Today I read a story that did not surprise me. It was that the Olympic athlete Mo Farah has admitted to beating up a man who apparently 'got in his way' while he was running in Richmond Park in 2009. The man was walking with a woman with a pushchair and Farah insisted that they moved out of his way as he was training along the path. The path is in a park that is open to the public, it is not a sports arena not even a sports centre, it is free to people to walk around. Farah called the police and tried to get the other man charged, arguing that he had started it. However, Farah had left the man so injured that the police would not believe Farah's version of events. Now Farah is black and the other man's ethnicity is not given. Typically, if I had heard the story I would have assumed that a white man had punch Farah and the police sympathised with the white man. However, Farah condemns himself by his own words in his autobiography. Yes, he may be a nationally recognised athlete, but that gives him no authority to order members of the public about and then to attack them viciously if they do not comply with their wishes.
The fact that Farah cannot see what he has done wrong and how he has bullied and then attacked people going about everyday business, it was Christmas Day when you expect many people to be walking in Richmond Park, shows how far removed from reality his mindset is. Can you imagine his indignation if he had been out with his family and the story had happened in reverse? Yet, the reason why he cannot see it this way is because we live in an increasingly divided society. Many people think they are better than everyone else. In part by writing this blog, I am subscribing to that view, because I feel my words are right and are worth reading. However, the lauding of sports people as with members of the military, leads to them having an inflated attitude of themselves. Yes, instruct people where they are to go if you are on a running track or keep them off a military installation, but do not think that extends to a park. It has rules which are enforced by officials connected to the park and in many parks in London even by a specific park police. However, that power does not extend to every individual who is upset that someone else has happened to choose at the same time. That is life, just get over it, do not attack people.
You might argue that Mo Farah has such recognition and status that other people should do what he wishes. I feel that no-one not even the Queen has such a right. If people are acting within the law, then no-one can censure their behaviour. Pushing a pushchair in a park is not a crime. Even if you feel that people like Farah should have special privileges, this does not mean they extend to every sports person whether they compete at a national, country or local level or are just hobbyists. However, as I have noted before, Farah might be at one end of the wedge, but there are thousands of others who see his kind of behaviour as acceptable for them too. I have written here before about abuse I have received from 'proper' cyclists in all the expensive kit as if I was contaminating their space, simply cycling along a public road (not in a velodrome or along a cycle race route). They feel they constantly have to assert that they are better. The same applies to runners especially alongside canals but also on pavements and even on roads. I remember cycling down a hill in a residential area that was poorly lit suddenly to find tens of runners coming right the breadth of the road towards me. Unlike them I was lit up, they were the ones who shouted at me to get out of the road. They felt they had the privilege to run where they liked and somehow I should know this was their route. I just hoped a 4x4 would skid around the corner and collide with them to reduce their arrogance.
There are case after case that I could cite and more come to mind as I write this: swimmers who feel that the lane rules (i.e. swimming clockwise or anti-clockwise and keeping to a certain speed in specific lanes) do not apply to them and power up and down the centre of the slow lane. Yes, be confident, but putting on your running kit or getting on to an expensive bicycle does not make you better than me and certainly not better than the elderly people you terrorise. Yes, it is admirable that you are doing some sport, but it is admirable that that couple are walking with their child or that elderly person is getting to the shops and back. I used to respect Farah. I have worked in the area he lives in and have met people who have trained with him. He seems a joyous, friendly, family man who has achieved a great deal for Britain. Yet, when running in a public space, he needs to remember that he is in fact no better than the rest of us. To assume that you have rights above that of other ordinary people is bad enough; to beat up someone for simply walking in a park is something utterly shameful and he has lost my respect by his own confession.
Showing posts with label arrogance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arrogance. Show all posts
Sunday, 13 October 2013
Monday, 13 September 2010
Getting Through to Blair?
Having seen that Tony Blair has been compelled to cancel signings of his autobiography due to anti-war protests not just in Britain but also in Eire, I began to wonder what it will take to shake his self-view that he was God's gift to this country? I remember back to the time of the Bernie Ecclestone scandal of 1997 when the leading promoter of Formula One racing had given £1 million to the Labour Party and then his sport was was exempted from the ban on tobacco advertising. Of course, being immune to scandal this did not compel Blair to step down, not even to apologise. The perceptive impersonator and satirist Rory Bremner did an excellent impression of Blair at the time being forgiving to us, the public. He said that he accepted that we made mistakes about what was right and wrong, but this time he was willing to understand that we were fallible and to forgive us and move on. That sketch was incredibly perceptive of Blair's character.
I suppose you have to have utter self-confidence to succeed in politics and those prime ministers, like Major and Brown have suffered for it. However, Blair's attitude seems completely untempered by any recognition that he is fallible and has made grave mistakes that have led to the death of thousands. It seems ironic that he moved from a Church of England stance, which though not really fully Protestant has some truck with those elements of Christianity which believe in predestination such as Calvinism, more prevalent in Scotland than in England. Under such a creed Blair could believe that his greatness was all part of God's great plan. One would expect such an attitude from George W. Bush in a USA which still adheres to the myth of its 'manifest destiny', i.e. that it was always going to be the size and as powerful as it has turned out, hence their dislike of counter-factuals. However, Blair is now a Roman Catholic and that brand of Christianity is one which is very aware of fallibility (if not always of the Pope) and allows more regularly for contrition and foregiveness. Unlike Protestantism which has only grace by belief, i.e. you will get into Heaven if you believe in God; Roman Catholicism needs you to have both belief and to do good works if you are to get into Heaven. However, as Graham Greene noted in much of his writing the ability in Catholicism to confess and be absolved regularly, can lead people to do bad things in the confidence that if they pay up quickly on Earth it will not affect their entrance to Heaven.
Blair did lots of things wrong in his premiership but the one that continues to haunt him is his compliance with George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq simply to control the fifth largest oil reserve in the World. There were spurious claims about what a threat Saddam Hussein was to the planet, or more particularly the USA, but it was forgotten that a large part of his weaponry was sold to him by western powers when fighting Iran. In many ways removing him was like the Americans removing General Noriega, he was one of their tools that they had tired of or for political reasons no longer needed. It is certain that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 actually increased terrorist activity across the World and whilst it freed the Iraqis from one dictator it simply plunged them into a different kind of violence and depridation. As I noted at the start of this blog, Blair has never waivered from his self-belief that everything he has done is right. He was very fortunate that he was able to mutate the Labour Party into the Blairite Party. His dislike of Brown was because he was of that previous party rather than being a Blairite. On that basis he could never have reconciled with him. No wonder Blair found Brown 'maddening' as he says in his autobiography, he would simply not accept that Blair was the best thing ever to happen in British politics and be a true believer in the Blairite cult. It seems like that David Miliband will be the next leader of the 'Labour' Party and so the Brown phase will be seen in retrospect as an aberration from the growth of the Blairite Party. I have regularly given examples of this, Gaullism and Peronism being two that always come to mind; Blair with his Christian Democrat approach is very much in that mould. It is interesing that we are so concerned with 'fundamentalists' but forget that with Bush and to a great extent Blair, we had them already in power.
Right-wing commentators have argued that the protests against Blair have been orchestrated by political groupings. They, like Blair, still do not understand how unpopular the Iraq war was and that it has lost supporters every month. They forget the huge and the persistent protests against it. Blair was the favourite Labour leader of the right-wing press and wealthy because he was so like them. He did nothing to shake the Thatcherite legacy and avoided policies which actually helped what should have been the natural constituency of the Labour Party. The cutting out of the ordinary people has continued under Cameron, in fact, as I will analyse next month, has sharpened and accelerated. Again, looking back from fifty years in the future I am sure we will put Blair in the same category as Major and Cameron, Thatcherites who gave some superficial elements to the policy but continuing with what Thatcher established in the 1980s and not repairing any of the damage she inflicted. Brown tried to reverse that trend, but the hostility to his attempt is apparent in the still virulent attacks in the media on him even now he has left office. Their fear, of course, is that with Ed Balls or even Ed Miliband will come to lead Labour, so they keep trying to scare Labour supporters and the general public so that the Thatcherite-Blair trend can continue. In many ways Thatcher has achieved in her legacy what she set out to do as part of her mission in the 1980s, was to move to a situation where the two main political parties would be close together in policy the way the Republicans and Democrats were in the USA, though these days many Americans might dispute their proximity.
Tony Blair's self-confidence is unnerving. It is the kind of self-confidence generally found in dictators rather than rulers of democratic countries. I suppose winning repeatedly in elections and seeing his successor just about fall has added to Blair's ego. However, I also believe it is a real flaw within him and the fact that he was able to run Britain and believe constantly that only his view was the correct one, shows how vulnerable the UK is to dictatorship. I kept hoping that he would see one day that he could be wrong. However, it does not seem to be the case, and I am coming to conclusion that only when he is turned away from Heaven will he finally realise what he did. Then, he will probably blame someone else. I would certainly use Blair as a model for children warning them of the dangers of such arrogance. As yet, he may not have paid the price (though interestingly on the 'Daily Telegraph' blog there is someone threatening to assassinate him), but I hope that these protests which stop him lording around bookshops, squeezing out just that little more adoration which he clearly needs like a drug, may begin to penetrate. I hope in time that he will be disgraced and ignored, because the danger of Blair is not only what he wreaked on people, but the fact that he has become too much of a model for other politicians and the UK and the rest of the World cannot live safely when we have politicians who believe that their personal decisions are the work of God and thus beyond even questioning, let alone challenging.
I suppose you have to have utter self-confidence to succeed in politics and those prime ministers, like Major and Brown have suffered for it. However, Blair's attitude seems completely untempered by any recognition that he is fallible and has made grave mistakes that have led to the death of thousands. It seems ironic that he moved from a Church of England stance, which though not really fully Protestant has some truck with those elements of Christianity which believe in predestination such as Calvinism, more prevalent in Scotland than in England. Under such a creed Blair could believe that his greatness was all part of God's great plan. One would expect such an attitude from George W. Bush in a USA which still adheres to the myth of its 'manifest destiny', i.e. that it was always going to be the size and as powerful as it has turned out, hence their dislike of counter-factuals. However, Blair is now a Roman Catholic and that brand of Christianity is one which is very aware of fallibility (if not always of the Pope) and allows more regularly for contrition and foregiveness. Unlike Protestantism which has only grace by belief, i.e. you will get into Heaven if you believe in God; Roman Catholicism needs you to have both belief and to do good works if you are to get into Heaven. However, as Graham Greene noted in much of his writing the ability in Catholicism to confess and be absolved regularly, can lead people to do bad things in the confidence that if they pay up quickly on Earth it will not affect their entrance to Heaven.
Blair did lots of things wrong in his premiership but the one that continues to haunt him is his compliance with George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq simply to control the fifth largest oil reserve in the World. There were spurious claims about what a threat Saddam Hussein was to the planet, or more particularly the USA, but it was forgotten that a large part of his weaponry was sold to him by western powers when fighting Iran. In many ways removing him was like the Americans removing General Noriega, he was one of their tools that they had tired of or for political reasons no longer needed. It is certain that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 actually increased terrorist activity across the World and whilst it freed the Iraqis from one dictator it simply plunged them into a different kind of violence and depridation. As I noted at the start of this blog, Blair has never waivered from his self-belief that everything he has done is right. He was very fortunate that he was able to mutate the Labour Party into the Blairite Party. His dislike of Brown was because he was of that previous party rather than being a Blairite. On that basis he could never have reconciled with him. No wonder Blair found Brown 'maddening' as he says in his autobiography, he would simply not accept that Blair was the best thing ever to happen in British politics and be a true believer in the Blairite cult. It seems like that David Miliband will be the next leader of the 'Labour' Party and so the Brown phase will be seen in retrospect as an aberration from the growth of the Blairite Party. I have regularly given examples of this, Gaullism and Peronism being two that always come to mind; Blair with his Christian Democrat approach is very much in that mould. It is interesing that we are so concerned with 'fundamentalists' but forget that with Bush and to a great extent Blair, we had them already in power.
Right-wing commentators have argued that the protests against Blair have been orchestrated by political groupings. They, like Blair, still do not understand how unpopular the Iraq war was and that it has lost supporters every month. They forget the huge and the persistent protests against it. Blair was the favourite Labour leader of the right-wing press and wealthy because he was so like them. He did nothing to shake the Thatcherite legacy and avoided policies which actually helped what should have been the natural constituency of the Labour Party. The cutting out of the ordinary people has continued under Cameron, in fact, as I will analyse next month, has sharpened and accelerated. Again, looking back from fifty years in the future I am sure we will put Blair in the same category as Major and Cameron, Thatcherites who gave some superficial elements to the policy but continuing with what Thatcher established in the 1980s and not repairing any of the damage she inflicted. Brown tried to reverse that trend, but the hostility to his attempt is apparent in the still virulent attacks in the media on him even now he has left office. Their fear, of course, is that with Ed Balls or even Ed Miliband will come to lead Labour, so they keep trying to scare Labour supporters and the general public so that the Thatcherite-Blair trend can continue. In many ways Thatcher has achieved in her legacy what she set out to do as part of her mission in the 1980s, was to move to a situation where the two main political parties would be close together in policy the way the Republicans and Democrats were in the USA, though these days many Americans might dispute their proximity.
Tony Blair's self-confidence is unnerving. It is the kind of self-confidence generally found in dictators rather than rulers of democratic countries. I suppose winning repeatedly in elections and seeing his successor just about fall has added to Blair's ego. However, I also believe it is a real flaw within him and the fact that he was able to run Britain and believe constantly that only his view was the correct one, shows how vulnerable the UK is to dictatorship. I kept hoping that he would see one day that he could be wrong. However, it does not seem to be the case, and I am coming to conclusion that only when he is turned away from Heaven will he finally realise what he did. Then, he will probably blame someone else. I would certainly use Blair as a model for children warning them of the dangers of such arrogance. As yet, he may not have paid the price (though interestingly on the 'Daily Telegraph' blog there is someone threatening to assassinate him), but I hope that these protests which stop him lording around bookshops, squeezing out just that little more adoration which he clearly needs like a drug, may begin to penetrate. I hope in time that he will be disgraced and ignored, because the danger of Blair is not only what he wreaked on people, but the fact that he has become too much of a model for other politicians and the UK and the rest of the World cannot live safely when we have politicians who believe that their personal decisions are the work of God and thus beyond even questioning, let alone challenging.
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Sledgehammer Management
My last post was around my concern that by trying to be a liberal manager who appreciated a lot of the trouble that his employees were going through (I am not allowed to call them 'my team' because apparently they 'belong' to my own boss not me) that I would end up being too much like the manager, David Brent, in the television series 'The Office' making embarrassing fauxs pas. I do think some of my employees do look on me as if I am rather odd, but I guess that comes from being a Goth in the workplace and from the clothes I wear resembling some hybrid of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes (1984-94) and the Herr Flick character from ''Allo, 'Allo' (1982-92; played by Richard Gibson with David Janson taking over for the 9th and final series in 1992), especially in the very provincial town I am now working in. However, generally I seem to get on pretty well with those who have been assigned to me.
The same cannot be said for those above me, especially my immediate manager and, fortunately to a lesser extent, her successor. Like many companies, ours is currently under pressure, making a loss and looking for ways to do the same or more work with fewer staff. There are no redundancies (something the management wants us to keep reminding our staff, the 'whip of unemployment' being cracked on a regular basis) but when people leave (the best always go first from a company that is struggling) they are not replaced. The new requirements of the Border Agency have been put on one of my units meaning extra work for the staff remaining. At this time of year with illness and with one person on maternity leave not covered, it is tough to ensure all the work is being done. It is, but most of the staff are working flat out and all of them doing jobs outside their job description to cover missing staff. New systems are being brought in, but letting someone go off for the necessary training can really dent the capacity of my units.
So, what does a new manager do in such circumstances? Well, I was repeatedly told by my boss that my staff were 'inefficient'. This is taken by the workforce, unsurprisingly, as seen to mean 'lazy'. So I started by surveying all their activity and in fact I feel many of them are working too hard. They are very flexible in adapting to extra jobs to cover missing colleagues and to some degree this is where any inefficiency is creeping in, that hardly anyone is now doing the work they were employed for or trained in, they are doing fragments of 2-3 other people's jobs and are adapting very well. Such steps are fine in the short-term but they are hardening as the weeks and months go by and there is a fear that when the 'music stops' with the reorganisation in the Summer that people will be left fixed with this collection of functions that is not rational, simply dished out ad hoc. I am told that staff should 'rise to the challenges' and seek regrading if they feel their work is now of a higher level, though, of course, that takes time and is very uncertain especially with a freeze on posts and promotions.
Repeatedly I am told that the units would not be in this position if they had more of a 'can do' culture. The sense that they are working below full effort is not based on any objective measurement it is simply because someone who resigned from one of the units a year ago had complained that they were 'bored' in their post without exploring why that might have been the case; it was simply assumed she had too little work to do and that assumption, from one person's passing opinion, has become the basis for all approaches to the units even while the numbers have continued to fall and new work assigned to them.
For challenging, what in my mind is an inaccurate perception, I have been summoned to three very unpleasant meetings in which I have been accused of being 'disloyal' to the management, and then ironically accused of trying to create an adversarial environment in the company, wherease in fact I have been battling to reduce the feeling of 'them' and 'us' that has been built up and that I was dropped into. My management style was well known to my boss before I was taken on. I had an hour of interviewing and activities and am always explicit about how I manage. Ironically I was told I was taken on because of my sensitivity to the workforce which is certainly what seems necessary at this time not just because of new work and the economic situation but also company reorganisation. With six months to go we have little idea what the company will look like or how various units will be grouped. We keep being told there will be no job losses, but that is little help as we cannot plan our work for the year ahead with so little information.
Of course, a lot of this stems from the attitude of my boss who even back in 1983 would have jarred with how businesses are actually run let alone with current management practice within the company and best practice as outlined in all the training I have attended over the past six years. She accused my staff of lying to me constantly and accused me of not only being disloyal but also naive. In that case, the last laugh is on her for employing me for my expertise and experience. It turned out this week that once I was appointed I was used to threaten others in the company with her saying that I would have some kind of enforcer role for her policies. The level of fear this has engendered is unpleasant. One colleague at another site stopped me mentioning something only indirectly related to the manager, about a policy not even the woman herself. The level of concern reminded me of the Eastern bloc or contemporary China. The woman might have been over-cautious but her manner was as if she expected the room to be bugged or one of her staff to betray any views she expressed. You cannot have discussions about working effectively in such an environment.
My challenging of my boss's views led to me subsequently being told that what I was writing in the term of mundane minutes and emails was in fact would form the basis of disciplinary action and might even be the basis of litigation against me. I was accused of trying to create 'a resistance movement' in the company! I had expressed to colleagues the need for more staff in our unit to carry out the tasks we have been assigned and to end any secondments until we have less pressure, but apparently that is improper to face up to reality and I should have kept on with the lie that they were not working hard enough. My first contact with the union at this company was to ask for advice for facing disciplinary action despite having only worked for four weeks so far at the place.
The challenge is, of course, that for the second time in my career I have a boss who believes that her view of things is the only truth. She does not accept that there are differences of opinion or that she might not have the total facts. Consequently someone who even diverges mildly from her opinions is 'lying' (she lays this accusation against people very freely) and as a result must have some perverse and sinister motive that leads them to say anything contrary to the 'truth'. In her world there is no room for compromise. Her talk of loyalty is not about loyalty to the management, let alone to the company as a whole, but to her. We will all fail in this regard, because we cannot be inside her head and see things the way she does, so even those who are very loyal to her in person, often slip up, especially as she has been loath to give us any detail of the future she wants. I have now stood up to her three times in person and fortunately she now feels that rather than being her enforcer I am beyond the pale and she will not work with me any more. Of course, steadily I have found that she has irritated many others on my level in the same way. She seems entirely oblivious to the damage she is doing to morale at middle management to shop floor level among the staff, persisting with her view that all of us are wrong and are lying. She is not the first boss I have had like this, the previous one I had to make an official complaint against because she would not accept that a member of staff had been bullying colleagues over a sustained period of time and so felt that any complaints against him were 'lies' as they were out of step with her view of the man.
I have had enough of bosses like this. You wonder how they get to where they are as they must irritate the people above them as well, but I suppose when someone does not have authority over you, then the impact is far less. The arrogance of this kind of bosses is incredible and whilst I wish no-one harm, you want them to have a kind of 'A Christmas Carol' experience to waken them up to the reality which is not their 'truth'. I can see why Charles Dickens wrote that story about the employer Scrooge. Whilst it is set more than a century ago, such characters seem unfortunately persistent in real life. More practically if I had not been so badly off financially I would have resigned from my post last week, less than a month through. Of course, my boss would write me off as a liar who was misguided about reality and so it would make no impact on how she saw what is actually going on in the company beneath her; it could not penetrate the cast iron assumptions that she clings to. Naturally, I see no future with this company and in January will again start applying for jobs hoping that there are more companies where David Brent rather than Margaret Thatcher is the dominant norm for running the place.
The same cannot be said for those above me, especially my immediate manager and, fortunately to a lesser extent, her successor. Like many companies, ours is currently under pressure, making a loss and looking for ways to do the same or more work with fewer staff. There are no redundancies (something the management wants us to keep reminding our staff, the 'whip of unemployment' being cracked on a regular basis) but when people leave (the best always go first from a company that is struggling) they are not replaced. The new requirements of the Border Agency have been put on one of my units meaning extra work for the staff remaining. At this time of year with illness and with one person on maternity leave not covered, it is tough to ensure all the work is being done. It is, but most of the staff are working flat out and all of them doing jobs outside their job description to cover missing staff. New systems are being brought in, but letting someone go off for the necessary training can really dent the capacity of my units.
So, what does a new manager do in such circumstances? Well, I was repeatedly told by my boss that my staff were 'inefficient'. This is taken by the workforce, unsurprisingly, as seen to mean 'lazy'. So I started by surveying all their activity and in fact I feel many of them are working too hard. They are very flexible in adapting to extra jobs to cover missing colleagues and to some degree this is where any inefficiency is creeping in, that hardly anyone is now doing the work they were employed for or trained in, they are doing fragments of 2-3 other people's jobs and are adapting very well. Such steps are fine in the short-term but they are hardening as the weeks and months go by and there is a fear that when the 'music stops' with the reorganisation in the Summer that people will be left fixed with this collection of functions that is not rational, simply dished out ad hoc. I am told that staff should 'rise to the challenges' and seek regrading if they feel their work is now of a higher level, though, of course, that takes time and is very uncertain especially with a freeze on posts and promotions.
Repeatedly I am told that the units would not be in this position if they had more of a 'can do' culture. The sense that they are working below full effort is not based on any objective measurement it is simply because someone who resigned from one of the units a year ago had complained that they were 'bored' in their post without exploring why that might have been the case; it was simply assumed she had too little work to do and that assumption, from one person's passing opinion, has become the basis for all approaches to the units even while the numbers have continued to fall and new work assigned to them.
For challenging, what in my mind is an inaccurate perception, I have been summoned to three very unpleasant meetings in which I have been accused of being 'disloyal' to the management, and then ironically accused of trying to create an adversarial environment in the company, wherease in fact I have been battling to reduce the feeling of 'them' and 'us' that has been built up and that I was dropped into. My management style was well known to my boss before I was taken on. I had an hour of interviewing and activities and am always explicit about how I manage. Ironically I was told I was taken on because of my sensitivity to the workforce which is certainly what seems necessary at this time not just because of new work and the economic situation but also company reorganisation. With six months to go we have little idea what the company will look like or how various units will be grouped. We keep being told there will be no job losses, but that is little help as we cannot plan our work for the year ahead with so little information.
Of course, a lot of this stems from the attitude of my boss who even back in 1983 would have jarred with how businesses are actually run let alone with current management practice within the company and best practice as outlined in all the training I have attended over the past six years. She accused my staff of lying to me constantly and accused me of not only being disloyal but also naive. In that case, the last laugh is on her for employing me for my expertise and experience. It turned out this week that once I was appointed I was used to threaten others in the company with her saying that I would have some kind of enforcer role for her policies. The level of fear this has engendered is unpleasant. One colleague at another site stopped me mentioning something only indirectly related to the manager, about a policy not even the woman herself. The level of concern reminded me of the Eastern bloc or contemporary China. The woman might have been over-cautious but her manner was as if she expected the room to be bugged or one of her staff to betray any views she expressed. You cannot have discussions about working effectively in such an environment.
My challenging of my boss's views led to me subsequently being told that what I was writing in the term of mundane minutes and emails was in fact would form the basis of disciplinary action and might even be the basis of litigation against me. I was accused of trying to create 'a resistance movement' in the company! I had expressed to colleagues the need for more staff in our unit to carry out the tasks we have been assigned and to end any secondments until we have less pressure, but apparently that is improper to face up to reality and I should have kept on with the lie that they were not working hard enough. My first contact with the union at this company was to ask for advice for facing disciplinary action despite having only worked for four weeks so far at the place.
The challenge is, of course, that for the second time in my career I have a boss who believes that her view of things is the only truth. She does not accept that there are differences of opinion or that she might not have the total facts. Consequently someone who even diverges mildly from her opinions is 'lying' (she lays this accusation against people very freely) and as a result must have some perverse and sinister motive that leads them to say anything contrary to the 'truth'. In her world there is no room for compromise. Her talk of loyalty is not about loyalty to the management, let alone to the company as a whole, but to her. We will all fail in this regard, because we cannot be inside her head and see things the way she does, so even those who are very loyal to her in person, often slip up, especially as she has been loath to give us any detail of the future she wants. I have now stood up to her three times in person and fortunately she now feels that rather than being her enforcer I am beyond the pale and she will not work with me any more. Of course, steadily I have found that she has irritated many others on my level in the same way. She seems entirely oblivious to the damage she is doing to morale at middle management to shop floor level among the staff, persisting with her view that all of us are wrong and are lying. She is not the first boss I have had like this, the previous one I had to make an official complaint against because she would not accept that a member of staff had been bullying colleagues over a sustained period of time and so felt that any complaints against him were 'lies' as they were out of step with her view of the man.
I have had enough of bosses like this. You wonder how they get to where they are as they must irritate the people above them as well, but I suppose when someone does not have authority over you, then the impact is far less. The arrogance of this kind of bosses is incredible and whilst I wish no-one harm, you want them to have a kind of 'A Christmas Carol' experience to waken them up to the reality which is not their 'truth'. I can see why Charles Dickens wrote that story about the employer Scrooge. Whilst it is set more than a century ago, such characters seem unfortunately persistent in real life. More practically if I had not been so badly off financially I would have resigned from my post last week, less than a month through. Of course, my boss would write me off as a liar who was misguided about reality and so it would make no impact on how she saw what is actually going on in the company beneath her; it could not penetrate the cast iron assumptions that she clings to. Naturally, I see no future with this company and in January will again start applying for jobs hoping that there are more companies where David Brent rather than Margaret Thatcher is the dominant norm for running the place.
Thursday, 8 November 2007
What Annoys Me About ... Drivers
As I have commented before I drive around 400 miles (640 Km) per week. Last weekend I covered 680 miles (1088 Km), so I experience a lot of traffic. I have driven in the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece so have quite a good deal of knowledge of driving conditions and behaviour in my part of the World. I have heard that in some countries driving is worse than in the UK, and Italy and Malta in particular have been pointed out to me as examples, but I have no experience of driving in those two countries so am in no position to comment. However, I would still imagine that the UK is near the bottom of the table for bad driving.
One reason why drivers in the UK are so bad is because they carry the social consciousness of British society on to the road. Those with big, expensive cars, especially SUVs, expect others to move out of their way and that they are exempt from the regulations, especially in terms of speed limits and parking restrictions. However, at all levels in the UK people feel that they have the right to bully people in a smaller or older or cheaper car with no regard for what the rules of the road are. Every British driver (and this includes many women as well as men) sees driving as somehow a test of their virility (or whatever the female equivalent is) and to be challenged on the road and lose is somehow a serious slight to their personality. This is no basis on which to drive, it is not a gladiatorial competition, it is about getting from A to B as safely as possible, but it seems very few UK drivers recognise that. For them it is about showing off their wealth and status and getting around as fast as they can.
I have already touched on a couple of types of behaviour by UK drivers that I will not revisit here, but will mention again briefly at the beginning for completeness. The first is complaining about speed cameras. So many people say they are simply fund-raising devices and extreme groups even vandalise them. Much print and many hours of radio talk is spent complaining about speed cameras. Of course if you never break the speed limit you will never be fined as a result of a speed camera, but to many UK drivers this insults their freedom to drive as fast as they like (to them it is equivalent to saying to an American that he does not have the right to have bullets for his gun because they may kill people). These people want to the right to drive dangerously and whine incessantly because they are penalised when they do.
Overlapping with the speed camera opponents are those people still using mobile phones in their cars. Hands-free kits have been available for years now and can be bought in any service station. Despite the increased fines and the greater penalties for anyone holding a mobile phone while driving, every day I see people continuing to do it. Their silly phonecall is deemed more important than the lives of the people around them. As with speeding they have the ultimate arrogance that a) they are very skilled drivers b) that laws do not apply to them c) that their petty concerns are greater than the welfare of hundreds of other people. Even skilled police drivers cannot hold mobile phones and drive well; it is not simply the obstacle to gripping the steering wheel but also the mental distraction. You see people wobbling all over the road, braking suddenly and generally causing disruption to the flow of traffic.
Now, moving on to new areas of terrible driving. Different things bubble up through the year, but one persistent one I have faced over the past few weeks is 'tailgating'. If you are not familiar with what this involves, basically it is driving so close to the vehicle in front of you that if it stops suddenly you will be unable not to crash into it. The stopping distance for a car travelling at 30 mph (48kph) in dry weather is the length of 6 average cars (75 ft or 23m) at 70 mph (112kph) - the highest speed you are legally allowed to travel on UK roads, is 24 car lengths (315 ft or 96m). These distances double in wet weather. Now, constantly I have cars behind me at less than 3 ft (i.e. 1m), which means even driving in a residential road where the speed limit is 30mph, if I stop when a child or an old person or a cat runs out, they will definitely crash into me and shunt me forwards quite a distance. You can imagine how hazardous it is on motorways. This is the reason that every day I see cars that have 'shunted', i.e. one has smashed into the rear of another. On a 30 mile (48 Km) journey each morning I typically see three of these accidents. Now, I accept that not all of these kill people, but they wreck cars and contribute to the slowness of traffic.
There are a couple of variations on tailgating. One is the behaviour of lorries (trucks) on motorways (freeways or highways). In the UK their speed is limited to 60 mph (96kph). If you are in front of a lorry and your speed falls to 59mph they will be less than 3 feet behind you, flashing their lights and hooting you to get out of their way, even when you have nowhere to go as there are vehicles blocking the way in front of you. They make no consideration for the fact that you may have moved into the inside lane because you want to turn off, they expect you to charge up to the junction. Having a 30-tonne plus lorry bearing down on you is hardly likely to lead to confident driving. The other thing is the racing between lorries. If one finds that because he is unloaded he can get 1-2mph faster than the one in front he pulls into the middle lane and slowly edges past that other lorry. It is an agonisingly slow race. Of course the lorry on the inside lane never yields any space and sometimes the overtaking lorry has to drop back. All of this is going on for some foolish pride of lorry drivers, but it causes chaos for other road users. It drops the speed of the middle lane suddenly from 70mph to 60mph when the lorry moves out and these large vehicles sweeping constantly back and forth between two lanes sends turbulence and disruption to the other road users that the lorry drivers seem simply to despise. Coach drivers who can go up to 70mph (and usually go much faster despite their passengers) are even worse.
Another variation on tailgating goes back to the social status issue. Many drivers seem to feel that small cars should not be on the road (lorry drivers seem to have the same view of all car drivers). They hoot and flash at them, trying to get them to pull off the road, even when there are other clear lanes to pass on. If you yield the car zooms past and you catch up with it at the next junction anyway. Presumably it is offensive to them to see a small car in front of them and they wish they had some special route just for them (I believe this is one reason why the Conservative Party in the UK want the top speed limit increased to 80mph. Even the Citroen 2CV with an engine capacity of 602cc can make 70mph but most cars under 1 litre [i.e. 1000cc or more usually 998cc] capacity find it difficult to reach 80mph meaning that they would be reconciled to being terrorised by the lorries in the slow and middle lanes). There are drivers who take this further and I have encountered a couple. One will move around back and forth across the road to block your progress and go in front of you and brake suddenly. Another will simply follow you, sitting tight behind you no matter where you go, even if you pull over or speed up or slow down, as if you are in some trashy horror movie. Why these people want to do this I have no idea, clearly they have nothing better to do with their lives.
Other behaviour that is both dangerous and annoying on the road, are people who change lanes, go round roundabouts, turn into side roads, etc. all without signalling. Every car now has clear, easily operated indicators, but some people seem to have an inability to use them. Again they slow up the traffic and increase the danger to others for the sake of them moving their hand a few centimetres. Why people like moving back and forth across all lanes of the motorway I do not know. Then they see their junction and move right from the fast lane to the exit slip road without signalling at all. Again, clearly they simply think the road is just for them.
A similar problem is with people 'undertaking'. By this I am referring not to funeral directors (they at least have the grace to drive slowly) but to people who pass your car on the inside and then pop up in front of you. Like those who wander across all the lanes, they are seeking the quickest route anywhere. By definition they are speeding. The main hazard is that they come back into a middle lane at the same time as someone is coming across from the fast lane and so crash three cars at once. If they have the power and the speed, why can they not simply expend the effort to overtake properly, no-one has any gripe with that. A variation on this comes at junctions when they creep up, say the lane to go left or straight on then jump out right in front of you as you try to turn right. Clearly even a few seconds lost on their journey is more of a concern than their or anyone else's life. The same impatience happens when two roads are merging. In the UK in such situations cars are supposed to merge with one from the main road followed by one from the joining road then one from the main road and so on. However, of course, rather than waiting their turn people push as far forward as they can and shove in as many of them as they can. Again such behaviour not only is hazardous but also actually slows up the whole flow of traffic for everyone, the people carrying out the action too. I must say I have experienced this in Germany as well as the UK, though less often. Another variation is people doing this creeping up when you are queuing to join a ferry or go over a toll bridge or something similar. Why do they think they are exempt from queuing when everyone else has to do it?
In contrast to many of the problems above that stem from arrogance and even self-righteousness, there is one form of bad driving which comes from hesitancy. Maybe this if forgivable given all the overly-assertive dangerous drivers around, but it does add to the difficulties of driving around safely. This is the issue of people who 'hover'. This is notable on motorways where people sit just behind you in the faster lane to you which is a difficult location as it is often in a 'blind spot' for car mirrors. The front of their car is just level with the rear of yours so you cannot move across into their lane and yet if you slow down to get in behind them, they slow too. You end up paying more attention to where they are for fear of them knocking against you, than the rest of the users on the road. Either they should fall back to give you enough space to get in or accelerate and get past you. The same happens with feeder roads, very common on both motorways and dual carriageways. I pass many of these on a daily basis and I know it is often difficult to join the main road from them, so I slow up in advance of the junction and signal for the people to come on, but do they? No. They move forward a little but do not go, then they might go and of course by then I am closer to them and have to slow more, endangering myself from whoever is tailgating me. It also happens in reverse when you are joining from a feeder. Lorries will simply not let you in and you have to hang at the entrance until they all pass, but some cars again will not accelerate past you nor slow enough to let you in and you get pushed to the end of the slip road in a very dangerous situation. Of course I simply put it down to incompetence and a lack of understanding of how the British road system works, but maybe it is malice and they just enjoy toying with you.
I am sure there are probably a hundred more things I witness in terms of bad behaviour on the roads, but these are the most common and probably provoke the most accidents. Other ones that come to mind is people driving around with full beam headlights constantly at night time seemingly unaware that they are dazzling everyone around them, they do this even on well lit and busy roads. People who drive the wrong way into service stations and then expect you to get out of the way when you have come in the correct way and have queued patiently to use a pump. Now that people drive big SUVs they seem to think that the rule that any vehicle pulling a caravan travels no faster than 50mph (80kph) has been scrapped and they charge along at 70mph+ with the caravan flapping side-to-side hazardously. People who do not understand that when approaching a junction what was previously the fast lane, say on a dual carriageway, is now the lane to turn right, so you can go into it and slow down and should not be forced to travel at 70mph right up to the junction just because they think it is still the fast lane.
Generally the quality of driving in the UK is appalling. This stems primarily from arrogance. Most drivers travel around in a bubble and think they are free to drive how they wish with absolutely no interest on anyone else they are sharing the road with, and often with an intention to somehow humiliate many of the people around them. Over 3,500 people are killed each year on Britain's roads; over 290,000 people are severely injured. Of these incidents only around 5% are caused by drunk drivers, which means that 95% of the accidents are committed by someone who is sober but driving in the idiotic ways I see on a daily basis. As the UK's roads become ever busier we need people to wake up and realise when they get in their car they are not starting a computer game or going into battle, they are simply driving and not alone, but with thousands of people around them. The arrogance needs to decrease sharply and a recognition that you are moving with a dangerous weapon in a confined and ever shifting space, needs to come to the fore.
One reason why drivers in the UK are so bad is because they carry the social consciousness of British society on to the road. Those with big, expensive cars, especially SUVs, expect others to move out of their way and that they are exempt from the regulations, especially in terms of speed limits and parking restrictions. However, at all levels in the UK people feel that they have the right to bully people in a smaller or older or cheaper car with no regard for what the rules of the road are. Every British driver (and this includes many women as well as men) sees driving as somehow a test of their virility (or whatever the female equivalent is) and to be challenged on the road and lose is somehow a serious slight to their personality. This is no basis on which to drive, it is not a gladiatorial competition, it is about getting from A to B as safely as possible, but it seems very few UK drivers recognise that. For them it is about showing off their wealth and status and getting around as fast as they can.
I have already touched on a couple of types of behaviour by UK drivers that I will not revisit here, but will mention again briefly at the beginning for completeness. The first is complaining about speed cameras. So many people say they are simply fund-raising devices and extreme groups even vandalise them. Much print and many hours of radio talk is spent complaining about speed cameras. Of course if you never break the speed limit you will never be fined as a result of a speed camera, but to many UK drivers this insults their freedom to drive as fast as they like (to them it is equivalent to saying to an American that he does not have the right to have bullets for his gun because they may kill people). These people want to the right to drive dangerously and whine incessantly because they are penalised when they do.
Overlapping with the speed camera opponents are those people still using mobile phones in their cars. Hands-free kits have been available for years now and can be bought in any service station. Despite the increased fines and the greater penalties for anyone holding a mobile phone while driving, every day I see people continuing to do it. Their silly phonecall is deemed more important than the lives of the people around them. As with speeding they have the ultimate arrogance that a) they are very skilled drivers b) that laws do not apply to them c) that their petty concerns are greater than the welfare of hundreds of other people. Even skilled police drivers cannot hold mobile phones and drive well; it is not simply the obstacle to gripping the steering wheel but also the mental distraction. You see people wobbling all over the road, braking suddenly and generally causing disruption to the flow of traffic.
Now, moving on to new areas of terrible driving. Different things bubble up through the year, but one persistent one I have faced over the past few weeks is 'tailgating'. If you are not familiar with what this involves, basically it is driving so close to the vehicle in front of you that if it stops suddenly you will be unable not to crash into it. The stopping distance for a car travelling at 30 mph (48kph) in dry weather is the length of 6 average cars (75 ft or 23m) at 70 mph (112kph) - the highest speed you are legally allowed to travel on UK roads, is 24 car lengths (315 ft or 96m). These distances double in wet weather. Now, constantly I have cars behind me at less than 3 ft (i.e. 1m), which means even driving in a residential road where the speed limit is 30mph, if I stop when a child or an old person or a cat runs out, they will definitely crash into me and shunt me forwards quite a distance. You can imagine how hazardous it is on motorways. This is the reason that every day I see cars that have 'shunted', i.e. one has smashed into the rear of another. On a 30 mile (48 Km) journey each morning I typically see three of these accidents. Now, I accept that not all of these kill people, but they wreck cars and contribute to the slowness of traffic.
There are a couple of variations on tailgating. One is the behaviour of lorries (trucks) on motorways (freeways or highways). In the UK their speed is limited to 60 mph (96kph). If you are in front of a lorry and your speed falls to 59mph they will be less than 3 feet behind you, flashing their lights and hooting you to get out of their way, even when you have nowhere to go as there are vehicles blocking the way in front of you. They make no consideration for the fact that you may have moved into the inside lane because you want to turn off, they expect you to charge up to the junction. Having a 30-tonne plus lorry bearing down on you is hardly likely to lead to confident driving. The other thing is the racing between lorries. If one finds that because he is unloaded he can get 1-2mph faster than the one in front he pulls into the middle lane and slowly edges past that other lorry. It is an agonisingly slow race. Of course the lorry on the inside lane never yields any space and sometimes the overtaking lorry has to drop back. All of this is going on for some foolish pride of lorry drivers, but it causes chaos for other road users. It drops the speed of the middle lane suddenly from 70mph to 60mph when the lorry moves out and these large vehicles sweeping constantly back and forth between two lanes sends turbulence and disruption to the other road users that the lorry drivers seem simply to despise. Coach drivers who can go up to 70mph (and usually go much faster despite their passengers) are even worse.
Another variation on tailgating goes back to the social status issue. Many drivers seem to feel that small cars should not be on the road (lorry drivers seem to have the same view of all car drivers). They hoot and flash at them, trying to get them to pull off the road, even when there are other clear lanes to pass on. If you yield the car zooms past and you catch up with it at the next junction anyway. Presumably it is offensive to them to see a small car in front of them and they wish they had some special route just for them (I believe this is one reason why the Conservative Party in the UK want the top speed limit increased to 80mph. Even the Citroen 2CV with an engine capacity of 602cc can make 70mph but most cars under 1 litre [i.e. 1000cc or more usually 998cc] capacity find it difficult to reach 80mph meaning that they would be reconciled to being terrorised by the lorries in the slow and middle lanes). There are drivers who take this further and I have encountered a couple. One will move around back and forth across the road to block your progress and go in front of you and brake suddenly. Another will simply follow you, sitting tight behind you no matter where you go, even if you pull over or speed up or slow down, as if you are in some trashy horror movie. Why these people want to do this I have no idea, clearly they have nothing better to do with their lives.
Other behaviour that is both dangerous and annoying on the road, are people who change lanes, go round roundabouts, turn into side roads, etc. all without signalling. Every car now has clear, easily operated indicators, but some people seem to have an inability to use them. Again they slow up the traffic and increase the danger to others for the sake of them moving their hand a few centimetres. Why people like moving back and forth across all lanes of the motorway I do not know. Then they see their junction and move right from the fast lane to the exit slip road without signalling at all. Again, clearly they simply think the road is just for them.
A similar problem is with people 'undertaking'. By this I am referring not to funeral directors (they at least have the grace to drive slowly) but to people who pass your car on the inside and then pop up in front of you. Like those who wander across all the lanes, they are seeking the quickest route anywhere. By definition they are speeding. The main hazard is that they come back into a middle lane at the same time as someone is coming across from the fast lane and so crash three cars at once. If they have the power and the speed, why can they not simply expend the effort to overtake properly, no-one has any gripe with that. A variation on this comes at junctions when they creep up, say the lane to go left or straight on then jump out right in front of you as you try to turn right. Clearly even a few seconds lost on their journey is more of a concern than their or anyone else's life. The same impatience happens when two roads are merging. In the UK in such situations cars are supposed to merge with one from the main road followed by one from the joining road then one from the main road and so on. However, of course, rather than waiting their turn people push as far forward as they can and shove in as many of them as they can. Again such behaviour not only is hazardous but also actually slows up the whole flow of traffic for everyone, the people carrying out the action too. I must say I have experienced this in Germany as well as the UK, though less often. Another variation is people doing this creeping up when you are queuing to join a ferry or go over a toll bridge or something similar. Why do they think they are exempt from queuing when everyone else has to do it?
In contrast to many of the problems above that stem from arrogance and even self-righteousness, there is one form of bad driving which comes from hesitancy. Maybe this if forgivable given all the overly-assertive dangerous drivers around, but it does add to the difficulties of driving around safely. This is the issue of people who 'hover'. This is notable on motorways where people sit just behind you in the faster lane to you which is a difficult location as it is often in a 'blind spot' for car mirrors. The front of their car is just level with the rear of yours so you cannot move across into their lane and yet if you slow down to get in behind them, they slow too. You end up paying more attention to where they are for fear of them knocking against you, than the rest of the users on the road. Either they should fall back to give you enough space to get in or accelerate and get past you. The same happens with feeder roads, very common on both motorways and dual carriageways. I pass many of these on a daily basis and I know it is often difficult to join the main road from them, so I slow up in advance of the junction and signal for the people to come on, but do they? No. They move forward a little but do not go, then they might go and of course by then I am closer to them and have to slow more, endangering myself from whoever is tailgating me. It also happens in reverse when you are joining from a feeder. Lorries will simply not let you in and you have to hang at the entrance until they all pass, but some cars again will not accelerate past you nor slow enough to let you in and you get pushed to the end of the slip road in a very dangerous situation. Of course I simply put it down to incompetence and a lack of understanding of how the British road system works, but maybe it is malice and they just enjoy toying with you.
I am sure there are probably a hundred more things I witness in terms of bad behaviour on the roads, but these are the most common and probably provoke the most accidents. Other ones that come to mind is people driving around with full beam headlights constantly at night time seemingly unaware that they are dazzling everyone around them, they do this even on well lit and busy roads. People who drive the wrong way into service stations and then expect you to get out of the way when you have come in the correct way and have queued patiently to use a pump. Now that people drive big SUVs they seem to think that the rule that any vehicle pulling a caravan travels no faster than 50mph (80kph) has been scrapped and they charge along at 70mph+ with the caravan flapping side-to-side hazardously. People who do not understand that when approaching a junction what was previously the fast lane, say on a dual carriageway, is now the lane to turn right, so you can go into it and slow down and should not be forced to travel at 70mph right up to the junction just because they think it is still the fast lane.
Generally the quality of driving in the UK is appalling. This stems primarily from arrogance. Most drivers travel around in a bubble and think they are free to drive how they wish with absolutely no interest on anyone else they are sharing the road with, and often with an intention to somehow humiliate many of the people around them. Over 3,500 people are killed each year on Britain's roads; over 290,000 people are severely injured. Of these incidents only around 5% are caused by drunk drivers, which means that 95% of the accidents are committed by someone who is sober but driving in the idiotic ways I see on a daily basis. As the UK's roads become ever busier we need people to wake up and realise when they get in their car they are not starting a computer game or going into battle, they are simply driving and not alone, but with thousands of people around them. The arrogance needs to decrease sharply and a recognition that you are moving with a dangerous weapon in a confined and ever shifting space, needs to come to the fore.
Thursday, 10 May 2007
Goodbye Mr. Blair: go quickly, go quietly, just go
The news is alive with the build up to Tony Blair's resignation today, though of course he will remain prime minister for another couple of months or so. Like many people in the UK I am looking forward to him going. I think the fact that the condemnation of him stretches across the political spectrum from the far right to Old Labour reinforces what I posted recently. Blair has not really been a Labour prime minister he has been a Blairite prime minister, that mix of Christian Democrat approaches with his desires, however tempered, to adopt a more authoritarian approach to things. Whilst I would not want a prime minister who was uncertain about themselves and what they stood for (this was John Major's problem by 1997) Blair has gone too far in the opposite direction, he has had total arrogance in everything he believed and more than that found it difficult to accept that anyone who thought differently from him had legitimate views. He was lucky in 1997 that he was really the only option for those who wanted to dismiss the Conservatives from office and that included many Conservative supporters, but never has he really engaged with more than a small circle of supporters. There has been a small Blairite circle who have shared his vision, but have been alien not only to the UK as a whole, but also the Labour Party itself, it simply acted as a machine to get this clique, this junta, to the pinnacle.
Blair learned most of his political approach from Margaret Thatcher, hence reference to 'presidential politics', the kind of Gaullist approach, eschewing Cabinet government, simply having bilateral talks between premier and another minister on an issue. Blair would have done better to have learned from Clement Attlee (Labour Prime Minister 1945-51) who went to efforts to balance his Cabinet in terms of their backgrounds, even which parts of the country they came from and to let those with ability exercise it, rather than hold them back because they did not agree precisely with what he thought. Yes, the prime minister should be charismatic, but should ensure that he does not plunge his colleagues into the shade.
Possibly the best way to characterise Blair's behaviour in the British political system is like one of the rulers of the Italian city states of the Renaissance, say for example, the De Medicis. He has had a clique to which he has been very loyal: Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett, Ruth Kelly, Tessa Jowell, Alan Milburn no matter what they did, no matter how bad it was in political terms, they were always forgiven and more than that, lifted back up to high office. Those with talent and yet outside the group, such as Mo Mowlam and Robin Cook were marginalised. Blair had his vizier, his henchman, the equivalent of the wizard he consulted to achieve the black arts so granting that person power over him to - Alastair Campbell his communications officer as with all black magicians, suspected and feared by others at the court. In addition, Blair has followed the precept 'keep your friends close, but your enemies closer', hence Gordon Brown being the longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in British history (the UK equivalent of the Minister of Finance).
Blair's departure today (assuming he does not make himself leader for life instead) will also mean the end of these Renaissance politics at the heart of the UK system, and (hopefully) the end of the term of office of the Blairite Party. The curious thing about the Blair regime is that it had such immense power, so much popularity at the start, such a large majority in parliament and yet so much of its efforts from the start seem to have gone into preparing Blair's legacy almost from the first day. He has been the pharoah who has diverted his strong army into building his pyramid rather than pushing back the enemies at the border. These enemies for the UK remain poverty, ill health among the population, a deteriorating environment, increasing racial tension, a lack of engagement with opportunities in Europe, the increasing difficulty of housing and the expense of living in the UK. He could have done so much but rather he prefers to strut on the world stage, causing misery for hundreds of thousands and further dividing the UK population.
There are some good things that the last 10 years have brought. The one I would point to is the minimum wage which was long overdue. British people remain underpaid and overworked, but I knew people whose weekly income doubled the moment the minimum wage came in, people who were on the bottom of society and victims of its capriciousness. So many companies whined that it would drive them out of business. This has proven to be untrue and it is obscene to run a business that depends on paying people so little, especially when the salaries of those who run businesses are so many more times larger than those of their workers. Prove to me that a managing director does 20, 30, 100 times more work than his employees.
Tax credits have also been a good step, helping those people hovering on the fringes of benefit and employment, especially for families as children make up half of all the people in poverty. However, tax credits have been handled and administered so badly. Had no-one learned from the fiasco that was the Child Support Agency? Millions of people have had tax credits overpaid, underpaid, clawed back. You cannot behave like that especially with people for whom £40 per week is a huge difference between whether they eat, pay their rent, heat their homes, can get the bus to work, etc.
The Freedom of Information Act was another overdue step, but one again that has been weakened in the execution. The Data Protection Act, actually supposed to protect us from the 'Big Brother' surveillance culture, is actually used by the Big Brothers, the authorities to bar us from information which we need. FoI is a good policy and yet latterly as the government pushes for expensive identity cards which will carry data we have no knowledge of and wants to bring biometric data and other information together in one huge database, you feel that their heart was not really in giving us access to what is held about us. We lag behind countries such as Sweden and even the USA in what we can find out. Rather the Blair government has preferred to move towards the surveillance approach of every aspect of our lives so common in totalitarian regimes.
It would be nice if someone could remind me of some of the positive things that the Blair regime has done for this country, because I cannot think of any at present. I accept that few others could do much better, but few others could do much worse, and why should I be compelled to accept a leader because he is the least worst option as Blair has long been portrayed to the ranks of the Labour Party. I do not even have to mention the word 'Iraq'. The thing that makes the Blair years so bitter is that you feel he has grabbed you by the back of the head and rubbed your nose in what he has produced saying 'you ungrateful moron, look how good I have been to you, look, look harder; now: love me, worship me'.
The one thing I now dread in the post-Blair rule period is that he will linger on strutting around London with his coterie, undermining anything his successor does, hoping as I imagine he will, that there will be a crisis and he will be called back to save the country, as the King Arthur or the Sir Francis Drake re-awakened from their slumber. Peron and De Gaulle, those two egoists that Blair so resembles, did have this opportunity and I just pray that Blair never gets such a chance. Berlusconi, please offer Blair a nice quiet villa where he can sit in retirement out of our way, somewhere in Tuscany, not Elba!
Blair learned most of his political approach from Margaret Thatcher, hence reference to 'presidential politics', the kind of Gaullist approach, eschewing Cabinet government, simply having bilateral talks between premier and another minister on an issue. Blair would have done better to have learned from Clement Attlee (Labour Prime Minister 1945-51) who went to efforts to balance his Cabinet in terms of their backgrounds, even which parts of the country they came from and to let those with ability exercise it, rather than hold them back because they did not agree precisely with what he thought. Yes, the prime minister should be charismatic, but should ensure that he does not plunge his colleagues into the shade.
Possibly the best way to characterise Blair's behaviour in the British political system is like one of the rulers of the Italian city states of the Renaissance, say for example, the De Medicis. He has had a clique to which he has been very loyal: Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett, Ruth Kelly, Tessa Jowell, Alan Milburn no matter what they did, no matter how bad it was in political terms, they were always forgiven and more than that, lifted back up to high office. Those with talent and yet outside the group, such as Mo Mowlam and Robin Cook were marginalised. Blair had his vizier, his henchman, the equivalent of the wizard he consulted to achieve the black arts so granting that person power over him to - Alastair Campbell his communications officer as with all black magicians, suspected and feared by others at the court. In addition, Blair has followed the precept 'keep your friends close, but your enemies closer', hence Gordon Brown being the longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in British history (the UK equivalent of the Minister of Finance).
Blair's departure today (assuming he does not make himself leader for life instead) will also mean the end of these Renaissance politics at the heart of the UK system, and (hopefully) the end of the term of office of the Blairite Party. The curious thing about the Blair regime is that it had such immense power, so much popularity at the start, such a large majority in parliament and yet so much of its efforts from the start seem to have gone into preparing Blair's legacy almost from the first day. He has been the pharoah who has diverted his strong army into building his pyramid rather than pushing back the enemies at the border. These enemies for the UK remain poverty, ill health among the population, a deteriorating environment, increasing racial tension, a lack of engagement with opportunities in Europe, the increasing difficulty of housing and the expense of living in the UK. He could have done so much but rather he prefers to strut on the world stage, causing misery for hundreds of thousands and further dividing the UK population.
There are some good things that the last 10 years have brought. The one I would point to is the minimum wage which was long overdue. British people remain underpaid and overworked, but I knew people whose weekly income doubled the moment the minimum wage came in, people who were on the bottom of society and victims of its capriciousness. So many companies whined that it would drive them out of business. This has proven to be untrue and it is obscene to run a business that depends on paying people so little, especially when the salaries of those who run businesses are so many more times larger than those of their workers. Prove to me that a managing director does 20, 30, 100 times more work than his employees.
Tax credits have also been a good step, helping those people hovering on the fringes of benefit and employment, especially for families as children make up half of all the people in poverty. However, tax credits have been handled and administered so badly. Had no-one learned from the fiasco that was the Child Support Agency? Millions of people have had tax credits overpaid, underpaid, clawed back. You cannot behave like that especially with people for whom £40 per week is a huge difference between whether they eat, pay their rent, heat their homes, can get the bus to work, etc.
The Freedom of Information Act was another overdue step, but one again that has been weakened in the execution. The Data Protection Act, actually supposed to protect us from the 'Big Brother' surveillance culture, is actually used by the Big Brothers, the authorities to bar us from information which we need. FoI is a good policy and yet latterly as the government pushes for expensive identity cards which will carry data we have no knowledge of and wants to bring biometric data and other information together in one huge database, you feel that their heart was not really in giving us access to what is held about us. We lag behind countries such as Sweden and even the USA in what we can find out. Rather the Blair government has preferred to move towards the surveillance approach of every aspect of our lives so common in totalitarian regimes.
It would be nice if someone could remind me of some of the positive things that the Blair regime has done for this country, because I cannot think of any at present. I accept that few others could do much better, but few others could do much worse, and why should I be compelled to accept a leader because he is the least worst option as Blair has long been portrayed to the ranks of the Labour Party. I do not even have to mention the word 'Iraq'. The thing that makes the Blair years so bitter is that you feel he has grabbed you by the back of the head and rubbed your nose in what he has produced saying 'you ungrateful moron, look how good I have been to you, look, look harder; now: love me, worship me'.
The one thing I now dread in the post-Blair rule period is that he will linger on strutting around London with his coterie, undermining anything his successor does, hoping as I imagine he will, that there will be a crisis and he will be called back to save the country, as the King Arthur or the Sir Francis Drake re-awakened from their slumber. Peron and De Gaulle, those two egoists that Blair so resembles, did have this opportunity and I just pray that Blair never gets such a chance. Berlusconi, please offer Blair a nice quiet villa where he can sit in retirement out of our way, somewhere in Tuscany, not Elba!
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