On Monday, upon return from a relaxing fortnights holiday, I went back to work to receive the news that my company had sold my company to another company.
Bugger!
Given that this would be my third experience of this, neither of the other two had ended well for the previous companies I'd worked for, I started worrying. Now this process will take some time, EU competition laws mean a 3 month farting about period while the i's get crossed and so forth. I'm also informed that nothing can be 'done' to us for a year, so there's 'nothing to worry about in the short term' (a philosophy that has landed us, as a species, in the ordure more than once). Time to take stock.
I'm in my late 50's so my options are limited; a spell in the forces, volunteering overseas (my wife would love that one), sell up and join a touring rep company, retrain (still a possibility) as an acrobat (hmmm, maybe not then) and so on. One re-evaluates the skills set one has accrued over the years, reflecting on missed, lost or ignored opportunities. It's one of those 'interesting times' that the Chinese wish upon you when they're a bit less than keen.
It did make me think, however, of the incredibly unfair society in which we live, where decisions made by people who are fairly well insulated from fiscal non-viability affect those of us who are mere puppets of a capitalist conspiracy to, well, you get the picture. Of course this is about Bob diamond. and Nick Leeson and George Osborne, Gordon Brown and all the others.
I have a Son, coming up to his 21st Birthday, who has rarely worked. A fanatically funny and energetic lad as a youth, class joker and all that, who was effectively told not to be so happy and frivolous. A boy who needed stimulus and fairness more than anything but who was let down by a systems designed to stamp out well-behaved fodder for the jobs market while adhering to Government/OFSTED quanta and targets. After an altercation with the school bully he was expelled, but not expelled, that halfway house called exclusion; he had to work from home. After an unsuccessful year he got little in the way of qualifications but was lucky enough to find a placement on an apprenticeship. 6 months playing with woodworking tools in an attempt to give him building skills. The advice seemed sound; in a couple of years time the Olympics will absorb thousands of builders and there will be a shortage around the country, can't fail. then the economy tanked and it all went Pete Tong.
Fast forward to now. Those Olympics are upon us, the labour was cheap and plentiful but the rest of the country has little in the way of building work.Thousand languish, my lad amongst them. His Mother and I separated due to her alcoholism and he left home to live with his girlfriend. But, he can't find work, the DWP have sanctioned him for some spurious reasons (among thousands of others) in an attempt to lower the unemployment figures. He now faces the undignified prospect of having to give up his home because he's, gasp, under 25 and not living at home, so his chances of having a relationship are now under threat.
All of this is because some guys who have 6+ figure salaries and get bonuses when the fail got greedy (or stupid, I can't make up my mind which). And that, sorry David, pompous ass Cameron, privately educated from a fund that he seems to want to deny others the ability to build, wants to remove a substantial proportion of the safeguards put in place by several generations of government, to avoid/stop a 'culture of dependency'. A culture made inevitable by the actions of a monied few who have mismanaged the wealth of our nation/planet. and based upon the actions of a minority of fiddlers who have taken the system for a ride.
Just like the bankers!
So, while Bob Diamond gives up his job for the sake of the bank 'he loves' and the real culprits evade detection, what will Cameron do about this? bugger all, I suspect.
It's time for change, and we all should be making noises to make this happen.
Sorry if this was a bit tedious but I had to get it out. I suspect I'm not alone on this one.
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