IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN

I'm talking about weight loss; diet; healthy eating; whatever! I got up this morning determined to start afresh. Having lost about 16 lbs on my world trip I then put it all back on again, + some.  Don't you just hate that? 

So,,, this morning, determined to start afresh I weighed myself (don't ask), planned my menu for the day and was just about to sit down to enter it into weightlossresourses.com to keep me on the straight and narrow when the devil looked over my shoulder and said "before you start why don't you make yourself a nice cup of coffee? You deserve it".

This was my first mistake, I should have stuck my ass to the chair and finished what I was doing instead of wandering around the house in a perplexed daze trying to figure out what I was doing wandering around the house!  I remembered when I avoided my first temptation, the 3 ginger biscuits on my bedside table left over from yesterdays excesses.  These were deposited back into their rightful home in the biscuit jar.

That is when I should have made my coffee and gone back to the job in hand.  But no, I then bumped into my second temptation, the beckoning Milk Tray chocolates and After Eight Mints on my coffee table.  I didn't give into that though, I put them into a container to take over to the office for the gang.  I felt good about myself.

But... my third temptation was a step too far.  The Christmas Cake.  Should I give it to someone?  Nah!  I'll have a bit with my coffee and start all over again on 1st January.  Sorted!!

This is a photograph of some of our little "Infoteliens" at the ritual office family buffet lunch and raffle prior to closing for Christmas.  They are a right bunch of little suspects aren't they?

A TIME OF REFLECTION

Today it is two years to the day since Davy died.  I know that following any life changing event it is advisable to reflect for at least this period before making any major decisions and this morning I woke up to find my mind wrestling with the events of the last two years and wondering what to do.  Is this, I wonder, because I had subliminally been waiting for this two year period to elapse before re-evaluating things?  I don't know.

Without going into too much detail, within days of Davy's funeral a catastropic "situation" developed within the family which, to this day, is unresolved and totally beyond my comprehension. I was left feeling totally bereft, desolate and misunderstood and the more I tried to resolve things the worse they became.  I didn't cope well.  In fact I would go as far as to say that at times I handled things in an extremely immature, irresponsible and at times petulant manner. 

Now, after many approaches, it is my opinion that the rift is too great for me to heal, but somehow it must be resolved because other people are being hurt too. But what to do?  I don't know.  Other members of my family and friends have offered to act as mediators but I am of the opinion, rightly or wrongly, that it would probably exacerbated the situation. 

This morning I found myself wishing that I could ask a disassociated individual to evaluate, assess and advise on the strangeness of  all this.  But who? It would have to be someone completely impartial. I then wondered if I should simply write it all down.  This, they say, can be very cathartic.  But would it open up old wounds that I'm not ready to face yet?  Who knows.  And where to start?  And would writing about it change anything anyway? Would it even makes things worse because once my feelings were committed to paper would I be content to keep them to myself? Least said, soonest mended and all that good stuff. The jury is still out on this.

Oh Davy, where are you when I need you?  Life has been so hard without you and there is never a passing moment when I don't miss you so much.  You were so intuitive and would have known exactly what to do. Or would you?  I remember one time when you went into a difficult situation with the best of intentions only to be chewed up and spat out again.  I know that you felt the same devistation then that  I feel now.

In the meantime I pray to God that one day soon the answer will become apparent . I guess until that time comes I just do the Churchillian thing and keep buggering on! Trust in the lord, but row for the shore!!

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

MOST HUMBLE APOLOGIES

Following my ,"the worst CV in the world" blog I received a severe admonishment (HELP Benedict, is this a real word?) from the writer Benedict Le Gauche because I failed to mention where I happened across this gem. I added a PS to my blog to lead you, dear followers, through the process I took and asked Benedict if he was now content.  I also sought his advice on how to spell the word discombuberated. He emailed back:

Ann I am not content.  You got the CV from my site, not from the Metro's site, which doesn't have it but has a link to it.  Mother tells me I shouldn't indulge these frissons of propriety and yet here I am 01:25 in the morning asking you to please link it to the original because I spent a time writing it and it connects to whole lot of other stuff that I wrote and it's not really much to ask that you link to the original site from which you cut and pasted it. 

You f****** spell discombobulated like this DISCOMBOBULATED. 

Yours with a frank-uncalled-for amount of snoot.

Benedict

Calm down dear.  You have to remember that you are communicating with a frail and, quite honestly, crazy 71.33 year old widow woman.  Please forgive me.  Oh! and by the way, in response to your request, here's the link to your site, http://curriculumvitiate.wordpress.com/.  I admit that I was entirely in the wrong and hope that you aren't still discombobulated darling.

Having to print this makes me empathise with the editor of the Daily Mail when he compiles a list of apologies and retractions at the end of each day.  Is this power or what?  Oh sh*t, am I now in trouble with the Daily Mail too?!  Lock me up!!

THE WORLDS WORST CV

This purports to be the world's worst CV.  I think it must be a joke, but I still love it, especially the bit where he says in his Extracurricular Pursuits "In order that the cheques do not stop I sometimes spend time with the family." Read into that what you will!   Note to family, even a 'phone call now and then would suffice!!! :-)

So - here is the CV.  My advice? Read it on your own because you'll howl with laughter and might even wet yourself. 
My name is BENEDICT LE GAUCHE and I was born on 02/05/83 which makes me 28 and ripe as a lemon. I’m looking for a job I’ll like. As a man of integrity I’m not about to try and give you the impression that all the jobs I’ve had previously were brilliant learning experiences tailor-made to equip me for precisely the job I’m applying for (hello you) when in reality they have been, for the greater part, boring and drudgerous and disheartening. I should state I was not bad at them. The capacity to bear such trials whilst retaining an at-most-times sunny disposition might be called something like ‘the ability to work under pressure’. Yes. I wasn’t bad. I was good in fact – I can’t think of a job I wasn’t good at. (I can: a call centre job at a company called GOVNET – ‘a communication tool that government uses to communicate with the third sector’ and home to the most disastrous horseshit I’ve had the pleasure of peddling, commercially.) So, but via some kind of weird pride or fear of being disliked I have hitherto been inspired to perform above averagely for every company I’ve ever worked for and believe that I can harness this same fear in the furthering of your company goals. Who knows? I might even like the job! Though this is statistically improbable. Some short sentences about me: I excel at customer service – really fly, you should see. I can lift more than it looks like I can lift. I like working on my own if there isn’t anyone fun to work with but can also stand the company of people I hold in contempt and am, in this sense, versatile. I can work incredibly long hours, and will work for very little money. I have ginger hair and for a lot of people this is a talking point. Sometimes I do not feel like I am completely in control of myself and I have to pinch myself very hard. I like the great outdoors. As of the 11th January 2011 I am free from all venereal disease. Thanks for taking the time out to read my application. I’ve tried my best to be honest. I really excel at customer service and do, through great force of will and habit, hide the worst of my qualities.

Work History

Cleaner/Caretaker; The Women’s Organisation, Manchester ; 11/08/2010 – Present

Duties include: Working out how dirty I can let the building get without Lisa complaining and then cleaning to this exact standard. Composing lewd/crass emails to Alison. Enjoying the reversal of gender stereotypes. Pride swallowing. Key holding.

Host: Zion Arts Centre, Manchester; 02/02/2011 – 28/07/2011

Moving chairs from one place to another place. Tables, sometimes. I sat on the front desk. I colleced printouts from the office which is 300 meters away from the desk and I brought them back. When people passed the desk and made little jokes in a kind of we’re-in-this-together spirit I laughed even if the jokes were not at all funny. This made me feel hollow. I tried to fill the hollow by eating stem ginger biscuits that I stole from the cafe. The biscuits were delicious but they did not fill the hollow. Duties included: Checking that the toilets were still there and that it was ok in them, still. Keeping a log of this information on an A4 that was taped to the back of the toilet door. Taking orders from people who are conspicuously younger than me.

Copywriter ; Tailormydesign.co.uk, the internet ; July 2010

Duties included: Writing about fabrics and tailoring like they were something I thought were exciting and meaningful. Researching the exact tone of condescension invariably used in the Q&A sections of trendy fashion websites and overcoming an astonishing sense of dread in order to copy seven shades of shit out of exactly this tone. Wondering whether I preferred prostitution of the mind or of the body. Wondering whether this made me a writer. Wondering when it would end.

Waiter/Barista/Kitchen Porter ; Koffee Pot, Manchester ; I did this job like five times in 2010

Duties included: Washing up until somebody told me it was time to wash the floor. Washing floors. Pretending I was cooler than I am and that I was ok with all this washing up.

Commis Chef ; Stock Restaurant, Manchester ; 28/09/2009 to 15/12/2009

Duties Included: The preparation and presentation of fine-dining dishes. Intimate acquaintance with panic. Embracing with grace and good cheer being called ‘Julie’ by most of my colleagues. Teamwork. Because I personally went in to resign instead of anonymously skulking off I was commended for my bravery and forthrightness though I really only went in to collect my ipod and my terrifyingly sharp knife.

Telephone Guy ; GOVNET, Manchester ; 15/8/2009 to 28/8/2009

Duties included: Pretending to be on the phone. Joining my irrevocably compromised colleagues in the morning chorus of ‘I’M GOING TO SELL SELL SELL (my soul)!’. Trying to work out what it was the company did and what part of that I was supposed to be doing. Hiding.

Bookseller ; Blackwell University Bookshop, Manchester ; 01/06/2006 to 10/12/2008

Where I was kept on after temping because I was more than willing to share my social time / pass notes on Belle and Sebastian with the full-time staff. My meteoric rise to ‘Fiction Buyer’ – I was for a time featured on their website as an ‘expert’ – was tempered only by my devil-may-care attitude toward punctuality and what was termed in meetings with management as my ‘attitude problem’ (FUCK OFF). Having achieved a dream I attributed après coup to my traumatic childhood at such a tender age (the dream of being able to buy ‘all of the books’) I withered on the publishing vine and hit the bottle. I eventually left, to Denmark, in pursuit of dubious love. Duties included: Daily use of the full suite of Microsoft Office programmes. For two years. So now I can’t look at a latticed window without seeing, in my mind’s eye, Excel and everything that follows.

Weekend bookseller ; Books Etc. Manchester Printworks (now a Cafe Rouge) ; 02/08/2005 to 20/12/2005

Where I ignored signs that the world of bookselling was not quite as I’d pictured it in my dreams (signs included: Simon’s cadaverous skin and desperate smell. Eve’s quiet fury at how unlike the dream of youth real-life-retail-maturity had turned out to be. And Richard’s faltering attempts to allay this same fear and same desperation by writing plays that no-one ever performed, no-one ever saw, drunk, as was I, on the promised authority of the author over his and all possible worlds.). Duties included: Cashing up. Data input.

Retail man ; NEXT, Market Street Lancaster ; 06/09/2001 to 01/02/2003

Duties included: Resisting the desire to fold my arms. Resisting the desire to yawn. Resisting the desire put either of my hands into either of my pockets. Resisting the desire to scream aloud. I learned how to separate women who’re clutching with their dear lives to the same knitwear without ruining the knitwear. Learned how to dress wounds. Learned what it means to be a man (thanks Wendy).

Education // Trainings

Customer Service Certification ; Mary Gober International ; June 2007

After a two day course in a hellhole hotel deep in suburban Leeds my self-satisfaction is up from 46% to 79% and number of written complaints I receive down from 400 to 35 (all statistics in line with their website[1])

BA (hons) Philosophy (2:1) ; Manchester Metropolitan University ; 06/06/2002 to 06/07/2006

Pointless.

A levels, English Language (C), English Literature (C) Mathematics (D) ; Preston College, Preston ; 06/06/1999 to 06/07/2001

I learned that I was not nearly as clever as I’d always assumed I was. A difficult pill to swallow.

GCSEs in all manner of subjects (4xA, 2xB, 3xC and 1xD ); Garstang High School, Garstang, Lancashire ; 1994 – 1999

So unfathomably long ago that I can remember only vague scenes and almost certainly nothing of value.

Extracurricular Pursuits

I read, I brood, I play squash, I collect Nina Simone and Fats Waller and Billie Holiday records because they are beautiful. In order that the cheques do not stop I sometimes spend time with the family. I like going to parties (If ever I sit next to you at a party it is likely that I will talk to you about the author David Foster Wallace in a way that you will find dreadfully boring and it is likely that you will start looking around in an increasingly frantic manner for your friends. I will be hurt by your obvious attempt to escape and I will most likely betray this hurt by rhythmically stroking my ironic tie). I play the piano and the guitar. Sometimes I’ll give a cigarette to a tramp. I draw pictures of my friends and give them to them as birthday presents. I like to close my eyes and pretend I am Darth Vader. I pursue love and happiness like anyone else, with about the same level of success.

Facts and Figures

•Average time I stay in a job: 357 days

•Average wage: £6.15p/h

•My weight, as of June 2011: 56KG

•Number of friends on Facebook: 289

•Age at which I was 100% sure I’d passed puberty: 21

•Average number of letters in my eight ex girlfriend’s Christian names: 5

•Number of letters in current girlfriend’s name: 9

•% of customers satisfied: 97% (up from 74% thanks to The Gober Method)

And if you would actually like to meet the man himself go to

http://www.meettherealme.co.uk/profiles/3e84763442add1960b1d9a531d24b9a5c34d516f

PS  I've just received the following email:

Dear Madam Ann,

I'm flattered that you like my cv but I was wondering if you could refrain from posting the whole thing on your site without at least referencing where you got it from.  I'm sure you meant no harm, it's just a matter of some narcissism.

Kind regards,
Benedict.

I am so sorry Benedict, you are correct I should have admitted that I googled "the worlds worst cv",came across this for all to read on metro.co.uk and finally linked to your site at .http://curriculumvitiate.wordpress.com/.

PPS - wana job?

UNWANTED BROWN ENVELOPES IN THE MAIL

I had a brown envelope in the mail this morning and my heart sank.  Brown envelopes = bad news.  More tax to pay? a parking fine? or even worse, another wretched speeding ticket! But no, this one was unusually good news.  Notification of my £200 winter fuel allowance.  It got me thinking.  I'm in a very fortunate position in asmuchas through sheer hard work and insanity I don't really need this money but I have no way of refusing to accept it.

Recently many high profile people have tried to send this payment back but  there is no mechanism for doing this, which is mad. Admittedly this money can, and I'm sure will, be sent off to good causes, but wouldn't it be better to have the ability of opting out in the spirit of  "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country".  Maybe the better off could also have the option to opt out of receiving family allowance and the state pension too! 

And wouldn't it be fun if CEO's opted to reduce their massive salary and bonus payouts, or if some of our public servants declared "you know what, I'm not short of a bob or two, I consider that it's my civic duty to do this job for a modest fee", or if Trade Union leaders said "no £100,000 + exenses is too much to take out of the kitty, pay me less", etc. etc. 

Let's start a campaign.  Instead of demanding "what's in it for me" lets ask "what can I do to help?"  One of the key by products of this might be to take personal responsibility for making our leaders more accountable. And wouldn't it be good if pigs could fly? They don't call me polyanna for nothing you know!

MY SECOND 15 MINUTES OF FAME

A few weeks ago I wrote about an article to be featured in Woman's Weekly about my around the world without flying Oz-Bus trip . Well here it is and for those of you who can't buy the magazine here is what it says. That's Davy and me in the bottom right hand corner!

It was Christmas Day and the house was filled with love, laughter and family. As Ann and Davy‘s children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren played Secret Santa downstairs, Davy slept upstairs, the sound of laughter wafting up from below.


‘The house was packed! My grand-son-in- law said it was like being in The Waltons,‘ laughs Ann. ‘Even the district nurse said she’d never seen such a large family, but it was good to have life in the house again, after so much sadness.’


The last three months had been incredibly difficult for Ann and Davy. After 27 years together, the last two spent fighting cancer, Davy was dying, and Ann was determined that he should have his final wish; to die at home. With help from Marie Cure nurses, ’ our angels‘ as Ann described them, they’d somehow pulled it off.


But now, Christmas Day 2009, it was clear that their time together was running out.


‘Davy was fading, but he could hear everything, including the children's laughter,’ says Ann. Everyone had time to sit with him and say goodbye. Our newest great-grandchild Leyton, who was only five days old, visited too, which was perfect because Davy adored his grandchildren.’


He also adored Ann. The first time they met, in a pub, Davy, who was a bricklayer, had impressed her by spouting passages from Homer’s Illiad, in between pints. ’ It was love at first sight!‘ says Ann, who was a secretary. ‘He knew how to woe a lady!


‘We had both recently come out of a failed marriage with four children between us, Davy had a son and daughter in Scotland and I had two daughters living with me, times were hard but we both believed in seizing each day by the throat!‘


In 1989, Ann had an idea to start her own business; a hotel information service. ‘I thought Davy would think it was daft but he didn’t, he encouraged me to do it. He always had more faith in me than I ever had in myself,’ she says.


Ann’s business Infotel became a phenomenal success, and Davy was soon working alongside her. 'Over the years we laughed, fought and cried but most of all we thanked God that we had found each other. He used to say that we were two people who made one whole person. I think that just about summed it up.’


Upbeat to the end, Davy learnt to rollerblade just a few months before he died, and told Ann she too must continue to, ‘seize every day’ after he’d gone. ‘Davy knew I’d always wanted to travel. He told me I should see the world but I couldn’t bear to think ahead …‘.


On Boxing Day morning, while Ann and her daughter Sara sat with him, Davy passed away.


‘I don’t remember much about the next few weeks, it was surreal,’ says Ann. ‘But I remember dividing out the £2 coins Davy had been saving for the grandchildren, he’d wanted us to share them out at Christmas. I knew I had to honour the wish.’


After Davy’s funeral (attended by 350 people) Ann felt utterly lost. ‘The family were wonderful of course; my granddaughter Georgina, her husband and four children (including baby Leyton) even moved in with me. It was absolute chaos - just what I needed! But it couldn’t last forever.’


Then nine months later, remembering Davy’s wish that she should have the trip of a lifetime, Ann heard, quite by chance, about a coach trip - with a difference.


‘A friend told me about it and it sounded so exciting,’ says Ann.


Without hesitating, Ann paid a deposit, then allowed herself to panic. ‘I got terrible cold feet,‘ she admits. ‘I thought, ‘I’m far too old for this! It’s ridiculous! Part of me hoped that not enough people would sign up, and it might be cancelled.’


Anne’s worries were understandable. For the ‘coach trip’ she’d just booked wasn’t your average two week tour of the UK, or Europe. It would last three months and take her round the world starting in London, finishing in New York and visiting 16 countries in total - including Russia and China!


Nor would it be luxurious. To keep costs down, sleeping accommodation was in hostel dormitories, under canvas, or on the coach itself! As for what to take, Ann would only be allowed one rucksack, and it had to be light enough for her to carry herself.


On paper, it certainly sounded like a trip for someone a few decades younger…


‘The idea of roughing it did not appeal. But the idea of seeing all these places I’d never be able to see otherwise, definitely did. So I tried not to think too much about the other stuff.‘


She also decided to ask people to sponsor her, so she could raise money for those Marie Cure ‘angels’ who had helped Davy so much.


Were her family horrified? ‘Not at all,‘ Ann laughs. ‘They know what I’m like once I have an idea, and were probably glad to see the back of me!’ Or maybe they were simply relieved to see that Ann was feeling more like herself again.


After a surprise farewell party, thrown by her step-daughter Kimberly, Ann’s adventure began. On March 27 she boarded the a coach in London, along with 21 other passengers, feeling ‘numb with nerves.’


Fortunately the coach was spacious enough to allow each of them a double seat each, and for the first few days at least Ann relished the solitude. ‘It became my own personal space, a place to sit and think.’


Of course her thoughts were never far away from Davy. ‘He was never out of my head,’ she says simply. ‘It was as if he was travelling with me. But he would have absolutely hated the first part of the trip. I remember arriving at our second hostel in Heidelberg, Germany, dragging my rucksack up three flights of stairs to a cramped dormitory and wondering, what am I doing ? I knew exactly how Davy would have met this first ‘challenge’ - with an airline ticket straight back to Britain! Davy liked sleeping in his own bed and would never have tolerated it!’


But Ann was made of sterner stuff. Besides, although the accommodation was sometimes grim (especially the filthy, freezing hostels in the Baltic states) her fellow travellers were anything but. Very quickly, they became as close as any family.


‘I formed great friendships with Sirin, a 34 year old German woman, Johnny from London and Jono from Australia.’


Ann had take a laptop with her and kept a daily blog so that family and friends could see she was

fine. ‘I called my blog Retired and Crazy because that’s exactly how I felt!‘


Ann’s 92 day trip tested her in many ways. As well as seeing all the places she’d dreamed of - Red Square, the Great Wall of China, Terracotta Warriors, Niagara Falls - she also experienced nine night on the Siberian Express, endured ‘pit toilets’ (simply a hole in the ground) and camped in Yellowstone National Park, USA, renowned for its grizzly bears. She also discovered it was quite possible to wear the same three sets of clothes for three months…


But by far her most memorable and poignant moment was crossing Lake Baikal in Siberia, the world’s oldest and deepest lake. ‘We’d intended to drive over it, which is perfectly safe in winter when temperatures reach minus 19! But we arrived at the wrong time of year, the ice was starting to thaw, and we had no choice but to walk,’ says Ann.


‘I slipped and slid my way across, feeling afraid, but the solitude was magical. I felt so close to Davy and so at peace with the world. On the way back, the ice was even thinner and my friend Jono held my hand all the way, to stop me falling. Davy would definitely have approved of that.’


Her trip ended in New York, where Ann had an emotional reunion with step-daughter Kimberly and granddaughter Georgina who had flown over to meet her. ‘They told me I was glowing with happiness, which is just how I felt.’


‘I didn’t go on the trip to escape,’ Ann adds. ‘I went because it was something that Davy encouraged me to do. It certainly was the trip of a lifetime and I loved it, but it made me realise that I also love the life that I have here. Davy taught me how to live, and I’m not going to give up on that.’

Ann crossed 16 countries, three continents, 14 US states…without a single flight!


She travelled by coach through Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, China . From China she sailed to Alaska, (with visits to South Korea and Japan) then travelled by coach again into Canada and the USA where she visited Seattle, Yellowstone Park, Chicago, The Great Lakes, Niagra Falls and New York.


The total trip cost £6,999.


Ann is raising money for Marie Cure Cancer. To find out more go to her blog http://www.retiredandcrazy.com/




 

PUBLIC SECTOR STRIKE

I had my knuckles rapped by Lewis, the student who is the sole instigator of  The Thought Report  mentioned in my last blog.  I erroneously stated that there were19 other students involved in the project and that the date of publication would be 5th December which is the article deadline. The actual date of publication is sheduled for 13th December. Sorry for that. 

I have also asked Lewis how he intends to gather the Charity donations.  I'm assuming that he will use an organisation like Just Giving. I can't see any mention of this on  his site, but.............I am not good at following instructions so can anyone else tell me how this works? Have I missed something?

Now on to my rant!  Public sector workers!! 

Let me tell you a story of how an private sector company works.  In December 2007 two major credit card companies took their payment from our bank six days earlier than usual. They were entitled to do this, but it took us completely by surprise.   Within weeks we had a double whammy - clients were delaying payments.  We went from having six weeks operational costs in the bank to needing an overdraft.  And this was months before the "credit crunch" was being publicly talked about! We were very concerned and immediately froze recruitment and purchases while the situation was assessed.

Our first step was to reduce management salaries by 20%. That helped but it still wasn't enough and by the autumn things had got so bad that we were having to plan redundancies.  It was one of our bleakest, blackest moments but one that we knew had to be faced.  How do you tell your loyal and committed workforce that you have to lay some of them off?  People that have worked beside you for years and, on the strength of their jobs, taken on financial commitments.

It came to the dreaded day when we were to make the announcement.  As fate would have it the previous evening we won a Business of the Year award! During the night I knew that I didn't have it in my heart to take this step without one final throw of the dice.  I spoke to my fellow directors and we decided to lay the facts out, honestly acknowledge that we were facing redundancies, but offer one final solution - a temporary, across the board, 20% wage cut or reduction in hours. 

The staff were brilliant.  Client budgets had been cut, but volumes were growing and they already knew they were working harder to only to stand still. Things had to change and they had been anticipating redundancies.  When we threw this lifeline it was grabbed with both hands.  No-one wanted to be without work.

It was agreed in open forum that everyone would be interviewed in confidence and anyone suffering extreme hardship would continue as normal but the survival of the company depended on the majority voluntarily selecting one of the two alternatives.   Thankfully most were able to pitch in. 

We were eventually able to restore the Status Que but still continue to have a wage, recruitment and spending freeze. In other words, we watch things very carefully. 

Around this time a health worker that I know was complaining bitterly that they were only getting a 2% wage rise.   He was banging on about the need to take action.  It was at a social gathering and I behaved myself and managed to keep my mouth shut.  It's unreal.

To change the subject ever so slightly, but not a lot, this morning they were saying that statistically, due to lack of cover, you are 10% more likely to die if you are admitted to hospital at the weekend.    The TV doctor hit the nail on the head.  He said that the problem could easily be solved if doctors were paid less and there were more of them.  Boom, boom!

In a nutshell, public sector workers in general and health workers in particular have massively swelled in numbers and enjoyed high wage rises over the past decade, outstripping private sector workers.  And now they strike? Get real! It wouldn't be so bad if efficiency had improved. Quite the reverse, some of them seem to actually think they are demi gods.   . 

This inequality has to be addressed if we are to avoid serious conflict.   My hard earned taxes are paying for their militancy and I'm fed up with it.

We were lucky, but we bought about our own "luck" by being honest.  And again, "luckily!" our staff believed us because they trusted us.  Who is to be believed and trusted now?  You certainly can't believe the politicians or the banks. This is the crux of the matter isn't it? Dear God, where do we go from here?