“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?
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