The Big Eye
Denver Sluice Complex - The Sluice gate at the junction with the River Great Ouse, the New Bedford River and the Ely Ouse. The Big Eye.
I USED to work for a local firm with a relatively short chain of command. There is the owner, a managing director, a small handful of obsequious and powerless non-executive directors, a sales manager and then “us”. The company is run on very autocratic lines and the MD’s word is final. A premier bully and a dinosaur of epic proportions, but he sees himself as dynamic, decisive and immensely conversant with the ways of modern business as far as he imagines it to be.
There’s lots of bluster and tweedy suits and he adopts a classic pre-war attitude towards women in the workplace They were either hired for their looks or the fact that they were well past child-bearing age and therefore were unlikely to suddenly demand time off because they were pregnant or had sick children at home who needed them.
He knows only two things about females and is always quick to dismiss their value as employees for the following reasons. He knows they are inclined to waste time by chatting or weeping in the toilets for no good reason and that if two or more are placed together in a closed office environment they inevitably will fall out with each other.
He’s universally despised, mocked out of earshot and important business information is kept from him to avoid his interference and the subsequent chaos that will ensue. I’m in danger of losing my thread but you get the picture!
As stated earlier, he does consider himself thrusting and decisive and loves to flex his managerial muscles. A good day will inevitably encompass tinkering with trivialities. He’ll conduct a savage verbal attack on a secretary who’s failed to get some expenses in on time or perhaps discover the stationery cupboard has a surfeit of pens and rip into the office manager or maybe humiliate a rep in the car park because of his dirty car.
A day barking at staff and what he imagines are “executive” but ultimately minor decisions will be considered by him a managerial triumph and he’ll toddle off home, happy in the belief that his contribution has been worthwhile.
This week we’ve watched our elders and betters expend quite a bit of energy in similar vein. Parliament has felt the need to slaughter a couple of sacrificial goats in an attempt to appease the gods of finance and the electorate and the papers have been full of shrill indignation about Fred “The Shred” Goodwin’s knighthood and RBS’s Stephen Hester’s whopping bonus.
Lots of man hours at meetings have been expended as the nation’s political bigwigs plotted the destruction of a couple of relatively minor players and throw their still warm corpses to the wolves. We’ve enjoyed the spectacle and the kerfuffle but ultimately absolutely nothing has changed. Cameron and his cohorts believe they have taken some revenge against bankers and the city but all that’s happened is the financial hole has got massively deeper whilst they’ve diverted our attention by fiddling about producing these cheap sideshows.
I’m ashamed that they’ve bothered to pick on these two for the following reasons. Firstly, withdrawing Sir Fred’s knighthood was futile and childish and as far as the RBS guy is concerned it infuriates me that our Government is prepared to welsh on important contracts and binding agreements with people they’ve asked to help.
If they are prepared to lean on people to the point that they feel forced to forgo their money, what chance do they’ll imagine they’ll have finding other experts from the banking sector to work for them. I don’t agree with paying huge bonuses but I want my Prime Minister to conduct himself like an honorable statesman and not like a crummy third-rate bullying MD of a tin-pot manufacturing business. A deal’s a deal in my book and if you can’t trust the Government to keep its word...who will you trust?
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Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 26 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
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Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
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