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Brendan Nelson's Values

Our Education Minister Brendan Nelson wants to see some "essentially Australian" values introduced into our schools – "understanding, tolerance, inclusion and responsibility, care, compassion, reaching out to others, doing your best, pursuing and protecting the common good, treating all people fairly, enterprise, respectfulness, fidelity, comradeship and endurance." And if people don't want to "accept and embrace" those values, he says, "they ought to clear off."

What to make of this.... Cameron thinks that Nelson is "way out of line"

"That isn't what this country is about. That isn't what democracy is about. The minute that you have one group of people forcing their values or beliefs on another group of people, you don't have a democracy any more - you have a form of fascism."

I don't completely disagree.

But I do reckon that people living here should "accept" our values in the sense of obeying by the laws that embody them – we demand that of all Australians.  Now that doesn't mean that they have to agree with them. Any Australian is entitled to object to any of our values, our laws or our institutions, and they even have the right to try to change them, provided they do so within the confines of the law.

However, forcing our "values"on people, whether they are immigrants or not, would be a futile exercise at best, and potentially dangerous and divisive at worst.  Particularly when Nelson's and his values smell more like something out of the 1950's than contemporary Australia.  But I don't find anything wrong or offensive in asking immigrants to gain a wider understanding of Australian Culture and history.

Putting that argument aside, it's interesting that value debate has entered the Australian political arena.  We are used to it happening in the United States, where their whole political system and decision making is centered around sphere of values, but it never really happens like that in Australia.  Mark Latham tried to focus on values during last years Federal Election (remember the "Ladder of Opportunity") but was steamrolled John Howard's economic agenda.

I wonder what our values would have been if Latham had been elected?

A Thought Over Coffee... With A Lawyer

One of my favorite "blogs of the minute" is Jason Duncans "A Thought Over Coffee":

"Follow me through my journey towards opening Cafe Evoke. From my final semester at Belmont University in Nashville, TN to opening day in Bozeman, MT I will share my expirences with writing the business plan, doing the research, and opening the cafe."

In amongst the commentary on the fun and games that are taking place as he attempts to establish his new cafe (Evoke), Jason offers lots of great quotes, lessons and other cool links.  Today he pointed me to this article on Jeffrey Hughes:

Thirsty for justice? Jeffrey Hughes' two Legal Grind cafes in the Los Angeles area offer "Coffee and Counsel" to those who may not otherwise seek legal advice. Through his innovative venture, Hughes has worked hard to both provide a valuable service to his community and change the public perception of attorneys.

It's Starbucks meets LA Law, and it's great stuff:

Over a dozen lawyers work out of Legal Grind on various days, generally between 3 and 6 p.m. For example, on the first and third Monday of every month, attorney Michael Goldstein offers a $25 "Coffee and Counsel" session on employment rights, worker's compensation, wrongful termination, sexual harassment, personal injury and civil/business disputes between 5 and 6 p.m. Another lawyer simultaneously offers advice on landlord/tenant disputes, auto accidents, restraining orders and small claims.

During the day, before the various experts come in, people can use the document preparation service, pop in to get something notarized or drink coffee while browsing the self-help books on the shelves, including "Your Divorce Advisor."

Coffee.  His point of difference is as simple as coffee, good coffee of course:

"We don't want to serve bad espresso, because then people will think we'll screw up their divorce"

It's a great story and is another example of what can happen when you really think about what your customers would really like from you, and it is almost an example of how Chris Carfi's "Transaction to Community" model works.

I don't know that you can ever feel like you are part of a lawyer's community, but at Legal Grind it is about as good as it is going to get.

The Melbourne Demons: No more bad luck

It is nearing the end of the season for the teams in the Australian Football League, and despite looking shaky a few weeks ago, my mob- the Melbourne Demons- look like they just might scrape into the finals series following two come from behind victories.

I was at the MCG watching last nights game, and it was bloody exciting.  A really remarkable and stirring victory for the men in red and blue.  Just goes to show what you can do if you never give up and stick to a plan.

After round 12 (the halfway point of the year) we had won 9 games and lost only three, and were sitting comfortably in second place on the ladder.  We then managed to lose the next 7 games in a row, and tumbled down the ladder to 11th.

How does that happen?  How does a team that is capable of winning 9 out of 12 games then lose 7 in a row?  Of course the media commentators, supporters and other loungeroom experts (like me) offer up plenty of opinions and reasons, but who really knows.  According to Freakonmics author Steven Levitt, it might be nothing more than bad luck:

"It seems like, when a team loses several games in a row, it is so extreme that it can't reasonably be the result of randomness. Clearly coaches, sports writers and most fans believe that to be true. How often have you heard of a coach holding a closed-door meeting to try to turn a team around? But if you look at it statistically, you expect big losing streaks to occur, simply by randomness, about as often as they do."

He uses the example of the Kansas City Royals, and in typical Levitt fashion explores what the chances are of a Major League team having a long loosing streak, and even links it to his Ipod Shuffle (really!).  He concludes that a big losing streak will occur once every decade or so:

"So, one doesn't need to resort to explanations like "lack of concentration," being "snakebit," or "demoralized" to explain why teams lose so many games in a row, just that they are a bad team getting some bad luck."

I won't say that Melbourne is a bad team, but maybe we were just having some bad luck!  Hopefully we are due for some good luck.

Why do we treat Emails differently to Phone Conversations

Occasionally staring at the amount of stuff in my email inbox and archives I wonder the same thing:

"Why not read an email and then instantly delete it? Why do we save emails? Why do we archive them in folders for safe keeping? We don’t save phone calls. We have a conversation on the phone and then we hang up. If we need to take notes for whatever reason we do, but 99% of phone calls are completely ephemeral. And if we forget something, or we need it again, we just make another call.

Is email really any different? Are we all keeping emails around just because we can? Do we really need to have this stuff on hand so we can go back 14 months from now and dig something up? If we need to dig something up why don’t we just ask the people who we were talking to originally?"

(from Signal vs Noise via Strategize).

My rule for my inbox (either email or physical, old fashioned- dump-it-in-Shannon's-tray type inbox) is pretty simple.  Action it as quickly as possible get it out of there, and get on with your day.  I do the same with notes that I take over the phone.  I either action it straight away, or stick in in my inbox to be action later that day. 

Of course it doesn't always work like that.  I occasionally keep some emails, but that is a bit like keeping that old bit of junk in your garage, "just in case you need it."  Most times you never need it again, and if you do, it needs to be updated anyway. 

I guess keeping emails can be like security blanket- it's easier to sleep at night if you know you have kept everything, just in case.  If I do that, it's usually about a week later that I look at it wonder why the hell I kept it, and hit delete.  All it does is delay the decision making.

As for archives, I can't be bothered with archiving stuff.  If it is important, I print it and file it it physically.  At least then I don't waste time going through old emails trawling for stuff that I can probably go back to the source and find out more quickly.

The Ashes: Why England can't win

"There are some forces in the universe so immutable that it takes something extraordinary to change them. Chief among these is the one that impels Australian captains not to lose the Ashes, something that had begun to look increasingly likely until Ricky Ponting arguably played the captain's innings of the 21st century at Old Trafford to save his team from defeat."

That was Derek Pringle response to the dramatic draw in the Third Ashes' Test.

He has a point.  It seems that Australia simply cannot lose the Ashes, and the Third Test draw in Old Trafford just goes to prove it.  The exciting match might have ended in a draw, but it was clearly a victory for the embattled Aussies and was a soul-destroying loss for England.  They threw absolutely everything at us, right up until the very last ball of the match, but couldn't knock us off.

Sure they got a skin of-their-teeth victory in Birmingham, but the scorecard did them no justice.  They comprehensively belted the Aussies in all areas of the game in that match, and still only scrapped through.  Think of that match as the minor aberration that proves the law- "England cannot win Ashes series."

The Global Syndication of Hootville

At last my favourite ex-3AK radio host is podcasting his weekly radio shows.  Yes indeed, the world domination of Brett de Hoedt, the Mayor of Hootville, and one time Page Three Boy, has begun:

"Hootville is a one-hour, free-range talkfest. The show mixes politics and religion but rarely mentions sport. There's a fair swag of pop culture, corporate thinking and the odd Rant on Demand and poem."

I'm not much for the poetry, but the rest is pretty cool.   Brett is an intelligent, witty and- these days- fully clothed presenter, who dishes up a lively 57 minutes or so of radio each week.

Here's the feed: http://www.hootville.com.au/Hootville.xml
 

On the rise with Penthouse Magazine

The rise of the Internet has made life tough for the publishers of "adult" magazines- or so I've heard.  But it makes sense, with a stack of soft and not-so-soft porn freely available on the web, I often wonder why people still buy it in printed form at all.

But obviously I am not a media expert, and the media readership figures released this week prove just how much I know, because sales of adult magazines are on the rise (so to speak).

Sales of the local version of Penthouse jumped by 18.9% to an average of 53 026 a month.  It must be the quality of the articles.  Another adult title, Australian Hustler is also doing well, with its sales up 1.1%.  Although I believe Hustler isn't as big on the editorial side.

Of course the doyen of adult magazines, Playboy, quit the Australian scene years ago.

I wonder why this is so.  Most magazines and newspapers are in a tailspin of readership decline, as we turn to the internet and RSS feeds to keep ourselves informed &.. ahem.. entertained.

If anyone wants to conduct some research and tell me just what is so good about these magazines that they are experiencing industry defying increases in readership, I'd be happy to report your findings.

(I might regret that offer...we'll see)

One Great Game; Three Lousy Runs

What a riveting end to the second Ashes Test!  I'll admit now that I couldn't bear to watch it or even listen to it....But to lose by three lousy runs.  Argghhh. 

As much as it hurts me to say it, here goes;   over the course of the three and a half days that the game lasted, the Poms deserved to win it.  More so than Australia.

But the only down side to the game was that, as is too often the case in cricket, the umpiring had a fair bit to do with the way the game panned out.  Don't get me wrong, I think the Pom's still would have won. But umpire Billy Bowden had an absolute shocker of a game, and his denial of one of the plummest LBW decisions you'd ever see when Michael Kasprowicz had just come to the wicket and Australia was still about 50 short of the target was almost laughable.  In other words, England had actually won, but the umpire badly blundered. And even the final, winning wicket of Michael Kasprowicz has some conjecture over it.  Did it flick the glove or not?

But I suppose we can debate those type of things, and argue all kinds of other reasons why Australia lost (which is fascinating; why don't we look for reasons why England won?) but that is all part of the great uncertainty of Test cricket. 

But enough bouquets for England.  They would do well to remember  that it probably wouldn't have happened if Glenn McGrath hadn't turned his ankle minutes before play was due to start on the first day....

(And Ashley Giles is still crap)

Link Wrangling

I haven't posted much this week.  Two reasons.  First, I haven't been able to fashion what I want to say into a meaningful post.  Second, I have been too busy reading some good stuff from other blogs.  Here is a sample of what I mean...

Tony points to What Business Can Learn From Open Source, a piece that explores, amongst other  things, what workplaces can learn from Open Source Software and blogging.  It is an excellent essay and Tony's comments are spot on (as usual).

On similar lines, Jeff (Entrepreneurial Mind) has something to say about using culture as a hiring criteria for business, and the difficulty people have using it as a firing criteria.  Worth a look, and reminded me of a situation I found myself in last year.

And just to prove how easy it is to create a  speech simply by bolting stack of cliches together, Andrew Leigh at Imagining Australia has an example by PM John Howard.

If, like me, you have ever wondered why your meetings at work just don't go anywhere, and why instead of exploring new ideas, people seem intent on fighting for what they've already determined is the right way to go?  Then read this post from Seth Godin.  Good stuff.

At last there are some new manifesto's up at Change This.  I am a big fan of Change This, and hope it's reincarnation is for good.  Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas by former "Microsofter" Scott Berkun is definitely worth a read.

Also, the latest Boozeletter arrived in my in box courtesy of the boys at Brewtopia.  (If you haven't already, check their podcast interview with Johnnie Moore here).

The August edition if The Monthly came out this week too.  I bagged the first edition, but the fledgling Aussie "New Yorker" wannabe is getting better with each edition.  The current one is full of excellent stories and essays.  Really liked John Harms stories of "the forever-dry, years of drought" in the Australian "bush" (whatever the "bush" is...)

So, that's what I've been doing this week....

What are Australia's Retail Oligopolists up to?

I have posted about the oligopolistic Australian retail industry before, so Liz Knight's column in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday was of interest.  She tells of a high-powered meeting of senior Australian retail figures in Sydney earlier this week – a meeting that calls to mind that dictum from Adam Smith about being suspicious when people "of the same trade meet."

At lunchtime last Monday the 20 most powerful men and women in Australian retailing held a secret meeting at the exclusive Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron clubhouse at Kirribilli on Sydney's North Shore. The invitation had been issued by the two industry big boys: the chief executive of Woolworths, Roger Corbett, and the head of Coles Myer, John Fletcher.

For many, it was the first time they had been in the same room as the two men, who have long been not just arch rivals but arch enemies.

The pair had decided to get all the major retail chief executives together, from David Jones's Mark McInnes to Mike West from Best & Less, to join in a common mission.

A couple of ideas were tossed around. The first was a united front on regulatory issues. So Graeme Samuel over at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission may take a keen interest in what the retailers are up to.

Now as the guys at Crikey remind us, here's what economist Adam Smith wrote about these sorts of get together's more than two centuries ago:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

Between this group, they own the grocery and apparel market, and strangling what competition is left in the petrol market and have the pharmacy game next in their sites. Remembering also that both Woolies and Coles were last in the Federal Court together on charges from the Australian Consumer & Competition Commission over restricting competition in the liquor industry, consumers and smaller retailers have every right to be concerned.