Seeing a boss’s biography at a conference organised by Counsel and Care for… (it used to be for elderly people, but now it’s got an inclusive logo (in four colours, pretty but expensive to keep reprinting if you run short of money) and a longer strap line of people that it’s for, but to you and me it’s still older people. But I see that Stephan Burke, who I’ve not come across before, its chief executive, is proud of his 25-year career in ‘public relations, journalism and fundraising’. Just the guy with expertise to run an organisation concerned about older people. But he’s probably been good for the logo.

No disrespect to Stephen, who also has political and management roots, but it’s a sad commentary on services for all sorts of people excluded from our society in poverty, as many older people are, that the best person an organisation can find to lead them is a public relations consultant. Of course, it might just mean that people who really have the expertise to help older people are getting on with doing the job, but I suspect its another commentary on our media-obsessed age that any organisation thinks it needs a public relations man rather than someone who can do the job. And I suspect also that it will in the end lead to disillusion with voluntary and social care organisations in the same way that Blair and Cameron discredit politics, people will see it as all smoothies feathering the duvet for their next job, instead of really being committed to people and their needs. I exclude Gordon Brown from that comment. For obvious reasons.

Still it won’t put me off Counsel and Care’s very good public information leaflets: http://www.counselandcare.org.uk/ Their care homes guide is specially good: http://www.counselandcare.org.uk/helping-you/careguides/

Because I’ve been away on holiday and this blog is not published outside the Hospice yet, I have not been posting daily, but now I’m posting the backlog.

Pics of the St Christopher’s building works, in solidarity with colleagues who are working in difficult conditions, so that things can be better in the future.

The way through the woods (another pacth to the gardens cut off):