Nic Chambers-Parkes - Nic Chambers-Parkes

The freedom I want tomorrow

The response to the pandemic has, as anyone who has paid attention to anything remotley political over the last 18 months will have noticed, created opportunities for at least some people. And one of the main types of people for whom opportunity has abounded are those who like nothing more

Trips

A trip back to 1938

It's time for that short period, where a year ago today we were doing the last "normal" things without realising it. In 1938, Neville Chamberlain was the Prime Minister, people in the UK were issued with gas masks and The Beano first went on sale. Meanwhile, that same year new

Politics

Did I have a good Brexit?

Four years ago, Brexit was quite a fresh word and I found myself wondering Can I have a good Brexit?. I think it was part of a theme at the time of 'making the best of it' being peddled by the polticians who at the time were very much cake-ist.

Goals

Setting goals for 2021

New Years Resolutions generally don't work, but I'm a goal-driven guy so since 2018 or so I've been setting myself a yearly theme backed up with some objectives. After 2020 (the year of fewer - who knew what it'd be fewer of!), I've set 2021 the slightly depressing(?) theme 'make

Goals

📚Read 13 books...

These are the books I plan to read (or have read) this year. It's a bit of a catch up year, because while I didn't read much at all in 2020 - I did keep buying books. Check my progress in my 2021 Targets shelf on GoodReads. Good Services: How

Goals

Reflecting on 2020

From the perspective of December, I feel slightly less than unique in describing 2020 as an 'unusual' year - but I knew it was going to be an odd one for me before anyone had even heard of that coronavirus. 2020 is the first year for a while where I've

General musings from the past

Reflections on water bills... No, really.

I’m dubiously assured by the clever scales at the gym that I am around 64% water, which according to a quick Google search is either 4% too much or 6% too little but, by any way of reckoning, it’s significant proportion. Water is essential to us being alive.

Projects

There was a pandemic, so I made a podcast

Making a podcast is easier than it has ever been, that’s for sure. For a start, there’s plenty of help out there for the budding podcaster, and lots of people have gone before – so the mistakes are well documented. It is no longer necessary to make your own

General musings from the past

What is success for me?

I pulled this question out of my new “wordsmith” deck of writing prompts. I thought I should write and post something and so here I am with a coffee and an iPad. I feel like “define success” in various iterations, is one of those things you’re supposed to be

General musings from the past

Oh, someone else will sort it

Coffee shops are fascinating from every perspective. I think so anyway. Firstly, I reckon the shop someone plumps for when faced with a choice between all of the ‘chains’ and an independent (or more) says as much about their personality as their star sign of MBTI ever could. But inside

Goals

My books of 2018

Each year I set myself a goal of reading 12 or so books, and then at the end of the year I try to come here and review them. It’s a silly idea, because I can barely remember what I thought at the time when it comes to doing

Nicipedia

You'll never guess what Monarch's planes are doing now

… Broadly speaking, they're flying about. So probably not that surprising.

Goals

✅ Reading challenge

For another year in a row, I’ve achieved my goal of books – one a month during 2017 was a follow on from 1 a month plus 1 in 2016, a step down in number but a step up in difficulty. I only just achieved it, the final tick by

Politics

I'm still OK with charging graduates more

In 2015, I said that I am pretty fast at coming to an opinion over things and usually equally quick at changing my mind, but on tuition fees it seems I am pretty committed to my view. I won’t pretend that each month, when I look at my payslip

General musings from the past

Do you really need to know I've read it?

For as long as I can remember now, the people who message me have been able to see that I’ve read them. Back in the first few minutes of using iMessage there was a pop up which asked for permission to send them and, hhaving come from a BlackBerry

Life of Comms

Why everyone should do media training

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, but wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone had done media training? You may have to bear with, or perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but media training and the skills that it teaches are, I

Politics

Can I have a good Brexit?

Normally I come here to talk to you about how, if I ran the world, everything would be so much better. In reality, if I was left in charge of the world then there’d probably be major issues in most areas. The trains would work well (but close when

Goals

The books of 2016

For the first time ever, I achieved my Goodreads target for the year in 2016. It’s only the second year I have done the challenge, but nonetheless it’s an achievement and I want to celebrate. I read 12 books. I am pretty certain in fact I read many

Nicipedia

Libraries of Hampshire, I believe in you

Yesterday I dispatched a missive on this very blog about how I, if someone were to have accidentally left me in charge, would run Hampshire’s libraries to increase their usage – not manage their decline. I did conclude, though, that it wasn’t all the council’s fault. Despite being

General musings from the past

Libraries of Hampshire: believe in yourself

I took part in Hampshire County Council’s consultation over the future of its libraries a few weeks ago. The consultation itself has been rather controversial with many anti-cuts groups saying the exercise, which does suggest some closures, is ‘phoney’ and uses fancy words to obscure plans for closures. The

Work

Can I work from home?

How do you deal with the question “can I work from home?” and do it well? I think it’s a difficult one to get right, whether the person asking the question is a known and trusted colleague or someone new, asking in the middle of an interview. The company

Nicipedia

39 dwellings

Update at 4pmSince I published this at 4am last night I’ve found out some new stuff. Firstly that the Telegraph also wrote about this picture , secondly that my guess that the flooding wasn’t actually quite reaching the part where development permission had been given might not be wrong

General musings from the past

Why that's the worst illustration of cycling infrastructure ever

I’ve seen this image pop up on Twitter a couple of times today and each time it’s had a tweet something along the lines of “best illustration of cycling infrastructure ever” attached to it, but I don’t really think it is. In the image we have to

General musings from the past

A week with Apple Pay

After a week or so of using Apple Pay almost exclusively, I'm convinced it's the future. For as long as I can remember, I've been carrying around some kind of payment or loyalty card on my phone. It started out with an unofficial app for my Tesco Clubcard and it's

General musings from the past

A week with Apple Music

It's been a little more than a week with Apple Music now, but today I reinstalled Spotify and walked away - but I didn't want to.