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    The Great Gordino Newsletter - Issue 269 - Fri 19th Dec 2004
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    Hi There,

    Friday rolls around again, and I hope it finds you well.

    A couple of things have happened this week which tie in with
    recent subjects, so I'm talking about them today.

    Firstly, earlier in the week, the Royal Variety Performance was
    held in London.
    Held in front of Royalty, it's a charity performance, where the
    biggest names of entertainment gather and give the
    performance for free.
    It always used to be one of my ambitions to appear on the
    Royal Variety, most likely with my unicycle ballet act.

    However, with it being a televised event, and with the changing
    demands of TV programming, in the past few years, the show
    had degenerated into little more than a pop show.
    The audience pay a lot of money for tickets, so usually have no
    idea who these latest pop acts are, and the acts use the
    opportunity to perform their brand new single.
    Hardly the cream of the crop, and it really took away the appeal
    of appearing on the show.
    I must say that this year wasn't too bad, with a good couple of
    variety acts, and maybe one day I'll work again on that unicycle
    piece!

    The other thing that happened this week was the resignation of
    the Home Secretary David Blunkett.
    After weeks of headlines about whether he intervened in a visa
    application for his lover's nanny, he finally resigned.
    I spoke about this recently, touching on the subject of integrity,
    and although he didn't personally intervene, the sequence of
    events meant that one of his statements could not be seen as
    100% true, so he decided that in the interest of integrity he
    should resign, which is commendable in my view.

    His succesor is Charles Clarke, who was the Secretary for
    Education, who was only elected 7 years ago, and made it into
    the Cabinet only 4 years later.
    That's an impressive achievement indeed, but I want to look at
    *his* replacement at Education, who is Ruth Kelly, and what a
    goal achievement story she is.

    In the male dominated world of politics, also elected in 1997,
    she is the youngest woman ever to hold a Cabinet office, at only
    36, and what's more she entered politics after 2 successful
    careers, and has had 4 chidren since entering parliament.

    Now that's what I *call* driven!
    How focused must she be, to do so much so young, in the face
    of such competition!
    Blimey, she's younger than I am!

    The thought of politics does appeal to me, but I feel I would get
    too frustrated by the, er, politics of it all, so I'll just carry on
    making my comments on my own!

    Wow, what a week of inspiration for me - in my missing-panto
    season, I am reminded of my unicycle act, and then there is this
    amazing goal achievement success by Ruth Kelly - plenty to
    digest along with my pre-Christmas bread!

    Ok, that's it for today, have a great weekend, and here's the
    thought - do you get stuck in and get things done, or do you
    stand back and *think* about getting things done?

    'Til Monday,
    Health and Happiness,
    Gordon
    email me at gordon@gordonbryan.com - you'll have to copy and paste
    thanks to the idiot online spammers!



    
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