#oneaday, Day 142: Erraticism

Things haven’t been sorted back at my place yet. A letter came through the door today informing me that the electricity would be off, and the water would probably be going off at some point too. Joy! This means I pretty much have to live like a hobo for the next few days.

I’d be less embittered about the whole thing if I hadn’t looked out of the window this morning and seen the big hole which the electric company had dug and no-one in it at all. I would have thought in what probably qualifies as an “emergency” (albeit not one which is directly threatening lives) that the people in charge of fixing it might be a bit more interested in, you know, fixing it.

The letter also mentioned that there would be police patrolling around the site. So I was heartened to see two children playing inside the hole that the electric company had dug, obviously unsupervised by both their parents and the conspicuously absent police.

So that’s all good. I’ve not slept in my own bed for the last two nights. But I don’t mind, really. Of course I don’t.

Of course I fucking do. I’d like to be able to, you know, do stuff in the place that is supposed to be my home but which day by day is feeling less and less like it. I know I’m going to have to get out there at some point but being jobless at the moment I really don’t have anywhere to go just yet. It’s not through lack of trying, either.

Today was “one of those days” when everything feels like it goes badly. I got up early as I was sleeping on a friend’s floor and he had to go out to work. This wasn’t a “bad thing”, I knew it was going to happen. But when I got outside, it started raining, always a bad omen. I wandered into town to find some breakfast, and it was still raining. I spoke to a friend who was also having a terrible morning, and it quickly became apparent that today was not going to be a good day.

So I was unsurprised when I wandered back to my flat to check on things that the electricity was still off. More to the point, the people in charge had not had the foresight to remember that electronic door locks don’t work when there is no electricity. Fortunately, a chav who had had the foresight to break the basement door had left a way into the building, fortunately.

I went out again, took some photos, wandered around aimlessly, came back. Still no power. Then the power came back for a minute. Then it went away again. Now here I am.

Forgive me for the not-very-interesting posts. But I’m pissed off. Hopefully normal business will soon resume.

#oneaday, Day 141: Wet Feet

I was just about to settle down to write a blog earlier tonight when I was unceremoniously informed that it would probably be for the best if I vacated my flat.

Let’s rewind an hour or two here. I was about to settle in for a d… to have some alone time in the bathroom when I realised I was out of toilet paper. So a trip to the shop was on the cards. I gathered the universal “going outside kit” of money, keys and phone and went outside my flat.

When I got into the lobby area I could hear gushing water. I figured it was just the rain outside intensifying, but I needed a dump and no thunderstorm was going to stop me in acquiring the appropriate equipment for said activity.

I opened the door and noticed it wasn’t raining. Not only that, but I couldn’t hear the gushing water outside.

“That’s odd,” I thought. I headed back inside and followed the source of the sound. It was coming from the basement of my block.

At the bottom of the stairs, the floor was ankle-deep in water, and said water appeared to be gushing out from behind a white, locked door which, it later became clear, is an electrical cupboard.

I went back into my flat and phoned the useless estate management company who are in charge of the development. I was put on the phone with a spectacularly chavvy-sounding gentleman who offered that he could either get someone to come down tomorrow (“It’s flooding,” I pointed out.) or tonight, and that there “might be a charge” for an “emergency callout”.

Fortunately, as it transpired, there was a representative of this festival of incompetence already on site for some reason. He came and knocked on everyone’s door and informed us that they were going to turn the electricity off as the water was getting at the fuses and that was bad. He also helpfully informed us that he had absolutely no idea how long the work to fix it was going to take.

Well, thanks for that.

That, then, dear reader, is why I am lying on the floor of my friend Sam’s house blogging on my phone. Because Trinity Estates, who think “fixing a pipe” means “putting some duct tape on it” have outdone themselves.

I guess I should be grateful that they are at least fixing it. But to not be able to do stuff in my own home for an unspecified amount of time is not exactly what I need right now.

#oneaday, Day 129: Projects Procurement Specialist Wanted

Have you tried to get a job recently? It’s a massive, huge pain in the arse, and nothing to do with crowbars this time. The reason for it being such a pain in the arse is the sheer amount of bullshit that flies around with job advertisements, as I believe I alluded to in passing yesterday.

The worst bullshit is when you read through a job advertisement and, by the end of it, have no idea what you would actually be doing if you were successful in your application. What on Earth is a “Manager of Quality and Services”? Or a “Projects Procurement Specialist”? Or that old favourite, “Consultant”? Consultant on what? What are you consulted on? “Nothing, I’m just a consultant”.

Then there’s the job description itself. From the aforementioned “Projects Procurement Specialist” ad:

To provide the engineering department with tactical/strategic procurement support, including supplier identification and selection to meet the Engineering projects cost schedule, quality and delivery requirements.

To act as the liaison between the engineering and purchasing department whilst identifying opportunities to protect the business and to increase gross margins.

To raise and process relevant documentation for supplier selection criteria both technical and commercial and draft and negotiate contracts and purchase orders.

To contribute to continual improvement of processes and relationships at key suppliers and those internal processes affecting supply chain performance.

Now, granted, I am not a Projects Procurement Specialist. I’m not even a Projects Procurement Trainee. But I did do an English degree and can write a bit. And I have no idea what any of those sentences mean. Let’s see if we can break them down a bit, shall we?

To provide the engineering department (Okay! Easy so far. I can do this.) with tactical/strategic (Oh, so it’s a military job?) procurement support (Procurement of what?) including supplier identification (So… looking people up in the phone book who can send you things?) and selection (…and putting a circle around them) to meet the Engineering projects cost schedule (Cost is an amount of money. It doesn’t keep a schedule.), quality (How does cost have a quality?) and delivery requirements (I imagine they want it put in a box and sent to them. Us. Wait, who’s getting what delivered now?)

Whew. So some military person is required to get hold of some unspecified products that the Engineering department need, having worked out who can send them to them and for how much? SO WHY DON’T YOU SAY THAT? Let’s continue.

To act as the liaison between the engineering and purchasing department (Wait… I thought I was the one “procuring” things?) whilst identifying opportunities to protect the business (Well, you could replace the lock on that door for a start… and you should probably put an alarm on the fridge.) and to increase gross margins (Have you seen those margins recently? They’re disgusting, but I think we can do worse. Smear some shit over them or something.)

Okay. I’m getting lost now. Let’s carry on…

To raise and process relevant documentation (“Raise and process”? Do you mean “type”? Or “print”? Or perhaps “type then print”?) for supplier selection criteria (Relevant documentation for supplier selection criteria… um… like a checklist or something?) both technical and commercial and draft and negotiate contracts and purchase orders (There are so many “ands” in that sentence I can’t even begin to fathom what it actually means. Something to do with contracts and purchase orders. Still no word of what any of these things are actually for.)

I don’t think attempting to analyse this is actually making it any clearer to me. In for a penny, in for a pound.

To contribute to continual improvement of processes and relationships at key suppliers (What? You mean “get to know someone”? Or perhaps “set up an account with someone who sends us stuff”?) and those internal processes affecting supply chain performance (Reading this is giving my internal processes a funny bubbly feeling. I think I might need to go and sit on the toilet for a little while. Excuse me.)

So, having come to the end of those statements, I am still completely in the dark as to what a Projects Procurement Specialist actually does. Evidently their specialism is so specialist that anyone who has never procured a project will have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to be doing.

And herein lies my problem. When I look for a job, I tend to try and look for something that I know I can do. But when you’re confronted with page after page of bullshit like the above that makes absolutely no sense, it’s difficult to work out exactly what jobs you can do. Or indeed would want to do. Being a Projects Procurement Specialist sounds inordinately tedious to me, so I guess I won’t be joining that particular team.

But what can I do? If I don’t understand half of the job advertisements out there – and it’s not through stupidity, I might add, it’s through their extremely poor use of language – how can I be expected to find something I’ll be good at? I feel trapped in a cycle of doing crappy supply teaching right now, because for all the bullshit there is in education, at least I understand what the words “classroom teacher” mean. They haven’t quite taken to calling them “learning facilitators” yet, though I imagine it’s only a matter of time.

#oneaday, Day 128: Leveraging the Monetization of Excellence

Dear Businesspersonages of the World,

You don’t half talk a load of bollocks. Whether you’re sitting around a boardroom table with a cup of petrol masquerading as coffee, standing in front of an overhead projector training people who aren’t listening by patronising them (in the English way, not the American way) or writing job advertisements, your language is full of shit that doesn’t mean anything. In case you weren’t aware, the English language has been around a lot longer than the double-breasted business suit and so was already adequately equipped to allow clear communication between individuals, or even large groups of people, through the media of writing or speaking.

Therefore, I must please ask you to remove the following words from your vocabulary forthwith:

Leverage

Use. USE. You don’t “leverage social media applications to crowdsource popular opinion”, you “use Facebook to see what people think”. I have no idea where this word has come from and I see no reason for its existence other than to keep websites like Mashable in business. I guess people use the word “leverage” to mean “use really hard”. But I say again, the simple word “use” has been perfectly well-equipped for this purpose for years. And the word “leverage” has been quite happy with its original meaning of how much, well, leverage you can get on something. Like leverage on a boulder that you’re trying to push down a hill. Or leverage on a glued-down tabletop that you’re trying to remove. (I don’t know why you’d want to do that, but you need leverage to do it.) Leverage is not a verb. So just stop it. Or I will see how much leverage I can get on your arse with this crowbar.

Monetize

I understand that this is the 21st century and everyone wants to communicate as efficiently as possible. Therefore that oh-so-cumbersome three-word phrase “make money from” appears to have been replaced by the much more elegant word “monetize”. Was this really necessary? Again I point the finger at Mashable, whose favourite question about websites appears to be “how will they monetize this”? Were I writing an article about, say, Twitter, I would ask the question “how will they make money from this?” It’s just as clear. Yes, it uses a couple more words, but it sounds infinitely less pretentious. “Monetize” sounds like something a money robot would do. It’s a bit sinister. Imagine the money robot coming into your bedroom in the middle of the night and monetizing you. You’d wake up as a big pile of dollar bills or pounds sterling or the currency of your locality, unless the money robot was made in a different territory in which case it would probably use its own local currency. Which would make it terribly difficult to get anything done. Also, people would want to spend you all the time. So please stop this too. Or I will monetize the violation of your rectal cavity with this crowbar.

Excellence

Mottos used to be inspirational pieces of text, usually in Latin to make people look clever. Here are a few examples:

Natura Artis Magistra (Nature is the Teacher of Art – Amsterdam Zoo)
In Somno Securitas (In Sleep there is Safety – the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland)
Ex Obscuris Lux (From Darkness, Light – American Association of Ophthalmology)
Vita donum Dei (Life is the Gift of God – Royal College of Midwives)

Here is the motto for Purbrook Park School in Hampshire:

Working Together Towards Excellence

Somewhat less inspirational, I’m sure you’ll agree. It implies that the school is, you know, all right, but not what you’d call “excellent”. The word “excellence” is constantly used as something to strive for which is never actually attained. Therefore, I suggest that it is actually utterly useless. You may as well put “Working Together Towards Some Of The Children Here Actually Leaving With Some Qualifications And Not Getting Knocked Up And Living On The Dole At The Taxpayers’ Expense While Daily Mail Readers Get All Upset And Blame Immigrants For Taking Jobs That You’re Too Lazy To Get Anyway Because You Couldn’t Be Arsed To Work Hard At School”. Although admittedly that’s somewhat less snappy.

So please stop using “excellence”. Otherwise I will strive for excellence in the infliction of pain in and around your anus with this crowbar.

Self-Starter

You use this an awful lot in job advertisements, don’t you? Usually coupled with “confident” and “motivated”. What exactly is a self-starter? Can you tell me? Is it someone who can actually tie their own shoelaces? Someone who knows how to boil the kettle and press the button on the toaster so that the coffee and the toast are ready at exactly the same time so you have hot coffee and hot toast instead of boiling hot coffee and dry, cold toast or burnt toast and tepid coffee? Is it someone who runs like those new cars that don’t have an ignition key and you just press the button to start them up? Is it a person who doesn’t run on clockwork? Because most of us don’t run on clockwork, so I’d argue that most of us are self-starters. If we weren’t, we’d spend all our time lying in bed wanking, if we could be bothered. So please stop it. Otherwise I will demonstrate how much of a self-starter I am by, without any outside intervention or assistance, performing an amateur colonoscopy using this crowbar and a late-90s Handycam.

Fit for Purpose

No. It’s not “not fit for purpose”, it “doesn’t work”. What’s wrong with “doesn’t work”? I’ve been using the words “doesn’t work” for years. See this old pair of headphones? They don’t work. This remote control? It doesn’t work. This battered old PC? It doesn’t work. It’s pretty clear that none of these are working as intended (and that I should probably throw out some of these things that don’t work or at least replace the batteries) but I have never once felt the need to describe them as “not fit for purpose”. Similarly, the shirt I purchased from Primark who seem to think that XL-size gentlemen are actually more like S-size gentlemen was “too small”, not “not fit for purpose”. The fact that when you drop a mobile phone onto a concrete floor it tends to shatter into a million tiny pieces doesn’t make it “not fit for purpose”, it makes you a clumsy idiot who should know when to put your fucking Blackberry away. So please stop using this, otherwise I will show you just how fit for purpose this crowbar is for inserting into businessmen’s arses.

There are many other words I could continue this letter with, businesspeople (and don’t even get me started on why you use the word “persons” instead of “people”) but I have already written over 1100 words on the subject and I imagine that you have some important leveraging to get on with. So please remember what I have said, otherwise I will be paying you a visit with my friend the crowbar. And no amount of ergonomically-designed comfort-leveraging chairs will make sitting down comfortable for quite some time when I’ve finished with you.

Yours sincerely,

Pete

#oneaday, Day 123: Kiss My Ass, World Cup

So there’s some sort of football tournament soon. Those of you who know me well will be aware that I have tried and failed several times to be the slightest bit interested in football. People I tell this to normally respond with “Oh, well, there’s the World Cup coming up. Everyone enjoys that. Even people who don’t like football.”

Well I beg to differ. I don’t like football and therefore the World Cup or similar tournaments are a vision of Hell on Earth for me. It seems for weeks at a time the entire nation except me goes absolutely insane and shows levels of supposed “patriotism” that they’d never normally show, only to get all grumpy and depressed when the England team inevitably comes to a crushingly embarrassing defeat at the hands of someone that the pundits say we “should have beaten”. Well no shit. Of course we “should have” beaten them. That’s how you win the tournament.

Anyway, fuck the World Cup, and here’s why:

That horrible shouty-singy-chanting that drunken men do, inevitably in the middle of the night outside my window when I’m trying to sleep.

As a musician and someone who actually recognises good singing when he hears it, there is no sound more loathsome to me than the sound of football chanting, except possibly that horrible sound that polystyrene makes when you scrape it against something – ugh, it gives me goosebumps (in a bad way) just thinking about it. But yes. Hearing some drunken twats shouting “EN-GUH-LUHND” in a discordant manner is not musical. Nor does it make me particularly inclined to think that Enguhluhnd is a place to be especially proud of.

Not only that, but these chants are often “sung” with such aggression that I find them genuinely threatening. I guess that’s the point – to try and intimidate rival fans and the opposing team – but I don’t particularly like it when I have to walk past or near people who are doing it. It gives me a sensation remarkably akin to panic. I fear for my own safety. I’ve never had any problems with football fans (normally because I stay the hell away from them) but the point is, I don’t feel safe around shouting people as a general life rule.

The racists come out to play.

Police are going around to all pubs andclubs saying we cant wear our england tops for the footie and we havetotake our england flags down as it is offending ppl that aren’t fromengland !!now im NOT RACIST..BUT this is taking the piss!! THIS ISENGLAND & we need to make a stand!!! would u remove ur turban if itoffended me??? we need to stick together repost this as ur status andmake ur stand!!!! ENGLAND !

Seen this on Facebook recently? Leaving the appalling spelling, punctuation and grammar aside for a moment, it’s also not true. The England flag only ever comes out for football tournaments and people get very precious about it. Particularly racists. As a result, they make up bullshit like the quote above which quickly spreads itself around Facebook as one of those interminable copy-and-paste-this-as-your-status-if-you-don’t-have-a-mind-of-your-own-and-anything-interesting-to-say pieces of nonsense. It always comes back to the same few lines, too. “fuk of bak where u come frm” [sic], “wud u remove ur [turban/burka/sari] if it ofendid me” [sic] and numerous others. I’m sure you’ve seen them before.

The trouble is, the World Cup gets people into such a flap about the England flag that being racist about defending it suddenly becomes just peachy. Any excuse to blame the Muslims in particular is jumped on by the sort of people that support the BNP’s ideology. And that’s an ugly, ugly scene.

Pubs become a no-go area.

Sometimes you just want a quiet drink. Sometimes you want to chill out with friends. But at World Cup time, you try finding a pub that isn’t filled with 1) braying idiots and 2) a giant TV showing a match… even the ones that England aren’t involved with. It’s not easy. There are some out there, sure, but they’re not always easy to find. And should you find yourself stumbling into a pub which is showing the football at the time… well, I certainly find it a threatening environment. Light-hearted banter that “oooh, there’ll be riots if England lose” doesn’t help matters.

Forced joviality.

I hate hate hate it when people tell me what I should be excited about. I feel like a tool when I do any sort of “celebration” at the best of times, so there’s no way I’m going to make a twat of myself in front of the general public by trying to fit in with one of the communal bellows when one of the players does something that is apparently good. I feel like a fraud if I try (and I’ve tried) – so I’d rather not bother. I’d rather not be in that situation in the first place at all, thanks. But if I am forced to watch a football match, I’d much rather sit quietly with my drink and ignore what’s going on as much as possible, preferably with anyone who feels the same way.

Footballers.

Last of all, I really can’t get excited about something done by people I don’t have any interest in or even respect. I hate footballers. They’re overpaid prima donnas who can kick a ball around and get paid inordinately huge amounts of cash for it. And they are the most boring people on the planet. I can’t watch a footballer being interviewed. I have to switch over, because their droning voices and complete lack of personality make me want to summon a dimensional portal in my TV in order to let me slap them in the face until they wake up from their doziness.

“Oh, it’s jealousy,” you may say. Well damn right I’m jealous. I’d very much like to be paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a day for playing a game. But I’m not. So yes, I’m jealous. As are, I’m sure, many people out there who feel they make more valid contributions to society for a relative pittance.

So that’s why I hate World Cup time. I must confess, I don’t even actually know when it’s happening. This post was prompted by the fact that World Cup-themed adverts have started appearing on television, reminding me to grit my teeth and ride out the storm as I always do. And pray that if England do manage a successful bid to host the one in whatever year they’re trying to host it in, that I manage to emigrate or at least be temporarily out of the country while it’s on.

So, fuck the World Cup, and fuck football.

#oneaday, Day 122: Wencock and Wankdeville

So not satisfied with a logo which looks like Lisa Simpson doing something that she’s really rather too young to be doing, the Olympic organising committee now have some stupid mascots to go with it. Unveiled today to a combination of indifference and disbelief from various corners of the Internet, the mascots “Wenlock and Mandeville” are apparently designed to appeal to children. Because, after all, what is the Olympics but a big kids’ party?

“They connect young people with sport,” said Lord Coe, chairman of the organising committee. “And [they] tell the story of our proud Olympic and Paralympic history.”

Do they? Do they really? Let’s go and watch their “story” together. Ready? Click here. Go on, I’ll wait.

Right. So apparently our proud Olympic and Paralympic history involves some retired steelworker from Bolton nicking two pieces of discarded steel and fashioning them into a likeness of Captain Fwiffo from Star Control II before a rainbow bursts through the window, brings them to life, gives them irritating squeaky voices and a desire to mimic every photograph they see nearby. The clearly able-bodied Mandeville mimicking a wheelchair race is a particular highlight.

An actual proper author – Michael Morpurgo, to be precise – was paid to come up with that bollocks. Well, I assume he was paid. I wouldn’t churn out something that shit for nothing. Or maybe he churned out something that shit because he wasn’t being paid anything.

The point is, they’re rubbish. But as Claire Balding’s report on the BBC site says, Olympic mascots hardly have the best reputation. How many of them can you remember? I certainly can’t remember many. Thinking about it, I can’t even remember having seen them at the time the Olympics were actually on the television, leading one to wonder what on Earth they were doing during the Games. Probably face-down in a pool of their own sick at the nearest bar.

Anyway, do the Olympics even need a mascot? I always saw the Olympics as pretty serious business. Having some irritating computer-generated twat jumping around all the time surely cheapens the achievements that the world’s best athletes are busy accomplishing, doesn’t it? Oh, but it’s for the children. Because computer-generated twats that have nothing to do with sport (oh no, wait, his head’s shaped like the stadium, so that’s all right then) are exactly what we need to get children interested in sport. They can get interested in sport while they sit on the couch watching the Olym… wait a minute, there’s something wrong with that theory there, but I’m not quite sure what it is. I’m sure it’ll come to me.

Still, they’re here to stay now and we’re promised more movies in the run up to the Olympics. I’m sure they won’t get annoying at all throughout the course of the next two years. Particularly as you can follow them on Twitter, too. Should you really want to, here’s Wenlock and here’s Mandeville. Why not go and ask them a few offensive questions and see how child-friendly they manage to remain? Not that I’m condoning the abuse of a pair of silver buttplugs via the medium of Twitter of course. No no no. I simply provide you with links to their pages as a courtesy, should you wish to stay up to date with their tour of the UK in the run-up to the Olympic games.

Yes, tour. You know what that means. Some poor sods are going to have to dress up as those bloody things, and probably have to drink the official drink, eat the official food and insert the official suppositories up their rectal cavities, all in the name of publicity.

I weep for the world. Can’t a sporting competition just be about, you know, sport any more?

#oneaday, Day 121: Janet Street-Porter Is A Dickhead

“Well sure, Captain Obvious,” I hear you say. “What else is new? Gordon Ramsay swears a lot? Brian Blessed is a bit shouty? Graham Norton is gay?”

Wait, Graham Norton is gay? Seriously?

Stop it, ethereal readers who aren’t there really. I’m trying to make a point here. And my point is that, yes, Janet Street-Porter is a dickhead. Why do I say this with such authority though? Because of this.

For those of you too lazy to click on that link, or indeed those of you who are terrified of clicking on any sort of link that leads to the Daily Mail for fear of aspiring middle-class racist viruses infecting their otherwise happily multicultural computer, she wrote an article about depression under the title “Depression? It’s just the new trendy illness!”

Not a good start. As someone who has suffered depression and stress to varying degrees throughout the years (with right now being one of the “more” rather than “less” periods) I found the title by itself offensive. But I clicked on anyway, just in case she had anything enlightening to say on the subject.

The misery movement has rapidly gathered momentum and in recent months it’s become apparent that, along with the Sam Cam handbag, the latest must-have accessory is a big dose of depression.

Oh no. No no no. Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. Depression is not a fashion accessory. Whether or not it’s been diagnosed and/or treated (mine isn’t and hasn’t, for the record) it’s serious business, and to put it in the same category as a bleeding Samantha Cameron handbag? That’s just the tip of the bell-end poking through her forehead right there. She continues:

I am not denying that clinical depression is a real mental illness, or that it can be debilitating for sufferers. But let’s take a moment to consider whether depression is common among the poor or the working class?

Oh, she doesn’t deny it’s a real, debilitating illness? How big of her. Is it common among the poor or the working class? Well, I don’t know, Janet, you’d better get the SCIENCE! out and let us know.

If you’re a black South African woman growing up in a township, or a mum in a slum favela in Rio, or a supermarket shelf-stacker in Croydon, or one of the band of low-paid female workers who go to work at 3am to clean the offices of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Britain in the City of London, you probably aren’t afflicted by depression. What you’re more likely to be suffering from is poverty, exhaustion and a deficient diet. You will have bills you can’t pay and a struggle to feed and clothe your kids.

Right. Because you can’t have depression and poverty. That would just be ridiculous! Hah! Look at the poor black people. Don’t even have enough money to have a debilitating mental illness! How pathetic they are! PATHETIC, I SAY!

The death of my own sister reduced me to rage and despair, and the sudden death recently of a close personal friend rekindled the same feelings of hopelessness.

But my life goes on, I haven’t retreated under the duvet with a bottle of pills. I refuse to accept this notion that a whole generation of women are being laid low by an unexplained epidemic of depression.

Ahh! “Life goes on!” Of course! All these people who are suffering with depression should just get up and get on with their lives! Silly me.

Of course, she does sort of have a point, albeit one expressed in the most obnoxious manner possible. The worst thing to do when suffering depression is to sit and wallow in it. That just makes it worse and worse and worse until you get to the stage where there’s seemingly no way out of it. For some people, that leads to seeking professional help. For others, an intervention by the people who love them. And tragically, for some that ends in the taking of their own life.

But different people deal with things differently. We can’t all be as strong as she apparently is, and for her to put down the efforts of those who are genuinely struggling with the condition as being somehow weak is both repulsive and wrong.

The truth is, we’ve got fatter and flabbier. Obesity is a medical condition too many of us are suffering from – but you can’t claim time off work because you’re fat. You can, however, suddenly find you can’t ‘cope’ – and stress has become, in our work-orientated society, almost a badge of honour.

If you’re stressed, it implies you are a busy person with plenty to do. Nowadays, women who’ve never been in a war zone or experienced an act of terrorism are claiming they are suffering from stress, when all they do is run a home and get the bus to work.

Stress has become so acceptable, the last government decided that the NHS would make counselling available for a whole variety of mental illnesses, from stress to depression to panic attacks and low self-esteem, totally gratis.

Oh, keep going, Janet! Have a dig at the fatties too! Go on! Especially if they’re black! And poor! Poor black fatties! I bet they’re gay too!

I’ve been stressed – reduced to midnight panic attacks with it, in fact. It’s not pleasant. And I certainly didn’t wear it as a badge of honour. I was ashamed of it. I was terrified on the one occasion I got myself signed off sick with stress. I dropped in the doctor’s note when no-one was around and then got out of the door as fast as possible so no-one could witness my shame. It was an awful experience, and I’m by no means proud of it, as Janet seems to suggest I am. You don’t have to have been in a warzone or have experienced an act of terrorism to suffer from stress. It depends on the sort of person you are. If you’re someone with self-esteem issues like me, one single hurtful comment can trigger a depressive episode.

Needless to say, the article continues in a similar vein for a considerable number of words, with a particular highlight being Janet’s “laughing out loud” at the prospect of men having low self-esteem. Her justification? Men have been in charge of everything for so long, so it’s “karmic revenge”. Well, as a man with low self-esteem, I say again, Janet, fuck you. And may the men in the white coats never come for you.

Of course, by posting this I’m probably doing exactly what was intended by the article – drawing attention to the Mail and it’s “Oooh! Controversial!” columnists. Does Janet Street-Porter really hold such objectionable opinions? I don’t know and right now I don’t care. The Mail has long had a reputation as a filthy rag barely fit to wipe the arse of the country with. Every article like this that appears in it is a little worrying, because there are people out there who will read that and believe it. And that’s a problem.

[UPDATE: The comments on that post are remarkably coherent for Mail readers, with all of the visible ones expressing concern or outrage over JSP’s article. The Mail have closed comments on the article.]

#oneaday, Day 120: Education, Edducaytion, Eddyukayshun

Schools are “failing our children”. So say various government watchdogs, quangos, hypocrites, rhinoceroses and jabberwockies. But aforementioned bodies (some of which I may have made up a little bit) don’t take into account that it’s their fault in the first place that schools are “failing our children”. Not to mention the fact that there’s also a lot of blame to lay at the feet of both the parents and the kids themselves before you start pointing the Finger of Justice™ at the hard-working teachers and other school staff who are trying very much to make the best of a bad lot.

I quit being a full-time teacher. Twice, in fact. I’m not going to make that mistake a third time. Fool me once and all that. Currently, to pay the bills, I am enjoying the life of a supply teacher. This means that I can choose whether or not to sleep in every morning or maybe be woken at the crack of dawn by a phone call saying some festering scumhole school in the very armpit of Southampton is short of a teacher for today and could I possibly go along with a chair, a whip and a net and see if I can do anything with them? There are two very simple equations to bear in mind here.

1. sb = 0(£) + 100(j) where sb is “staying in bed”, £ is money and j is joy.

2. nsbapcdtvfssvas = muchos(£) – 5000(j) where nsbapcdtvfssvas is “not staying in bed, answering phone at crack of dawn, visiting festering scumhole school in very armpit of Southampton”, £ is money and j is joy.

So while equation 1 leads to a gain in joy, it does not lead to a gain in money. Indirectly, in fact, it tends to lead to a decrease in money, as staying at home often leads to wandering out in search of coffee. However, while equation 2 leads to an increase in money it leads to a substantial hit in the joy department. And no, that’s not a euphemism for your dangly parts.

But I digress in talk of made-up maths. I was about to tell you what is so very wrong with education. Particularly primary-level education, as that’s where I’ve been spending most of my time recently. So let’s do another list, shall we? Good. I know how you like lists, particularly if they’re illustrated.

1. Overcomplicating everything.

I remember when I was at primary school. A tick meant “correct” and a cross meant “wrong”. If you were lucky, you got a brief comment, like “Good.” or “Lazy work.” depending on whether you’d done good or lazy work.

In the school I was working in today, they had a “marking key” on the wall. A squiggly line meant “look at this”. A straight line with a “sp” meant “spelling mistake”. A circled letter meant “you should have used a capital letter”. A circled empty space meant “you have missed some punctuation”. A caret meant “you’ve missed a word out”. And then and only then did the key reveal that, yes, tick means “correct” and cross (or dot, now) means “wrong”.

Seriously? These are eight- and nine-year olds we’re dealing with here. Some of them can barely read, and you expect them to decipher that babble? Not only that, but then every book is expected to have a comment in there which, at the very least, says something inane like “Well done! You have shown me you are able to use connectives to join sentences together!” or “Congratulations! You successfully subtracted two things using the written method!” or “Super! You were able to recreate the entire Nutcracker Suite through the medium of rectal flatulence!”

Which brings us nicely on to…

2. Using unnecessarily high-level language.

Remember: eight- and nine-year olds. Do they really need to know terminology like “learning objective” and “success criteria”? I am yet to meet a child who actually knows why they write down the learning objective and success criteria other than “it’s the stuff we copy at the start of the work, innit”. The sole purpose for it is so when the inspectors come to play that the teachers can point proudly at the various learning objectives and say “Look! They’ve done this!”.

Bollocks.

3. Making unnecessary work.

Oh silly me. I made a mistake. The children shouldn’t be copying the learning objective and success criteria. The teacher should have prepared them all in advance, trimmed them to size and stuck them in the children’s books for them. Bear in mind at this point that a typical class has about 30 kids in it, each with at least five books (literacy, numeracy, “topic”, science, art) and each day typically has four or five different things going on throughout the course of it. So hey, with all that to plan, what’s a little extra cutting and sticking into ninety different books?

4. Dumb-ass theories that make no sense.

There are too many of these to count. Phonics is one. Anything involving behaviour management is another. Take a quick detour and go and watch this, including the stupid interactive part. The first shot of the class and the obnoxious children in it is the most accurate depiction of what it’s actually like to be in a classroom. However, the supposed “strategies” for dealing with the class are complete bollocks. Giving the teen who thinks talking about fucking his classmate’s mother a “positive note” if he sits down and gets on with his work? Don’t make me laugh.

5. Pressure, pressure, pressure!

I was talking to someone the other day – I think it may have been Rhiarti – and talking about how the imagination of young people is stifled these days. UPDATE: Yes, it was definitely Rhiarti, right here, in fact. So yes – the imagination of young people is stifled by the fact that they’re expected to learn all these million-and-one different techniques which there’s no way in hell are going to stay in their tiny heads. I remember “writing” at primary school being all about writing stories. Now, they’re expected to write Reports, Explanation Texts, Instruction Texts, Recounts, Narratives and all manner of other things (all inevitably capitalised, too) rather than, you know, just being able to sit down and write to express themselves. Even when they do get the rare opportunity to write a story, it’s inevitably got such a long list of completely arbitrary success criteria for them to fulfil that any semblance of creativity has been battered out of them by the end of their school career. Which is sad.

All this is the tip of the iceberg. Don’t even get me started on the “three stage lesson”, on “thinking skills”, “thinking hats”, Bloom’s Taxonomy, starters, plenaries and all manner of other shit.

So, in summary, a lot needs to change. But unfortunately, all of the things above, which are quite obviously and clearly dumb and stupid, are the sorts of things which men in suits with clipboards think “get results” and “show progress”. Well hooray for progress. Somehow we managed without it for a long time. Why can’t we go back to those days, for the kids’ sake and for the sake of the poor, anxious teachers constantly on the verge of nervous breakdowns?

#oneaday Day 116: Dear The Internet

Dear The Internet,

I am writing to you to express my concern about several people who spend their time on you. Not in a sexual way. Actually, sometimes in a sexual way, but that’s beside the point. The fact is, there are people out there who do annoying things. I am aware that this is not your fault, nor are they doing it specifically to wind me and only me up. However, the fact is, I am wound up by them and I would like you to stop them, please.

People who comment first on things should be applauded for their tenacity. Assuming they have anything worthwhile to say. However, unfortunately, the sort of person who enjoys pointing out the fact they are the first to comment on something rarely has anything useful to say. This then has the knock-on effect of causing the following commenters to assume that the thing that has been posted is the sort of thing only enjoyed by twats and, by extension, is not something over which a reasonable, thought-provoking or entertaining discussion might take place. Please see what you can do to stop this happening.

The immediacy with which information is available on you is astounding. During the last paragraph, I was able to quickly look up the word “tenacity” to ensure it was, in fact, the correct word I was thinking of. (It was.) However, this does not mean that more lengthy prose no longer has a place in society. Whether on a message board, a blog post, an online news article or a Wikipedia article, the saying “less is more” is not always true. Consider these two sentences: “Pete is a dude.” and “Pete is an awesome dude who likes video games and music, and has also recently taken to punctuating his blog posts with MS Paint stickmen representations of himself and numerous other anonymous people.” Which of the two sentences tells you more about Pete?

As an aside, however, this does not mean you should ever allow your denizens to use text-speak in order to cram more information into less space.

Laughter is the best medicine, but it is not punctuation. We already have some perfectly good punctuation marks to use. Here is one: a colon. And a full stop. And oh look – a dash! And an exclamation mark. But what about a question mark? Or some sort of slash/”quotation marks” combination? All of these things are fine and serve to make our written communication more clear.

“LOL” is not a punctuation mark. It means “laughing out loud”, something I genuinely doubt people are actually doing every time they type “LOL”. I’ve heard a lot about privacy concerns around you, so could you make use of some of these loopholes to watch people through their webcams and squirt deodorant in their faces if they type “LOL” and they’re not actually laughing, please?

I’ve bought things in the past. I once bought a copy of Oasis’ first album Definitely Maybe the day before their second album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? came out. I didn’t know any better at the time, as I was just getting into popular music, but I wasn’t annoyed, because Definitely Maybe is a good album too. I was quite impressed that my friends at the time didn’t feel the need to take the piss out of me for this, because they too knew that Definitely Maybe was still a worthwhile purchase even though the next album was on the way.

So if I buy something these days, could you see if it’s possible to stop people saying what I’ve bought is not very good and suggesting something better instead? I happen to like the thing I bought. That’s why I chose to buy it over the thing they’re recommending. Maybe I spent a little more. I’m fine with that – I can deal with the consequences. I’m sure their thing is really good too, which is why I’m not suggesting that they buy the thing I bought instead of the thing they bought. Do you see?

Finally, Internet, I believe that one of your most exciting features that you told everyone about when you first appeared on the scene was the ability to bring the whole world closer together. Terms like “information superhighway” and “global village” were coined for us to all imagine one big happy family holding hands and enjoying things together.

I like this idea. Happy families are nice. We can enjoy things together. So would you mind doing something about the people who feel the constant need to say something sucks because the thing they think sucks does almost the same as the thing they think doesn’t suck but maybe not quite as well in their opinion? Because that just invites other people to show up and say the thing that the other person thinks sucks actually doesn’t suck because they think it doesn’t suck and the thing that the other person actually thought didn’t suck really sucks instead because the other person is a douchebag and their mother is a homosexual?

I have all the things that some people think suck and others think don’t suck, and I don’t think any of them suck. Could you spread a little bit of this love around please?

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, Internet. I’m sure it will provide you with some helpful feedback on how to make yourself work better. You might need to fire a few people, though.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Davison

#oneaday, Day 115: Change the Script

I popped out earlier in an attempt to 1) clear my head a bit and 2) get something done. Specifically, I went out with the intentions of 1) giving my CV to a temp agency to get a crappy job so I can actually earn some money, since the supply teaching agencies are being useless right now despite repeated poking, and 2) getting something to eat.

Within the space of five minutes, three separate people in three separate establishments had proven themselves to be absolutely useless. In the world’s constant drive to be more efficient, the introduction of “scripts”, turning real people into walking, talking robots, has made even the simplest of tasks an ordeal.

First I walked into Reed, an employment agency. There was no-one at the front desk, which wasn’t an immediately good start. I looked around a bit and eventually a middle-aged woman appeared out of an office at the back.

WOMAN: Hello, can I help you?

ME: Yes, I’m looking for short-term temporary employment.

WOMAN: Oh? How temporary?

ME: Erm… temporary as in “not permanent”?

WOMAN: Tell me about you.

ME: I’m Pete. Here’s my CV. Do you need me to register with you?

WOMAN: (ignoring proffered CV) Here’s what you need to do: You need to go online to our website and register. Then apply for a job and go from there! Okay, thank you! (disappears)

ME: MAAAAAAAAAHHHHH.

Point number 1: I know you can apply online. But via their website, you have to apply for a specific job. I wanted to make myself available for short-term temp positions that I could quit at a moment’s notice in the event of something actually good coming up.

Point number 2: If you want people to apply online, why on Earth do you have a high street presence? It seems that having a publicly-accessible office is completely redundant if the staff refuse to actually do anything for you.

Next, bewildered, I wandered over to Burger King as I fancied one of their sweet chilli chicken sandwiches. I was confronted by a girl who looked about twelve.

ME: Hello. I’d like a sweet chilli chicken sandwich by itself please.

GIRL: I can’t do that.

ME: What?

GIRL: I can’t do that.

ME: No, no, I heard you. Still, what?

GIRL: I can’t do the sandwich by itself.

ME: Sure you can. You just don’t put it in the same bag as some chips and don’t pour me a drink.

GIRL: No, I mean it’s more expensive to have it by itself.

ME: What? That goes against every law of nature.

GIRL: But I can’t do it.

ME: But it gives a price for the sandwich by itself on the board up there. And it’s cheaper.

GIRL: Oh, you mean the sweet chilli Royale? I can do that.

ME: Right. Then let’s do that, shall we?

GIRL: MAAAAAAAHHHHHH.

Pro-Tip, BK: don’t have two things on your menu with almost identical names. It confuses your sales staff. And your customers.

After that, I fancied a coffee. I didn’t get a drink from BK because I specifically wanted a decent cup of coffee. So I wandered over to Costa. Inside, a lemon cupcake glared at me from within the glass case and I decided that yes, that might be a nice accompaniment too. So I wandered up to the counter, only to be confronted by another girl who looked about twelve.

ME: Hi. A medium latte and a lemon cupcake to have in, please.

GIRL: Any cakes or pastries?

ME: I just asked for a lemon cupcake.

GIRL: Oh, right. Is that to have in or to go?

ME: I also just asked for it to have in.

GIRL: Oh, right. A medium latte, right?

ME: Right.

GIRL: And a lemon muffin?

ME: No. A lemon cupcake.

GIRL: MAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH.

When I finally got my coffee, it was accompanied by a lemon muffin, not a cupcake. I didn’t complain, as muffins are more expensive than cupcakes and she only charged me for a cupcake. Take that, The System!

My point is, though, all of these incidents could have been easily avoided by the above people acting like actual human beings rather than robots. It’s unnecessary to have a script to ask people whether they want a cake with their coffee. I have never heard anyone reconsider whether they want a “cake or pastry” after being asked that question. If someone wants a cake (or pastry), they’ll generally ask for it. If they have already asked for it, you don’t really need to ask it again.

The drive to make the world more efficient by standardising everything – including the things employees say – is actually making it more inefficient. So the next time you get asked a stock question by a drone behind a counter, try responding with something they don’t expect. Like this:

COFFEE CHICK: Any cakes or pastries?

ME: Do you like badgers?

COFFEE CHICK: Uhh… is that to have in?

ME: The surreptitiously-garbled mongoose is flatulent in the willow tree.

COFFEE CHICK: Leave before I call the police.

ME: MAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH.