomenon.

The social and economic changes that I had identified and Hoskins mapped are interesting in their own right; they add texture to my story. However, in writing, Hoskins refers to to bogie as the word that came to be adopted for sea bathing.

The early British settlers did not swim as such for sport. Swimming described a physical activity, but most bathed. They went into the sea and especially the still waters for that purpose. The sea was, I suppose, the equivalent of the Roman baths.

The Australian coast with its surf was rough and dangerous for those, and this was most, who could not swim. Worried about deaths from drowning at the Newcastle convict settlement, Governor Macquarie directed that people should avoid the surf and bath only in the sheltered waters. Quite quickly, bogie became a word for sea bathing, bogey hole a place where it was safe to bath.   

Towards a new approach to economic and community development 1 Introduction

I have been interested in economic and community development activities for as long as I can remember. Part of that was family, but it was also strongly influenced at primary school when I read Neville Schute’s A Town Like Alice. It’s a good yarn, if a little dated in some of its attitudes.

Just at the moment, my History Revisited Column in the Armidale Express features a little of the story of civil aviation in New England. I have yet to bring the columns on-line, that will happen later in the week, but the link will give you access once I have them posted,

Its an interesting story that centres on the role of individuals in love with flying who create new economic activities that have great spin-off benefits for the area. It is also a story of progressive take-over of activities by bigger players that remove many of the local benefits, set against a background of Government policy decisions that force constant changes. We begin with a regulated sector, end with a regulated sector, but the pattern of change in regulation has profound local effects.

These airlines are not without Australian national significance; New England Airways (Lismore) established the Sydney-Brisbane run and formed the core of a new national carrier; East-West Airlines (Tamworth) was a familiar name in civil aviation until it vanished in the burn-out of Ansett; Eastern Airlines (Tamworth) forms the core of what is now called QANTAS Link; while the rise and fall of Impulse (Newcastle) featured in the civil aviation and commercial battles of the 1990s, with Impulse forming the core of what is now known as Jetstar. Other names in New England civil aviation include Oxley Airlines (Port Macquarie), Tamair (Tamworth) and Aeropelican (Newcastle).

The frequency of Tamworth (East-West, Eastern and Tamiar) reflects the entrepreneurial culture of that city, including the presence of locals prepared to invest on a risk sharing basis. Even today when Tamworth's aviation role has shrunk in relative terms as a consequence of constant change, it remains an important aviation centre; the Australian Airforce’s basic training is based there.

Tamworth’s entrepreneurial activity is not limited to flying. There was no logical reason why Tamworth should become country musical capital of Australia. It did so because of a small number of activists backed by the Higginbotham owned New England Radio Network and especially 2TM Tamworth. Reading the Broadcast Amalgamated board papers, there is constant discussion of the diseconomies created by regional scale versus the market, institutional and scale economies controlled by the big city broadcasters. There was a constant search for new markets, for way of overcoming the disadvantages. Tamworth country music was one outcome, Agquip (the big farm expo) another.

In reading the papers, the importance of individuals able to marshal support and resources comes through all the time. Neither Tamworth country music nor Agquip would exist without Max Ellis. Max Ellis could not have succeeded without Broadcast Amalgamated. And Max himself would not not be in Tamworth if his father Ulrich had not come to Armidale as campaign director for the New England New State Movement, the most long-running economic and political reform movement in the North.

But what makes for an entrepreneurial culture at local level? What creates the chains and connections that allows things to succeed despite all the odds? Why does one place or region succeed, another fail? Why is one project a success that feeds into further successes?

Over the next week or so, I am going to explore these questions, drawing from my personal experience and historical research, consolidating my previous writing.

Abbott, ideology and student politics

Back on 19 March, Alan Barcan, the Sydney Old Left and threads in New England’s history set out some initial thoughts triggered by reading Alan’s book Radical Students: the Old Left at Sydney University (Melbourne University Press, Carlton South 2002). I was interested in the book partly because I had read some of Alan’s work on the history of education in Australia, partly because I was trying to flesh out certain aspects of the development of Australian thought from the perspective of the history of New England that I am trying to write.

I followed this book by reading Judith Armstrong’s The Christensen Romance (Melbourne University Press, Carlton South 1996). This is the story of Clem and Nina Christensen. Clem was the founder of Meanjin, one of Australia’s literary magazines, while Nina founded Slavic Studies at the University of Melbourne. The book is partly the story of their respective life and careers, more the story of their relationship. Here you will get a feel from the title.

To a substantial degree, both books are dominated by life in two universities, Melbourne and Sydney. Alan focuses on Sydney, but refers often to Melbourne. Judith’s book focuses on Melbourne and the institutional battles that Clem and Nina faced; there is little about the broader impact of Meanjin. Both books are set against a backdrop of the political and ideological changes that took place in Australia and beyond during the twentieth century. Not unexpectedly, the names and events overlap.

As I indicated in my post, I grew up in a different academic world. However, I know the names referred to in both books. in some cases and especially in the case of the Barcan book, I knew the people; a number ended up at the University of New England or were connected through academic interests. They were part of the life I knew.

Obviously all this is of interest to me in a personal and professional sense. Unexpectedly, what caught my attention were the resonances between student politics at Sydney and current political events in Australia. The role of current Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in student politics at Sydney have been well documented, as has the influence of those battles on the PM’s thinking. This is an example from 2013: Shadow boxing: Abbott's battle against 'Marxists' at the University of Sydney. The story is introduced this way:

In the '70s and '80s, the University of Sydney was split in a fierce battle over attempts to teach students a new kind of neo-classical economic theory. At the heart of the battle were Tony Abbott, Anthony Albanese and Malcolm Turnbull—and their actions explain much about our current politics.

All this is true enough.However, what is less well recognised is that the conflict at Sydney University did not just emerge, but had its roots in past battles. Mr Abbott’s views were not formed by the ideological battles of the 70s, but by fights that began thirty years earlier and where then institutionalised in student thought.

That’s actually a bit frightening. Just as I coming from a different cultural and political background to Mr Abbott seek to pursue older agendas, to conserve things that I consider to be important, so Mr Abbott is working from old agendas. Neither he nor I are new men, but people inextricably involved in the past.

Mr Abbott would argue, as I do so often, that our views are tempered, reformed, by current experiences. We are both new men, changing to meet needs. Mmmm!

The original intellectual frame at Sydney was set by the left. The right responded during the ideological battles of the 1940s. For a long time, the Andersonian libertarians were the main opposition to the left, although both sides had many common views. It seems to me that the right response that finally emerged was a funny mixture of social conservatism, Catholic Action, anti-communism and libertarianism. Each contributed its own if sometimes conflicting thread to the political and social response.

Now, in 2014, those past battles within the Sydney University student body are playing out on the national stage. Who would have thought it?!      

Big Issue short fiction competition

This one came to me from the New England Writers’ Centre. I am half tempted to put in an entry!

“Entries are now open for the 2014 Big Issue fiction edition – an annual highlight of the publishing year. Some big names in Australian literature have featured in our past fiction editions, including Christos Tsiolkas, Chris Womersley and Kate Holden. Last year, our fiction edition had the inimitable Joanna Lumley on its cover and featured in a session at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Once again, all submissions will be judged ‘blind’, with no names attached. We are inviting all writers – of whatever age, whether established, emerging, or just keen to have a crack – to send us stories. This year’s theme is as simple as it is open-ended: Take Me Away… It could be something with a travel theme, or about food, or neither of these. As always, lateral thinking is encouraged; originality is gold.

Stories must be no longer than 2500 words.

To submit, send two printed (not electronic) copies of your entry to: Fiction Edition, The Big Issue, GPO Box 4911, Melbourne 3001.

Make sure your name and contact details (email and phone) are included on a removable coversheet.

Closing date for entries is 6 June 2014.

Lorraine Pink

Editorial Coordinator |The Big Issue”

Inequality, action and the changing role of government

Interesting if somewhat depressing piece by Greg Jericho on the ABC’s The Drum: Our long-term unemployment headache. In essence, the proportion of the Australian unemployed who have been out of work for more than twelve months has risen quite significantly. Further, those falling into this category who do get work are more likely to get insecure jobs.

The current response to this problem centres on three sets of actions: apply training to increase skills; free up the labour market to increase jobs; and apply coercion to try to force people into work. All three do have a place, although one might argue about the direction and weighting of their application in practice. However, of itself the combination does not appear to properly address the problem.

By its very nature, structural change involves immediate pain in the expectation of longer term gain. But what happens if that gain is not realised? What happens if the gain is localised in human and geographic terms? What happens if, as appears to be the case at present, the political and policy settings do not allow redistribution of the gains so that all benefit?

Recent data for Sydney, I did not record the link at the time, suggested that the new jobs created in recent years fell overwhelmingly in the inner city area. Few jobs were created in those areas where the majority of the people live. Further, the jobs that were created required very specific abilities and skill sets not possessed by the longer term unemployed nor, indeed, by the majority of the employed. 

I have been wondering about the best responses to this problem in a world where the role of Government is defined simply as reduction, getting out of the way.

As an related aside, interesting piece on the ABC by Peter Lewis and Jackie Woods from Essential Research on the way that polling is distorted by perceptions that then feed into policy and further perceptions. It seems that a majority believe that Australia is comparatively overtaxed by global standards, that Government is big by global standards, even when that is not the case.

I don’t have a clear answer as to what we do if we take Government out of the equation in addressing problems such as the apparent increase in long term structural unemployment or, indeed, the growth in islands of poverty. However, a starting point is to try to define the nature of the problem itself.

A recent Australian Reserve Bank research paper by Amy Beech, Rosetta Dollman, Richard Finlay and Gianni La Cava, The Distribution of Household Spending in Australia, concluded in part that measured by expenditure as compared to income, there had been little growth in inequality in Australia. This lead to some commentary attacking the idea that inequality in Australia had grown. This may well be true when measured by expenditure because of the present importance of transfer payments, but it remains true that inequality has grown, especially when one drops below the statistical averages.

That growing inequality is geographically based, concentrated in particular areas such as parts of Western Sydney or the Mid North Coast of NSW. It is also family based, with the emergence of intergenerational poverty that carries down generations in a way that this country has not seen before. It is also group based, with concentrations in particular ethnicities such as Australia’s Aboriginal peoples or certain more recent migrant groups.

Looking at the historical record, several things stand out.

The first is the decline in importance of locally based and controlled economic activity. In 1950, every newspaper or radio station in Northern New South Wales was locally or regionally controlled. TV too was initially locally owned. By 2000, local or even regional ownership had largely vanished. In 1950, all the main retail outlets in Northern NSW were locally or regionally owned. By 2000, they were all externally controlled. With these shifts in control went the managerial positions and the supporting infrastructure that had supported the businesses.

In 1950, Government services were locally delivered. They had to be. By 2000, local delivery had been replaced by centralised delivery in both public and private sectors. With that centralisation went jobs and decision making to the metros and, to a lesser degree, the bigger country centres.

I have often written about the economic and social effects of these changes. Here I want to focus on one thing, the second major thing that stands out from the historical record, the collapse of the middle class.

At a macro level, the rise of income inequality and the decline of the middle class has been of concern to (among others) the US Federal Reserve. My focus is more local and parochial. As the middle class jobs vanished from specific localities, so did the people who had contributed to local community activities. The editors, journalists, bank managers, store owners and managers, the doctors, the pharmacists, the technicians and the public officials who used to provide the community skills and grunt have vanished or at least  diminished.  

This links to a another social trend, a broader decline in volunteerism and community activism. Those still involved are older; as they age, the organisations that they once supported have diminished. 

Staying with the historical record, I spend a fair bit of time looking at local and regional histories. Here one thing that stands out is the importance of local dynamism in getting things done, in attracting local people and funds, in gaining Government support, in created developments that provide a base for future developments. With economic and social change, this has become harder and harder as local resources and power diminish, as the often state imposed barriers to action become greater. The activists have been emasculated.

This brings me to my first point, we can no longer afford universal standards, we can no longer afford a standards creep that makes action impossible. As I have commented before, as Government reduces its role, it increases its intervention in those areas that it can still control. It’s true. You can’t develop a block of land in a small country centre because state imposed rules make it impossibly expensive. What’s the point of consumer protection, or indeed trades standards, when its effect is to make it impossible to easily change a tap or, for that matter, get any medical help at all? 

We have to lower, to get rid of, our standards. What is better, having someone live in a shack or be homeless? What is better, to have a house repair that is inadequate or no repair at all?

My second point is that we have to get rid of our idea that we must prioritise on greatest need when the effect is to make a system unsustainable. Take social housing as an example. This was originally envisaged as a way of helping lower income earners into housing, of giving them a path into home ownership, of building social mobility.

As expenditure constraints kicked in, as the gap between need and demand increased, we focused on greatest need, on those with multiple complex needs. Social housing moved from a social tool to part of the welfare system. Rents went down, costs went up, and the social housing system moved into permanent deficit. That would be fine if the money was there to pay, but it wasn’t. Just shifting management to community housing because of the tax breaks in that sector doesn’t help a great deal; we just shift the problem.

Now we face some hard choices. Logically, we have to make the system sustainable, to allow it to achieve its longer term objectives. However that is hard, for it may mean leaving a really needy and deserving applicant homeless. Yet we really have no choice, for without change the existing system will crash in the absence of new Government funding. And it appears that we can’t afford that.

My last point is that since we can no longer rely on Government and its political games. we need to find a way to rebuild community activism as a substitute for Government action. In doing so, we have to redefine the role of Government. I will return to this in another post.   

Posting resumes tomorrow

I have been travelling with limited internet access. Normal service should resume tomorrow.

Bureaucracy, adhocracy and the computing and communications revolution

In a comment on Saturday Morning Musings – problems with system dependency, Evan referred in a comment to Alvin Toffler and 'adhocracy'. I didn’t remember the concept in a Toffler context,  so looked it up. Wikipedia describes it in this way;

Adhocracy is a flexible, adaptable and informal form of organization that is defined by a lack of formal structure. It operates in an opposite fashion to a bureaucracy. The term was first popularized in 1970 by Alvin Toffler, and has since become often used in the theory of management of organizations (particularly online organizations). The concept has been further developed by academics such as Henry Mintzberg.

Adhocracy is characterized by an adaptive, creative and flexible integrative behavior based on non-permanence and spontaneity. It is believed that these characteristics allow adhocracy to respond faster than traditional bureaucratic organizations while being more open to new ideas.

Apparently the term was used in Toffler’s 1970 Future Shock, and then further extended in The Third Wave (1980). While adhocracy offered real advantages, there were also perceived risks including "half-baked actions", personnel problems stemming from organization's temporary nature, extremism in suggested or undertaken actions, and threats to democracy and legality rising from adhocracy's often low-key profile. To overcome these, a melded bureaucracy-adhocracy model was proposed.

These concepts were not unique to Toffler. Other popular writers including John Naisbitt in Megatrends (1982) popularised them as well. We were moving into a new world based on new computing and communications technologies of flexible working, virtual organisations in which work would be project based, constantly reforming and refreshing.

It is now over forty years since Toffler coined the term, over thirty years since Megatrends became a global best seller. How have we gone? What has actually happened?

On the surface, the very power of the new computing and communications technologies that were meant to free us, to take us in new directions, has created the command and control management that we see today. Management systems have actually gone in the opposite direction to that envisaged; flexibility has been replaced by rules, by new forms of measurement and reporting. The technology has allowed, even mandated, a requirement for the big to get bigger. More and more of our resources are devoted to just making all sorts of systems work.

Is this simply a passing phase, or are we condemned to suffocate in the controls and costs that increasingly enshroud us in our working lives?  Can we define another path?

Working from home – how to survive

I was chatting to a friend today about the best way to structure your working life when you are working from home. Back in 2006, I wrote Teleworking - a personal perspective. I think that the comments I made then are still relevant today, although my own world has changed.

Central to successful home working is the need to recreate formal separations between different aspects of life and work. That is why so many writers write in the morning. Lacking externally imposed disciplines and separations, faced always with the perils of procrastination, they create their own structure, forcing themselves to write (or sometimes not) within specific hours.

Today those working in organisations face a different but remarkably similar problem. How to create barriers that will protect personal and family life from the encroaching curse of modern communications technologies!

Really, there is absolutely no need to do certain things after hours just because someone (or you) thinks that you should. You just have to learn to say no. What’s the point of going to work tired in the morning and then struggling just because you got that email out! 

Sunday Snippets – the Ukraine

Today’s post is a follow up to Has war with Russia become inevitable? This drew a number of comments.

Anon wrote:

I think the rhetoric about Putin has gotten way out of hand. Hitler killed hundreds of thousands of people when invading Ukraine. Putin has the military power to reduce Kiev to a smoking crater and has decided on non lethal options.

kvd wrote;

Well fwiw these are my further thoughts on what has happened and maybe what could happen to cool this crisis.

1. Putin saw the weakening of a Ukraine government which was friendly towards Russia as a direct threat to his naval forces in the Black Sea. For his own internal reasons he cannot afford to have that asset under threat.

2. (Not talking about the initial demos, more the violent step-up before it ended): It would not surprise me to read eventually that the violence in Kiev was Russian-inspired/instigated because, although Putin lost a weak ally, he took from that the needed excuse to 'protect' his people in the east - for which actually read 'his naval base'.

3. Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for a guarantee of its territory.

4. A possible mutually acceptable solution might be for Ukraine to cede to Russia the land containing the naval installations, to achieve the situation now existing in Cuba for the US. (please don't lecture me on the history of that place; I get it)

5. In return, Russia and the West would formally acknowledge Ukraine as 'neutral' - see Switzerland. This would have huge economic benefits to all sides of this conflict.

All that said, much like you, Jim, I see confrontation now verging on the inevitable - but as to if that becomes a 'hot' war, or simply harsh economic sanctions, who knows?

I come back to a comment I made on your earlier post: Putin will do exactly what he says because he cannot afford not to - and that is his major bargaining chip. He needs to gain something out of this. They need to give him a way out which can't be mistaken for a step backwards.

He followed up with:

Also, I think this analysis is worth a read - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/10700292/Why-China-is-right-on-the-future-of-Ukraine.html  - even tho the author dismisses a sanctions approach.

And last thought: isn't it funny that we have Putin defending the overthrown democratically elected government, and now promoting a referendum, while the US and the rest are firmly behind the 'revolution' involving some pretty dismal sorts?

Ramana wrote:

If you are a betting man, I will wager that nothing will happen. There will be a lot of huffing and puffing and noise and it will all eventually die down. Yes, even the sanctions. Just watch the Brits. They are the guys who will miss out on big commissions and see how they have reacted so far. No noise at all from the suits there. Ukraine will say, thank God Crimea left and the Russians will have to foot big bills in subsidies to the Crimean part of the new dispensation. It will all work out fine eventually.

Orby Wrightville said...

Excuse me but just who is going to go to war with Russia over this?

To which Neville responded:

Orby, I think you are right. I would favour also ceding Finland, and Poland and any country ending with 'ia' and 'stan' as well.

Let's simplify the map; there maybe only three colours then required! Anything to appease.

Over at skepticslawyers, Lorenzo’s Built-in Imperialism: an era of farcical return provides that writer’s historical perspective. Meantime, I went searching for a Ukrainian source on all this and found the Kyviv Post.

Reading the Kyviv Post reminded me of the complexity of all this in human terms in a world of complex interlinks: the Ukrainian migrant workers in Russia; the teachers now not being paid in Crimea; the progressive Russian sanctions (they began before all this) on Ukrainian businesses in Russia; the paperwork involved in Crimea as you have to re-register ownership of key assets; the collapse of payments systems; the reshaping of possible gas supplies within Europe.

And where might those gas supplies come from? Australia, at least in part.

Saturday Morning Musings – problems with system dependency

This has been a busy topsy turvy week with limited time for writing. It’s also been a frustrating week, one that reminded me (again) of my reliance on sometimes imperfect technology.

Earlier, Livewriter stopped working. I was able to fix that by loading new Microsoft software, but in doing so created another problem. My outlook stopped working, forcing me to rely on web mail. As a consequence, I quickly collided with the mail box size limits.

Then on Thursday I turned the TV on for the first time in two weeks. Not working. The old analog signal has just been turned off in Sydney. I have a digital set top box, but the TV clearly requires some form of retuning that is beyond me at the present time. Youngest, I need you!

During the week the phone systems at work went down several times. along with access to all the on-line functions. The office is part of a large, centralised, cloud based system, and its often rather cranky and slow. I was in Coffs Harbour running a workshop when the worst outage occurred. Apparently, many people simply went home, unable to do their work.

Back at work from the Coffs Harbour workshop, I hit a problem with the NSW Government procurement system. I am familiar with that system. but hadn’t had to process accounts for payment for a while. In the intervening period, a new automated system had been introduced. Now I found that as a contractor, I didn’t have access to the automated system.

We are not talking about approvals here, simply processing. Certain accounts needed to be processed quickly. Since neither I nor the colleague who was working for me on the project could access the automated system properly, we had to find a work-around. We did. Hopefully, the accounts will be paid. Still, the case illustrates a core problem.

All systems must have rules to function. This is especially important for automated systems. However, people have jobs to do, deadlines to meet. When the system impedes your work, you find ways to do your job regardless. This keeps work going, but it also has real dangers, for the need to find work-arounds creates systemic risks.

I am quite anal about these things, as are many of my colleagues. We document and document. Yet when you go to many of the systemic problems revealed in corruption inquiries, you find that the need to find work-arounds reveal paths that can be used by those subject to temptation.

To cap it all off, I dropped my mobile Friday. The back came off. I picked it up, checked that it hadn’t been damaged, put it back together again, and rushed on. It was only later that I realised that the SIM card must have become detached, resulting in a non-working mobile. This is actually important, for my personal mobile number is the fall-back contact point for the various workshops that I am trying to organise.

Unlike some of my friends and colleagues, I am quite patient with technology. They expect things to work and get impatient when they don’t. The reality is that all systems are imperfect and subject to failure. That is the price we pay for greater efficiency, for the ability to do new things. It is also the reason that you have to have fall-backs, ways of operating in spite of technology failures.

Convenience is a trap. I work independently, I have work-arounds in place for most things. Each time a problem emerges, I have to remind myself that it is my responsibility to ensure that I have back-ups in place. Reminder Jim: back up your hard drive!

This week-end I am going to focus on fixing my systems, on ensuring that I can survive regardless of system failures. I need to do so. So do you!