Yours Sincerely, Name and address witheld
I am currently concerned for the safety of my fellow bloggers & friends in the south and eastern USA that just got a visit from a pesky little critter called Katrina. The BBC is carrying their usual Global-warming-everyone-is-a-victim-everything-is-awful-lots-of-corpses-and-it’s-all-George-Bush’s-FAULT! coverage. Come on! The Americans of my acquaintance are a bit more robust than the folks we’ve seen on our TV’s of late. Yes, I know I don’t watch TV (Much) but the kids have had the coverage on non-stop and I’m in the next room writing. I occasionally stand in the doorway with an expression of thinly veiled disgust at the poor level of coverage.
Countless little acts of heroism from day to day folks must be going on down there and they’re all being ignored. We only hear from the defeatists and the beaten, never from the get up and get going folks. Or maybe they are the ones to tell the Journo’s to piss off and get out of the damn way while they get on with the job.
Same with Iraq, you just don’t hear about the guys who are trying to make a difference. You only see them when they come unstuck.
We as the public are fed a biased picture, which doesn’t reflect the real world. Just sound bites and the reporting media’s prejudices. Same for our bunch. We come in for a hell of a lot of flak from a greedy, uncaring public and we’re not allowed a forum (Short of this and other blogs like it) or to bite back. Since 1963 when traffic wardens were first introduced to police the on street restrictions they have been demonised and insulted. It is no wonder a lot of our guys develop a very surly and terse public ‘face’.
Not only that, our Senior Management are proving (To us at least) to be the kind of employer who treats their staff as ‘disposable assets’. Current word on the grapevine is that a large private company has approached the Senior Managers with several kinds of blandishments to take over the whole Parking Enforcement operation in our district. This has got to the point that whenever someone mentions ‘contracting out’ in the hearing of Senior Manager recently there has been a massive over reaction and overt, vociferous, denial.
The signs and portents are not good. Between the weather and the Job market, I think we’re all doomed.
Countless little acts of heroism from day to day folks must be going on down there and they’re all being ignored. We only hear from the defeatists and the beaten, never from the get up and get going folks. Or maybe they are the ones to tell the Journo’s to piss off and get out of the damn way while they get on with the job.
Same with Iraq, you just don’t hear about the guys who are trying to make a difference. You only see them when they come unstuck.
We as the public are fed a biased picture, which doesn’t reflect the real world. Just sound bites and the reporting media’s prejudices. Same for our bunch. We come in for a hell of a lot of flak from a greedy, uncaring public and we’re not allowed a forum (Short of this and other blogs like it) or to bite back. Since 1963 when traffic wardens were first introduced to police the on street restrictions they have been demonised and insulted. It is no wonder a lot of our guys develop a very surly and terse public ‘face’.
Not only that, our Senior Management are proving (To us at least) to be the kind of employer who treats their staff as ‘disposable assets’. Current word on the grapevine is that a large private company has approached the Senior Managers with several kinds of blandishments to take over the whole Parking Enforcement operation in our district. This has got to the point that whenever someone mentions ‘contracting out’ in the hearing of Senior Manager recently there has been a massive over reaction and overt, vociferous, denial.
The signs and portents are not good. Between the weather and the Job market, I think we’re all doomed.
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