Journal

The text of the Amsterdam Declaration on Transparency & Reporting, the first issued by the Global Reporting Initiative, as described in the previous blog entry, can be found at http://www.globalreporting.org/CurrentPriorities/AmsterdamDeclaration/.  I confess I’m rather pleased with the result of our efforts.

PM in full flow

Spent much of the morning at a NESTA summit on innovation in the public service sector, launching The Lab.  All going quite well until Gordon Brown and entourage crashed into the proceedings.  In the context of what Team Obama are aiming to do in the USA, the Brownian offerings seemed lacklustre.  I left.  Then went across to Oxford to speak at the Said Business School.  Supper with Pamela (Hartigan) and Geoff (Lye), then home.  The ruffian count on the train was uncomfortably high, but I buried myself in the latest issue of Fast Company, which spotlights the Fast Company 50 innovative companies.  Five of them also appear in our Phoenix 50, which will be announced at the Said Business School during the Skoll World Forum at the end of the month.

Bike Wake Door to GRI Face 3 Flags 1 3 flags 2 Graffiti Man in workshop Nelmara Arbex and Ignasi Carreras GRI team BlackBerry (and similar) moment Declarative group 1 Declarative group 2

Back late yesterday from a couple of days in Amsterdam, with the Board of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), chaired by (Judge) Mervyn King of South Africa.  Bumped into several people I knew while arriving in and walking around the city, including Hein Sas and then Franklin van Beuningen of GreenPartners.  (Little sleep in the hotel on the second night, when the street outside the Eden Rembrandt Square Hotel seemed to be full of screamers and shouters from nightfall to dawn.  When I asked the receptionist whether this was normal, he said yes.  Steer clear of this hotel if you can, ask for a room at the back or on the top floor or wear noise-canceling headphones to sleep.) Still, the wonderful GRI team proved to be fatigue-canceling.  Indeed, the two days were a forceful reminder–if reminder were needed–of just how important transparency and reporting can be.  We ended by drafting a fairly energetic Declaration that will hopefully see the light of day.  

Ghost bike, Holborn

Having tried to cycle home this evening, I was turned back by high winds and sluicing rain.  So walked to Holborn Tube – and then saw for the first time  the ghost bike in Southampton Row, where a girl cyclist was killed soon after we moved to Bloomsbury Place.  A couple of our team saw the ghastly aftermath.  The ghostbikes movement strikes me as a wonderfully imaginative, moving response to a largely unseen catastrophe on wheels.

Achilles sprouts horns

The last two days of this week I cycled to and from the office for the first time in quite a while – and mood lifted accordingly.  Weather helped, as did all the bulbs blooming in the garden at 2 Bloomsbury Place.  Then, too, there was the fact that we have more or less finished The Phoenix Economy, which is now with our designer, Rupert Bassett.  Fairly intensive week nonetheless, with my annual lecture at Imperial College and a visit with Charmian to Goldman Sachs, but am feeling more in tune with the universe, particularly after a quiet day in the office with Sam, listening to the likes of Dean Martin on her iPod.  As Sam noted Lou Reed would say, A Perfect Day.

Last night the car failed to start, indeed even the security light had gone off, until I unlocked it and the alarm went off for some 15 minutes.  Because we were on our way to Richmond, we cancelled a call to the RAC and took a cab, driven by a delightful Punjabi nicknamed ‘Lofty’.  He began to tell us about sleeping on the roof of his home as a teenager and doing his homework by moonlight. That conversation started because there was a wonderful Moon last night, with Venus dawdling nearby. Then he proceeded to tell us about Slumdog Millionaire, which was interesting, since Gaia had been exerting every sinew recently to get the child actors to the Oscars – a mission duly accomplished.

Today, a truly wonderful RAC man turned up, protested that after 7-8 years we have only put around 17,000 miles on the Volvo’s clock, and ended up changing the battery, yet again.  Then, inspired by an email this morning from Geoffrey Chandler about his garden, and particularly the scent of witch hazel, we trolled across to the Isabella Plantation, where most things seemed to be in bud, and the witch hazels were in blossom.  Watching a few bumblebees rumbling from blossom to blossom, I began to wish for a life as a cross-pollinator.  But then perhaps that is what I do?

Witch hazel

Catkins 1

Catkins 2

Reflections

Osiers

Path