Beware Taylor's Law...

I am on my way back from Bath - my talk at the Association of County Chief Executives conference seemed to go quite well.  This was a relief - not least because I suffered once more this morning from 'Taylor's Law'.  This states that whenever one has put aside the time of a journey to do some final preparation for a speech or presentation, it is guaranteed that an old friend will walk into the plane or train, thus making preparation impossible.  I know this sounds obscure, but it has now happened to me so many times that I am convinced there is something going on.  While it was more fun than preparing for my speech to chat to my old No. 10 colleague, Peter Hyman, I did wonder whether the chief executives noticed that my list of six points contained only five!

I did have some time for preparation last night, but only after listening to Zarine Kharas, founder of Justgiving.com and this year's winner of the RSA Albert Medal.  Zarine gave a great speech, telling us about not only the founding principles of Justgiving, but also the progressive and innovative way her organisation works - she is a worthy winner. 

In introducing her, I mentioned to the audience in the Great Room that £430m has so far been raised through Justgiving.  I also took the opportunity to remind people of my own Justgiving site.  So far, I haven't quite met the £500 target I have set myself to raise for the Alzheimer's Society but I have a secret plan (OK, not so secret) to raise the target to £1000. 

That's it for now - I will try to blog again later about my six (or was it five?) point plan for the 'pro-social local authority'.