The week ended well with a meeting with the Scottish Social Services Council and the promise of some additional resources to help with the Care and Social Care agenda. The Care Scotland team will really welcome this. I then had to scramble to get some letters out to centres in relation to more Diva developments with Adobe and to some new work with Learndirect Scotland.

In between times we spent a day on team planning for 2008/09 . We are working towards having our qualifications development part of this done by the 21st of September to pass on to our executive team .

We figured out all the things we still need to do for ESOL and debated a commercial publishing opportunity. Had a quick meeting with Glen Senior who flew in from New Zealand around the retail game and managed to drive up and back to Dunkeld on Tuesday evening in a monsoon to welcome a group of new External Verifiers. Had a chance too to get some of my staff involved in the next part of HOSCA our process review project , got involved in SQA's web development strategy, spent an hour looking and talking through commercial targets for the qualifications we deliver outwith Scotland and spent a morning with all the agencies that meet the Scottish Skills Development Agency looking at a number of Sector Skils Development Strategies. - Mainly Social Care and Financial Services this month.

One scary moment when we noticed that some inappropriate posts had appeared on the Internet Safety Wiki - We have shut it down for a day or two so the technical team can sort out the security policies.

Spotted this story about the German National Railway ensuring football fans travelling to a game had beer on tap on the train to and from their match. I bet the train ran on time and was confortable too. A great piece that challenges thinking and our own brand of Scottish/British conservatism and the cultural differences that co-exist across Europe. Made me smile.