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THE THREE RESOLUTIONS

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Tag Archives: general election

Results take time to measure.

13 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Rants, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Results take time to measure.

Tags

boris johnson, general election, jeremy corbyn, jo swinson, results

Okay. Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way.

Not that long ago, I published a blog on The Circle of Influence. The message was that effective people spend their time focused on doing the things that they can do something about.

Yesterday, there was a General Election. This morning my brothers (love ‘em to bits), all being left like m’Dad (who wasn’t all that left but read the Daily Mirror) have started discussing their disappointment that they didn’t win.

Well, technically. I say technically because one of them did. He lives in a ‘safe’ Labour seat, presumably voted Labour and Labour stayed in. Nevertheless, they’re all ‘scared’ (FFS) about the future.

Here’s the thing. We do not elect the Prime Minister. We only elect a local representative. Therefore we have little to no influence over who governs the country because we do NOT have a vote in the other 600+ seats, and it’s that number which decides a government. Which means that the winner of a GE lies solely in our Circle of Concern.

Get out of there!

Next, they’ve also discussed the right-wing, pro-Brexit bias of the media.

Talk about ideological myopia!

The media has been fairly consistent in its desire for Brexit to stop, and Channel 4 has admitted as much. The political interviewers have bashed everybody of all persuasions over what they said when they said it years ago. (In fact, as a criminal interviewer I would say that the manner of their interviews would be described as unprofessional at best, and illegal and oppressive at worst, in all cases.)

The media particularly lied when they showed the evidence of people doing what they denied they’d done, the bar stewards! How very dare they.

Anyway, I’ve left the brothers’ Messenger group for a week while they get it out of their system.

Doris Day said it best when she sang, “Que Sera, Sera.” Whatever will be, will be. Over time, the electorate will see what happens, and then they will either be proved right, or be proved wrong. Hyrum W. Smith expressed it in a similar fashion when he suggested that we only know whether something serves us if we measure the results over time. I’ll go with that.

But I must admit I want to say something political. I respect the general membership of the Labour Party, brothers. They mean well, even if (like all sides) they’ve adopted the aggressive rhetoric of the US.

But think about this. Jeremy Corbyn has supported the IRA, Palestinian terrorists, and Russia (in terms of the Novichok incident).

Brothers – between 1980 and even up to now, to a degree, the people he defends would happily have killed me, as a serviceman and policeman. Not in a war, mind – most likely by planting an IED that would also have indiscriminately killed anyone near me regardless of their status. Or shooting me as I, unarmed, got into my car.

He supports the people whose actions could have resulted in you quietly escorting a plastic bag in a sealed coffin to a local graveyard.

Quite how you could support a man who’d welcome my violent death disgusts me. But I still love you all.

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“Conduct a Conversation” isn’t a literal instruction.

12 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence, Time Management, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on “Conduct a Conversation” isn’t a literal instruction.

Tags

boris johnson, communication skills, general election, jeremy corbyn, jo swinson, public speaking

Communication.

Habit 5 of The Seven Habits® is specifically directed towards that major part of human existence. If you were to read ‘The Book’ you would receive a comprehensive explanation of how successful communication works.

On a course I used to run (as a licensee of The Springboard Consultancy) called Navigator®, one of the modules was about communication and, more relevantly here, about barriers to communication. Obvious examples included language, culture and context, but I have discovered a new one, one which also goes some way towards confirming how we humans have a tendency to become conditioned to mannerisms like modes of speech and language and adopt them unthinkingly.

Remember Covey’s first Habit, Be Proactive? Its main thesis is that there is a space between stimulus and response, and our failure to utilise that space results in blind compliance with whatever becomes the norm in our environment. This blind compliance results in everyone acting ‘the same’ having given no thought whatsoever to the consequence of that new behaviour.

At the moment, combining the two lessons of reactive response and barriers to communication, I have an observation which I hope readers will share. Primarily with the BBC Politics Live to start with, then everywhere else.

It is this.

For some reason, and it is more noticeable with young ‘speakers’, people on the television have developed a habit of waving their hands about when talking. It was one or two, now they’re all at it.

In itself, a controlled gesture that is designed to emphasise a specific point in a sentence is fine, even welcome and natural. But emphasising every single word with a pointy/downward-claw/pleading gesture made with both hands (yes, Miss Swinson, YOU) means you have emphasised NOTHING.

What is more, while you are waving your hands around, the camera or eye that is focused on your top half can only see your hands waving around and it can’t see what expressions your face is making. People who are hard of hearing (or who are in a room full of screaming kids) and trying to lip-read just can’t.

In other words, what you are trying to say – and it may be important – is lost in a whirr of randomly-wriggling digits and limbs.

I recall the old days when news presenters just spoke with a mic in their hands and I’d agree that was visually dull. But now they’ve been trained to ‘be more expressive’ they’ve gone banzai-nuts and can’t stop moving about. It’s like watching Sir Simon Rattle conduct Thunderstruck by AC/DC.

There is a happy medium.

Might I make a suggestion?

It’s still considered a bit contentious, because some professional speaking clubs don’t like it, but if you put one hand in your pocket, you reduce the sillier gestures by more than half, and the other hand finds a natural rhythm in terms of gesturing that enhances, not obstructs your presentation. (But keep the pocketed hand still…… that’s a whole different distraction.)

This doesn’t just apply to political panels. It applies to any presentation that you have to make, and ‘Hobbs’ Law’ makes the speaker “100% responsible for communication”.

If the audience can’t hear you because all they can do is see your agitated hands, then it’s your fault if they don’t get the message. And a missed message wastes time. Lots of it. Time that has to be spent repeating the message properly.

If Jo Swinson hadn’t been waving her arms about, perhaps she could have been PM tomorrow.

(Sorry, I just spat my own coffee…………….)

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“It’s the most ‘orrible time of the year. (Ding Dong!)”

11 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Discipline, Rants, Time Management, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on “It’s the most ‘orrible time of the year. (Ding Dong!)”

Tags

"time management", Christmas, general election

14 sleeps.

Yes, two weeks tomorrow, it is Christmas Day. Many have been planning it since July. Christmas movies have been accompanying those who have been planning for Christmas since the start of Summer. My wife is watching one now. 10p says the girl’s cured of cancer after a last minute scare, the split family gets together and the choir wins. Or all three, and more.

The celebration, the Feast of Stephen as it were, consists of a birthday party for Jesus Christ. Notwithstanding the present giving to everyone but Jesus, part of the day is given over to a celebratory dinner. Turkey with all the ‘trimmings’, an expression that no-one can define.

Think about that for a second. A Christmas Dinner. ‘A’. Signifying ONE dinner.

Why is it, then, that right now thousands of people are clogging up the local shopping centre car parks in a mad panic to buy enough food to serve HMS Queen Elizabeth’s entire crew for a 6-month cruise around the equator?

Why is it that they are buying so much food in one go, knowing:

  1. It’s for one day’s celebration (really):
  2. They will eat it all because it’s there:
  3. With the exception of a very small percentage, it’s all over-salted or over-sugared, non-nutritional crap; and
  4. They know will later bitch about the weight they put on while eating that ‘one’ meal twice daily for about 7 days? Excluding between-meal nibbles.

How much money are they spending and how much time are they taking that could (in both cases) be better used?

How about next year (“It’s too late for me, save yourselves!”, they cry) you decide what you are going to eat on the day, buy that and get it delivered, and then glory in the way you feel better than everyone else when you go back to work?

In other words, plan the celebration and manage your time in its regard, with your common-sense personal value system dictating what you do, instead of complying with Christmas ‘conventions’ and (occasionally) a desire to compete to see who can demonstrate the most largesse and/or stupidity over Christmas.

Not to mention that, at THE most expensive time of the year, everyone wants to have an expensive works ‘do’ where you spend more on a three hour party than you will on your own present. Where people buy rounds all hoping you get as much as you give and that no-one abuses the ‘system’ – which, if you think about it, would happen if you just bought your own drinks.

And don’t forget! Most important of all!!

All that food you don’t eat, which you won’t eat because of the weight you gained and the fact that you’re starting that diet ‘tomorrow’?

Don’t forget to take it to work to valiantly, considerately and generously help all those doing and feeling the same???

 

Happy Christmas.

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