We've just come back from our 2014 conference in Birmingham, so I hope you'll find a break from the national media interesting. The main media story of the week seemed to be Christina Briggs, 25 stone mother of two from Wigan, who receives £20,000 in benefits a year and wants more money to be able to eat healthily. Apparently she tried swimming, but it was too expensive and meant she had to cut back on pizza and Chinese takeaways. Christina thinks money for fruit and veg and gym membership will do the trick. Well our conference had news for her - none of this would make any difference.
There were two guest speakers at our conference: Kevin Downey and Dr John Briffa. You've probably not heard of Kevin Downey. He's a keynote speaker who works at Bill Gates level with business leadership teams to improve company performance and employee satisfaction. He's way out of our conference budget league, but I've known Kevin for 20 years from my HR Director days and so this was 'on the house'. Lucky us!
This note will share three points, from each of the three speakers, to give you a flavour of the conference and to share a few things from backlashes to "chimps" to a doctor's message when it comes to dieting...
