Wednesday, 3 January 2007

My journey into work this morning was soured by a news report about research into migration conducted by “pressure group” Migration Watch! It seems that any group can produce any shoddy piece of nonsense, dress it up as “research” and the media will gladly report it as objective and scientific. I am now constantly surprised (ashamed? distressed? alarmed?) that people seem to have become gullible and incapable of intelligent critical thought. R4 and Newsnight were guilty of the same failures. Scientific method? Bah! Objectivity? Hah! Peer Review? Hogwash!

In the office, I began the long round of staff review meetings by seeing Helen. These reviews will take a large chunk out of January, but they will also establish clear work programmes for the rest of the year and help us identify any gaps in skills or resources.

I spent part of the afternoon talking with Sue about the changes I made over xmas to our nominal coding structure. Sue and I also discussed how best to process transactions in the future. I am painfully aware that I need to re-establish contact with CAF to open the new WCVS accounts. Then I talked with Vanessa who liked the format of the Quick Books reports. Vanessa and I will meet again soon to start going through the CVS’s projects.

At the end of the day I was visited by Sharifa and Sam to talk about the Watford Racial Equality Council, WBC funding, WBC leases, and the future of the Watford Minority Ethnic Forum. Quite an agenda.