(Monday) Moan 63

“AND NOW FOR SOME ROLE PLAY …..”

These were words guaranteed to make my heart sink.  In my working days I was all for a spot of out of office training, of getting to know your colleagues better, of having time away from the daily bustle to be able to think about what we were doing and how we might do it better, of planning for things we knew we had to do in the year ahead.  All sensible stuff.

Team building events came in many shapes and sizes, and those that involved learning how to juggle, or engaging in what amounted to a game of Twister with your work colleagues always seemed of questionable value – even if you enjoyed them.    But I could rarely see the point in role play activities.  Occasionally one of them would have some relevance to work to some degree, but often it just seemed like someone had taken a look at a list of wacky things to do and decided which to pick on the basis of the random-finger-on-a-page-whilst-blindfolded approach.   

So, my full sympathies to Alan Bacon and his fellow job applicants who were asked to do a dance at a recruitment session for a Currys store in Wales.  I’d like to think that whoever came up with this bizarre and demeaning idea is now looking for a new job, although one where they don’t have to jump through hoops to the command of some half-brained idiot who thinks they are at the cutting edge of recruitment strategies. 

 

 

SOMETIMES INSTINCT IS A BETTER GUIDE THAN THE RULEBOOK

Alan Chittock has worked for the railways for thirty years. He knows what the rulebook says and my guess is that on most occasions he will happily follow its guidance.  But with that amount of experience he has also accumulated a keen eye for potential danger and how to deal with it before it escalates. He can assess situations instantly and take the appropriate action – even if that sometimes means deviating from what the rulebook might dictate.

 

Alan saw a woman in a wheelchair topple over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks at his station, with the next train due in a short while. Rather than heading off to alert the signaller so that the train could, hopefully, be halted before it appeared at the station, he decided that instant action to get the woman off the track was the better option. Alan was helped by other people who had seen the incident and the woman was brought back onto the platform – job done, safety maintained, no disaster at this station.

 

Except, of course, that Alan hadn’t followed the rulebook. So, instead of a word of commendation from his bosses for swift action to save the woman, he was suspended from duty pending an investigation into his breach of procedures. 

 

It may be that all Alan would have needed to do to stop the trains was reach behind him and press a button.  Or it might be that he would have had to go from one end of the platform he was on, over the bridge, down to the end of the other platform and then find the button, which might have jammed because it had not been used for so long, to alert the signaller, who might have been distracted by other urgent matters for a few seconds. Obviously, I don’t know the full details.  But I do know that life is full of moments when you need to make an instant decision based on the knowledge available to you and using the wisdom and experience you have accumulated in however many years you have been on this earth.  There isn’t always time to do whatever it is that you read about somewhere, or even the thing you have been trained to do. Sometimes, commonsense and instinct are the best guides.

  

 

ED MILIBAND COULD RESHAPE BRITAIN AS MUCH AS MARGARET THATCHER, SAYS TUC LEADER

So said the headline in the Daily Mirror last week.

Now, given that Ed’s performance as leader of the Labour Party so far has borne a closer resemblance to Wally than to a potential Prime Minister, I thought this a rather bold statement for Frances O’Grady, TUC General Secretary, to make. But when I read the article I realised that Frances had not come up with this rather glowing assessment of Ed's abilities.  No, her call was for Ed to stand up and make a name for himself, to show a bit of character, to remind people that he is a serious politician.  Essentially, she was telling him to find some balls other than those represented by his Shadow Chancellor. The headline to accompany that article would have sounded critical of Ed, so the editor decided to change the emphasis from Ed should to Ed could - subtle but important.

Whether you applaud the suggestion that "we could become the Britain of Danny Boyle's Olympics opening ceremony" depends on what you thought of that monumentally expensive, clichéd, naff and embarrassing depiction of 'all that is good about Britain'. Guess you know where I stand on that - but it's just an opinion.

  

 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR FAITH IN ME …..

Kevin Rudd ousted Julia Gillard (born in Barry, South Wales) as Australian Prime Minister a few months ago (see Moan 53). 

He had little time to bask in his new position, however, as he and his party were soundly beaten in the Australian general election last week.  He has been replaced by Tony Abbott (born in London, England) – most famous recently for his comment that “What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing ……..”.

Politics in Australia seems so much more interesting than in Britain.   Abbott’s coalition has secured 91 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, giving it a significant overall majority. But is doesn’t have a majority in the Senate, so will be beholden either to the main opposition party it has just replaced, or to a rag-bag of independent Senators elected under Australia’s complex proportional representation rules.  These include Wayne Dropulich, an ex-rugby player, whose Australian Sports Party has few, if any, policies beyond supporting lots of sports, and Ricky Muir, whose Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party is in favour of exactly what it says on the tin.  

Poor old Julian Assange failed to plot a seat in the Senate from his Ecuadorean Embassy bolt-hole in the UK.  No great shame in that, I suppose.  Although he was beaten by the aforementioned Australian Motoring Enthusiasts, as well as the Sex, Family First and Australia First parties, he can be proud of his achievement in having overcome the challenges of the Shooters and Fishers, Help End Marijuana Prohibition, Animal Justice, Australian Fishing and Lifestyle, No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics, Bullet Train for Australia, Drug Law Reform, Stable Population and Bank Reform parties.  I can’t help thinking that the Shooters and Fishers and Australian Fishing and Lifestyle parties might have done better if they had amalgamated.

 

Of course, this rejection by the citizens of Australia will do nothing to damage Assange’s opinion of himself as the saviour of the world – his first quote afterwards was along the lines of ‘time to get back to the real work of publishing secrets’.  I don’t suppose many of the tiny number of people who voted for him would have been surprised by this. 

 

And please spare a thought for those hardy souls of the political system, the voluntary party-workers who pound the streets and knock on every door to canvass the views of residents before polling day.   It’s a thankless task in parts of Australia, not least in the constituency of Durack, in Western Australia, which is almost 1800 miles from top to bottom – further than from London to Moscow, and covers an area more than three times the size of France.   ‘Sorry you were out when we called ’ would be a very sad card to have to leave, wouldn’t it? 

 

 

COME AS YOU ARE PARTY ……..

Regular readers will know how much I love people whose desire to say something clever leads them to say something silly.  So, we had the reality show contestant who was trying to describe how he got bored listening to another contestant because that other person wasn’t saying anything interesting.  He decided to do this by using one of those little foreign phrases that people like to pitch into conversations to show how intelligent they are – but unfortunately, in describing it as leaving himself “non compos mentis” he was probably nearer to the mark than he intended.

 

And once again we had someone misusing the under-estimate/over-estimate expression.  Marin Alsop, in her speech at the end of the Last Night of the Proms having conducted this annual jamboree, said that “you cannot under-estimate the power of music”.  Oh yes you can – ‘music is of no importance whatsoever’ – there, I did it.  Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should use the opposite expression instead, because quite clearly you can easily over-estimate the importance of music.  No doubt what she meant was a genuinely felt “please do not under-estimate the power of music” – so why didn’t she say it?  

 

But more importantly than any of this, who decided that a free-for-all concert dress policy for the choir for last Saturday’s concert was a good idea?