Refugee Crisis – How Can We Help?
I'm pretty sure everyone in the UK has seen the awful pictures of Aylan Kurdi, the three year old Syrian boy who drowned along with his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rehan while trying to escape Syria and join relatives in Canada. I sincerely hope that everyone else who saw these pictures was as upset and angry about it as I have been. As a father of two, one of who is three years old, it made me cry. It also made me want to do something about it. I started with signing the UK Parliament petition for the UK to take more refugees. If you are a British Citizen or resident please do the same. Refugees not Migrants Language is important. We have a global refugee crisis. The people we see trying desperately to come here are refugees, not…
Getting A Civil Service Job
Today is my last day in my current civil service job. On Monday I will start a new civil service job, on promotion, with a different civil service department. 100 Parliament Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Figuratively, I will be at the other end of Government. Physically I'll be in Parliament Street, a five minute walk from my current building. I'll be quite sad in many ways. I've worked with some very good people on things that I've both found interesting and felt that it was improving things from a citizen perspective. I expect that to continue in my new job, just with new people and new subject areas. This is not the end of my first chapter, not is it the start of the last. I describe myself as a career civil servant, having had many civil service jobs since 1992.…
Cell Tradecraft – Plot Hole Plugged
The cell tradecraft in the first draft of Perfects had a plot hole. I found in my first editing pass, it relates to the cell tradecraft when it is compromised. Background Core and infrastructure from a typical cell system (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The main characters in Perfects are a group of genetically modified people. They're illegal and trying to help other genetically modified people escape from the country under false identities. The parallel here is the evader networks in nazi occupied Europe during WW2. Indeed the group has consciously modelled it's way of working on the SOE manual. They have a compartmentalisd cell structure to prevent the whole network being compromised. The Plot Hole The story involves the cell being compromised. The police raid their identity factory and arrest of a couple of the cell members, including the leader. In…
Green Ink for happier editing?
For almost two decades I have used green ink when commenting on documents and for editing. I've come to believe that green ink is the best colour for editing for a variety of reasons. Here they are. Green Ink is psychologically positive Traditionally red ink has been used for correcting proofs. Red has a negative connotation, we use it for stop signs and prohibitions. Psychologically red can symbolise the blood from our work, and if there is a lot of red on the page then we get disillusioned and dispirited. So much so that UK civil service core competency framework has "wields the red pen" as an unacceptable trait for senior civil servants. Green Ink carries the opposite connotations to red ink. We use green for go, and for affirming things. So green ink on the page doesn't carry the…
My Airbnb Experience in Paris
I had my first airbnb experience this weekend in Paris. It was a fairly good one. Paris itself was expensive but enjoyable and exactly what I had expected. My Airbnb Experience Part of my AirBNB experience, view from the window If you've had your own airbnb experience then I expect this won't be news to you. Initially I was uncertain about it. Staying in someone else's place can be fraught with difficulties. However my host was a nice guy and was very friendly in the messaging beforehand and when we met in person. The first thing that I found a little odd with my airbnb experience was the booking process. What was odd was the need to introduce myself. Hotels don't really care about me as a person, they just want my money. Their volume assumptions mitigate the risks they…