Driving the Future

I wonder how many drivers would rate their driving below 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, not many I'd bet, yet how about someone else rating your driving, would it be well received, somehow I doubt it, yet the UK Government is leaning towards GDL, despite the fact that their is no hard evidence that is comprehensive enough, to prove it is a life saver.

On the table for some time has been a political urge to monitor the driving standards of all licence holders in the UK. The first step is CPC for professional drivers and then the next group, everyone else. The latest research shows that 25 - 49 is the biggest group of people who lose their lives on the road, and that only 7% of the World's roads have seen any steps towards saving lives, yet every 40 seconds someone loses their life on the roads, so with those figures in mind would you be keen to have your driving assessed?

Political pressure has led to various groups trying to cash in on the improved driving instructor, by selling training, but do they need it? Well one would actually hope not because all those young people learning to drive who choose their lesson delivery by price alone is then putting their life in the hands of someone who might not be up to the job. However all instructors have passed the same qualification, with all professions seeking CPD, except driver training, extra qualifications may not actually make any difference, a good academic is not necessarily a good teacher. An experienced one is likely to be, because the trade of driver training sees many come and go, so will holding a piece of paper make any difference.

When you choose your driver trainer to assess your skills, when your company chooses driver trainers to assess your skills, did they choose the one with the best recommendations and highest qualifications, or did they shop on price? Have you ever asked your fleet trainer if they hold any qualifications? Would you care or are you just conforming to company requirements as opposed to a real desire to be better, or are you good enough already? Would you choose your surgeon the same way?

Are the targets unachievable, can the driving of everyone be improved so much that there are no accidents.

According to the research I am involved in the answer is no. You can reduce accidents with a multi factored approach but they have to be comprehensive enough to get everyone regardless of their background and financial situation.

Chemotherapy, cure all?

Chemotherapy, where did it come from, and why? Does it really help or does it make things worse. I researched a huge amount before starting my chemo journey and found answers I didn't like, it seems I am not alone but what do you do, go for the hope or go for the crossed fingers.

Chemo treatments are poison, injected into the blood stream, and I am yet to find anything that points to the ability to cure tumours in this way. There is plenty of evidence to suggest it slows or freezes growth, but generally during the time of treatment, once treatment stops the process then starts again and the cells divide and mutate. Chemo cannot cure cells that have metastised, and the recent NHS investigation into cancer and chemo supports this, with patients being offered treatment because there is nothing else, and because hope helps build strength. At what point though will we be offered something better, as just accidentally finding a drug that supresses growth surely is not enough.

I don't understand the routine of chemo post surgery, as the risk to the patient is huge, infections, blood poisoning, deafness, joint pain, kidney failure, yet we do not know if doing nothing and letting the body sort itself out works, because the majority of patients accept treatment. I did, I followed the advice of my surgeon, and I accepted the advice of the medical team, but after just one dose of chemo I stopped. The symptoms, the risk, the damage to my body and generally how ill I felt decided for me. So then my chemo exploration began, although I had listened to those who had accepted treatment and this steered me away from the fingers crossed option, once I stopped the chemo I decided to find out more. It seems the drug market is lucrative, and that the chemo offered is a synthetic alternative to the natural resources originally used. Natural resources became too expensive, yet although there is no evidence to suggest that the synthetic option is not as food, one has to ask would you prefer something natural or engineered pumped into your body, I know what my choice would be.

There are of course many who are a testimony to the fact that they went through the whole rigorous routine and lived to tell the tale, some many years in remission. However, would they have been in remission without this testing treatment? Who knows. Chemo shrinks the tumour, making surgery easier, does it create long term damage, does having the treatement without the potential for cure mean that time of life is wasted in a gruelling process only to have bad news at the end. Well, nothing in life is certain, I guess I'm looking for answers where there are none.

Treatment of cancer cells in the lab are effectively killed off, so why are they so difficult to treat within the body, is the rapid natural revitalisation too busy accepting in the invader and making them feel at home. The cure must be out there somewhere and it's unlikely to be in a lab, more likely to be outside somewhere in the land, within something common across the world, hopefully one day someone will find it, mean time I'm still open minded about chemo, but I also believe it to be buyer beware. An article in the Lancet showed that a survey of doctors highlighted nearly 90% would refuse chemo, makes you think.

It's been a long journey for me so far and I'm about to write a blog about Ovarian cancer, and my experience. I read a blog yesterday, written by a young girl who didn't survive the journey, it was difficult to read in places yet it was also inspirational. I hope my story will inspire others even if I appear to have not taken the traditional route, I surely can't be the only one.

AI Solutions: 50 Shades of ....

AI Solutions: 50 Shades of ....: ...interest? Intrigue? Sex? Love? Passion? Desire? Grey? Ever wished that you had thought of the idea and created these self-publi...

50 Shades of ....

...interest? Intrigue? Sex? Love? Passion? Desire? Grey?

Ever wished that you had thought of the idea and created these self-published novels that became such a money maker, there isn't many who have not heard of the exploits of Christian Gray. So where do writers get their ideas, how do they create characters that grab the buying market.

Well, nothing that hits the literary fiction world hasn't been seen before. A good story writer draws you in, but these novels had less pull due to the poor grammer, yet there was something, maybe it was because you had read it before.

Oscar Wilde must have been jumping up and down, his only novel taken, disected and re-written in the modern day. The novel itself was criticised for the Twilight connection, but that isn't the root of this trilogy. Christian Grey is Dorian Gray, taken, tidied, and then tamed. The twist of the Gray who was anything but christian, the similarities are crude but outstanding, the control, the beatings from the past, the physical and mental scars. The need for sex that become more violent and then the love to slow his descent into a lonely macarbe world.

So although Ms James is clearly not the greatest novelist of our time in descriptive terms but you do have to admire her creativity, she has certainly made a quick buck and so have all those who have taken her novel, created a film and are waiting at the bank with their hands outstretched.  I wonder which will be next, Cashel Byron reworked? After all Oliver Mellors is too recent for copyright.

The idea of a sexy exciting character is always good, after all sex sells, have you ever picked up a book where the first few lines grab you, a must of course for fiction.  The heroine gasping for air as her finger tips scratch at the silky sheets and she feels the breath on her skin of her secret lover as his lips slowly caress her skin, only to never read one steamy session throughout the book, because before you have settled comfortably in the chair the book has raced on to whatever story it is that the author really wanted to write.

Of course, publishing and writing has always been a difficult arena, and who you know accounts for many piles of print runs in second hand shops, what you know comes in second, but who you can draw in, as 50 shades shows, is crucial when it comes to be recognised and wealthy.

A good author smiles at their book in whatever format, even those scribbled draft pages and piles of post it notes and sees art in what they do. A reader turning the last page and wanting more is the success.

AI Solutions: Radical Change in DFT

AI Solutions: Radical Change in DFT: The face of the DFT is changing is to become the department for transport and family, private sector has already moved in to the w...

Radical Change in DFT

The face of the DFT is changing is to become the department for transport and family, private sector has already moved in to the warm seats of the staff in the DVLA, pushed into the rolling redundancy programme.

So how does this affect us? VOSA, DVLA, DSA names of the past, smaller private sector companies to inject finance and control under the lead of a BPO, EU owned with a UK interest. So no wonder we will see strikes, but the action is wasted, it is a waste of their energy and tax payers money, the ink on the contract is dry.

Is this the step towards reclaiming our triple A credit rating, which has become more important than the quality of lives for the residents of the UK. Or is this passing the buck, deliver or be fined. ISSC1 went live this month, but the giant computer programme system planned to cover all of the departments surely is a disaster waiting to happen, this is one of the most radical and ambitious moves by any Government, but is it the EU control through the back door?

There has been much talk of the driving test being privatised and the check test system changing or effectively being replaced, well be careful, blink and you may miss it in the document, the writing is on the wall.

The DFT is the first department for radical change but the brave move to merge other departments for ISSC2 looks great on paper, but how it will ever work, or be recovered if the system crashes is anyones guess. The protection of our private data by an independant company is scary, the running of our lives and the introduction of the universal credit system and the introduction of a newly created Government department to work on benchmarking and to oversee quality and standards.

Will any Government service be as we know it now? The only departments untouched are HMRC, MOJ and MOD, so the answer is no. For this to have gone live in March 2013 with the next phase going live by March 2014, shows this was in the background for sometime, long before any consultation, proving again that consultations are lip service.

Alienating the Client

The current economic climate has bought difficulties for many businesses, large and small, established or young, so are business owners and employees in a position where they should be alienating the client?

Well one has to think not, but it does happen, on the phone through email or face to face. Many companies employ executive coaches to train staff, but how many are going for the cheapest option rather than option that delivers real results.

I experienced some evidence of coaching in the dentists chair, for the first time in 30 years I was asked what I expected from my visit and what was the end result I wished to achieve, I prompted a question to define the time frame they thought they could provide, funny really, being a life coach I could feel the lip service.  The tedious questionaire that accompanied it though demonstrated that the guiding hand of advice wasn't quite on the client wavelength, bringing into question, did the coach identify the market properly or use a method picked up on a one off course. It will be interesting to see if they deliver.

Coaching has stretched to the driver training industry, it is neither life nor executive coaching, it is teaching techniques with a coaching slant, it is dressed up as client centered learning, yet the preperation a life coach makes before embarking on sessions with their client is not even touched upon and if it was, the instructor would have to charge a much larger rate than is currently being asked. That would see the end of cheap lessons, but the years of study to even begin this journey would push away many instructors.

The knock on effect is the courses being offered, one size doesn't fit all, one course does not make a coach. Having a qualification is not enough, because being able to academically achieve does not necessarily mean you can deliver the goods, so coaches develop a portfolio to accompany their CPD, on going CPD is a must for a coach, to join many of the associations you need a consistent level of CPD to accompany your portfolio. Does the buyer search for this or just fall for a sales pitch.

Moving on to other areas of coaching, life coaching, can the coach alienate their client, well it depends, there has to be rapport in the relationship for it to move forward, but as a business person can the coach create ambience to a satisfactory level without possibly embracing the personality of the client, well a good coach can. As coaching can be offered through e-mail, Skype or telephone then rapport isn't necessarily evident, it may be there it may not. However should someone who truly embraces coaching for it's real value, believe in it and trust it's worth ever risk their business by alientating anyone in their potential market place, we would hope not.

You do not have to be a financial coach to understand your business needs to be viable and nurtured, so can client marketing work. Literacy is important, a document with poor spelling or grammer sent to clients is the first step to pushing them away, understand your market, and to do that you must understand your client base.

Too many coaches offer courses, and this is covered in regular debate on coaching forums, because they have not been able to succeed as a coach, often attending one course or picking up one qualification outside of QCF guidelines and developing a course of their own to make money. Great for the provider not so great for the client, so does this also amount to alienating the client, according to many, well yes it does.

So how do we step away from this trap, know your market, your client and your own target, have a mentor and a plan, above all be realistic. The client always gets what they pay for, but do you want your business to alienate your client base because you bought the first off the shelf coach who came your way.