Snow melts

The hard frost lets the snow settle and we love the snow. But when the white stuff melts away the ground is hard and unforgiving.

One of the dogs that Ma Outlaw looks after whacked into poor old Snowy yesterday and sent him flying - he hit his head on the kitchen floor. That little spark that we'd been nurturing suddenly snuffed out quick as anything.

It is ludicrous to be sentimental over a lamb, but in that lonely house which has seen so much pain over the last year, with Mick's suicide, it seemed a green sprig of life in a pretty barren landscape.

Lambs die. We know that. But this one was something of a symbol, certainly for the Nip and probably for Ma Outlaw too. The pain of Mick's death still so raw, underneath it all. We need more Snowies...

Tilly cuddles Snowy

Tilly cuddles Snowy, originally uploaded by Simon Redfern.

This is a story. About a poor lamb called Snowy. Snowy was the runt of the litter and while his siblings were up on their feet, kicking up the snow and feeding in a frenzy off their brassed off looking mum, he lay limp, empty, barely alive.

Tilly and William begged the farmer to let them take him home. He grumpily gave in and handed them a big bag of sheep milk, a teat and a stomach tube.

First Tils and the Boy Wonder put the lamb in the warm draw of the rayburn... then they installed him in a dog basket next to a radiator, covered in old woolly jumpers.

They fed him, and he responded. He woke everyone up in the night, bleating and crying for more milk.

The next day he was on his feet - wobbling and scampering - like his pins were going to give out... Tils and BW had saved him from certain death, and without realising it done just the thing to celebrate Easter and the onset of spring...

But actually nobody comes

As if to illustrate Clay Shirky's point I recently attended a couple of All Party Parliamentary Groups. APPGs have come in for a lot of stick over the last year or so, mired in funding allegations and all the rest. Ultimately they exist for MPs and Peers to receive briefings from external organisations on the issues that matter to them.

But what has happened in some cases is that the dynamic has been reversed. Organisations have suggested to Parliamentarians that forming a group makes sense, the MP has demurred, the requisite number of cross party members have been found and the group formed. The problem then is that these groups can rapidly become moribund, with one or two members turning up, almost because they have to. Just like the proliferation in the use of early day motions there is a sense of "we have to, because they have."

But of course this is a "gather then share" model in Shirky's terminology. The tools are old school. Get MPs interested by writing to them, keep them interested by reminding them, get other stakeholders interested too. It's cumbersome, it's labour intensive, and the results are sometimes painfully poor.

Turning the model on its head would be better. Share the need, offer the solution, then gather. Again the solutions aren't obvious - clearly the need to lobby remains, but a more active mechanism for MPs to put their needs and wants out there seems sensible, and deliverable given the social tools now on offer. Just a thought...

Here Comes Everybody

I'm skipping through Clay Shirky's new book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. It's a truly incredible read and Shirky (whose lecture at the RSA yesterday I blinking missed) is really persuasive.

Essentially his point is we have tools now that mean we can organise ourselves in a totally different way than 10 years ago. We don't necessarily need traditional structures anymore.

He cites the spontaneous photojournalism that took place during the 7/7 bombings on the underground, which saw Flickr used as a tool to promote a news story that no newspaper could ever get images for. He talks about one New York blogger's quest to retrieve a stolen mobile phone, mobilising half the net to help him.

This is powerful stuff and makes my political antennae twitch. I'm only a little way in, but already his comment that "the basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming "gather, then share" to "share, then gather". That speaks to something profound in me about the way political parties operate, and about the future... Think Simon. Think!

Skippy

, originally uploaded by villageidiot.

Ahh - here she is. Five and skipping. It doesn't get much better than that.

Tilly is five tomorrow

The little radiator hits the garden
Flapping in her cape as Supergirl,
Or booting the ball high and true
In the summer and laughing loud.

On this earth now five short years,
Roots so deep entwined inside us
That life before her crying coming
Sits in memory - a blank waiting room.

Now this quark, this zap-charged electron
Orbits us super fast, glue-ing and sticking,
Painting us and colouring this world;
This girl who is five and who is mighty.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's a sustainable Budget!

If I was Alistair Darling I would close all the shutters in the Treasury, lock the doors in my suite of offices, get some sound technicians to build a 70ft amp stack on the roof, and play the John Williams theme from Superman day and night for the next 48 hours.

Because this is my first Budget, Lois. And I am SUPERMAN.