I’m not backing the bid

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

May I place on record my thanks to the powers-that-be here in London for the constant advertising instructions to Back the Bid (for the 2012 Olympics). Thanks also for spending my transport pounds on incredibly lurid yellow seat covers on tube trains reminding me of their wise orders.

Apparently, spending money on yellow seat covers is justified because if London hosts the Olympics it will have to improve transport. Obviously the powers-that-be understand why it makes more sense to spend my money hosting the fat cats of the IOC instead of er… just spending it on better transport.

I have thought very carefully about these well-intentioned instructions. And call me a troublemaker but I am politely declining to do as I’m told. I’m not backing the bid. Nor linking to their site since it will only encourage them.

If others want to back the bid that’s fine. They may be right and I may be wrong about the value of it. But can we please acknowledge that there’s an argument about this. I don’t like public money being spent to put one side of the debate and not the other.

Share Post

More Posts

Rambling thoughts on models

I went down to Surrey on Friday for long walk and pub lunch with Neil Perkin. We’d originally planned to run a workshop about agile

Planning as drowning

Antonio Dias offers a fascinating description of what goes wrong when drowning: What separates a swimmer from someone drowning is the way a swimmer acknowledges

Leadership as holding uncertainty

Viv picks out some nice ideas from Phelim McDermott on the subject of leadership. “We love the security of the illusion that someone is in

Concreting Complexity

I’ve been thinking about the urge to scale things lately – see here and here. I understand the concern with being able to effect big

The absurd

In moving house, I radically downsized my collection of books which I can highly recommend. I used to think I’d one day find a reason

Rewriting history…

Thanks to my Improvisation friend Kelsey Flynn I rambled into a letter cited in Margaret Cho’s Blog (go to Letter #1): Lately it seems like

Who says fun is dangerous?

I wanted to share this email doing the rounds this morning… AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE After every flight Qantas pilots fill out a form called a gripe

Yes, and…

A quick ramble on the nature of paradox, inspired by a blog on the value of both fear of the new and curiosity

More Updates

Emotional debt

Releasing the hidden costs of pent up frustrations

Aliveness

Finding the aliveness below the surface of stuck

Johnnie Moore

More Friends in Low Places

I know I’m getting a bit carried away posting today. But I want to share another dollop of James Willis’ generously shared wisdom. I’ve just read this and felt very

Johnnie Moore

Blogs can pay

Ton Zijlastra shows me his new wiki with some great information about the business value of blogging.

Johnnie Moore

Ooh, little bit of politics there.

Jon Husband spotted Billy Bragg’s piece in the Guardian. Bragg suggests that our current economic crisis can be traced back to Mrs Thatcher’s defeat of the miners and the ideology

Johnnie Moore

Worrying

I enjoyed Annette’s latest post On lessons to be learned from worrying… [UPDATE: quoting Adam Philips.] Annette’s always thought-provoking on things like this. (This is a woman doing a PhD