Month: December 2009

White Xmas my arse!

What larks! Snow, ice, and Rage Against The Machine. I seem to be getting sent into the freezer every shift now, hopefully just until the xmas rush is over. On Sunday it was miserable in there, I was on a bit of a downer. 2-10 on a Sunday, in the freezer. Glum was I. Then I got home and Wendy told me that Rage had beaten Simon Cowell’s karaoke clone to the xmas number 1! I was buzzing! What Yuletide frolics we shall have. Best xmas No 1EVER! That was definitely the best 99p I’ve ever spent. Bill Bailey was triumphant on Twitter that night. A success for real music, he thought. As he so rightly said "Hey Cowell, F+++ you I won’t do what you tell me!" Might be an anthem for me next year, "Killing in the name." Then there was the snow. All very pretty until it freezes over night. Then you have the mard-arse want-to-live-for-ever types who think that a slightly damp road means you should do 6mph (literally. For about three miles through town.) That was later though, in the morning I ran Wendy to church, then on the way home hit the brakes too hard. Not so much fun. Locked up (obviously) lost all control, and started sliding towards that open roadworks you see. Shit, shit, shit, shit! And that will be another new bumper, please. Wendy was so much less than pleased. When I got home I spotted this, which has to be the most optimistic bit of clothes hanging in the history of laundry: That amused me. It’s not a brilliant quality photo’, but you can see the sitting snow, and it was actually snowing at the time. Respect! I think I have already mentioned (was it on here or on Twitter?) that after me telling one of the bosses (after he asked how my driving was going) that ‘it isn’t they are fucking me over’ the next day a senior manager pulled me up and said that they were still on about getting me on the road with the warehouse-to-wheels scheme, but at the moment they had a desperate shortage of pickers and a surfeit of drivers. Come the new year… Yeah, right. When they hand me the keys I’ll start to believe them. Still now I’ve stopped pestering them over it, there was no reason for him to start me off again. There are no jobs out there, I’m trapped until well into the new year. It’s a possibility, but if I see another job I will be applying for it. Also in the news, yesterday the neighbourhood urchins were pelting the front room windows and car with snow/ice balls. Wendy told them to stop, as did I, so they went behind a garden fence and carried on. I lost my rag. Not this time. I stormed over to the offending wretch’s house and banged on. The dad is bloody huge. He would be the same size as every bugger […]

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I 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 […]

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It is what it is…

, well what the hell else could it be? Redundant? A tautology? A waste of two seconds of my life listening to inane drivel? Sorry, just carrying on the thought from the ‘subject’ box. I am very tired and a tad cranky in case you hadn’t noticed. Just to say after spending nearly a quarter of my annual take home pay on driver training and after all the prevarication and promises, when I again asked today if there was any sign of me ever getting on to the final bit of warehouse to wheels, a manager said to me "in a word, no." As I have long suspected. Bunch of bastards. Months they have been stringing me along, always with plausible plans, and finally, ‘no’. On the bright side, it’s not like I have turned any work down on the off chance they would come through. I’ve been applying for every job that’s advertised, and many that aren’t, and always it comes down to experience. Two jobs I’ve seen since passing my test that were OK, about not having experience, both agency. The last said he would ring me when he had something more definite, never got back to me, and one today. £7 per hour, class II driver, but only until Jan/Feb. I’m tempted, even so. There will be no work at all at the end of January though. It would be nice to drop my works in the shit for xmas and start building up experience, even if it would be a drop in hourly pay. Wendy’s out painting the town red tomorrow with her hell-raising crew from C.A.B.. Well, going for a meal, at any rate. I think I’ll do the maths then. Could we afford to take the pay cut, and how long could we last with me out of work. The army said they have received my application to ‘re-enlist’ (gulp) but it will take several weeks to process as I’m an ex soldier. Presumably they will have to track down my records from previous service. I will be a driver, I will, I will. Wendy’s still not happy about the thought of me being mobilised. She’s got me down as dead, wounded, or loony. A dude’s got to (try) to do what a dude’s got to do. I have grave doubts as to whether I’ll even get in. Got to keep as many irons in the fire as possible though. Right, well tired me, later, Buck.

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