Business in Glasgow

What a weekend this has turned out to be, Danielle has eventually become Dorothy (I rooted for her early on in the series). José Mourinho has once again championed his cause with winning the Champions League, 45 years since it was last achieved by Inter Milan. All these events will capture the imagination of many people and will leave them discussing and talking at the morning break on Monday morning.

The most significant thing that took place this weekend for me was the announcement that J. Craig Venter has been attributed with creating the first artifical cell,Mycoplasma Mycoides. This is an amazing piece of scientific discovery and indeed has already divided the scientific community as to how far science can go in its pursuit of new things. Ian Bell’s article in Saturday’s Heral said this: ‘science’s latest sensation forces us to ask what it is we do with the world we inhabit, for what purpose and by what right?’ It is clear that Ventor is not just concerned with the science but the possibility and the prospect of creating new opportunities to cure the sick, feed the hungry, basically create a brave new world.

Of course we have heard it all before and no doubt we will hear it all again but the issue always comes back to this, when we use our intellect to it’s fullest capacity, then are left with the outcomes and the responsibility of acting on that knowledge and information, we are always left with a moral question, what is our motivation? Is it self interest? Is it pride in our abilities and our achievements or do we seek the greater good and the welfare of all?

It will be interesting to see in a few years time where this discovery leads. One thing is for sure, we cannot ‘unknow’ what we know, unlearn what we have learnt, uncreate what has been created but we will certainly be held accountable for how we use our knowledge as humanbeings. Perhaps for myself and my own thinking, something to be discussed I hope in the canteens and the staff lounges, is that instead of being filled with a sense of pride at what man has been enabled to achieve, it would be far better if he promoted his humility in recognising that with these great opportunities come tremendous responsibilities.

Engage is going to take a break over the summer period and will probably come back in a different format than before. However, in order to keep continuity, the table talk chats on my blog site here will continue.

Something has to be said I think, on the aftermath of the General Election, with the dust now settling and what with the proverbial volcanic ash dust causing havoc in the skies and now the financial realities beginning to bite, there is a degree of uncertainty abroad on different fronts.

It is hard to maintain a buoyant attitude towards life, at every turn something else comes along to either knock your confidence or undermine any kind of joy or pleasantness you have experienced or are experiencing.

I can’t help but think that in countries where they have even more to complain about and less to encourage them, you often find a much more cheerful disposition towards life and the prospects and possibilities that it contains. A salutory lesson perhaps to those of us who are of a more morbid and mournful disposition.

So the challenge for me today on this beautiful, bright, late spring sunny morning is to be cheerful, sometimes it is all to do with an act of will, just as it it true that sometimes to love someone you have to be deliberative about it.

My encouragement to you today is to take some heart in the warmth of the sunshine and be grateful even for the simple things like that which make the day just that little bit brighter.

A Bank Holiday is a wonderful little oasis in the midst of a busy season leading up to our ‘real holidays’ when you can get a well earned rest from the labours of life don’t you think? Hmmm… or do you see a Bank Holiday as another encroachment into a week of deadlines when, because it is shorter you have all the more to do, because the work that should have been done on Monday now has to be done on Tuesday first thing, or alas even before Tuesday has begun?

One person’s gift of time is often another person’s deficit in time, but one thing is for sure, no one get’s any more of a day or a week than anyone else. So is time your helper or your taskmaster? What does the time you have mean to you?

Engage this Tuesday will be reflecting on ‘Time’ and how we feel about how it affects us aS people. You will  be welcome to join the discussion at 5.30pm Tuesday 4th May 2010.

I was reflecting over the last couple of years on how as a society we have had our confidence severely dented and in some ways the recent events in Iceland have added to that.

We have had a world wide financial implosion that challenged the view that our money held in the  bank is always secure. That trust has been severely challenged.

With respect to our Politicians and  their honesty in dealing with expenses, it probably did not come as a surprise to us that there were those who misused their responsibility in claiming expenses but perhaps not on the scale at which it has become evident. It makes us wonder whether we can have confidence in our elected representatives. Once again trust has been challenged.

In the last few weeks the very fact that people are now seriously considering whether they should travel by train or travel by plane, not knowing whether to book their holidays because they can’t be sure whether the volcano with the unpronouncable name in Iceland will erupt again or the volcanic ash will once again compromise air space. Confidence once again is challenged and our trust is weakened as we step on board our next plane.

The need for trust is what makes this world function well. Around the table at Engage this coming Tuesday we will be thinking about the issue of trust. How do we create it? How do we sustain it? Has it had an impact on us when our ntrust has been broken? What  impact that has  that had on our lives and indeed when has trust made such a huge postive difference that  has changed our lives.

Looking forward to discussing this topic when we meet on Tuesday 27th April at 5.30pm.

Well what a week it has been! It is quite obvious from my window that something is
strangely amiss over the skies of Glasgow because my house overlooks the flight path
for  the planes arriving at Glasgow Airport, and of course over the last few
days there has been little happening. Without the wonders of technology we
would not even be aware that there was a volcano on Iceland spewing  out ash into the
atmosphere apart from the dust on our windows and the ash on our
cars.

It prompted me to think about what it means to have your journey disrupted. You will
possibly even know someone who is struggling just now, trying to get back home as I
do. It led  me to think about the journeys we have made in life, some which have
been most eventful, some we would rather forget…

It would be good to share some of those journeys and reflect on the implications of
them, good and bad and perhaps be mindful of those who at this moment are experiencing
the adventure of their lives, or their worst nightmare ever! We will make this the
starting point of our Table Talk on Tuesday 20th April.

I was handing out postcards in the city centre streets promoting  an online survey last week (have you completed it yet?). At 8am  on the hard wet pedestrian precincts of Glasgow city centre it was I who felt sorry for these hundreds of people rushing to work with a brolly in one hand, a phone in the other, Ipod wires in their ears, then being asked if they would like to take part on an online survey! Its the very last thing you can be bothered about at that time on a Monday morning. They had my sympathy.

Sure, don’t get me wrong I was anxious that every single person would take a card and dutifully go online to complete the survey, but of course they all didn’t take a card, and of those who did, well other things got in the way of the act taking place. Some did fill it in (Thank you!), but overall I could not blame them for feeling harassed a nd burdened. I and my team were adding one more on them.

I kept thinking about Jesus looking at the crowds around him, seeing their harrassment,’ like sheep without a shepherd he said’.

So I plead forgiveness if we added to yours last week, it wasn’t our intention. Hopefully too, when we finally analyze our results we might have useful data we can respond to with measures that might ease the pressures that many face in today’s fast paced world. To that end there will be no ‘Engage ‘ meetings over the next two weeks. We are taking an Easter break and hope that you too might get a chance to rest and replenish the drained batteries of your soul.

I look forward to catching up with you in the post Easter season. Happy Easter

I never thought I would feel as disappointed as I did when I got a Conditions of Let for a public event in the city streets and the required obligations amounted to all the letters of the alphabet bar one.

When I began to check out some of the conditons I was disappointed to realise they  stretched from a – y but “z” was missing. Who wants an extra regulation when you have so many you might think? I just felt there was an incompleteness about the conditons of let when we missed out “z”. This was also surprising when you saw the content of some of the obligations. One was for example ‘you note that no military involvement may take place without the prior agreement of Land Environmental Services.’

When you get rules and regulations like that you wonder if there could possibly be anything else that could be missed because they have obviously taken great care to ensure that every eventuality has been covered.

It got me to think along the lines of, what if you had the chance to add one more rule or regulation to life, what would you make?

I know we are living in a day and generation when the rules and regulations can overwhelm and swamp us, but is there one particular one that strikes you as one that you would like to see as part of the way life and society is structured and organised?

Let me give you an somewhat trivial example to get you thinking:

1. When you are pushing a pram or buggy and trying to struggle into a shop through a very heavy glass door, there should be rule that states that ‘the proprietor or manager of the shop must come and open the door for you whether you are male or female’.

What burning issue is there in your mind that gets you exasperated, fills you with frustration, if not anger because the rest of humankind ignores or misses a very important principle that you feel needs to be observed? How would that affect and shape your life if it was a common principle that everyone accepted and lived by?

We will be discussing that and similar matters around the table on Tuesday 23rd March, if you would like to be part of this discussion then please do drop me a line and I will let you know where we meet. We usually start at 5.30pm at the end of a working day, relax with some good food and drink and have a chat until 7pm.

I look foward to seeing you at some point.

I was flicking through the Guardian paper the other day and came across a picture which
I found quite moving. It was a picture of a road full of people being held back in an
orderly queue by policemen with three big armoured vehicles. It stretched back as far as the eye could see.

As I read the note attached to the picture I became more and more challenged by what I saw. The picture was of residents of Oukasie in Pretoria, South Africa who were threatening to disrupt the World Cup if their demands for housing, running water, electricity and flushing toilets were not met.

I felt ashamed that here were these people  having to take to the open road to request the basic fundamentals that I take for granted. In fact my family and I rejoiced over this very thing when more than fifty years ago we moved from the inner city out to the brand new housing scheme of Easterhouse.

These thousands of people were threatening to disrupt a football competition that will be watched by billions of people because they do not have the basics of life that I take so much for granted.

I felt moved and challenged by this, so much so that I think the topic for our next table talk when we meet at Engage on Tuesday 16th March at 5.30pm is this – would I be more  annoyed at the interruption of my viewing of the World Cup than thinking that people are living in abject poverty, not so much as 20 miles from where the World Cup will take place?

I look forward to seeing you sometime at Engage, in the meantime I hope your work is prospering and more importantly that your life is flourishing.

As Britain’s aspirations disappear in the slush of Whistler Mountain, the Winter Olympics have come to an end and so again the dreams of many athletes. I wouldn’t want to knock them because I could not hurtle down an icy wall of death at 90 miles an hour, lying on my back on a little piece of board, so hats off to them.

Don’t you find sometimes that your aspirations and your hopes are constantly knocked on the head by the realities of life? However, in the midst of trying to find some consolation in the remains of the Winter Olympic reports late into the night, I came cross the Politics Live show.

 On this occasion I was encouraged to listen to the words of Rev Jesse Jackson who had been wheeled in to talk about British politics  and the lack of enthusiasm for it.

He kept coming away with the phrase that politicians need to instil ‘ faith, hope and … substance’  to what they say and what they do for their constituents. It was not just an American take on the usual ‘have a positive attitude about everything and it will all turn out right’, but he was focussing on the ‘substance’.

So often when we come to the big events in the world, whether it is the Olympic Games or World Cup Football or the Ashes Test in Cricket, there is a lot of faith and hope but we usually walk away with no substance, no results, no trophy at the end of the day.

So the question we will be thinking about at the next Engage meeting is what is the substance of life that makes it meaningful? The substance which enables you to rise above the disappointments which do come our way and gives you a foundation and a platform to build upon?

If you would like to join the discussion round the table then you would be very welcome. Please drop me an email at jackquinn59@btinternet.com and I will, by return, give you the details of the meeting.

I look forward to seeing you at some point and enjoy the discussion as we relax and chill after a day’s work.

The conversations we covered at our Engage dinner last week were wide ranging but the topic of ‘going for walks’ came up. You know, the kind of walking we don’t always have time for. The walking with our eyes open, taking in the scenery, the weather, the people at street corners on bridges etc etc.

Well those conversations came back to my mind on Wednesday when my grandson decided to go for a walk. At the mature age of two years and two months he decided that the path I had chosen to walk on was not to be his path, so off he went, hesitatingly at first then at full canter, as fast as his” Spiderman” wellingtons could carry him, (bearing in mind they are two sizes too big for his feet, ‘room for growth’, said my daughter).

As I watched him I wondered if he would hesitate, pause, turn round to see if I would be watching him. Not a bit of it, he was putting some distance between us, and then I saw a little hesitation, a faltering in his pace but it wasn’t to consider where I was in his travels. He spotted a man kicking a football to his mate on the grass, and off he went and joined the game….

The little incident in the Botanics made me reflect on the bigger question of what influences us to take the paths we do, whether in work, or marriage, or special interests and how do these journeys fulfil our lives, or perhaps detract from them.

Are we like herring in the shoal, following the latest cultural trend or are we like the mature chub, striking out in our own into the deep, reluctant for company on the journey…

So I guess the topic of conversation around the dinner table next Tuesday 23rd February at 5.30pm will be: ‘ do we journey alone, or run with the pack….?’

If you would like to sit with us at table for some simple and nutrious food, share a drink, and see where the conversation takes us you would be very welcome. Email me at jackquinn59@btinternet.com for specific directions.

Oh yes the tale of my grandson….. he long forgot about me until I had to drag him kicking and screaming from the football onto the pathway home.

Jack Quinn