Ok - two quick bits cos I'm struggling to keep on top of work...

... but promised myself I'd blog this week.

I went to the PM Direct that Cameron held with 100 or so business people in Maidenhead three weeks ago.  The BBC News coverage suggested that business leaders were up in arms at the government's incompetence - and focused on a woman running a solar panel producing company who was complaining about the alacrity of the cuts to subsidies.  Just about everybody else looked as if they were quite encouraged by the response from DC.  I asked a question myself - about the challenges of engaging with local authorities and he gave a robust reply suggesting that he realised that the government had to work harder to encourage LAs to work with (particularly) local businesses - adding that at the moment they were not incentivised to do so.  So the BBC has tabloid tendencies in trying to create drama where it doesn't really exist.  It's not the wonderfully objective organisation we would like it to be.

The second point... well for ease, I'll just run the discussion that's going on in my head:

A:   Why is Tony Blair on a mission of money-making and self-aggrandisement?
B:   Because he's determined to be properly recognised as a leader of the establishment.  He hurts because he's been made to feel as if he doesn't quite cut the mustard.  He wasn't invited to the royal wedding, for example.
A:   I really felt that he was trying to reshape society and open up opportunities to the deprived and marginalised in our society.  I admired much of what he did.  But now my admiration is evaporating as I see him apparently desperate to look after numero uno.  He's even getting KPMG to advise him on his tax affairs.  No wonder that his income tax payments seem small compared to the income he appears to be bringing in.
B:   Cameron doesn't carry the same baggage around re his own status - one of the positives of having  bedrock status regarding the establishment?  I will start forgiving him for being upper crust.... it has advantages I hadn't thought about.
A:   What is the 'establishment' anyway?  No one ever feels quite secure in their membership - probably because no one really knows what it actually is
B:   Simply an artificial way of segmenting society between those who are 'in the group' and those who aren't.
A:   Ever since I got sent - at 13 - to boarding school at the other end of the country from where I lived - and found breaking in to the established groups (from the two feeder schools that provided 80% of the intake) I have felt on the fringes.  I naturally shy away from wanting to be part of a crowd (don't like big parties), playing loads of team sport (though I make an exception for cricket) and needing to be part of any group.  I am ruthlessly independent. 
B:   Well now that you recognise where that has come from, maybe you could relax a bit and lose that in-build defence mechanism?  And maybe have a heart for TB?  He's probably had a similar experience?
A:   Should I write to him and share my wisdom?
B:  Best not.  Time to go.