There is an Internet meme that goes “Somewhere, there is a 21 year old in a 50 year old’s body going ‘What the hell happened?’”. I try not to think about age generally; and more specifically, my age. In part because I can’t count that high. And if I wanted to count that high, I…
Another teaching year has ended and the last session’s review and goal setting for the future has thrown up the same questions it does every year, or indeed as does the end of every mediation training course. Many of these start with what if? What if I…do something wrong…make a mess of it…go blank…say the…
I’ve just returned from a week in Vientiane, the capital of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and that week away gives me both a [slight] excuse for a late blog entry and a couple of reflections on the outsider/observer role of both mediator and tourist. I should say, too, at this outset, that this is…
The year 2016 has so far been a significant one for Singapore in the area of ADR. The opening of the Singapore Legal Year saw the Chief Justice of Singapore, Mr. Sundaresh Menon introducing various ADR-related initiatives in family justice cases and medical malpractice matters. This has been explored in a previous blog entry here….
Recap Last time I wrote as a young mediator about my mediation path, I had just arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia. It was February 2014, when people began being killed at the Euromaidan on Independence Square in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. I was trying to ‘break into the peacebuilding field‘ but did not have much…
[A talk given at the recent “100 cases” event in Glasgow to celebrate two years of small claims mediation provided by Strathclyde Mediation Clinic. Judges in Scotland are known as “sheriffs”.] I’ve been rather enjoying my belated return to the small claims court. Like a kind of slow theatre, each Friday afternoon unfolds with impeccable…
I begin with two poetic images. One is from an 8th century Taoist poem – I asked the boy beneath the pines. He said, “The master’s gone alone Herb-picking somewhere on the mount, Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.” [Chia Tao (777-841)] And the other, more recent, from W H Auden’s poem “Law Like Love”: And always the…
We have quite a heavy topic before us, but before we get into the weightiness of it, I’d like to begin with something more light-hearted. There is a TV commercial going around which begins with flashes of hard-hitting questions such as: what is the age of the universe? What is the meaning of life? Etc….
Ireland is grinding to a halt. Or, at least, looking in from the outside one could think it is. 40 days on from the general election, we have no government. None of the parties had a sufficient majority, and no coalition can be formed. The latest attempt at talks ended yesterday almost before it had…
At the end of March, when I finally arrived back to Prague after weeks full of traveling (I almost flew the globe around), I sat down and wanted to share with you some experiences I had having attended the Global Pound Conference Series launch in Singapore. Then I realized that the time did not…
