Corruption in UK democracy. Gasp!

Whilst the current US administration is being shown for the web of deceit it is, here in the UK David Blunkett is in the news again, showing us all how many lapses of judgment a senior politician can have and still get away with it. Obviously this man is being made an example of by the media, to the extent that ex-lovers and colleagues realise there is a few quid in pointing this stuff in their direction.

Or, in fact, things are simply being pointed out to the world by those experiencing his wrath, as this recent lapse reported here and here highlights (one I apparently missed at the time, but was obviously just the hors d'oeuvre this month for the latest round of 'bash the Blunkett'). Here's a tip - buy a computer David, and type your own private letters like most people have to. Then, regardless of your dubious dealings, you can at least make sure you put it on your own private stationery.

Now, this last week or so, it appears he has been making more interesting deals whilst out of the public spotlight after the 'Nannygate' fiasco - and at least one of the companies he has been dealing with and has been 'making important introductions' for, is now queuing up to accept work from government agencies he now controls.

There is a comedy take on this in the Telegraph - here - which suggests Blunkett may just be plain bonkers, but appeals to Blair that either way, leaving him in a top job probably isn't a good idea.

HEADLINE: Politicians can use positions of power to make money and influence people.

Until this fact is addressed much more rigorously than it is, this will never change. How about actually restricting the civil liberties of politicians to such a point that, heaven forbid, those making decisions for the populace might have to concentrate on policies that benefit the populace. I cannot see that most would think it so drastic. For example...

Whilst serving as an MP:

1. You are generally only allowed to own one house at a time.
2. Whilst you are due an MP's salary you must not accept any other money for anything that passes as work one might expect to receive money for, or do such work with the promise of money or favour at a later date.

I was going to write several of those, but that covers most of it, doesn't it? Simple. Any MP worth their salt will still improve their self-worth and employability after they leave and will have been able to serve their course as an elected public servant in a vein much more similar to an 'average' person. Democracy wins.

Also in the news, John Prescott and his wife have their day in court with Greenpeace this week - here (apparently a rather dodgily written hash by somebody on work experience at the Indie, but the only story out on this so far) after Greenpeace installed some solar panels on his house.

As this is going to be in the news again, let's run a sweepstake on how many times Prescott can, once again, label one of the world's finest non-violent organisations with the word 'terror'. I say lots.

Direction

Okay, your Recruiting Officer has been blogging away for couple of months now so I think it's about time we give things a bit more direction. Actions speak louder and all that.

I am going to develop a proper mission statement - and as we are currently a loose collective of kindred souls (which suits me just fine), I suggest we sort out a few environmentally aware, socially responsible, culture-jamming type activities that fit in with the mission statement to get us warmed up.

Any ideas?

"Nice beaver!" "Thank you, I've just set it free."

Beavers are once again set to roam the British countryside after being hunted to extinction about 500 years ago. The BBC beaver report says they are being released in a trial scheme in Gloucestershire. If things look promising, they hope to open up the trial so that beavers might once again spread themselves across the country.

Sorry, I think this is really interesting, however I can't help being really puerile about it too. So, in the the quest for further reading and sniggers I present to you:

Scottish Beavers Network:
An organisation promoting the re-introduction of the European beaver into Scotland.
www.scotsbeavers.org

Scottish Wildlife Trust:
One of the partners in the frustrated attempt to re-introduce beaver.
www.swt.org.uk

Thanks to Mark Fisher's interesting site about wildland for these.

I'm off to do my own beaver research. If you find anything interesting, let me know.

Autumn bibble

Well, it is autumn here in the UK and after not having seen much rain for months in Dorset this year, it has hardly stopped, it seems, for the last few days. The garden will be glad of it, of course. (I do so love very British, weather-obsessed things to say.) In fact it's rather nice to have things feel a bit more like autumn, even though it still seems remarkably mild. 'Tis a bit depressing though - even if it is slightly more pleasant and cozy-feeling than having to stare out the window when it's sunny with no chance of going out because there's work to do.

Clocks go back this weekend too, so it'll be darker even earlier. Ho-hum.

I am having one of those moments where I don't know where the time is going to. I dare say I am not alone in having moments like these when nature is pointing out the passing of time so well with the seasons. Thomas Hardy would be proud.

The problem is it is at times such as these I experience crushing feelings of failure. I end up feeling really low as I think I've pissed most of my youth up the wall and I'm running headlong towards middle age with nothing much to show for it. This is being brought home even more this year as redundancy from my current job looms, urging me to do something useful with my life rather than settle for whatever comes along.

This often brings me to study what life holds for us these days. To consider whether or not things are really any better than they were, or if we are really just making things an awful lot more complicated for ourselves. It's a tricky one. It's easy to say things must be better now - but when you stop and think about it, I mean the details of life instead of just living the day-to-day, is it really such an easy response? We seem to have sacrificed so much. For example, as has been mentioned in the news again recently, are we better off having children later on in life? Medically, apparently not. Also, we have not just moved away from nuclear families, we have at the same time moved away from strongly forged communities which just seems odd - and must put more pressure on individuals. How did families get by before both parents 'had' to go out to work? And how many social problems exist because parents don't have as much contact with their kids?

Those are family related examples, of course, however, what about working conditions, medical advances and standard of living - much better now right? Well for us in the UK, in many measurable ways, yes. However look at even these areas in detail and compare our way of life to how things were even 50 years ago and our existence is moving further away from 'reality' all the time. Is that healthy?

For example, our relationship with the food we eat is extremely tenuous now. Most of our jobs are so void of physical activity that we are becoming increasingly obese, with plenty of of free exercise available out of hours yes, but with those that can afford it spending more 'free time' in gyms and health clubs to work it off.

I know next to nothing about the NHS, however speak to people who work in it and they'll tell that in real terms things are much, much better than they were 50 years back. Still not a lot of money floating round our hospitals though, is there? Conversely there does seem to be a lot of money floating round the companies that provide the drugs and equipment. Hmmm...

Our obsession with celebrity is nothing new, but the pace of bombardment is so phenomenal it is now much easier to live the lives of other people instead of our own. Nonsense? Take away TV and tell me people would still have anywhere near as much to talk about.

My point is that we have been sold this life because it's 'easy' and many of us know by now there seems to be very little hope for humanity unless it a) comes down the path of least resistance b) is heralded by some massive well-meaning centralisation of democratic power or c) a 'miracle' (realistically probably science-based). Some combination of the first two is kind of what we have at the moment, in varying guises, and however desirable that might sound, the fact it isn't working very well shows just how difficult it is.

'Freedom' comes in, here. It is a human right, but we have made it mean so much more to us whilst travelling the 'path of least resistance'. People will gripe now when denied anything they think they 'deserve'. That is really quite scary, I think. For example, the idea we should all have the 'freedom' to trade stocks and shares in unethical companies we know nothing about - our complicity out-shadowed in our minds by our ignorance, the real environmental and humanitarian costs just something that happens on TV if you are lucky. Basically, this path ends in 'we should have the freedom not to think, because somebody else should be doing it for us.'

If this is beginning to sound vaguely small 'p' puritanical that is not the idea at all. Religion doesn't fit well with me although some kind of corporeal spirituality does, if that's not a misnomer - more firmly seated in the power of 'life'. I also love technology. The internet, for example, for all its vices, has also become a great unifier, a vast source of empowerment to the individual - for those relative few who have access to it, of course, yet it is a start.

The question is, for all the total natural cost it has taken and it is taking (and what it will take in future), is where we 'are' really worth what it has cost in 'real' terms? Simply think about your quality of life now and how fundamentally better off, or not, you think you might have been 50, 100 or even a 1000 years ago. I just can't make it add up.

What do you think?

Big Brother is watching us

Blummy-heck, our little collective has its finger on the pulse and no mistake. The BBC are today highlighting the re-release of a series of Public Information Films (PIFs) to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Central Office of Information (COI) - bred from its much better named predecessor the Ministry of Information (allegedly Orwell's inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in 1984).

The full BBC article is here.

Reading some of the comments there proves we are very much on the right track with our own venture into PIFs - here and here - and also highlights some fantastic PIF opportunities. Mr Twunt is in for a busy time...

Brilliant! Fill your boots here with the full collection coming online.

Any more suggestions for PIFs gratefully received, scripts welcome, free 'now wash your hands' advice to those passing muster.

Sunshine Points - an admission...

Your Recruiting Officer has an admission. My good friend, Dirk Pitt, has pointed out to me the original idea for Sunshine Points, on that hazy night at the pub, where he was indeed present and a co-conspirator in the forming of said idea, did a good deal less mincing with the niceties and correctnesses of IT leaning officedom.

The original idea was to award points for bollo**ing things up - and yet to call them something useful like the very good 'r2dtard' points was simply too obvious and would not last long in today's politically correct workplace. So, dear readers, the idea of Sunshine Points was born, so the individual responsible for the bollo**ing up of fundamental tasks - when they have already been told several times how to do it properly and really should know better - would be further confused when awarded 'Sunshine Points' for doing so. Cruel really, but hey, IT stress is real too.

There, I feel much better. Thank you, Dirk, now my conscience is clear. ;-)

Google me up

Okay, just because I've never managed it before - and in case it never happens again - The Recruiting Officer has just got its first, totally legitimate, top rank on Google:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=recruiting+officer&meta= *

Smashing!


*Don't expect this link to do what I've just said. After all, tomorrow is another day and the fickle beast will probably have dropped me by then. If it does come up, then feel free to admire my optimisation sorcery, or as I prefer to call it, lucky shenanigans.

Sunshine Points

Another marvellous idea from the pub-beer-consciousness-stream to combat the inability of some people to get to grips with doing a day's work without boll**king something up in a fairly fundamental way. The immediate implementation of 'Sunshine Points'.

Sunshine Points are a bit like 'stars' or other points systems they have in schools. However, as far as I understand, schools offer a dual punishment/reward system which Sunshine Points simplifies. Okay, as a fairly extreme example, in many schools one can earn points towards merits or rewards etc. and be a model of study, yet at the same time you could be the most evil git and be getting frequent penalties such as detentions, or be on report because the punishment and rewards are separated out.

Sunshine points is just one system - so what is giveth, can be taken away. Okay, here are the basic rules.

- The fundamental idea of Sunshine Points is to reward those who work well and to penalise those who are generally considered to be taking the piss - either through their own malice or simple ineptitude.
- Sunshine points are worked out by your immediate line-manager, whoever that might be, with their full and final discretion.
- Points can be awarded for anything well done, or above and beyond the call of duty.
- Points can be deducted for anything below par.
- Length of service, required skill-levels and common sense will all be taken into account when gauging excellence or ineptitude.
- Debating a gain or loss of one's points with the line manager is allowed, however labouring the point could result in them amending their decision as they see fit.
- A positive award - and/or a defined upper limit - and one should receive something good/nice.
- A negative award - and/or a defined lower limit - and one should receive something bad or have something taken away.
- Sunshine Points do not always have to run. If a majority agree, all involved individuals can have a vote to run or suspend the system at any time, however, if the system stops and restarts, all scores are reset.

Any takers?

South Park yourself

In yet more excitement - here - from Misty's blog, I have created my own South Park looky-likie:



Fantastic - and remarkably flattering. I must animate myself more often...

Go here to get your own.

Supermarket gripe No.1

I was in a bit of a rush on Friday morning and had to stop off for some bits in ASDA that I wouldn't have time to pick up later. There are entrances at either end of this vast supermarket so I pull up at the end nearest the stuff I want. I get out and check the pay & display machine to find have got there a fraction after 0800hrs which is the time you have to start buying tickets. Okay. Have I got a quid for the machine? No, I have 90p. Sod it. Chance it or go and get some change? Okay, I'll walk up to the other entrance where they have a kiosk to get some change. I wait for some exciting float-deposit action and the person in front of me to get served, then:

"Hello, can I have some change please?" - proffering five pound note.
"No, sorry, you have to get change at the customer services desk." - nearly at the other end of the shop as I look towards it.

Arse.

"No hang on," says another member of staff. "It's not open."

So, I get an apology and some change and walk all the way back to the car at the opposite end of the supermarket, get a ticket and go in to get what I want.

Two minutes later I come back to the nearest checkout and realise no tills are open. I wander up to the barrier so I can see down the entire line of checkouts and realise that out of what must be 25 checkouts they are all empty, apart from, oh-yes, with my binoculars I can just make out two open checkouts right at the other end.

It is obviously too much for the manager of such a vast supermarket with two main entrances and the intention to open just two tills at this time of day to have the mind-shattering foresight to open a checkout at each end, for example, as that might possibly be useful to the customers. Oh, hang on... that would mean the two people on the checkouts wouldn't be able to sit and have a chat though. Bugger.

So I walk all the way back to the other end of the supermarket and pay. Then exit. Then walk all the way back to the other end of the supermarket to get my car. Bloody marvellous.

Now, most of the staff in ASDA seem quite nice, even if some do appear to have been brainwashed by the ten-point smiley customer checkout plan (or whatever it's called - check out the bit of perspex they have to look at when serving you). I don't genuinely know first-hand how evil and ruthless the Wal-Mart machine is, just what I've heard other people saying, however I think it's kind of heartening that even such an allegedly well-oiled, world-dominating retail behemoth can still piss off their customers with such an obvious lack of consideration. Or perhaps it's just a sign of the way things will be if they get it all stitched up the way they want it?

Greenpeace and the future

The name Greenpeace has always conjured up some form of image in the minds of those people who know roughly what the organisation does - whether that might be as the guiding light of modern environmental activism, people zipping about seas in rigid inflatables - or even as mad tree huggers.

There has always been plenty of discussion about how the organisation operates and plenty of 'ex' activists who have gone off in different directions - or believe the organisation has lost its way and want to get something done about it.

So, this article in yesterday's independent, where former Greenpeace captain, John Castel, explains what he feels are the group's current shortcomings, comes as no great surprise.

The article does have the rather scary title 'Greenpeace at war' without explaining or giving any relevance to that comment in the article, which seems like a standard sub editor's flight of fancy, however Castel touches nerves here and no mistake.

It's worth a read, however to sum up, he thinks the organisation has gone been eaten-out from within by a lack of democracy and turned into an inefficient, pen-pushing, computer-gazing, corporate deal-doing bloater - losing the vision, spark and drive, indeed the humanity, that always made it so practical and effective in its approaches to getting things done.

I had the good fortune to be involved with Greenpeace for much of the 1990s and saw the organisation change from what Castel says he saw at the end of the '70s into roughly what he says it has become. The main reason, as far as I am aware, Greenpeace changed, was to be more effective in getting things done - not less. The group was often criticised for being too 'anti' things - "don't do this" - and took a positive step in the early '90s to position itself as providing solutions to the problems it was highlighting - "Don't do that - do this instead".

One of the first examples of this was the massively successful 'Greenfreeze' campaign started in 1992, which has revolutionised much of the world's refrigeration industry by showing a domestic refrigerator could be made successfully without using ozone and climate damaging CFCs, HFCs and HCFCs.

Greenpeace has always had a strong structure to preserve its core values, not the least of which is NVDA - Non-Violent Direct Action. I remember with no small amount of amazement on my first 'action', in 1993, that it was possible several hundred people could dress up in black suits and skull masks and 'die' in Whitehall, entirely blocking all lanes across from Downing Street (some photos here) - and for the Metropolitan Police to take the phone call just as it started, to inform them it was Greenpeace, and let the event play out unhindered.

That kind of relationship with the authorities took a lot of work and a lot of earning - and in many countries it's not easy. Not many groups can put that many people together in one place and say with any degree of certainty that people have a) been fairly carefully selected or at least have had people vouch for them and b) have received, in most cases, fairly substantial training in how to act, through to what to do if you get arrested. It's why Greenpeace never organises mass protests - it's too easy for people with their own agendas to kick off. Not good.

By the mid-'90s Greenpeace was almost becoming a victim of its own success. There were so many media-savvy campaigns that I remember it became common for much time and effort to put into planning, when all it eventually took was a phone call to the company concerned who would promptly cave in and say - "What do you want us to do?"

In addition to its other campaigning, it instigated Greenpeace Business to further open, two-way dialogue with companies, which continues to be successful today.

Later in the 1990s there was a swing away from nurturing the grass-roots support and involvement that had been built up for years and many people, myself included, rue that for being the moment Greenpeace became too commercial for its own good. We felt it was taking the 'heart' out its values.

As the 'charity sector' has increasingly become big business on its own this is a swing that has been prevalent over the last ten years with most of the big names at least.

Treat working for these organisations as just a step in a career or just like any other job, and you run a much greater risk of removing the fundamental passion required.

So is there hope for Greenpeace? Does it need to change? Yes on both counts. Would we be worse off if they didn't exist? Absolutely. If anything, I think Greenpeace has ended up with too many hats and that is always going to be difficult for an organisation with good intentions and, frankly, not a lot of money. It tries very much to be all things to all people to get the results it wants.

To me, that doesn't mean they have totally lost the plot - it means we need a lot more Greenpeaces to get everything done. There's a lot to sort out.

All images in this post Copyright Greenpeace

National Service

It has slowly been dawning on me that a lot of the ideas I think would make the world a nicer place require a bit of social engineering. In a nice way of course. So, it was only a matter of time, I think, before I raised the subject of National Service.

National Service ended in the UK in the 1950s, however several European countries still demand it. I'd like to see a National Service return, but not with a militaristic slant as in the past. The new National Service would be all-inclusive and provide services to the community. It would last for two years.

In my opinion, schools don't cover the practical angle well enough in preparing people for the real world. What I suggest is we have some training sites - there must be enough old military bases and housing kicking about that can be converted. There would be several ways to deal with fitting this into the current system. For example, if people don't want to continue with school after 16 they could take up their training then - and if people do carry on to do A-levels then they have to go in afterwards at 18. On balance I think the fairest and most inclusive way would be to get everybody to go in at 16 and then do further/higher education afterwards at 18.

This way, nobody gets any unfair advantage and everybody benefits from the same 'standard education' to GCSE level, plus the extra training and experience before making their way out into the world and into the job market. For everyone it will mean as little disruption as possible as it follows on from existing education and whether going on to seek work or enter further education, they will have some practical experience that might help inform their decisions and ideas more effectively than at present.

So what would happen? Training would consist of eight weeks, for example, broken down as follows. Week 1 - Introduction/group bonding/working together; Week 2 - Sociology, psychology and common sense; Week 3 - Food, drink and drugs; Week 4 - Money and your life; Week 5 - Law and Politics; Week 6 - Education and work; Week 7 - Trying new things; Week 8 - Conclusions, next steps, farewells.

Going back to their own communities - or even with some community exchange-type deals - everyone would then embark on the remainder of two years of community service involving all sorts of opportunities to experience the above in the first year, followed by three or four varied work placements, of perhaps 8 weeks each or so, in the second year.

So, what do you think the result would be? Would we have better-informed and better-prepared contributors to society or don't we need it/would it never work?

Phil needs...

It's the weekend, so in some contagious excitement from Misty's blog we are today mostly putting our name and the word 'needs' into Google and picking the five funniest results. "Phil needs" (my actual name less the 'needs' as I have no middle name) yields the following, slightly bizarre results. I just took the top 5 as I couldn't be bothered to 'delve deeper':

Saint Phil needs a blog - your wish is my command

Quite frankly, Phil needs a new act - umm... new material already?

Phil needs our prayers - if you have a god - god bless you, you're probably right.

Phil needs his beauty sleep - okay, take it easy, I squint like Clint, you know.

Phil needs your help today to fight the Schwarzenegger fundraising machine! - Well, somebody has to do it...

Nuclear weapons for dummies - go on, guess

Just in case you missed this in the news and are still blissfully under the impression that any nukes deployed in future are more likely to be aimed at incoming comets rather than people, twunt Bush ups the stakes again by declaring them fair game even in pre-emptive strikes against people they think might have WMDs.

Remember that we do have a habit of following the USA's lead and we are just about to decide in the UK what we do with our own nuclear weapons in the coming years. Oh and don't forget we give the USA plenty of handy airbases to fly bombs out from too.

The fact the Bush administration seems intent on tipping us into nuke hell is no great surprise. It must really piss off a lot of the war-mongering profiteers that they can generally only look at the best toys in the box rather than play with them.

Plus, the plans for global domination by pissing people off don't go half as well when people think you're backing down from using nukes, do they?

How many innocent civilians have been killed in Iraq so far by the US and its cohorts? Umm... and a lot of the ordnance is supposed to have been fairly precise hasn't it?

Under these guidelines they could well have used nukes in Gulf War II. If we follow this path again, in the twisted capitalism that drives such things don't be surprised if in 20 year's time we are nuking tracts of Africa to put starving people out of their misery because it's the 'humane' thing to do. ('Well, we do have a lot of nukes and there was nothing we really wanted there anyway and that aid bill is adding up a bit. Oh, seeing as we've put that land out of use for a while, why don't we dump our nuclear waste there too? Handy that, what with needing all these new nuclear power stations to combat global warming.')

Seriously, you couldn't dream up scare-mongering better than these people have thought up already. Global peace is not on their agenda. It doesn't make them enough money.

Please, visit the link, read the documents, tell people who care.

Office tech

During a conversation in the pub last night (an age old hotbed of ideological brainstorming, of course) conversation turned to the standard of university education in the UK and the fact that virtually everyone we had come across in the workplace who had taken the direct and immediate route into higher education seemed to be almost universally void of common sense. I am not trying to make a sweeping generalisation about all such early-20-somethings, just the ones we seem to come across at work and have to ask to do things.

Perhaps this was just a tatty 30-something slip into grumpiness, we argued, all such youngsters must be full of ideas and yet lacking the experience to implement them and age would bring that? We discounted this, observing that we, at least, felt we had always been quite sensible about doing a job and doing it properly as soon as we had entered the arena of 'proper jobs'.

Grasping technicalities doesn't appear to be the problem. It is the art of 'understanding' a problem and formulating an appropriate response where things seem to go a bit wonky.

Now, there was a time, not so long ago, when it was commonplace to enter a job requiring some IT skills and find yourself knowing much, much more about such things than your employers or peers. This is on the wane now I think as more tech-savvy peeps are becoming management material, however we noticed that workplace distraction had rocketed over the last ten years.

There was a time when the only 'work' interruptions were from customers - phone calls, faxes and the like. The PC has now brought e-mail and internet access to the workplace and along with it something a friend described as 'the cockpit'. Apps running alongside the task you're supposed to be doing, cluttering up your screen with instant messaging, tickers for news or wotnot, e-mail, browser windows and goodness knows what else, not forgetting the added excitement of mobile phones.

We decided, very simply, that having been exposed to and so welcoming of such technology, a lot of seemingly very bright people simply cannot concentrate on one thing long enough to actually do a job properly.

Do you experience this sort of thing? Is technology doing bad as well as good? Are attention spans getting shorter and concentration more difficult? Are our youth becoming brainwashed, tech-addicted automatons, chasing a mirage of virtual freedom and promise? Lordy, who knows. Whaddaya think?

Obituary - Ronnie Barker

A moment's reflection today to mark the passing of a comedy great. Ronnie Barker, star of so much classic British comedy over the last half a century, from radio's The Navy Lark, to classic TV including Porridge and Open All Hours - and of course The Two Ronnies - has died, peacefully, at home, after a long period of heart trouble, aged 76.

His work is an inspiration to those who want to write and perform. Much of his work engaged huge audiences of all ages with the kind of appeal people would probably now attribute to The Simpsons - frequently risqué yet never fully crossing the line into crassness.

The fact a man with such talent enjoyed his privacy and was uneasy with fame is an object lesson to the raft of crap-list 'celebrities' with no talent we are so frequently presented with today.

The BBC News report of his death, quotes Jon Plowman, BBC head of comedy, who said Ronnie Barker was "a genius".

"He had an everyman quality and he loved words. He could just do it.

"He was a perfectionist and I think we can all respect that.

"He was an extraordinary guy and an encourager as well as a brilliant performer and writer."

I think the main reason he has had such an effect on me is because he is one of first people who made me realise physicality is such an important part of comedy. There are, of course, many performers past and present with the talent to marry so many skills into a polished performance - it's just sad they're not often on TV or as accessible as they might be.

Ronnie's wish to be remembered as "one of the funniest men people have seen on TV" has, without a doubt, been achieved. I hope future generations of performers, as well as viewers, can laugh and learn from his legacy.

Not beating around the 'Bush'

Far be it from this blog to condone ridiculing the dangerous twunt that is the current President of The US of A.

Oh, go on then: