About Me

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The older I get, the more cynical I get. It is not a fact I am proud of, but it is a fact. I disbelieve just about everything the establishment and the media tell us. I am convinced that we are manipulated into being the submissive, law-abiding robots that we have become. It grieves me greatly.

Tuesday 31 March 2015

Bottom gear

Over the last few days I have driven some 1200 miles through France and it has left me most definitely feeling my age. It was also not ideal conditions for driving - howling winds, heavy rain and much of the driving in darkness.

I now have much greater appreciation for British roads. French motorways are laden with either tolls or potholes.  They seem narrower and are definitely less well lit.  I really missed cats eyes.   The rain was torrential.  If I drove up behind a large lorry, the spray was horrendous, but overtaking large lorries on dark narrow motorways makes me feel a bit sick.  I have to coach myself past them with a little pep talk on how much better it will be when I am over it – the kind of pep talk I haven’t had to go through since my divorce. 

On the return journey, speeds of over 65 miles an hour in the fully loaded small van felt unstable.   When I got home and was on the M2, I realised I was bombing along, overtaking lorries without a second thought.  I get to France and I turn into Mr Bean behind the wheel.  Going through one extremely narrow section of roadworks made me feel so sick I nearly had to stop, bribe someone else to drive the car whilst I hid in the back - but my pigeon French isn’t up to that kind of request and if you want to get back into the UK these days, lurking in the back of vans isn’t the best move.

I also suspect that my age has something to do with it.  My brother and I used to laugh at dad, who won't drive in the dark and would leave hours earlier than he had planned because he said he must get home 'before the rains get in'.  Now I am starting to agree with him.  Driving in rain is now so tiring, that I couldn't face a 30 mile trip tonight to visit a friend.  I don't think I am the greatest of drivers, but I always used to enjoy driving and have been on road trips covering thousands of miles and loved every minute.  It could have been the reason for the journey which got to me so much, but if I win the Euro lottery, I am definitely going to consider getting a chauffeur to drive me around.  

I forgot to take CDs as well, so the only company I had was French radio.  I listened to music stations until I got completely sick of both Sam Smith and Uptown Funk and then listened to talk radio, conning myself that I was improving my French by repeating what they were saying - or at least what I thought they had said. My final entertainment was when the van was searched at Dover.   I had expected the first question to be where had I been and why, but he asked me where I lived, so it threw me.  I took a while to answer, which made me worry I looked guilty and I then started stuttering.  I am the kind of person who feels guilty when I walk through nothing to declare with nothing to declare, so being searched makes me want to show everything to the customs guards from my few purchases of French wine and the contents of my luggage to the length of my intestines.  He was a very nice customs guard and even helped me manoeuvre the van out of the parking spot ... I say that as if it were a hydraulic truck, not a car-based van. 


I got home a bit less keen on driving and a lot less keen on driving in France.  The French have got two things right though, their service stations are better than ours - cleaner, better food, and the price of the fuel is much cheaper.  Diesel is €1.18 a litre (£0.87) in towns and €1.35 (£1.00) on motorways (petrol is €1.22 / €1.45).  I topped up my wine rack as well. It would seem rude to spend a weekend in France and not have a glass or two of wine, even if you do have to wait until you get home to enjoy it.  I opened one of my bottles when I got home.  I was so freaked out by rainy motorways that before I knew it there was only one glass left in the bottle.  I'm pretty sure that the extremely low prices mean lower alcohol content and the consumption is in no way reflective of excessive alcohol consumption.  I did briefly feel bad about the amount that I had drunk, but then I looked at the amount left in the bottle, and it looked so lonely that I drank that as well – there’s a lot to be said for not having to drive in the morning. 

Sunday 22 March 2015

Choice behaviour

Does the average woman or man in the street really want to see their prospective parliamentary / council candidates in the same street? 

You may have heard that there is a general election coming up in the UK.  Equally you may not have heard, in which case I can only envy you.  Rochester and Strood's by-election in November 2014 brought election fever to us early, and it is still very much here.  Dozens of MPs descended upon us.   Their keen interest in our towns has not noticeably improved the area.  It is a shame that they didn't all stay home and just pledge us all the money it had cost them to campaign instead.  It led me to wonder what really influences our voting behaviour. 

You venture out to visit the library or a trip to a teashop and you run the gauntlet of candidates and their supporters, leaflets and clipboards in hand, rigid smiles plastered on to their faces.  I avert my gaze and walk by as if they were not there. I have had lots of practice in that from studying the way young, attractive men avoid me.  I don't pursue young men, I can see how ineffective that would be, so I wonder why parties put so much time and money into campaigning without any supporting evidence to say it works?  I would like to see one area brave enough to ban campaigning and see what difference, if any, that it made to voting behaviour.  I choose the candidate I think will be best for the area.  If I still can't decide, I then chose the party I dislike the least.  If that disappoints you, I put less effort into my choice of first husband, so at least my choice mechanisms are improving.   

I ran a quick search on the internet, the font of all knowledge available to me on a Sunday morning.   There wasn't much available.  The Guardian wrote a piece on a voting behaviour study by the London School of Economics and Opinium in 2010 (article here).  Apparently there hasn't been much research into this since the 1960s, which would have taken place in a vastly different landscape in terms of politics, social media and technology.  The study has yet to finish, bit some of the findings so far have been published (article here).  

Findings suggest that 20% to 30% of voters change their minds in the last week, 25% of Americans have actually cried because of an election, and 63% of voters say they feel happy when they are in a voting booth.  This tells us three things, candidates should stay at home until near the end of the election, there is a lot to be said for the stereotypical British reserve and 63% of voters need to get out a lot more.  Voters who vote in a polling station are more likely to cast their vote based on what they think is best for the country.  If you take that fact into account along with vote-rigging scandals which have bugged postal voting (2005 BBC report), it is a good argument for encouraging us to vote in person.  

I have yet to see anything about the influence, negative or positive, of door to door campaigning.  Young voters apparently are more negative about politicians who use social media campaigns, which seems a bit hypocritical for a generation whose attachment to their smart phones is akin to general population's attachment to oxygen.  I don't mind the social media campaign, I find it much easier to cope with that than candidates campaigning in person.  In fact I am somewhat disappointed that only one out of my five local candidates is on Twitter.  I enjoy a good rant.  

Candidates will campaign, whether I like it or not.  Voters will employ a myriad of reasons for casting their vote, whether campaigners like it or not.  I don't think of marketing campaigns as manipulating the way I vote, I think of them as marketing companies manipulating political parties into wasting their time and money.  They and the spin doctors are like a controlling partner, whispering in the ears of the insecure politicians 'you know you'd be nothing without me'.  The reality is a bit less spin would do everyone a favour.  I look forward to the full study being published.  I find it all quite fascinating, even if that does suggest that I also need to get out more.  

Saturday 14 March 2015

Is it wrong to hate Comic Relief?

“Is it wrong to hate Comic Relief” was a question posted on Friday on Twitter.
Apparently IN ALL PROBABILITY, it was.

Comic Relief has raised over £1 billion in 30 years.  Richard Curtis, co-founder of Comic Relief, acknowledges the generosity of the British public.  That is an amazing amount and incredibly generous of us.  There is nothing to hate about that.

The part that I cannot stand is the continuing worship of the cult of celebrity that accompanies it.  Celebrities telling us how much they are doing voluntarily and suggesting that in itself should make us all keep donating.   Millions of people give more time each day for worthy causes without expecting a standing ovation for doing so.  Palliative care hospices, care homes, hospitals, community centres and animal shelters all have volunteers working for them and supporting them.  Unpaid carers ‘save’ the UK over £100 billion every single year, according to figures from carers.org (article here).  The sad reality is that they don’t save us anything, they are struggling on alone because there is no other choice, the organisations that should be helping them either cannot afford to, no longer exist or have never been set up.  The saving is actually what it would cost taxpayers if we had our priorities in the right place.   Thumbs up for the carers, get them on the stage and the Z List brigade off. 

An argument for Comic Relief and other charities’ telethons is that they raise awareness.  I can understand and agree with that.  It is much of the content that I can’t be doing with.   If many of the sketches associated with Comic Relief were actually any good, Ben Elton would have written a musical by now featuring Davina, Lenny and Dermot disappearing up their own backsides.   Luckily for us all, he hasn’t.  I also can’t help suspecting that charity awareness days are doing as much for the Onesie industry as they are for good causes.  If only the producers of shell suits had thought to accessorise with a few charity buckets, we’d all still have a few fluorescent nylon tracksuits in our wardrobes.  


I admire the amount Curtis and Henry’s idea has raised.  I particularly admire and respect the generosity of us, the British people.  Over-taxed, overworked, disenfranchised – but we still give an amazing amount to charitable causes.  I just don’t want some smug, talentless celebrity screeching at me that I must keep giving.  So no, I don't think it is wrong to hate Comic Relief, no more than I think it is wrong to love it, to be ambivalent about it or to be mildly entertained by it because you've just got in from the pub and there isn't much else on.  It is for each of us to choose to which charity we give our time and our money.  I am merely amongst those who prefer not to be pressured into it by people who on any other day make me reach for the remote control to change channels with a speed that might suggest my life depended upon it.

Following on from originally writing this blog, I was discussing Comic Relief with a colleague who agreed with much of what I had said and added that Comic Relief is limited in the regions in which it chooses to help, it is mainly the UK and Africa.  My colleague asked why so much money was diverted to Africa but so little to other countries, I could only agree.  Neither of us objected to the amount of money given to Africa, but there are so many other poor regions in India, Asia and South America - and also in Europe.  Why just the UK and Africa?   We then had a look at their website.  They have a map of where they have projects (link here).   In Asia, only Cambodia (£400,000) and the Philippines (£150,000) receive any help.  In the whole of India there are 12 projects, totalling donations of around £9 million since 2011.  Across Africa there are hundreds of projects, for example, 32 projects in South Africa alone totalling £23 million.  India, with a population of 1.25 billion receives only 40% of the amount donated to South Africa, population 53 million and yet India's GDP per capita is less than 25% of that of South Africa.  It goes without saying that it is better to help some than none, I just wonder why Comic Relief focuses so much on Africa. 

Friday 13 March 2015

Casualty

Last weekend a friend I was spending the day with was suddenly taken ill.  She advised us that she felt unwell and was having palpitations but said that if she sat quietly for a while, she would be fine.   Eventually she admitted she was actually feeling worse and could we go to her local Accident and Emergency department.  Jill refused to let us call an ambulance and insisted we get a taxi.  Throughout the journey we managed to restrict the number of times we asked if she was OK, but kept a careful eye on her. I had a feeling of dread, as much for myself as for Jill.  Jane, also with us, is about 15 years younger than us, but heart attacks are on the increase for women over 50, i.e. Jill and I.  

The taxi driver overshot A&E and took us to the main entrance, a short walk from A&E, but a bit of a struggle for Jill at that time.  To be fair to the cabbie, we had just asked for St Thomas’s hospital, it had seemed too dramatic to ask for A&E.  Now I look back I wonder why I worried about being ‘too dramatic’, and how severe her condition would have to have been for me to overcome such reserve. 

I had expected reception to be full, but there were only about 5 waiting to be seen, unless casualties travel in groups, but it still wouldn't be more than a dozen.  It was nothing like I had imagined it would be, possibly because my imagination is fuelled by television programmes.   There was no blood, gore, drama, cries or screams for help.  It was like a dentist’s waiting room, lots of magazines and people looking slightly apprehensive. 

Jill was registered quickly and then called in by a nurse for an examination and an ECG.  She was soon back out.  As she walked towards us we could see she looked better.  Her face had lost its deathly pallor and she walked with ease.  She said that a doctor was going to talk to her but that she was already felt much better, if not yet 100% normal.   She was worried she had wasted their time, but we pointed out that she was not given to over-reacting and it was better for her to be seen. 

A young man came and told her that her heart was ‘almost perfect’.  Jill was surprised, the young man said ‘you seem disappointed, surely that is a good thing’.  We couldn’t help but laugh, as much with relief as with anything else.  We then had to go to the Emergency Care Centre. Jane and I were again disappointed at the caliber of casualties.  The nearest to ‘obviously injured’ was two people limping, but other than that nobody even looked unwell.  You can see why television producers need more drama, even George Clooney couldn’t get much excitement out of treating the ‘not obviously hurt’ brigade.

The doctor who Jill saw told her she had most likely had a panic attack and Jill said the doctor had described her symptoms perfectly.  I have read since that heart attacks in women, particularly in their early 40s and 50s, can be misdiagnosed as panic attacks as the statistics results are compared against were compiled from tests on men.  But Jill was thoroughly checked out.  Fears of a heart attack were not unfounded, we could both have a more healthy lifestyle and are each a carer for our mothers.  I don’t begrudge the role at all, but I know it impacts my mental wellbeing and am sure the same is true of Jill.


The reality of A&E is much calmer and more reassuring, than the hustle, bustle and hysteria of fictional hospitals.  Once you get there you just think you are in the right place and, whatever happens, something can be done.  I had envisaged a four-hour wait surrounded by the drunk and the dying.  The NHS constantly receives bad press, but it shouldn’t.  The medical teams and administrative staff do an excellent job, whilst juggling constantly changing and contradictory policies, to be managed out of an ever reduced budget.  Everyone Jill encountered was reassuring and efficient.  We were all surprised that the Emergency Care centre receptionists were volunteers.   If we can pay £10 billion a year for PFI costs, surely we can pay staff who actually provide a service?  The ultimate cost of PFI is estimated to be around £300 billion (Telegraph online July 2012), with some NHS contracts predicted to cost 12 times the amount originally borrowed.   It costs around £70,000 to train a nurse and up to £500,000 to train a doctor (NHS Health Eduction May 2013).  You could fund a lot of both and pay administrative staff properly with that £300 billion.  We could also fund proper dementia care, not remove every last scrap of self-respect sufferers have by removing their life's savings and homes along with their minds.  If we lose the NHS, we will still be repaying the £10 billion per year.  We just won’t have anything at all to show for it.    

Sunday 8 March 2015

Park Life

Yesterday I met up with friends at Waterloo and we walked from the South Bank through St James' Park, across Hyde Park to Kensington Gardens.  We have done this journey before with bicycles from London's Cycle Hire Scheme.  It is more leisurely and a lot less hair-raising when walking and it means you can go anywhere in the parks, rather than just sticking to the cycle paths.  It was a beautiful day.  Spring was definitely in the air.  One of the friends I was with is a landscape gardener, so we benefitted from her knowledge of flowers, plants and her low opinion of very unnatural Victorian gardens.  

We had lunch in the Real Food Market, which has an amazing array of food stalls and quite a few wine and beer stalls which were very inviting, but we sensibly decided to make the most of the sunny weather and have our walk first.   The walk started at Waterloo Bridge, which we crossed to get to Victoria Embankment Gardens.   We came upon a statue of Henry Bartle Frere.  We didn't have a clue who he was, but Wikipedia knew.  Henry was a British colonial administrator whose career flourished in India.  He had less success as High Commissioner for Southern Africa, being held responsible for a string of regional wars (he was portrayed, unfavourably, by John Mills in the film Zulu Dawn).  There is some irony in that he was recalled to London by Whitehall for such reckless behaviour, but is now commemorated by a statue only yards away from Whitehall.  





We wandered along the river, behind the Ministry of Defence, past the RAF Memorial before leaving the riverside to walk up to St James Park.  We paused for a while to watch a demonstration go by.  The demonstration was organised by the 'Campaign against Climate Change'.  They were very colourful, loud and very peaceful.  A few Metropolitan Policemen told me last year that their favourite campaigners were Greenpeace as they were 'just lovely people'.  This demonstration seemed similarly placid and happy.   




We walked through Horse Guards to St James's Park, which is always lovely.  I work in London and don't spend nearly enough time just being a tourist, enjoying the history and the views.  Although we hadn't been going for long, we stopped for a cup of tea and sat overlooking the lake, marvelling at the contrast between the city and its parks.   After this our walk took us across the Mall, round Buckingham Palace to Green Park.  We passed the Canadian War Memorial.  Signs everywhere ask people to respect the memorial and not climb on it.  Despite this, two young men were sat chatting at the top of it, and small children were at the bottom, intently studying the green leaves in the memorial.  100,00 young Canadians died in the two World Wars, deprived of the chance to enjoy their youth.  I don't think they would begrudge the young men and the children the chance to enjoy the sunshine and the park and to spend a little time on their memorial.  There were signs of Spring everywhere, crocuses and daffodils filled the grass banks.  Every park was full of people, cycling, walking dogs, taking their children out for a stroll, young lovers walking hand in hand.  When the sun comes out, I am convinced we all become better people, happier and more light-hearted.  





Our entrance to Hyde Park was through the Queen Elizabeth Gate, also known as Queen Mother's gate, built to commemorate her 90th birthday.  The gates themselves are beautiful, forged steel flowers and leaves, the centrepiece of the lion and the unicorn not so beautiful.   The Reformers' Tree Mosaic is also in Hyde Park.  The tree that once stood there was where many protests took place during campaigns to give all adult men the right to vote.  The tree was burned down, but the protests led to an Act of Parliament allowing debates on just about anything at Speakers' Corner and the mosaic is on the site where the tree stood.  






We walked up to Lancaster Gate and then round into Kensington Gardens.  I was surprised by how natural much of Kensington Gardens is, we skirted round the Italian Gardens, which we had spent some time in last year.  Abby isn't keen on them, she says they are too uniform and unnatural, the style much loved by Victorians.  We headed for Kensington Palace, part Royal residence, part tourist attraction.  From there along the length of the street Kensington Palace Gardens, laughing at our poor knowledge of flags and wondering if the ambassadors and mandarins compete over size of embassies and also if the citizens of each country were happy to pay for the upkeep of such establishments.  The Russian Federation had two extremely large houses on that street.  

All along the route you are reminded it is part of the Princess of Wales Memorial Walk.  I can't say that for me it raised particular memories of the late princess.  It is just a very beautiful walk through state owned parks, with amazing views and a perfect pastime for a sunny day in Spring.  

Wednesday 4 March 2015

Fight or Flight

This evening on my journey home, I overheard a fellow passenger on the telephone say how unhappy she was at work - mainly down to her boss, she kept repeating 'you've got no idea'.  I consider myself lucky in working with a good team and having a decent boss, but it hasn't always been like that, so I did have an idea of what she meant.  Years ago I found myself working for someone whose behaviour verged on psychopathic. 

The job had started off OK – but don’t all abusive relationships?  Gradually my workload increased beyond a reasonable level.  The criticism became less subtle and more frequent.  I tried discussing it with her but was accused of being disloyal and selfish.  Along with being her PA, I was also her social secretary.  I would spend hours of the company's time trying to book holidays, weekends away, tickets for concerts, booking restaurants, all the while trying to keep on top of my excessive workload and dealing with the constantly changing details - dates, locations and departure airports.  

My hours became longer, it wasn't enough.  My workload was growing, the backlog of items I hadn't had time to do also grew, preying constantly on my mind that she would find out.   I rarely took a lunch break, but even eating lunch at my desk was a luxury.  She would telephone me constantly with demands - her office was a few feet away, she could see I was eating lunch, it was a deliberate interruption.  It wasn't personal, I had long suspected that she hated all women.  She spoke disparagingly of female colleagues and even more so of the wives and girlfriends of male colleagues and friends.  She constantly plotted and schemed against colleagues that she saw as a threat, which I soon realised was all other women and any men who refused to fall under her spell and pay her the attention she constantly craved.  In meetings I attended with her, I noticed how she undermined certain colleagues.  When they spoke she would start a side conversation in an overly loud whisper or interrupt them with a completely irrelevant comment.  

Her boyfriend once telephoned her whilst she was in a meeting.  I offered to interrupt her, but he assured me that it didn't matter, he was on his way to the airport and would catch up with her later, could I just tell her that he had called.  I did, fully expecting her to be irritated that he hadn't wanted her dragged out of an important meeting.  She wasn't irritated, she was incandescent with rage.  How could he do this, why didn't I get her out of the meeting, she was ovulating and as he was going away it was her last chance that month to conceive.   I stood by her desk in shock, not sure I had actually just heard correctly, whilst she continued to rant and rage. I didn't know whether to laugh or run screaming from the building.  

I frequently told HR that I couldn't cope, they sympathised with me, but did little.  To many of my colleagues, I was the abused child on the block.  The other PAs who had been there some time, some of whom had even worked for her before I became the victim of the moment, would tell newer colleagues in hushed tones who I worked for, and they would all look at me with a pity normally reserved for cancer sufferers.  Senior colleagues would take me out for drinks to cheer me up or regale me with stories of her appalling behaviour in client meetings.  

As the bullying increased, my health suffered, both physically and mentally.  On the train to work I had to sit as far away from the door as possible, because sometimes the urge to just open it and step out of the speeding train was overwhelming.  I never for one moment thought of it as trying to kill myself, I was just desperate not to have to deal with her.  Eventually it became too much and I just walked out.  Then the HR machine swung into action - to protect the reputation of the department rather than to help me.  I realised I wasn't well enough to get a new job, I was suffering from nearly two years of constant bullying, my confidence was shattered.  HR decided I had to stay within that department, but not work for her.  We became mortal enemies, I had dared to refuse to work for her.  I think she thought her sneering constant contempt would keep me in my place, I couldn’t have cared less where she thought my place was.  All I cared about was not working for her.  

I had cognitive behavioural therapy, paid for by HR - but of course they were doing it as a gesture of goodwill, no culpability was accepted.  It worked wonders.  I stopped hating her and planning the tribunal in which I would right all the wrongs against me and started seeing her as the sad, mad, insecure bitch that she was.  I realised that her male colleagues and bosses saw exactly what was going on, they just weren't prepared to take on someone so unstable - those who shout loudest get furthest.  


In hindsight, the first time I raised the issue with HR and they failed to act, I should have left.  Far too late into the months of abuse, I started to keep a diary of her behaviour, but if nobody will listen to you, why put yourself through more misery and the pain of a tribunal?  Many large companies will pay a solicitor £500k before they will pay an employee £5k and HR are not social workers, they are there to protect a company's interests.  If the train this evening had not been so packed, I might have stood up, sought out the woman on the phone and told her that no job and no salary is worth putting up with bullies. The first rule of first aid is to remove the hazard, or remove yourself from the hazard.  When the hazard is a bully with psychopathic tendencies, self-preservation has to come first.  As a friend of mine said when we discussed this - people don't leave bad companies, they leave bad bosses.