All cartoons on this website
© Bruce Petty.
Thanks Bruce

Many thanks to Rupert Freeman for designing
our website.

'Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) has appointed Glenn Monckton to lead the firm's social infrastructure team in New South Wales and its push into Private Public Partnerships (PPPs)...“The growth of PB's design and project management services in health care and education complements our capabilities in planning, sustainable design, strategic consulting and risk management,” said Mr Woods. [ PB Executive for Social Infrastructure]. Mr Monckton is currently focused on opportunities in NSW and Victoria within the healthcare and university sectors.' Thanks to Dominic Nagle.

'I am at a seminar where someone has just used the term executional granularity.' Tweet from Annabel Crabb on 27 August. Thanks to Bill Thompson.

'...playgrounds in Local Parks must be of a quality and design that addresses local needs and complements the experiences the local community desires to derive from visitations to these parks.' From the City of Kogarah's Draft Plan of Management for Local Parks and Reserves. Thanks to George Carrard who wrote this to the the council after atttending a meeting:
' May I add a plea for the use of clear, simple language in council documents. Don Watson, author of “Weasel Words” would love the draft generic plan of management: for example “Socialising, mastering and claiming of space”, five uses of the word “visitation” instead of visit, “External Park Visitation Spending”.'

'Notwithstanding one's political affiliations, the language used by all of our political leaders has been almost exclusively utilitarian. It has become a statistical narrative of GDP and CPIs, of economics and markets, of ageing and life expectancy, of productivity and competition; to be fair it recognises a series of challenges with descriptions of ‘urban congestion', the ‘adequacy of infrastructure', and the impact on ‘housing supply'.'
Jonathan Mills: State of the Arts Lecture, The Age, 4 Aug, 2010

Adverse patient outcomes
Used by student of policy analysis about the failure of policy making behind the now jailed surgeon, Dr Jayant Patel. Thanks to Sandra Van Eyk.

'The Nurse Manager of the Emergency Department is responsible for:
Leading, planning, coordinating and evaluating the service; the effective management of all resources; the promotion of best practice to enhance patient care outcomes through staff development and research...
Reviews and analyses data on all components of the patient journey and experience and recommends strategies to address patient concerns...
Implement and evaluate the framework for the recognition and response to the deteriorating patient and clinical emergencies...
Maintain standards of professional practice and system improvement through reviews of adverse patient outcomes...
The increasing demand for access to care via the Emergency Department requires a flexible innovative approach using current evidence and a range of data from clinical information systems and applications from prior learning experience. The Emergency Department is a highly visual and scrutinized unit of the organization.'
Job ad for Sydney West Area Health Service

'And so the bad guys are looking at web browsing and the downloading of web apps as two primary attack vectors.' The Age, 10 August 2010. Thanks to Leo Brewin.

The vision (going forward) thing:

'"I believe Kevin put out a vision, a bold vision about an Asia-Pacific community and that putting out there of the vision caused a discussion on regional architecture and we are seeing responses in our region."Asked whether she'd like to go forward with that, Gillard said: "Look, there are various models under discussion right now and an emerging consensus about change and how things go forward. Now there's been a debate about whether you build on the East-Asia Summit or you build on ASEAN, those sorts of things. But what Kevin started has caused a movement forward, about the architecture of our region . . . I embrace that change because Kevin's vision about needing to have one place where you could have the major dialogue between all of the superpowers and regional partners is an important vision." Julia Gillard 3 July 2010

Sarah Palin, a 2008 US vice-presidential nominee, says she hopes her daughter will "move forward in life with her same forgiving, gracious, optimistic spirit, but from henceforth she'll know to trust but verify."  Age 4 July 2010