The recent outbreak of Scottish nationalism, where First Minister Jack McConnell refused to support England in the World Cup, has been followed by rising tennis star Andy Murray.
Whilst McConnell was unrepentent in his decision to deliberately not support England after his ridiculous statement, Murray's nationalistic streak seemed a bit more sublte: when he appeared on court at Wimbledon he was sporting a white outfit edged with blue and a Cross of St Andrew wristband. Although he hasn't uttered a word, the message is clear: "hands off England I'm not yours, I'm Scotland's!"
With many other sporting events there are often teams from across the kingdom, but for Wimbledon Murray is put under the Great Britain heading. This is something he obviously dislikes, otherwise why wear such a display of nationalism. I don't know of any other tennis player that has done so.
Can anyone imagine if Henman had worn a Cross of St George wristband? No, because he would have been condemned as a Little Englander.
As Murray is now GB's only hope for tennis stardom I'm sure that most English, Welsh and Northern Irish people would fully support him as "one of us". If Scotland was playing in the World Cup, then I would be hoping for them to go as far as they could.
As with all things when it comes to national pride, the English in particular, are left wondering how things will be perceived. Every other country does its own thing and doesn't care who thet upset. Well, from now on I'm not so sure that Murray deserves (or even wants) the support of his erstwhile southern cousins.
Come back Hadrian -- all is forgiven!
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 22, 2006
What a lot of hot air
There seems little doubt that we humans, especially in the northern hemisphere, are pumping too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that this is likely to have an impact on our weather systems. The also seems little doubt that changes need to be made to our collective behaviour if we are to prevent the doomsayers' predictions.
The UK alone contributes but a small percentage to overall global CO2 emissions, so on a micro (UK-only) level the political debate on global warming seems quite removed from our everyday lives of getting to and from work or visiting our local supermarket.
On one level the government's message should be taken seriously and that we should all be doing what we can: cycling everywhere, installing solar heating and erecting wind turbines. If you were to spend the £20,000 or so that it would cost for both solar heating and a wind turbine you would struggle to ever see a financial return; that is, if the local planners allowed you to go ahead.
The mixed messages start to emerge when you understand how government finances work and how every government is actually addicted to motor transport, to the point that new railway lines will not be built (or re-opened) if there is a threat to revenues generated by car journeys. Governments aren't actually addicted to cars, it is just the billions raised from the tax on fuel, road tax and from the anticipated road charging schemes.
On the one hand cars are bad and on the other they're rather very good. How does, or how should, the government handle this dilemma?
From a communications perspective it is tricky. You can't go back to a time when we were less dependent on the car, but governments must re-evaluate their financial need for car-generated revenues. As the M1 grinds to a halt at Luton every morning around 7am, there surely has to be more the transport equation than what it would cost the government if none of us were in our cars. The costs of having hundreds of thousands of people sat going nowhere all around the UK costs businesses millions and these are the costs that we should be looking to reduce.
Governments need to put money into real transport alternatives, to re-open the rural branch lines, to promote bus services and to re-engineer the urban landscape so that we can actually use our cars less.
The UK alone contributes but a small percentage to overall global CO2 emissions, so on a micro (UK-only) level the political debate on global warming seems quite removed from our everyday lives of getting to and from work or visiting our local supermarket.
On one level the government's message should be taken seriously and that we should all be doing what we can: cycling everywhere, installing solar heating and erecting wind turbines. If you were to spend the £20,000 or so that it would cost for both solar heating and a wind turbine you would struggle to ever see a financial return; that is, if the local planners allowed you to go ahead.
The mixed messages start to emerge when you understand how government finances work and how every government is actually addicted to motor transport, to the point that new railway lines will not be built (or re-opened) if there is a threat to revenues generated by car journeys. Governments aren't actually addicted to cars, it is just the billions raised from the tax on fuel, road tax and from the anticipated road charging schemes.
On the one hand cars are bad and on the other they're rather very good. How does, or how should, the government handle this dilemma?
From a communications perspective it is tricky. You can't go back to a time when we were less dependent on the car, but governments must re-evaluate their financial need for car-generated revenues. As the M1 grinds to a halt at Luton every morning around 7am, there surely has to be more the transport equation than what it would cost the government if none of us were in our cars. The costs of having hundreds of thousands of people sat going nowhere all around the UK costs businesses millions and these are the costs that we should be looking to reduce.
Governments need to put money into real transport alternatives, to re-open the rural branch lines, to promote bus services and to re-engineer the urban landscape so that we can actually use our cars less.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Do I look fat in this?
On returning from a recent 2-day pampering session at a local health spa, my wife dropped a clutch of glossy magazines on the coffee table. Heat, OK! and Hello to name but a few. On the cover of one there was a headline-grabbing: “Celebrities’ flabby bellies”.
Of course, such headlines are designed to convert the browser into a purchaser; in my case not actually buying, but it did attract my attention and soon I was flicking through the magazine in that nonchalant not-really-reading-but-of-course-really-reading manner.
A few pages in and there was a feature on the girl band Girls Aloud. On the double-page spread there were ‘now’ and ‘then’ photographs of each band member.
Accompanying each photograph was each singer’s vital statistics. In this case the ‘vital’ element of the figures was that they had all dropped down several clothes sizes. The naturally curvy had become almost skeletal; the healthy facial glow now gaunt.
Whilst it’s easy to dismiss such articles as trivial and irrelevant there is a worrying message being sent out. If this article was a one-off, isolated feature then there would be no problem. But taken together with virtually every other women’s and girl’s title promoting, selling and reinforcing the message that thin is good then we’re going to see a continual increase in eating disorders.
In the same title, ironically, there was an article on how thin and ill Anna Kournikova was looking since she’d left tennis to take up modelling.
Little wonder she’s lost weight: it’s the advertising and fashion industry that eschews any figure that’s larger than an 8 and demands a constant flow of young thin girls to glamorise their products. I wonder how many Flakes Cadbury’s would have sold if they used even an average-sized British women let alone anyone that was slightly overweight.
Companies promoting their products and services must start to look at how their advertising is likely to impact on their target consumers. We must see the use of more everyday-sized models so that young impressionable girls and boys don't get the wrong message that skeletal is good.
Such aspects of companies' activities must also be a fundamental part of their corporate responsibility policies. It is all very well making a commitment to the environment, but if they're promoting thin=good/fat=bad messages then they're simply fuelling eating disorders and their responsibility statements are then no more than spin.
Of course, such headlines are designed to convert the browser into a purchaser; in my case not actually buying, but it did attract my attention and soon I was flicking through the magazine in that nonchalant not-really-reading-but-of-course-really-reading manner.
A few pages in and there was a feature on the girl band Girls Aloud. On the double-page spread there were ‘now’ and ‘then’ photographs of each band member.
Accompanying each photograph was each singer’s vital statistics. In this case the ‘vital’ element of the figures was that they had all dropped down several clothes sizes. The naturally curvy had become almost skeletal; the healthy facial glow now gaunt.
Whilst it’s easy to dismiss such articles as trivial and irrelevant there is a worrying message being sent out. If this article was a one-off, isolated feature then there would be no problem. But taken together with virtually every other women’s and girl’s title promoting, selling and reinforcing the message that thin is good then we’re going to see a continual increase in eating disorders.
In the same title, ironically, there was an article on how thin and ill Anna Kournikova was looking since she’d left tennis to take up modelling.
Little wonder she’s lost weight: it’s the advertising and fashion industry that eschews any figure that’s larger than an 8 and demands a constant flow of young thin girls to glamorise their products. I wonder how many Flakes Cadbury’s would have sold if they used even an average-sized British women let alone anyone that was slightly overweight.
Companies promoting their products and services must start to look at how their advertising is likely to impact on their target consumers. We must see the use of more everyday-sized models so that young impressionable girls and boys don't get the wrong message that skeletal is good.
Such aspects of companies' activities must also be a fundamental part of their corporate responsibility policies. It is all very well making a commitment to the environment, but if they're promoting thin=good/fat=bad messages then they're simply fuelling eating disorders and their responsibility statements are then no more than spin.
How to avoid screen rage
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly new technology becomes a part of everyday working life and the speed that we take technological developments for granted. Recently I was having problems connecting to the internet via our ISDN connection (unfortunately, there are still areas in the UK without broadband) and I was immediately faced with the problem of not being able to send out clients’ urgent press releases.
As I pondered my offline predicament I was transported back to being an 18-year-old junior in a sales office where I used an electric typewriter to produce the letters of the day. It was a slow and laborious process, especially if you made a mistake and had to start again. This sense of tedium enveloped me as I knew that I would have to resort to not an electric typewriter but mail merging letters and printing out the press releases, then stuffing the information into envelopes. It wasn’t that long ago that being able to mass produce letters in the time it would have taken a small army of typists seemed a highly efficient way to work – how quickly times change.
The problem with the ISDN connection was soon resolved and was back online. As I hit the ‘send/receive’ button, I reflected how easy it is to e-mail; I also reflected that a noun has now become a verb. E-mailing is almost as easy as talking and a lot quicker than texting; it is silent, immediate, fast and yet can still come across as being a slightly impersonal medium – probably because everyone thinks that e-mails should be far less formal than letters.
Despite the many benefits that e-mail brings to our lives, it can also be a dangerous tool and one that should be handled with caution. It is too easy to use the ‘reply’ or ‘forward’ options in our e-mail software than it is to send a fresh one. Familiarity does breed contempt and before we know it we’re forwarding a long e-mail chain for all subsequent recipients to read.
If we receive an unpleasant (or even a rather intimate) e-mail we should be very careful how we respond. As Bill Howard, in his article Save Yourself from E-mail Faux Pas, explains: “No matter how annoyed you are at some jerk’s e-mail, save your ‘that’ll put the S.O.B. in his place’ response and look at it again an hour later or first thing the next day. Chances are you’ll want to tone it down.”
Not only may you want to tone the response down, you may not want to end up in court. Unlike telephone calls or sending text messages, with e-mail you are actually publishing material and can be used in a court of law if you are making false accusations are producing inflammatory material. An innocent e-mail to a loved one or a rant about a loathed boss can soon end up half way around the world, leaving the originator of the e-mail embarrassed at best and worst without a job. The same goes for CCs: be careful who you might be unwittingly including in your circulation list.
Getting the message to the right recipient in the first place may not be as easy as you might expect, as Bill Howard suggests: “Use addressee auto-fill cautiously. If you type C-l-a-u, Claudia Andrews appears in the addressee window before Claudia Mezza. Hit enter too soon and you’ll send the message to the wrong Claudia.” However. if you’re generating an e-mail from a database that interfaces with Outlook or Outlook Express then you’re less likely to get the wrong person because you’re creating an e-mail from a unique record and you’d know immediately if you’d opened the wrong record.
With previous technologies there wasn’t the need to be so careful, but with e-mail my advice is that we should observe a few simple rules. Business e-mail should remain for business. Use a Hotmail, or similar server-based e-mail systems, for personal contacts. Where you do receive personal e-mails at work, check the policy of the employer; you might be breaking the terms of your employment (sending personal e-mails is no different from making personal telephone calls) and with spyware able to monitor every keystroke, you don’t know who might be watching.
A few years ago when I working for one particular employer I only found out after sending many e-mails to recruitment agencies that all e-mails (sent and received) were retained on their system, even after deleting them from my own computer.
Whether or not it is company policy I also suggest sending out fresh e-mails every time. This way you can’t accidentally send sensitive information to third party recipients. It may be more time consuming to start with a new e-mail, but this way you’ll avoid falling into the bear traps triggered by lazy habit of hitting the ‘reply’ and ‘forward’ buttons.
Don’t respond immediately to what appears to be an unfriendly or rude e-mail the moment you have read it. If and when you do receive such e-mails, the safety of the anonymity of the screen can lull you into a false sense of security and anger can soon burst forth. Perhaps this should be called screen rage, but whatever it might be called, my advice is walk away and take a breather. Even if the e-mail is unpleasant it is much more positive to deal with it when you are calmer and more focused.
To ensure that you don’t send e-mails that are likely to cause offence avoid sarcasm – it can come across too heavy in e-mail – and irony is often too subtle. The best option is to play it straight.
To get the most out of e-mail we need to apply a few commonsense rules. After all, we know how to behave on the telephone and writing letters so why get careless with e-mail? With e-mail now so much a part of our working life we use it without thought, but as professional communicators we need to be setting the agenda for best practice in all areas of communication and remember that our clients may not be giving the attention they should to such a powerful communications tool.
As I pondered my offline predicament I was transported back to being an 18-year-old junior in a sales office where I used an electric typewriter to produce the letters of the day. It was a slow and laborious process, especially if you made a mistake and had to start again. This sense of tedium enveloped me as I knew that I would have to resort to not an electric typewriter but mail merging letters and printing out the press releases, then stuffing the information into envelopes. It wasn’t that long ago that being able to mass produce letters in the time it would have taken a small army of typists seemed a highly efficient way to work – how quickly times change.
The problem with the ISDN connection was soon resolved and was back online. As I hit the ‘send/receive’ button, I reflected how easy it is to e-mail; I also reflected that a noun has now become a verb. E-mailing is almost as easy as talking and a lot quicker than texting; it is silent, immediate, fast and yet can still come across as being a slightly impersonal medium – probably because everyone thinks that e-mails should be far less formal than letters.
Despite the many benefits that e-mail brings to our lives, it can also be a dangerous tool and one that should be handled with caution. It is too easy to use the ‘reply’ or ‘forward’ options in our e-mail software than it is to send a fresh one. Familiarity does breed contempt and before we know it we’re forwarding a long e-mail chain for all subsequent recipients to read.
If we receive an unpleasant (or even a rather intimate) e-mail we should be very careful how we respond. As Bill Howard, in his article Save Yourself from E-mail Faux Pas, explains: “No matter how annoyed you are at some jerk’s e-mail, save your ‘that’ll put the S.O.B. in his place’ response and look at it again an hour later or first thing the next day. Chances are you’ll want to tone it down.”
Not only may you want to tone the response down, you may not want to end up in court. Unlike telephone calls or sending text messages, with e-mail you are actually publishing material and can be used in a court of law if you are making false accusations are producing inflammatory material. An innocent e-mail to a loved one or a rant about a loathed boss can soon end up half way around the world, leaving the originator of the e-mail embarrassed at best and worst without a job. The same goes for CCs: be careful who you might be unwittingly including in your circulation list.
Getting the message to the right recipient in the first place may not be as easy as you might expect, as Bill Howard suggests: “Use addressee auto-fill cautiously. If you type C-l-a-u, Claudia Andrews appears in the addressee window before Claudia Mezza. Hit enter too soon and you’ll send the message to the wrong Claudia.” However. if you’re generating an e-mail from a database that interfaces with Outlook or Outlook Express then you’re less likely to get the wrong person because you’re creating an e-mail from a unique record and you’d know immediately if you’d opened the wrong record.
With previous technologies there wasn’t the need to be so careful, but with e-mail my advice is that we should observe a few simple rules. Business e-mail should remain for business. Use a Hotmail, or similar server-based e-mail systems, for personal contacts. Where you do receive personal e-mails at work, check the policy of the employer; you might be breaking the terms of your employment (sending personal e-mails is no different from making personal telephone calls) and with spyware able to monitor every keystroke, you don’t know who might be watching.
A few years ago when I working for one particular employer I only found out after sending many e-mails to recruitment agencies that all e-mails (sent and received) were retained on their system, even after deleting them from my own computer.
Whether or not it is company policy I also suggest sending out fresh e-mails every time. This way you can’t accidentally send sensitive information to third party recipients. It may be more time consuming to start with a new e-mail, but this way you’ll avoid falling into the bear traps triggered by lazy habit of hitting the ‘reply’ and ‘forward’ buttons.
Don’t respond immediately to what appears to be an unfriendly or rude e-mail the moment you have read it. If and when you do receive such e-mails, the safety of the anonymity of the screen can lull you into a false sense of security and anger can soon burst forth. Perhaps this should be called screen rage, but whatever it might be called, my advice is walk away and take a breather. Even if the e-mail is unpleasant it is much more positive to deal with it when you are calmer and more focused.
To ensure that you don’t send e-mails that are likely to cause offence avoid sarcasm – it can come across too heavy in e-mail – and irony is often too subtle. The best option is to play it straight.
To get the most out of e-mail we need to apply a few commonsense rules. After all, we know how to behave on the telephone and writing letters so why get careless with e-mail? With e-mail now so much a part of our working life we use it without thought, but as professional communicators we need to be setting the agenda for best practice in all areas of communication and remember that our clients may not be giving the attention they should to such a powerful communications tool.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Mean-spirited local authorities
Driving our cars today seems to offer fewer and fewer pleasure: we have speed cameras at every turn, we have expensive fuel and we have increasingly congested roads. Even when it comes to parking there always seems to be problems finding a space.
The only consolation, in recent times, was when a fellow motorist offered you their pay-and-display ticket with enough time remaining to enable you to park for free. This simple neighbourly gesture was always enough to put a smile on my face and restored my faith in humanity.
But if you've been to a car park recently you'll find that your attempts at being neighbourly have been thwarted. Increasingly, you now have to enter either all or part of your registration number so that you can't give the ticket to anyone else. Of course I can see the finance directors' rationale: more money for the coffers, but for the actual amount of additional revenue raised set against the additional cost of the more complex machines, it is a mean-spirited act.
Whether or not you visit car parks that have the 'mean machines', as I'll brand them, there is the other issue: the actual cost of parking. I'm not really bothered whether I pay £1 or £2 per hour, what I really object to is the cynical pricing policy. How often have you found a ticket machine where the pricing is something like: 70p for 1 hour; £1.30 for 2-3 hours and £1.80 for 3-4 hours and so on? That's right, every time you visit such a machine you can guarantee that you have 60p in change or pound coins only. Why don't councils opt for round figures? £1 for an hour; £2 for 2 hours and so on.
The reason is obvious and it is another devious ploy to extract maximum revenues from the motorist that is trying to visit the village/town/city centre and spend money in the shops (keeping shops in business and enabling them to pay their local rates back to the mean-spirited councils).
To encourage shoppers back into town and city centres we need parking policies that actually encourage visits and help dissuade us from shopping at the out-of-town centres where parking is free.
What we pay when we park our cars is not going to change the course of history, but councils should wake up to the fact that they should be encouraging visits to town centres, that they shouldn't be preventing neighbourly gestures and they should realise that we're not as stupid as they think.
The only consolation, in recent times, was when a fellow motorist offered you their pay-and-display ticket with enough time remaining to enable you to park for free. This simple neighbourly gesture was always enough to put a smile on my face and restored my faith in humanity.
But if you've been to a car park recently you'll find that your attempts at being neighbourly have been thwarted. Increasingly, you now have to enter either all or part of your registration number so that you can't give the ticket to anyone else. Of course I can see the finance directors' rationale: more money for the coffers, but for the actual amount of additional revenue raised set against the additional cost of the more complex machines, it is a mean-spirited act.
Whether or not you visit car parks that have the 'mean machines', as I'll brand them, there is the other issue: the actual cost of parking. I'm not really bothered whether I pay £1 or £2 per hour, what I really object to is the cynical pricing policy. How often have you found a ticket machine where the pricing is something like: 70p for 1 hour; £1.30 for 2-3 hours and £1.80 for 3-4 hours and so on? That's right, every time you visit such a machine you can guarantee that you have 60p in change or pound coins only. Why don't councils opt for round figures? £1 for an hour; £2 for 2 hours and so on.
The reason is obvious and it is another devious ploy to extract maximum revenues from the motorist that is trying to visit the village/town/city centre and spend money in the shops (keeping shops in business and enabling them to pay their local rates back to the mean-spirited councils).
To encourage shoppers back into town and city centres we need parking policies that actually encourage visits and help dissuade us from shopping at the out-of-town centres where parking is free.
What we pay when we park our cars is not going to change the course of history, but councils should wake up to the fact that they should be encouraging visits to town centres, that they shouldn't be preventing neighbourly gestures and they should realise that we're not as stupid as they think.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Free advertising?
The great news for the PR industry is that there are still many people that are either unaware of PR or unaware of its potential.
I volunteered to help a friend to publicise a new service that he was launching as part of his busness and having submitted a draft release he wanted to know how much the target publication would charge. I explained that they don't charge, but equally we cannot guarantee coverage. But by making the story as relevant as possible to the publication's readership and ensuring that it is genuinely newsworthy then there is a good possibility of coverage.
Many people still see PR as something that is 'free', or related to advertising; both of which are incorrect. If clients are paying for a PR company to help communicate their news then the publicity generated isn't free, by definition, and shouldn't be seen as being something of little value.
The challenge is to continue to demonstrate the value of PR and to show that we're much more than press release machines; our remit should encompass every aspect of how a company or organisation relates to its all of its publics (including staff, customers, suppliers, shareholders, local community, government agencies).
There are a number of mainly trade titles that make charges for "colour separation" (charging for content) and they are the ones that I steer clear of. Not only are they doing a disservice to their readers because editorial and advertising has effectively been merged, but they are missing the point of journalism and PR.
Have a great day.
I volunteered to help a friend to publicise a new service that he was launching as part of his busness and having submitted a draft release he wanted to know how much the target publication would charge. I explained that they don't charge, but equally we cannot guarantee coverage. But by making the story as relevant as possible to the publication's readership and ensuring that it is genuinely newsworthy then there is a good possibility of coverage.
Many people still see PR as something that is 'free', or related to advertising; both of which are incorrect. If clients are paying for a PR company to help communicate their news then the publicity generated isn't free, by definition, and shouldn't be seen as being something of little value.
The challenge is to continue to demonstrate the value of PR and to show that we're much more than press release machines; our remit should encompass every aspect of how a company or organisation relates to its all of its publics (including staff, customers, suppliers, shareholders, local community, government agencies).
There are a number of mainly trade titles that make charges for "colour separation" (charging for content) and they are the ones that I steer clear of. Not only are they doing a disservice to their readers because editorial and advertising has effectively been merged, but they are missing the point of journalism and PR.
Have a great day.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Today, the UK government announced yet more plans to dramatically re-shape our education system. Yes, there going to privatise education and they're moving back towards schools taking pupils based on ability: in other words we're back to selection.
In the 60s it was 'out' with selection and 'in' with comprehensives; no more evil 11-plus exams to determine how bright you were. And since then we have been on the slippery slope to where we find ourselves today: more and more going to university and more and more who can't actually read or write.
But that's OK, because today there is no such thing a failure; nothing so black and white as that. No, there are just shades of grey, or rather the whole alphabet to allocate for grades. You can still 'pass' a GCSE with a G. When I did my "O" levels you needed an A, B or a C. Ds and Es? Sorry, but you'd failed.
What's so wrong with failing? Through failure you can actually learn how to succeed; you get knocked down, but you get up again... Character-building is a better word, but that sounds too... well, too elitist probably.
Certainly no room for elitism with Nouvelle Labour. Except that Tony B went to Fettes: the Scottish Eton no less.
It's all a case of plus ca change... and for those who didn't study French I'm really saying that nothing much changes. If we'd left the education system alone and maintained "O" levels and apprenticeships we'd have plenty of tradesman, and we'd have school children that knew what to do with an apostrophe.
Here endeth today's words of wisdom.
In the 60s it was 'out' with selection and 'in' with comprehensives; no more evil 11-plus exams to determine how bright you were. And since then we have been on the slippery slope to where we find ourselves today: more and more going to university and more and more who can't actually read or write.
But that's OK, because today there is no such thing a failure; nothing so black and white as that. No, there are just shades of grey, or rather the whole alphabet to allocate for grades. You can still 'pass' a GCSE with a G. When I did my "O" levels you needed an A, B or a C. Ds and Es? Sorry, but you'd failed.
What's so wrong with failing? Through failure you can actually learn how to succeed; you get knocked down, but you get up again... Character-building is a better word, but that sounds too... well, too elitist probably.
Certainly no room for elitism with Nouvelle Labour. Except that Tony B went to Fettes: the Scottish Eton no less.
It's all a case of plus ca change... and for those who didn't study French I'm really saying that nothing much changes. If we'd left the education system alone and maintained "O" levels and apprenticeships we'd have plenty of tradesman, and we'd have school children that knew what to do with an apostrophe.
Here endeth today's words of wisdom.
Friday, October 21, 2005
That Friday Feeling
It's suddenly Friday again and time to plan and plot for two days 'off'. Well, with 2 young boys and garden that resembles the Somme, I doubt I'm going to have much time off; but Friday it is and tonight time for a few beers.
On the subject of beers, did you know that 3 pints in one night and you are technically a binge drinker? No, neither did I. Five or 6 pints maybe, but three? But thanks to Nanny State, three pints and you're heading for an early grave. These days it seems that we're all doing everything that's wrong: driving too much, too little exercise, too many cigarettes, too many poor meals, too few family meals together... the list goes on (and on).
But back to Friday. If you've spent the last 4 days looking forward to knocking off today then you're likely to experience is the Monday Morning Blues. Nothing worse than the sense of dread if you have a job that you don't really enjoy. Then, of course, there is the Sunday Syndrome: the slightly worried feeling in the pit of your stomach, which means that what should be a relaxing two days off, is actually only about a day and a half before you're back to thinking about work.
Mondays come round as surely as night follows day, and before you know you are back at work. If you enjoy your work as much as that, then how productive are you being and should you not look at moving on? Your boss isn't getting particularly good value from you because it's probably Wednesday before you've settled into the week and by Thursday it's the emotional wind-down for the weekend.
If you enjoy your work and perhaps spend a lot of your time in the office, or whatever constitutes your 'office', then there are the issues of work-life balance nagging in the background. If you spend what is perceived to be too long at work then there are those that suggest that you're either inefficient or you're part of the presenteeism culture: staying at your desk just to look good for the boss.
Of course , there has to be a balance between being dragged to the office and being dragged from the office, but surely it is better to be motivated and focused, rather than resenting every minute that you're at work. For one, time evaporates and the weekend comes round faster (and you enjoy more of the weekend), and for two, life's surely too short to spend a third of your life with a cloud over your head.
And talking of clouds over your head, the next time it's raining go out for a walk. The relevance here? Absolutely zero, but it's a great feeling to be out in the wet especially when we're always trying to avoid getting wet we forget the simple pleasures of being connected to nature, which can be enjoyed whether you love or loathe your job.
Ciao.
On the subject of beers, did you know that 3 pints in one night and you are technically a binge drinker? No, neither did I. Five or 6 pints maybe, but three? But thanks to Nanny State, three pints and you're heading for an early grave. These days it seems that we're all doing everything that's wrong: driving too much, too little exercise, too many cigarettes, too many poor meals, too few family meals together... the list goes on (and on).
But back to Friday. If you've spent the last 4 days looking forward to knocking off today then you're likely to experience is the Monday Morning Blues. Nothing worse than the sense of dread if you have a job that you don't really enjoy. Then, of course, there is the Sunday Syndrome: the slightly worried feeling in the pit of your stomach, which means that what should be a relaxing two days off, is actually only about a day and a half before you're back to thinking about work.
Mondays come round as surely as night follows day, and before you know you are back at work. If you enjoy your work as much as that, then how productive are you being and should you not look at moving on? Your boss isn't getting particularly good value from you because it's probably Wednesday before you've settled into the week and by Thursday it's the emotional wind-down for the weekend.
If you enjoy your work and perhaps spend a lot of your time in the office, or whatever constitutes your 'office', then there are the issues of work-life balance nagging in the background. If you spend what is perceived to be too long at work then there are those that suggest that you're either inefficient or you're part of the presenteeism culture: staying at your desk just to look good for the boss.
Of course , there has to be a balance between being dragged to the office and being dragged from the office, but surely it is better to be motivated and focused, rather than resenting every minute that you're at work. For one, time evaporates and the weekend comes round faster (and you enjoy more of the weekend), and for two, life's surely too short to spend a third of your life with a cloud over your head.
And talking of clouds over your head, the next time it's raining go out for a walk. The relevance here? Absolutely zero, but it's a great feeling to be out in the wet especially when we're always trying to avoid getting wet we forget the simple pleasures of being connected to nature, which can be enjoyed whether you love or loathe your job.
Ciao.
Today's Image
As an amateur photographer I will also be posting various images to my blog site.
This is the waterfront at Kinsale in Eire. Kinsale is a fantastic place to visit, especially if you're a bit of a foodie. A warm welcome is waiting in every pub, bar and restaurant, and the food is wonderful.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Thursday 20 October
Welcome to Opera Public Relations' blog, which we hope you find of interest and will navigate back to.
On our blog there will be news of our campaigns, clients, our recently-launched networking group for Derbyshire-based PROs (Springboard) and sometimes a bit of a rant.
We'll also publish Opinion, which is Opera's newsletter.
On our blog there will be news of our campaigns, clients, our recently-launched networking group for Derbyshire-based PROs (Springboard) and sometimes a bit of a rant.
We'll also publish Opinion, which is Opera's newsletter.
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