I'm not baggging up to go defend Walsingham at some kind of forum like that.

If the rest of your crack staff would show up in their Neiman Marcus bags, I'd gladly put you guys on ... you name it, guys...

Nick, I really like the ncecopt of radical authenticity' aka ‘just being yourself’. It is a way of thinking that potentially cuts through all the angst and worry, removing the burden of trying to remember which hat you are wearing in whichever social (media) situation. However, but, then again, and on the other hand… I think that there is a problem with your recipe too. I think it is definitely a problem for civil servants and possibly for organisations like mine too – though I can’t tell whether I’ve stepped back enough from our situation to judge this, or if I'm just special pleading. One of the central planks of the British system, for better or worse, is the notion of civil service neutrality. It is hard to see how, without politicising the civil service, you can allow radical authenticity to infuse the upper grades in Whitehall. At least at the moment the rules are clear – if we move towards a politicised civil service how do we know whether someone is being authentic or just pitching for their next promotion? Yes Minister satirises the power that civil servants have over their political masters, and that power is real. But with it comes responsibility – and I suspect a loss of radical authenticity, at least while a civil servant. One question that arises is whether it is possible to be a little authentic, let the bits of you out that are not political. The FCO blog I linked to above noted that football, for example, was not off-limits for that author. Basically though, I’m too steeped in the old world to be able to see a way round this. I hope there is. Involve is part of a loose set of organisations and individuals that try, to the best of their ability, to create spaces where conversations, and often deeply political conversations, can happen. An underlying principle is that we should try to remain neutral. The idea is that by being so we can help people who may hold deeply held, yet opposing views, find a way to build a shared solution to their shared problem. We are passionate about what we do because we believe that it can affect real, lasting change in situations where more formal political processes have broken down or just won't work for a range of reasons (there's a whole post hidden in this sentence to explore this idea further I suspect). It isn’t a replacement for formal politics, but it is valuable because it can help break cycles of conflict (with a large and small ‘c’), for example, where other ways of doing things can’t.Thinking very much aloud now, and probably contradicting myself with every new sentence, I think my concern about radical authenticity for organisations like Involve is that it risks placing us in a position where we are unable to create those ‘neutral’ spaces. Or does it? Do we have to think about this more deeply and admit that by being more authentic we can be more honest about when we can truly act as ‘neutral’ convenors and when actually we do have an interest, or stake, in a decision? Or will it make it impossible for us to do this under any circumstances? My worry here is that the people who are good at our type of role are engaged, empathetic individuals. They couldn’t do the job otherwise. How do they remain engaged, able to relate to the people they work with and yet hold no views while demonstrating their radical authenticity?So it seems to me that Involve suffers from the problem of wanting its individuals to be open and authentic, but that this may not be possible for the wider entity – is this a case where the sum of the parts is smaller than the parts? I fear I am now running round in ever decreasing circles, but the discussion so far is helping to hone my thoughts and pointing to hard decisions ahead.

er3SeY zxkzgyrzqlfv

r8dBRP uvqljgybjelb