Home, Sweet Home

THE Englishman’s home is his castle, or so they say. It’s a safe haven, a place where strangers may enter only if invited. It’s a private place where each of us can have a different persona from the one that we portray in our hours at work. Instead of being smart, cultured, controlled, authoritative, we are allowed to be untidy and lazy.     

No Man Is an Island

No man is an island, entire of itself.-John Donne, poet (1572-1631)LAST month I celebrated the fortieth anniversary of my relationship with Stephanie, the woman who is now my wife.     

Youth Unemployment： An Impending Scourge on Society.

TODAY’S news media are full of tales about the state of the European economies, especially about the unsustainable levels of national debt funding the social programs of Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland, amongst others. There are joyous reports of the negotiations and disagreements between the UK and the Eurozone countries, as the UK says: "The Eurozone must now resolve its own selfmade crisis. We’ll do our bit, but remember that we have our own problems in the UK." The reality is that the UK does     

A Question of Responsibility

A colleague recently suggested to me that Oriental medicine is largely preventative, while Western medicine is generally curative. I tested this thesis by visiting my local pharmacy in England, where there was no doubt that most of the products on sale were designed to fix your problems, rather than to stop them occurring in the first place.     

HOW POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS NETWORK: A COMPARISON ACROSS GOVERNMENTS

Effective public administration relies on the passage of information through interpersonal communication networks. While we have a vast research literature concerning formal structures and roles in organizations, including public agencies and government institutions, we know far less about the flow of information through semiformal, voluntary interactions. In this paper we use a large survey to explore the networking patterns of politicians and bureaucrats and to compare these with the more formal structural attributes of hierarchy and functional specialization. Social network analysis and standard quantitative measures are used to examine which actors are most central in advice and strategic information networks and how this varies across governments. The results suggest that the communication networks of politicians and bureaucrats differ substantially, with politicians being surprisingly peripheral in their patterns of interaction. Differences across governments are also observed with some municipalities being markedly more hierarchical, cross‐organizational, and externally focused in their networking behaviour.     

Play on!

RECENTLY,I found myself in Seoul,at the invitation of Arts Council Korea. During the course of my stay,I enjoyed one of the most moving artistic experiences I have had in many years. It was my first     

Sport and the Rounded Human

THE anthropologist Desmond Morris noted that "everything about sport is derived from the hunt: there is no sport in existence that does not base itself on the chase or on aiming, the two key elements of primeval hunting." George Orwell went on to say that "serious sport is war minus the shooting!"     

MANAGING THE DIARY: WHAT DOES A POLICE COMMISSIONER DO?

What do we know about the work of a Police Commissioner? Using the example of Australia, this article provides a perspective of the working environment within which a Police Commissioner operates. The emphasis is on the Commissioner’s office and how that office manages a constantly changing diary in an unpredictable and uncertain environment both internally and externally. Through an analysis of a workplace diary spanning five years, interviews and non‐participation observation notes, the article reflects on the working life of an Australian Police Commissioner. It demonstrates that this Police Commissioner divides her time between management duties and representing the Office of Commissioner in the wider community. It also highlights the importance of external leadership and the importance of working with communities and connecting with external constituencies. The article shows that qualitative analysis in the form of interviews and non‐participant observation can provide a stronger interpretation and understanding of quantitative data.