OK, seen as I'm in the civil service, here's a tale. You'll have to work out the origin for yourself, but if you're a public servant you may recognise it.

Customs, Revenue, Treasury, DEFRA, CSA, and Jobcentre Plus all decide to compete in the Three Peaks Challenge, with the following results:

• Customs got to the top first., having followed the first routes they spotted. This might have been a risky strategy, and a few people got killed along the way up.
• Revenue never got as far as climbing the mountains. At the end of the allotted time they were still at the bottom appraising the various possible routes.
• Treasury went potholing instead, but claimed they had actually won. They said that ministers had changed it to a potholing competition as the last minute but they had been unable to tell anyone because of "budget security".
• DEFRA implemented the EU Directive on mountains, thus reclassifying the geological features in question as deep river valleys.
• CSA failed to reach the base of the mountains. The team left home in a minibus which broke down on the way. The mechanic brought in to fix it declared it beyond repair and sent the team home before inviting a team of professional mountaineers to carry him to the top - but he failed to make it as the professionals went off to rescue those involved in the Customs' debacle. Meanwhile, sat at home, the CSA team blame the mechanic, the minibus, the manufacturer of the minibus, the British road system, and all the pedestrians they met along the way for their failure.
• Jobcentre Plus fielded a team genuinely committed to winning. The group leader decided they would get to the top more quickly with a smaller group and sent a third of them home. This meant there wouldn't be enough people to carry all the climbing gear, but the leader reassured the team that all would be well. Unfortunately, halfway up, they ran out of rope. The leader fell off the cliff face and dragged the rest of the team to their deaths on the rocks below (where their bodies were recovered by the same professionals who took over the CSA's expedition).

Post a comment and let me know what you think - or if you can add a tale for another part of the public services?

163126main_image_feature_701_ys_full.jpg (JPEG Image, 750x763 pixels) - Scaled (67%):

Wow.

Nasa's image of the day. Apparently it's the "Reflection Nebula" taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. See:

NASA - Home:

Another day, another pile of poo poured over me in work. I've mentioned befoe about being moved back into a team leader job that I last did 2 years ago. Well, I had been started to get quite enthused about operational management again. My former boss is a big believer in EFQM, and he's been coaching me on using this framework. It all really makes sense - just the kind of framework I need to have a real go at managing front line staff.

Anyway, my new boss called me yesterday to tell me (not ask, tell) she was moving me to a different, non customer facing, team. It's the team where she puts people she neither likes nor trusts, to get them out of the way.

Well, that put me in my place. And it's probably the end of my plans to make a success of team leading. I really am being dumped on a sink team. Time to get the job search back on track.

Meanwhile, the team leader training course plods on. It mostly involved training me on things I trained the trainer on 10 years ago. It's a desperate struggle to keep myself active and not just slump into a vague sleepy depression. At the moment, I'm doing some EFQM based analysis work for my former boss. I hope my new boss doesn't find out, or there'll be hell to pay.

Well, I'm writing this whilst sitting in class. Time to get back to it and start listening again.

Amazon.co.uk: Enzymes for Autism and Other Neurological Conditions: A Practical Guide: Books: Karen DeFelice:

This is the key book about treating autism with enzymes that I referred to in  my post earlier this evening.

We went to see Alex's paediatrician recently. He's suggested that we consider a new drug therapy for Alex called 'atomoxetrine', brand named as Strattera.

As you may know, we tried Alex on a version of ritalin some time ago (called Equasym). We weren't particularly happy with the effect this had on him. It seemed to change his personality - it was like he wasn't Alex any more, coming across as very doped up.

It was that experience that lead us into investigating alternative therapies - which eventually lead us to looking at gluten intolerance and dietary interventions for autism. To cut a long story short we had Alex's urine tested through a programme run by Sunderland University. This identified that Alex as likely to be gluten intolerant. We tried Alex on a gluten free diet (this is some years ago now) and it was a complete disaster. Typically for a gluten intolerant, Alex craves gluten rich foods (and orange juice). Life without gluten for him was intolerable. We had to find something different.

The key book for us was Enzymes for Autism by Karen DeFelice. (I'll post a link to this on Amazon later when I'm back at my home desktop). This made us realise (and it was Deb who did all the research on this) that we didn't have to go gluten free to tackle the problem. So for the last few months, Alex has been on a cocktail of digestive enzymes before every meal.

They've worked really well, but now Year 3 and the change to junior school is starting to loom. His concentration and ability to focus is still poor and basically we're worried. So we're considering a drug therapy again. The enzymes have certainly had an impact, but I don't know whether it's enough to get him through the next 12 months.

There have been some reports on the BBC site (again, I'll add some links later) linking strattera to all sorts of worrying side effects. But then so did ritalin.

Time to go for now. I'll update with what we decide and how we get on later.

BBC - Liverpool - Capital of Culture - Liverpool from the air:

Saw this article on the 10 o'clock news this evening. Still seems like a strange way to celebrate winning European Capital of Culture for 2008 - ie. by tearing down the city's heritage and building a 42 acre concrete and glass monstrosity on it full of new shops and hotels (which looks like any city anywhere in the world). Ho hum. Oh, and it's made getting in and out of Liverpool around all the building work absolute hell too.

The Merchants of Bollywood:

Went to see this show at the Opera House in Manchester last weekend to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. Deb's parents looked after the children and we stayed overnight to make an occasion of it. The show was absolutely fantastic.

Topped off by finding a Wagamama:

wagamama | positive eating + positive living:

Japanese noodle bar. Went to one in London at half term, and we were over the moon to find one on our little holiday. Just need one to open in Liverpool now.

Wonderful weekend. Made us feel young again.

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | It's hard to explain, Tom, why we did so little to stop global warming:

Everyone over the age of 30 should read this. Especially if you have children. Read it on the way home from work this afternoon (on the bus). I particularly like the comment on being haunted by our inability to make use of our own understanding and technology to solve the problem.

Could there really be a "truth and reconciliation" commission in the future to condemn our generation for failing our children?

Haven't blogged for a while. Not sure why - although I've been busy in work. Not, I hasten to add, with work itself but rather searching for new jobs. I've now left the project I was working on (and enjoying tremendously). I'm on the 'team leader' training course for the new job I've been forced into. I'm not looking forward to this at all, so I'm searching for a new job - mostly internal and on promotion as I'm trying to make use of my experiences of the last 6 months. My former boss has been incredibly supportive over this, really helping me sort the application forms out.

On the same subject, I went for a job interview and assessment day for the Home Office on Tuesday. It was an all-dayer and quite hard work. Seemed to go OK though. I should hear around the end of November apparently. Fingers crossed!

We all went to London for a couple of nights during half term. We stayed at the Travel Inn in County Hall. I'd recommend this to anyone. It wasn't too expensive (for central London - �92 a night) and was very convenient, at the south end of Westminster Bridge just underneath the London Eye.

We took a 'flight' on the London Eye which was really a highlight (boom, boom!) - even though Alex just liked looking at the trains crossing Hungerford (thanks Steve!) Bridge into Waterloo. He thought they looked like a train set. Jessica enjoyed seeing Buckingham Palace across the city and all the other sites.

Followed this up with a bus tour. This meant we really did get to see everything, and was the perfect way to get 2 children around London and see the sights (although, being us, everyone did get a bit stressed at Tower Bridge).

Jessica enjoyed the Natural History Museum, and the British Museum (although stopping there meant we almost missed the train home on the Wednesday). I suspect the real highlight for Alex was the journey to and from London on the big red Virgin Pendolino on the West Coast Main Line.

So you can see, we basically managed to see just about everything in 3 days. This really came home to me after Auntie Katie bought J and A a t-shirt with "London" and some of the sights on the front - and I realised that we'd actually seen them all!

Well, that was half term, more updates to follow. Feel free to add a comment if you want to.