the Mundane and the surreal

so life continues in its vague way -- I can't work out how to reply to Clive's comments on patio heaters but am sure he would realise that this blog is not going to comment on government policy .....I have tried to put in a spellchecker for thise appalled by typing standard (it was the thing my school refused to teach lest we all ended up as secretaries.... their future scan did not suggest it would be the key 21st century skill...) and to allow ananymous comments.  Best offering so far for squeamish is "zimperlich" -- any advance welcome...so days continue with a localised low at injection time -- interesting reflection on the happiness literature -- lots of interesting stuff on how people experience highs and lows and why  we misjudge what will make us happy or sad....  one key finding is the peak-end experience which posits that your view of an experience and willingness to repeat is dependedn both on the most intense part of the experience (pain, pleasure etc) but also how it ends.... the way they do this is to give poeple equal length nasty treatments -- eg dentistry (sorry Tamsin) and then in some cases add a further marginally less painful treatment -- a rational approach would assuem peopel;s reaction wodl be driven by total pain -- but the people who go back for more are those who get more total pain but less pain at the end...(this has always struck me as an important principle to take into account of in workshop design).  another finding is that your feelings about events in retrospect are less determined by the actual experience than by the feelings you had anticipating it -- which is of course what does for me on the injections which don't hurt but where I hate the thought of them....  so I think I need to do something so that I automatically reward myself each time...like those chimp experiments they used to do on Zoo Time  my brother has suceeded in doing this with his diabetic cat....If you want to know more, read Stumbling into Happiness by Daniel Gilbert....

anyway the surreal bit came from reading "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran -- the Washington Post Baghdad correspondent about the workings of the Coalition Provisional Authority in post-invasion Baghdad  -- not everyone's idea of light post op reading but needs to go on the list of books about policy implementation and delivery ....when I was at Berkeley they used to use a case study on NASA on how standard operating procedures could lead you astray -- but what this shows is how to make almost every mistake in the delivery handbook.  A few selected lessons...ideology and loyalty not necessarily a 100% subsitute for expertise; 24 year old interns looking for a gap job before they joined the reelection campaign not necesarily the right people to not necessariy the best placed to navigate complex politics beween Sunni, Shia and Kurds (interesting to reflect on the different uses that successive administrations make of their interns - and which is more damaging -- a good PhD thesis there); secure the basics before you reform the world; bother to ask people what they want....Add it to the PMDU reading list.

Am suffering from a gossip desert.  The only news I got while in hospital was of Jeremy Heywood's move to the other side of the door in No.10 --  and anyone who has worked in the Cabinet Office and No.10 knows the importance of that door .. but what seemed even more interesting was the fact that the Civil Service news bulletin reporting the move made it absolutely clear that this move could on NO ACCOUNT be construed as the creation of a Prime Minister's Department....I have never really understood why we believe it is so essential that we don't try to make as effective as possible and why we assuem that it might not help the PM to have his opwn department (comments that will have Vernon Bogdanor and Peter Hennessy turning in their grave...).  But I thought it might be quite interesting to a look at the website for the Australian Dept of the PM and the Cabinet -- and it seemed to me that their mission of making the govt and the PM effective would not be such a bad ambition for Jeremy and friends on both sides of the baize door.... I would add a handy link but have failed to understand how to make hyperlinks work....