A bit of a multi-rant to see out September, if you will forgive me. After yet another rebuke from my manager for 'not handling' something well, I have been fuming for the entire weekend. Honestly, he's a hard man to please, but he does have such piercing blue eyes. If I didn't despise him, I would surely love him. The way things are going, it will probably do no harm to elucidate a little on the latest bullshit emanating from the 'centre' and give you a flavour of where I'm coming from.We have been severely criticised for costs being on a - get this - high trajectory, with overtime costs particularly bad. I know, as do most of the people in the office, that there is one particular section whose claims are more egregious than others, and so we have decided to challenge these claims - for example, 4 people to deliver newspapers every morning, and one full hour each day to check over vehicles. Needless to say, our efforts have been met with some resistance, as we expected, and the inevitable negotiation has begun. The poor put-upon grafters have taken it upon themselves to raise this with their union representatives, and I have been attacked for the way it has been done. I have been aware, of course, but have largely left the detailed discussions to my managers, who should after all be capable of dealing with such an issue. If they are not, then they should not be managers. Am I right?
Well, the long and the short of it is that I am in trouble, and will have to explain myself tomorrow. It's all so bloody boring, and especially ironic as I've always seen myself as sitting somewhere to the left of Che Guevara when it comes to politics. The sooner I can get away from this crap the better.
But that's a side issue. What I really wanted to vent about was Sting. Gordon Sumner. Not only is he guilty of the old Orson Welles Life In Reverse thing, with all memories of his early good stuff eclipsed by the irritating wank he now produces, but he also has to be one of these stars with a conscience, with his rainforest burbling and his supercilious wife, flying in the cook from thousands of miles away before sacking her. Bastard.
All this is old news of course, but he of the brown and yellow jumper has been on my mind recently. I have started reading American Prometheus, a (highly recommended, btw) biography of J Robert Oppenheimer, and the lyrics of the song Russians keep popping up. When you read about Oppenheimer, his opposition to the arms race, and his subsequent destruction by the American establishment for his pacifist stance, it's particularly galling that some Geordie secondary school teacher (no offence meant to either group) with an over-inflated ego could dare to throw his inane drivel into the ring.
Oppenheimer's Deadly Toy? Fuck you Sting!
7 comments:
Illegitimi non carborundum and all that. Hope everything's OK.
Probably not much to be done about Sting at this late stage.
You're right of course. But they are bastards, and there's only so much a man can take.
Would it ever have been possible to do anything about Gordon, do you think? While he was singing Roxanne, I wouldn't have wanted to do anything about him in any case.
It seems to me that you are taking out your frustrations on a surrogate-that is to say-a symbol. You are using Mr Sting as a symbol of your managers-that is to say-people who are not doing their jobs properly. Also, you are picking on someone who is unlikely to fight back. Unless of course he reads this blog.
I do read this fucking blog. And if I had a penny for everybody who wrote "he's not as good as he used to be" I'd need my old dad's milk-float to take them all to the bank. And yes, I would use the money to protect some of the rain-forest. I would expect YOU to spend them all on the cake-walks in Blackpool.
Am I being analysed by Steffen Freund?
My old man's not a milkman.
My Old man was milked. On stage. By Brian Glover.
Post a Comment