Save the Car Parks of the East Midlands - update

Last week I used my blog for an impassioned call to sign a petition against the havoc wreaked upon the car parks of the East Midlands in the name of heritage. Literally thousands of you responded by failing to sign my petition. In the spirit of this revolutionary fervour I'd like you all to continue that level of commitment and continue to not fill in the petition at the link below.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-the-car-parks-of-the-east-midlands/

Thus armed with the evidence of an unprecedented level of mass apathy I will ignore the heritage conference taking place in Nottingham next week thereby sending an unsubtle message of invisible protest. In the words of that great  protester Mahatma Gandhi I will take the view that, "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good."

That will show them.

OK I might still turn up - it's a free conference after all. BUT I will eat the free food in a non-cooperative way . This may result in a lot of crumbs, so if you come across a small pile of debris in the corner of the lunchroom recognise it for the car parking vandalism protest that is the beginnings of a worldwide non-violent protest movement.

"We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, '...we shouldn't have done that.' We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of car parks! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, 'We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history."

Nothing says that more eloquently than a pile of crumbs

with apologies to Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the quote

Save the car parks of the East Midlands

It is with a heavy heart that I feel I must take a break from teaching you how to be better managers to come back to my favourite subject - car parks. Unfortunately its not with good news.

I have had to blog on this before. 'Save Our East Midlands Car Parks' was a particularly unread call to arms in defence of this neglected part of our national heritage. The focus was on the wanton vandalism perpetrated to the car parks in the East Midlands. Since then I have kept my eye on that part of the world, and what I read displeases me greatly.

Usually I read with delight the proliferation of car parks around the world, covering up useless pieces of natural habitat, or as the result of the demolition of buildings too old to be of any use (e.g. castles).
But not in the East Midlands of England where a warped sense of the past still prevails.

Leicester having suitably ignored the presence under one of their car parks of a disastrous monarch that brought to an end a centuries old dynasty through murder and mismanagement, were persuaded to dig him up and now want to celebrate this. What sort of message is the local council sending to its citizens? In the council chamber did they think, 'Let us inconvenience people through the removal of one of the useful symbols of wealth and success of a modern city (the car park) in favour of a celebration of tyranny, murder and ultimate failure (a load of old bones). The world has truly gone mad.

Northampton dug up a car park to find a castle, Lincoln destroyed a car park to build a museum - the madness is endless.

The final straw has come when I read the headline, Another Car Park Another Discovery in the Heritage Daily. http://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/05/1131/ Yet again the good burghers of Leicester are suffering at the hands of heritage vandals. This time the University of Leicester have got their hands on a car park. Academics shouldn't be allowed out - I've been long convinced Universities are a form of care in the community for clever people.  Yet they have discovered 'personal items' such as jewellery and shoes in their car park. If any 'normal' person is found in a car park in possession of digging tools and 'personal items' that do not belong to him he would rightly be arrested - not lauded. That is the kind of moral vacuum that seems to pervade the East Midlands of England.

The time has come to act and the perfect opportunity has presented itself to begin the fight. The East Midlands Museum Service is hosting a conference in Nottingham to support museums and heritage in the region. The programme ignores car parking heritage entirely, but they seem to want ideas for the strategic direction of heritage management in their region. If I am armed with a petition I will demand that car park protection is part of that strategy. I urge all car park thinking people to join me outside to protest then come inside (it's free apparently) to lobby attendees.

Therefore please support me when I present the strength of public feeling to the East Midlands Regional Museums Conference on 5th and 6th June 2013 by signing my petition at the URL link below

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-the-car-parks-of-the-east-midlands/

The future of car parks is in your hands.

Five Management Secrets I Learned From My Cat

As an enlightened museum manager always on the lookout to improve upon my innate genius. The other day my eye was caught by an article on '5 Management Secrets I Learned From My Dog'

http://blog.hootsuite.com/5-management-secrets-i-learned-from-my-dog/

Needless to say I took the view that you can't teach an old dog new tricks and did not bother to read it. But having spent my lunchtime in the local park I decided to indulge in some action research on dog 'management' behaviours that could be put into practice in that afternoon's Trustees meeting.

The meeting turned out to be a short but turbulent affair. The Trustees objected to me licking their hands on arrival and the Secretary refused to throw my copy of the agenda across the room so that I could go and fetch it. Although I growled quite convincingly when anyone went near my sandwiches, the meeting ended abruptly when I tried to hump the Chairman's leg.

Clearly having canine related management strategies is the work of the unhinged. Yet it may be that it is just the wrong pet. Cats lead, dogs follow. I perused the internet to find out what the great minds of human history thought and they agree with me. Carl Van Vechten puts it beautifully and concisely, "There is no single quality of the cat that man could not emulate to his advantage."

So learning management skills from a dog is plainly stupid. Much more sensible is to learn from cats.  As Jeff Valdez observed, " Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through the snow."

The clear lesson here is: managers are cats, staff are dogs.

So I thought I would impart the wisdom of cats to the put upon museum manager. Follow these five tips and you can't go wrong.

Five Management Secrets I Learned from My Cat. (Her name is Lulu by the way)

1. Prioritisation
"Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later." Mary Bly

2. Pragmatic Motivation
"Essentially, you do not so much teach your cat as bribe him." Lynn Hollyn

3. Self Confidence
"Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God." Anon

4. Assertiveness
"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want." Joseph Wood Krutch.

5. Ruthlessness
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." Bruce Graham.


TOO ERR IS HUMAN TO PURR FELINE


All quotes sourced from maxellah.tripod.com/catquo.htm