….It’s been another rum old week. I was sent on that fork lift training course at work. That should have been a skive and another skill gained. Alas! They are having an overhaul at work. The Assistant General Manager has (jumped/pushed?) left. The General Manager’s prospects don’t seem much brighter. They are having a massive crack down on mistakes made in the picks for the stores, and time off sick and accidents. So instead of our on-site trainer taking us we had a crazed Jock! He is re-testing all the current fork lift drivers in an attempt to weed out those that might be an accident risk, and being harsh on those being trained, ie, me! Our on-site trainer gave the lads time to practice so they would be ready for the test, allegedly helped with the written part, and let one lad have ten attempts at the test until he passed it! Others have told me they failed and were told to go away and get their heads together then come back the next day. Not so with the crazy Scot! He gave us two goes at each exercise, most of the course was spent in the canteen drinking coffee whilst he went for fags, Bollocking each mistake like you were in the army (instead of pointing out how to rectify the error) no dummy run, straight in to the test. I was well on top, I’d done the hard moves. I thought I had cracked it so I started to relax. I got myself into a challenging position, managed to get myself out of it, was dead chuffed, reversed out ready for my last move….’Park up and get off the truck’. What? In my haste and relief I’d forgotten to retract the forks before I backed the truck up. FAIL! He was such a crap instructor I wasn’t that bothered. I’d already overcome the urge to beat the crap out of him after one of his screaming harangues, and after he’d threatened to cut me from the course I had started to get off the truck to go home. He stopped me, but I was ready to walk right then. In the end I was just glad to have it over and done with, either way. So that was less than fun. Yesterday at work the new AGM came and asked me how I’d failed, I told him about relaxing and being forgetful, didn’t mention the crapness of the trainer as it would have sounded like sour grapes, he said that they would put me back in for it. Then I saw the trainer again and he said that he’d told them to put me on a three day one to one course with the manager they are sending away to become a trainer. Tesco’s opening a big warehouse has scared the crap out of them, it seems. HA! Then I noticed that there was a missed call on my ‘phone. An event in itself as I don’t […]
Continue readingTag: Politics
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
At work some coffin-dodging bastard has switched to Gold. Allegedly all the best songs from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Actually all rock ‘n’ roll, and a few pop songs from the latter decades. Apparently there was no hippy era, no punk, no new wave British heavy metal, no gothic. Just saccharin 60’s and the odd inoffensive mainstream pop song. Which brings me to my point, spleen vented. They have played Cindy Lauper’s ‘Girl’s Just Wanna Have Fun’ a few times. Each time I hear it I feel a bittersweet pain. I am suffused with a nostalgic melancholy for a loss I can’t quite pinpoint. It’s not the song, which I like in an off-hand way. It’s not exactly the time in my life when it was in the charts. I have been thinking about it. O.K., so I was getting drunk but I was still working full time and my standard of living, due to the above, was considerably poorer than now. It seems to be some sort of product of the milieu, the zeitgeist and my own age of innocence. Girls just want to have fun. We were young, all the fun was new and thrilling (not the dependencies they would become) life was innocent and hopeful, and we were all just kids. Trying to live the dream of the day, which was to be totally ‘right-on’, (which later became ‘Politically Correct’ and a stick with which to beat the dream to death.) You weren’t a man, woman, black, white, atheist, Muslim, whatever, you were all people, and it could all work out. I’m getting choked up looking back on that. ‘So young, so dumb’, as a later songstress would say. Sorry about that, I was trying to capture a feeling and explain it. Wendy objects strongly to me writing it, so if it was too much…, well, tough tits, we ain’t in the 80’s no more! …..And, we’re back in the room. Senior moment over with. What has been happening with your quest for a driving job? I hear you cry. Potentially good news, at last! For months every job I’ve seen is either advertised as ‘must have extensive previous experience’ or it turns out to be a prerequisite when I have applied. Out of nowhere, like the proverbial bus, three come along at once that state ‘previous experience preferred, but not essential’. Woo-hoo! I’ve applied for two of them, (the third was 20-50 hours, I need to be sure of more than 20 hours). One of them is for a car transporter driver. Not great in many ways, I’d have to take a pay cut on my basic, might be away from home for a week at a time, and it’s at Ellsmere Port (about 25 miles away, so petrol money would be more). However, when I rang them (turns out it’s an agency fielding the contract) they said that the jobs were full at the mo, ring them back every fortnight on a Friday and […]
Continue readingI refute it thus….
I refer, of course to Bishop Berkely’s philosophical argument that we can only be sure of the existence of matter as and when we perceive it. More commonly thought of as ‘matter doesn’t actually exist’ and Samuel Johnson’s legendary reply; kicking a rock and declaring ‘I refute it thus’. A seconds reasoning shows it doesn’t actually refute it, but a clever and witty spontaneous reply, none the less. Anyway, I’m here to refute, or at least argue. I have started to follow Adam Baldwin (the American actor who plays Casey, a comedy fascist, in Chuck) and the links he posts are moving me to reply. Either he is keeping in character or Casey was type-casting. Let us begin. He posted a link to an article which had a cartoon of a stereotypical yank hick sat on the porch of his ser-then plantation house, whilst other white, suited types picked cotton in the field. The suits were labelled tax payers. The hick was saying something like ‘ we’ll look after you, provide you with health care’ etc. and it was entitled ‘about slavery’. The accompanying article said that Obama was good for at least making people decide between freedom and Socialism, or freedom and slavery. Right, where do I start? The implied, if inverted, racial dig at the cotton picking blacks? The pejorative, closed question that states if you have any form of social conscience you have no freedom? No, lets start at the beginning; the slavery jibe. If it wasn’t for people with a social conscience there would still be slaves. Business is never going to say ‘tell you what, why don’t we enshrine your rights in law, ensure a minimum wage and your right to get a different job if this one is too shit.’ The slaves never have a voice and business will not cut it’s profits. It is up to the free and empathetic, those with a conscience, to stand up for those forced to live on their knees. . Here is the proof, from 1863. Some poor yank got the shit beat out of him This is what business always wants, an expendable workforce bereft of rights. Then there is the matter which seems to be causing this polemic disingenuous waffle, the matter of public health care. Thank (non-existent) god that I live in dear old Blighty, where the ideal of a national health service is at least an aspiration. To think that someone would kick up a fuss about the thought of the poor having a minimum safety net of health care! Capitalism in such a crude form, in a nation that professes to be Christian, is disgusting to me. Economic Darwinianism is a fallacy, one that invariably leads back to slavery. If all ‘men’ were ‘created’ equal, and on a level playing field, then perhaps one could ascribe lack of financial security to laziness, and promote health care Nazi-ism as a form of incentive. As neither of the above pre-conditions are close to […]
Continue readingGive them the vote…
I was driving home from work today. It’s only a twenty minute drive whatever route you take. On the way home I prefer to take the longer route by the motorway which affords the illusion of haste. I pulled out of our works onto a single carriageway, behind a car with a huge boy-racer red stripe over it. It shot off, and I tootled after. The road became a dual carriageway after the next island, and I caught up with the boy racer who was staying in the inside lane. As I drew closer I considered overtaking, then fell back when the car swerved half into the outside lane, then just as precipitously pulled back in again. I gave the crash-waiting-to-happen a big gap. The same happened again. The situation stabilised so I ventured an overtake. As I drew level it was a woman lighting her fag! She’d obviously been routing in her handbag. A mere two islands later I still hadn’t made it to the motorway, but as I pulled across the island the car to my left drove straight out in front of me! I was standing on the brakes and sliding to a stop before I’d properly realised what was going on. The car pulling out in front of me stopped and I slid to a halt an inch or two from hitting it. I stared at the driver, a bit stunned at the stupidity, and it was a woman holding her hands up in a ‘sorry, can’t be helped’ sort of way! I mouthed ‘you stupid bitch’ but more incredulously than angrily. I made it to the motorway and was chugging along minding my own business when I noticed the traffic was slowing ahead. Everyone was queueing to get into the outside lane, as a National Express coach was holding up the middle lane. This struck me as odd as they are usually barrelling along. As I got closer I saw it was being held up by an artic lorry. Now I know the lorry isn’t allowed in the outside lane, but I also know they are limited to 56mph, and this one was on and off his brakes. As I in turn cleared the lorry there was a car, about five feet in front of this honking great lorry, doing an apparent speed of less than 56mph in the (which by this point had become) third lane, with two empty lanes to the left of it, being driven- obliviously-, by, you guessed it, a woman with an older woman in the passenger seat! Fuck me! It’s only a twenty minute drive and I saw three life threatening situations, all by women drivers! OK, today was exceptional, I don’t normally see anything, or if I do it’s me doing it, but goddamn! Unbelievable. Those who know me know I’m all for equality in every sphere and am a liberal that is always ready to see the other chaps point of view, holding no contentious beliefs (with […]
Continue readingNazi apologists!
I posted this on my blogger blog, (http://thegoodbuck.blogspot.com/) but I’ll post it here as well, as I’m not sure which one will win out. There has been something of kerfuffle in these sceptred isles of late. A minority party of holocaust deniers, non-white deporters, and gay haters has been saying they are being unfairly portrayed as neo-nazis. In the interests of balance the BBC let their Fuhrer, sorry, leader, on to a political programme. Some thought this was implying a legitimacy to his views and granting a perceived equivalence to the mainstream political parties with whom he shared the panel. Others laughed up their sleeves at the thought of him trying to rationalise the indefensible and relished the prospect of him exposing his views. In fairness I have to say I didn’t watch it. I have pretty firm views when it comes to politics. Not necessarily on policies, but on principles. The point being; New Labour is too right wing for me, so I have no interest in anything the British National Party have to say. That having been said, I did follow the story. Jon Snow (of Channel 4 news) said in his blog that the fuhrer was no match for the women on the panel. The impression I received was of a rout. Wendy’s brother and sister-in-law saw it and said he was reduced to incoherence. All good and well. Job done, back to the normal run of politics, where the torturing, murdering, and war crimes are at least denied. And are done without thought to gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity. Equal opportunities fascism. Admittedly some are more equal than others, but if they will go around living where there are oil reserves or being vaguely brown coloured on the underground they are asking for it, really. Back to the plot. All was well re the openly fascist party. Then I went into work this morning. I work in a warehouse. This means I am paid for how fast I work and how much I sweat, not for having an above room temperature I.Q., sadly it means all the people I work with are the same. There was only one topic of conversation, the bloody B.N.P.! These Sun reading, Sky watching, never questioning sorts were all saying what a good job the fuhrer had done! One chap was quoting him as saying " You’re saying I’m a nazi, but my grandad was in the R.A.F. in the war, Jack Straw’s grandad was in jail for refusing to fight." As though that was a point scored. If we were voting for their grandads that might have been relevant. It also sidesteps the issue of his grandad being willing to die to fight a country that was espousing the views he now professes. Later in the canteen they were still banging on about it, saying that foreigners have more rights than the English and somehow linking the BNP to a P.C. backlash. Quoting all those dubious stories the sensationalist right […]
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