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O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion. Robert Burns Those of us at the 'Br' end of the Brexit negotiation find it…

“What’s the point?” asked the preacher, rhetorically. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” was his text, taken from Ecclesiastes, an Old Testament book apparently attributed to Solomon, whose wisdom…

(I first wrote about mediation's values 12 years ago at the tail end of a Masters in Conflict Resolution and Mediation Studies.(1) Two years of study had convinced me that it is our values, rather…

“If two people are in a room, there are actually six to consider: “What each person is; what each person thinks he or she is; and what each person thinks the other is.” So began a recent Guardian…

“For nobody would understand, And you kill what you fear, And you fear what you don't understand.” Powerful words. As a progressive rock music aficionado, these lyrics taken from the song "Duke’s…

   To paraphrase a worldwide cliché, you wait decades for a Mediation Act and two come along at once. On this typically dreich Scottish summer afternoon I find myself in the surprising position of…

Being a mediator brings surprises along the way. For me, I was presented with what turned out to be the biggest challenge of my professional career last November when the Cabinet Secretary for Health…

I learned two foreign languages back in school, and there is a reason why my German was always going to be better than my French. I blame The Beatles. In my last blog I promised I would write about…

This is the second in my short series on using your assets well in a mediation. The first was on the people. This is on the arguments. Let’s start with the legal arguments. As a mediator, I hear…