Thursday 28 April 2016

Hillsborough and Humanity


As a Nottingham Forest fan I'm very very aware of Hillsborough and all that happened at the FA Cup Semi Final that Nottingham Forest could not win when replayed.  I'm aware of the reaction of the Murdoch newspapers which was my overriding memory of what followed, the low brow way that they made amazing unfounded claims before any investigation had taken place and ran with the headline 'The Truth'.  As we knew then i think as football fans and as we now absolutely know, it was far from the truth.  It's sad that 'The Sun' and 'The Times' did not feel that they could run with Hillsborough headlines on the day that the verdict was the number 1,2 & 3 story in the British press.

I am so pleased for the families and the activists that they have got a Jury verdict that vindicates their loved ones.  I remember the compelling Jimmy McGovern film that Chris Eccleston said was the most important work he had ever done and he's a Manchester/ Salford lad I believe.

With it's lies, cover ups, half truths, grotesque pantomime headlines in Murdoch newspapers, behaviour of public servants across the Police and Politics. Bernard Inghams letter to a Liverpool supporter said all about the disdain that the political elite had for Football supporters at the time, the Guardian has been at the centre of any journalistic integrity around the story.   For football writers across the Papers outside of the Murdoch and right wing press the story has been a back beat to any coverage of Liverpool over the years and it reached it's crescendo with the verdict yesterday, then a barnstorming and passionate speech in the House of Commons from Andy Burnham, I had always thought Andy just a little light weight in the oratory department but yesterday his speech was fair and well judged and I think the reason SYP had an almost immediate suspension at the very top of its management.

The Guardian reporting in 1999 prompted the then new Labour administration to set up the Hillsborough Independant Panel, a process of discovery was started.

It was interesting to see Theresa May read the full Jury verdict when to me this verdict is a result of the pressure of 'Human Rights' being brought to bear when everything else is stacked up against tose who want to get to the 'Truth', we need the EU Human Rights legislation and we ought to be proud when people are exonerated and justice is done that we were founding sign ups to the Human Rights legislation.

Don't be fooled by a Little England, Little UK view that Britain is better on it's own, after all what did the Bill of Human Rights ever do for anyone ??????


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Monday 25 April 2016

Breaking Good

There was an article that appeared in mid March on the ‘A Life of Productivity’ BLOG that looked at ‘breaks’, we are all aware that in using IT equipment we are encouraged to have regular breaks from the equipment but this BLOG talked about engineering our breaks to follow the same pattern as our sleep, I’m not quite sure what the science of it is but I guess finding and utilising our bodies natural rhythms has got to be worth a try.  The BLOG called for breaks every 90 minutes because the general accepted period that we sleep in, is 90 minute cycles, each period alternating between light, deep and REM sleep.  There is it seems an argument that in the mornings at work our bodies alternate between 90 minute periods of wakefulness punctuated by 20-30 minute periods of sleepiness/tiredness ( my won experience is that I’m tired most of the afternoon after 2pm rather than in bursts in the morning ).  The advice seems to be to break every 90 minutes and take 10/20 minutes when we are naturally groggy.  This seems a bit simplistic to me and is obviously hard to achieve when you have colleagues booking meetings across your natural rhythms of the morning.

So we have a counterintuitive proposition that its better to take more breaks for better productivity.  This sort of implies that a break acts as downtime to refresh and recharge yourself, now there might be guilt associated with this but lets remember the end goal of our working isn’t so much about how much we do, but its about how much we achieve.

To play this into my mental health challenges that I have in the work place, I know that I am really tired in the afternoons so my takeaway is that in order to improve my productivity in the afternoons I will need to take more breaks and I’m hopeful that will improve my performance in the afternoon,  I will also look at the 90 minute period in  the earlier part of the day as best I can.  Apparently a way of doing this is to look at writings on the Pomodoro cycle which looks at the work/break make up of your working practices.  Another thing I am looking to achieve because of the fatigue I have in the afternoon is to work on tasks such that I don’t try to finish them without a break but I work on them whilst I feel productive, then break, then come back to them and by working on lower priority work in the afternoons I should still maintain performance at work.