Cocktail

Hey, hey, hey sports fans! Tonight’s little aperitif for the remainder of the week is a bit of a cocktail. First pour in two measures of the observation that my blogs have impact. Oh yes! The Persian powers that be have clearly read my inchoate mumblings and thought ‘Aha, the infidel has a point, perhaps we will show mercy on the poor innocent youth we were about to murder in the name of Allah (pbuh)’.The keyboard is indeed mightier than the rock my friends.

The next addition to my liquid musings is a splash of breaking news that the idiot in charge of BP, what’s his name, Tony thingummy, the ex Chief Exec. chappy, may in fact have shown better judgement than his regal Obamaness. Owzat! I hesitate to draw any parallels between the doom-mongers who vilified BP (after all a British Company – not) as the architects of the greatest ecological disaster to befall mankind, the global warming mythicists who relied on falsified data from University of East Anglia (amongst other worldwide climategate tosh) and the conspiracy theorists who insist that the Apollo 11 moon landing in ’69 was bogus …. But if you see a similarity, who am I to argue?

Finally, serve the two aforementioned ingredients over plenty of cynicism - as supplied by my ‘professional’ blog below – and allow yourself to be shaken or stirred as your fancy takes you.

The Equality Act 2010

I’ve got real issues with some legislation, and how it is implemented. That doesn’t make me an anarchist or a Che Guevara wannabee … just a professional bloke with an opinion. The Equality Act 2010 due to come into force in October this year is a case in point.

To start with, what is equality? The word equal – so popular that it can be a noun, adjective and verb – has been a topic of spirited debate for philosophers, preachers and politicians for millennia. Aristotle, Jesus Christ and Harriet Harman have all expressed trenchant views on what equality means and what it looks like, but it is Harriet Harman, the previous Equalities Minister and leading proponent of the Equalities Bill 2008, whose definition will affect the UK most. So what kind of equality did the minister propose; formal equality, substantive equality or equality of opportunity?

Yep! Here’s your starter for ten Cambridge … what are the definitions of formal equality, substantive equality and equality of opportunity? Well without boring you dear Reader (if indeed you’re still awake), here are the brief versions of the definitions:

• Formal equality is about consistency, and assumes that ‘likes’ should be treated alike. Seems logical and fair enough, and indeed this was the dominant model of equality in the UK until 2008, driving such legislation as the Equal Pay Act, Sex Discrimination Act and Disability Discrimination Act.
• Substantive equality however has the aim of alleviating disadvantage – in round terms, positive discrimination applied to any perceived or numerically founded ‘ism’ (sex, race, age etc).
• The final ingredient in this definition soup is the equal opportunities view of equality, which intends to remove any and all specific barriers to any underrepresented groups. In real terms - say in the selection of a successful candidate for a job - this could lead to an individual from an underrepresented group, who is of equal merit to a candidate not from an underrepresented group (phew, still with me?) being chosen for a job in recognition that the two individuals started the application from different points. It’s no surprise that this is the brand of equality to which the EU subscribes (anyone see recent television footage of the French Riot Police tearing a baby from it’s migrant mothers arms by the way?)

So, to cut to the chase – because I’m even boring myself now – what impact will this new ‘improved’ equality have on the workplace? Here is a list of the main points:

• People who consider that they have been discriminated against because of a combination of protected characteristics such as sex or race will be able to bring claims of combined discrimination.
• Pre-employment health questions may not be asked unless the reason is one of a number of defined reasons.
• Employment tribunals’ powers will be extended so that they can make recommendations that an employer takes steps to eliminate or reduce the effect of discrimination on other employees, not only on the claimant.
• Any clause in an employment contract that requires pay secrecy will be unenforceable.
• Associative discrimination (because they have an association with someone with a particular protected characteristic) will now apply to age, disability, gender reassignment and sex discrimination.
• Perceptive discrimination (discrimination against a person because the discriminator thinks the person possesses that characteristic) will now apply to disability, gender reassignment and sex discrimination.
• Indirect discrimination (application of a detrimental provision) will now apply to disability discrimination and gender reassignment.
• Employers will be potentially liable for harassment of their staff by a third party they don’t employ.

Some of these changes may seem a little obscure to you - how prevalent is gender reassignment? Some are counter intuitive - why should you be responsible if a visitor to your business abuses one of your employees? Some of these changes may seem like yet more bureaucratic nonsense designed to add punitive costs into the already precarious world of the small to medium business owner.

With regret, I have to tell you that neither of our opinions matters – this is the way it is.

And you know that employees are much more aware of their rights and are willing to enforce them, through Employment Tribunals and the Courts if necessary.

If you’re not sure how this might apply to you in your business, check it out with a professional who can reassure you, amend policy if needs be, advise on safe practice and help safeguard your business in the future. That would be me then!

I hope to talk to you soon; trade well.

%^&*

So there you have it friends, free speech. It’s even better when you get paid for it, but until then …

th th th th th th th that’s all folks

Anne

Peace and Love

It’s been a while since we last shared a communication 4 weeks ago, although to be fair, a week at Glastonbury effectively took up 2 weeks of my thoughts. It seems like a huge tranche of time – one so large it could only fit into the new Vauxhall Meriva with it’s FlexDoor system – allegedly unique for a car of it’s kind (though not for a Mazda RX8, Rolls Royce Phantom, Austin FX4 London Hackney carriage, or indeed any one of over 500 cars manufactured in the first half of the 20^th Century). Plus ca change (plus c’est la meme chose).

This wicked new set of suicide doors set me thinking (you would have to be a freak like me to know how that works {note 1}). What if there really is nothing new under the sun? Are we doomed (blessed?) to travel on a mobius band whereby Euclid only gave two options, rediscovering and re-contextualising the same old scene {note 2}. Our friends at Vauxhall have justified the unconventional doors in terms of ease of access – no shit … doors that let you get inside something and then allow you to access outside again – but with a focus on the likely target market of young families and oldsters, rather than the Mazda RX8s yuppie or the Phantoms plutocrat.

For me it was only a hop, skip and a jump over a synaptic gap to make the link with other things that last forever – religion and bureaucracy.

Whilst not all religions claim to be a force for goodness as it is widely understood, the mainstreams of the Christian and Islam beliefs are amongst the many that do purport to offer a way of truth, enlightenment and generosity of spirit to one’s brother man. How then can today’s Iranian islamists believe that stoning to death an alleged adulterer perpetrates justice? To further stretch credulity, the same civilization really believes that locking up a young alleged adulterer for four year until she is old enough to be stoned to death is warranted, as indeed is the choosing of the rocks used to carry out this heinous sentence (which are chosen so as to maximize suffering and not cause instant unconsciousness or death-dealing trauma).

Wars fought in the name of religion, individuals tortured and deathed, cruelties unimaginable to today’s sanitised morality are more understandable when read of in the history books. Time lends a distance, a tut tut and a shaken head that implies ‘bless ‘em, they knew no better’. Add to that the dichotomies that exist in some of the notable characters that have perpetrated some of histories most abhorrent religious atrocities, and the shaking of the head becomes more vigorous. Torquemada for instance was a Dominican Friar before he headed the Spanish Inquisition with their butchery and fanatical zeal. Saladin studied Arab poetry and was known for his chivalry as well as for successfully resisting Richard Coeur de Lion in his fight to spread Christianity.

But that was then. Since those barbaric times we have had the benefit of Tony Bair as a Middle East peace envoy …

And let us not just pick on the followers of Allah (pbuh – now that’s what you call hedging your bets). How can the Christian religion, with it’s teachings of tolerance and gentleness and equality still have pockets of resistance that disallow women to attain high priesthood, will not sanctify gay marriage, and forces unwanted children on the poor and ill-equipped? It beats me, and yet … and yet … once a week (only on a Sunday) I give my thanks to my god for all the important and beautiful things that I have been granted. So, if my god instructed me to go out and stone queers and ho s, would I feel that I was contractually obliged to fulfill my part of the bargain? Would I do it for gain (HOW many virgins?) or out of fear (the devil’s pitchfork is soooo sharp).

I believe that much of the bad stuff that is associated with religion is due to the bureaucracy baggage that comes with all worship – but the secular world is bedecked with this schmutter too. Well done Boris Johnson for supporting the Schonrocks in their right to allow their kids to cycle to school. Whether you believe that a 5 year olds should be cycling through London accompanied by only an 8 year old sibling is irrelevant; the nanny state must have it’s umbrella redistributed from hand to rectum to allow life a fighting chance to be supercallifragillisticexpealli - freakin’- docious again.

In Britain we have fucked things up for at least two generations of kids; on the tv news last night the brother of that murderous nutter Raoul Moat, killer of his ex and her new boyfriend (and now himself) who had been terrorizing a huge area for 7 days and shooting policemen, complained. Just as Moat had complained that nobody cared about him just before ending his miserable life, so his whining brother moaned that he had been allowed to see the incident on news coverage. There will be lawyers earning fees on that case as I type, or my name is not Anne.

On the 70^th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, when ‘the few’ saw off the Luftewaffe, the mirror now truly shows a nation characterized by the antipodean term ‘whingeing pom’. Much of the blame must be linked to the desire to kowtow to the politically correct, health and safety-rich and common sense-lite doctrine of homogeneity, peddled initially by our own governments and now being fed to us by gavage from the European state. Quite why we have sleepwalked into the control of countries which have given us Hitler, Berlusconi and Sarkosy escapes me, but I have mutely done so along with the rest of the UK.

We are where we are.

It is never too late to change though; a policy of containment for the feral hoodies which infect all areas (with possible sterilization?) and an attitude of zero tolerance to ‘proper’ crime would be a start. Throwing off the shackles of cotton-woolism and clearing the statute books of stupid and repressive law – especially that from Europe – will help too. Challenging impractical addenda to The Human Rights Act must be a given; when we cannot even guarantee our own pensions in our dotage, how can we afford to give asylum to gays who choose to live here because their religiously repressed home country will not tolerate their sexuality? Please believe me – I am not racist, homophobic or xenophobic, but I neither am I willing to bite my tongue any longer to avoid the taunts of liberals.

Our children need the space and time and freedom to explore the world, to be given the responsibility to make mistakes and learn. What they don’t need is to be denied classic tales such as Little Red Riding Hood (she walks alone in the woods), Hansel and Gretel (abandoned) and Cinderella (overtones of slavery). Parents must to be allowed the choice to slap their child if they see fit rather than the being criminalized for it as our European overlords wish. Kids have to be allowed to take a piece of birthday cake into nursery for their friends without the Pre-School Nutrition Project posting the parent’s names on a tree in the village square. There will be mistakes. There will be tragedy. There will be blame and finger-pointing.

Once again I say ‘Plus ca change (plus c’est la meme chose)’

Living up to my nom de plume a little more today, but peace and love at ya all my brothers and sisters; as much as could be fitted in the new Vauxhall Meriva with it’s fabulous FlexDoor system.

Anne.

Note 1: Just as Leonard Cohen talks of a lover who handled him like a piece of meat; ‘You’d have to be a man to know how good that feels’ according to LC.

Note 2 More musical reference, this time to the King of Cool, Mr. Bryan Ferry, on Flesh and Blood, his 1980 Roxy Music album (as we old timers call them).

Thanks chook

So much tragedy and hurt in the world.

Since we last communed the ‘crossbow cannibal’ has crowed over his atrocities, the Gaza situation has been argued like the chilling but puerile playground spat that it is, a pissed-off taxi driver has stolen 13 lives in Cumbria (and marred dozens more) and a wacked out cage fighter has ripped out his sparring partner’s heart. To name but a few ‘newsworthy’ items. Any chance we can pile some love into the other pan of the scales to try and balance the negativity? It’s got to be worth a try.

I’m going to start by offering thanks to a dear friend of my little piranha fish and - by (very willing) proxy – myself. She is a Kay person and lives in New Zealand. Of the many hats she wears, one that fits her like a glove is that of poet. Now, those of the faithful who knew me as a tadpole will recall my attitude to poetry whilst tumbling through my formative years; to call me a poemophobe would be akin to referring to Pol Pot as a naughty man. I utterly believe that English literature lessons induced in me a form of synaesthesia in which the sound of spoken Byron or Bysshe-bosh Shelley actually translated through my muddled synapses as pen and wash images of a Lotus-Cortina or sometimes glossy photographs of unfeasibly large breasts.

But, just as detergent disperses oil into the water with which it will never truly mix, time has ameliorated the effects of poetry on my shredded neural network. And whilst Chronos is generally regarded at Watson Towers as a bit of an unwelcome bastard who can stick his hourglass up his ass sideways, in this instance he’s played a blinder. Whereas once upon a time I was an active learner, I am now more reflective (as, regrettably dear reader, is my balding pate) and this new trait in me has allowed a new paradigm for poetry.

Not all poetry of course. Some efforts appear to me as the spasms of inchoate thought manifested via keyboard to print. Some is so sugary that my teeth begin to drop out just with one verse. Some smacks of smug manipulation of verbiage and causes a red mist of hate, while yet more promotes a mental shrug of indifference akin to eating a potato. Kay’s poems though (check some out on her excellent blog http://andbottlewasher.blogspot.com/) can infiltrate the canyons of my mind, seeking out hidden memories and allowing them to escape from the darkness. Many social constructs are underpinned by music, and 10cc are not the only band to whisper that ‘big boys don’t cry’ and - unreconstructed as I am - I don’t do tears. That said, some leakage has been experienced when reading Kay’s words. There, I’ve said it.

Only now I am beginning to allow different channels of access to a heart that has previously served merely as a pump (yes, yes, I know that it is merely a pump, but it’s a handy short-hand for the emotional centre of being, you pedants). I don’t learn the words to these poems, I don’t revisit them in a wistful attempt to recreate spent emotions; for me some poems just flick a switch. This is a rather dystopian view of poetry, allowing it only to exist as a cipher, but it’s what works for me now. In my future, who knows? I may start to quote Yeats and wear a frilly collar, perhaps even reject the Subaru as a sublime lifeform. Heaven forfend, I might even recant vodka as the one true religion.

For now though, what I have is sufficient unto the day, and I am grateful for the chance meeting that allowed colour to bleed into a monochromatic view of poetry. That is my small addition to the scalepan of love needed to outweigh the bad stuff - love and gratitude for the help from a friend who is distant yet only a few keystrokes away, a ‘second hand’ friend, an true artist.

Thanks Kay

Yours aye, Anne

IT'S BEEN A WHILE ...

… since I last blogged; it seems as if a lot has happened which is relevant to me in the last fortnight. The Coblin (see the amygdala chapter) party has started to throw some shapes, and the losers are jockeying for the position of prime loser in waiting. Le soleil brille for a while, which not only coaxed the Watson limbs into the light but also lifted my darkened soul into the brilliance with a cry of ‘Hakuna Matata!’ I have had love showered upon me from many directions, had hopes raised and dashed, have travelled in space and time, have gazed in wonder at the modest beauty of English flora and marveled at the snootfuls of scent that wafted unbidden into the holes in my face making me smile and say ‘Wow’ like some aging hippy.

Of course the term ’a lot’ is relative to your system of measurement and the norms your mind in programmed with. For me, this 2 weeks = 67 units of alcohol = 14 days = 224 waking hours = approx 13440 conscious minutes = 1,209,600 heartbeats. If every heartbeat were as precious as it ought to be – as it was when I first fell in love, or when my children were born, and as I’m sure it will be on my deathbed – then over 1.2 million heartbeats would seem like an enormous opportunity. What has seemed like a busy fortnight for me might appear to be trance-like in comparison to the sensations I could cram in.

If the heartbeat is your chosen unit of measure, then a way to stretch time could be to increase the number of heartbeats in a given time, increasing the intensity of experience using adrenaline promoting activities and exercise. Or you could just take a good look at the frightful mess of petty bureaucracy running amok in these sceptred isles. I was talking to a friend recently who is a saffer (South African) living in London; he posed the question ‘why is Health and Safety such a big thing in England – doesn’t anyone have common sense any more?’ A good question Doug, and one to which my immediate answer only promoted me to reflect more deeply on. More of that in the next exciting episode mes braves for now I must make like a chicken and cluck off to justify my existence … but after one last nugget, one little truffle-ette to flavour your lives.

Did you know that sunshine (well, actually all natural light, but the appropriate wavelengths are more intense in strong sunlight) stimulates serotonin production and it is this molecule that is important in regulating mood, appetite and sleep. The science of serotonin production is fascinating; the positive aspects of serotonin crossing the blood-brain barrier include mood enhancement, stimulated by strong sunlight as well as ecstasy, mescaline, anti-depressants and also - bizarrely – bananas. In areas of our body other than the brain however, serotonin is responsible for diarrhoea, vomiting and the pain we feel when bitten or stung by an insect. Crazy!

How awesome is our body? And what do most of us use it for most of the time? I rest my case!

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend followers, and remember what Joni Mitchell sang
‘ … You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…’.

Anne

AMYGDALA

Amygdala

Wow! I am very excited by the current political situation in downtown UK, with our coalition government espousing a tribalist mentality for a pluralist philosophy. Granted it’s not a voluntary amalgamation and the compromise will be seen by some party activists as diablerie. I believe though that we must all put aside our fears and old allegiances and see how these two well educated men and their experienced teams go about coblin’ (it’s an anagram of Con / Lib) a solution together for our economic woes. So, a good result … unless you are a labourist or a latterday Celt.

Speaking of fears, I have recently been privileged to hear Anette Prehn dipping into the neuroscience toolbox to give some fantastic insights into ways that we lead teams, or indeed work in general; please indulge me whilst I bore you with an exerpt. The limbic system is a group of subcortical structures (the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, and the amygdala) in our 1.4 kilos of brain that are concerned especially with emotion and motivation. In particular, the amygdala is an area which triggers the sequence of events that lead to the fight or flight response and which destroys concentration, problem solving rationality and productivity along the way. Understanding the amygdala response allows us to use this knowledge to change habits, reflect on ones own (and others’) behaviours, and mitigate gnarly situations.

Overlaid on this brief description we have to know that

(i) we all have different triggers and levels of reaction for the amygdala threat response (although there is some commonality eg fear of spiders, fear of public speaking etc.) and

(ii) 20% of the population have an oversensitive amygdala

Right, for those of you still with me rather than reaching for the Mandies (oops, showing my age!) you can perhaps see where I’m going (or rather where Anette was going when she shone a torch into the dusty corners of my mind).

Concrete examples of the amygdala hijacking analytical thinking and impairing problem solving and creative insight are when you dry up (public speaking), fail to answer questions fully (job interview), babble incoherently (appraisals), face change in the workplace or your mind goes blank in exams. The important overriding principle is that these responses to perceived threat are autonomic (not under your conscious control) chemical responses designed through millennia of evolution to suppress everything but your ability to flee or fight. You really don’t need to rationalise with a charging mastodon nor to put a lucid case for a pay rise to the towering tsunami – just make like a sheep and get the flock out of there!

There are apparently only two ways to minimize dribbling your way through the scary parts of your life

(i) the limbic system learns by practice and repetition, so reduce the amygdala response by exposing yourself (steady tiger, I haven’t finished yet!) to those situations and practicing a more reasoned response, and ...

(ii) work for a nice boss who understands that conflictual situations destroy concentration and productivity.

If you are a boss - so that’s all the women in the Western world and the proportion of blokes who have ‘Manager’ (anagram Rageman often is a more apt descriptor) as their job title - you have to understand that the level of cortisol rises when you offer ad hoc ‘one-off’ feedback, send out those negative non-verbal communications (a fair proportion of the 2-4000 per day I suspect) or set overwhelming targets. If you bark orders rather than engaging someone with the necessary task, and conversationally compare people unfavourably with others, is it any wonder that they will not only consciously spend time having imaginary conversations with you using words you might not like, but also that they may be physically incapable of performing their job due to the amygdala response?

Phew, lesson over. But this is a topic which I recommend you involve yourself with if you are a manager (especially a HR manager) or indeed a harassed worker with a boss deficient in emotional or social intelligence. Google Anette’s web site ( www.where2next.dk ) or amygdala, hippocampus, limbic system; read it and just put it all into your work context – I guarantee that there will be mileage in it for you.

Now, where did I put those Mandies …?

Anne

CLEAR AS MUD

What a muddle! I need surety, a bedrock, a knowledge that I am (although not necessarily captaining the Good Ship Watson) heading in the right direction. Dealing with ambiguity is an occupational hazard as a manager, a father, a husband and as a citizen, but some kind of contextual surety is demanded to assure sanity.

Regarding the election, I needed someone clever, trustworthy and neutral to help me order my thoughts and make the right choice – not just for me, not just for my neighbours and for my ‘manor’ but for the greater good of my proud island race - including that lot at the top and the left of Great Britain. No such mentees were forthcoming, so I voted with my head, my heart, and my gut; the result has left me and my childers a financial headache for decades to come (to be fair, whatever colour takes the reins we must all quaff deeply from the poisoned chalice), the heartache of wondering whether my actions have dealt fairly with wimmin, gays and the (somewhat less vocal) majority of society who don’t care about ones sex or sexuality, and a sea of diarrhoea to swim through before a less smelly horizon hoves into view.

So, now the posturing and preening, the cajoling and romancing, the spinning and the flesh-pressing is over, what have we got?

Well, I now know what I know I don’t know, and the following is part of that cannon (WTF is he talking about? Ed.)

I am as vague about the election results as Bertram Wooster, but without the calming Jeeves to save me from disaster. How can the blue chappies have gained so many seats, hold more seats than the red wallahs and not have won (a dubious term in the UK’s parlous state) the right to govern? The election process we have at the moment (which I have not seriously queried in my 34 years as a voter, thus proving me to be a bear of very little brain) has the legitimacy of a game of P**h Sticks.

What is first past the post? What is proportional representation? Why are we one of the few European nations who cannot trust their elected representatives to deal with each other in the electorates interests in a collaborative, mature and non-tribal manner? How can the electorate not be allowed to vote because the rules say that the doors close at 22:00? Crikey, in Athens the presiding officers and their clerks would have been barbequed if they’d tried that! And what were all those queuing people doing for the other 14 hours of their day? I suspect that this is a reflection of the mobile phone, unlimited TV channel, ‘Googling is better than visiting a library’, just in time mindset which infiltrates all of our lives now – but hey, that’s another rant altogether.

I get why the global economy is so interested, and I suppose a run on the pound will stimulate the economy from an exporter’s perspective, though it will limit the amount of sangria I can afford … assuming I can fight my way through the ash cloud. At the risk of sounding like Edward (I hesitate to call him P**h Bear in case some fascist filters might stop my followers logging on via their work servers - I hear you my disciples, I hear you) we cannot carry on humming a happy tune and hoping the bees don’t sting us whilst we dip our paws into the hive for more honey. Then again, there is no sense in being alarmist and shouting ‘We’re all going to die’ as we rush to tell the King about the sky falling on our head.

The tale of Chicken Likken and Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Goosey Loosey and Foxey Loxy (everyone’s favourite flea-ridden and urine-drenched cunning hero) has interesting parallels with my world, bearing in mind that my particular zone is a curious space with unique wants and needs which do not include a bigger, thinner TV or a chosen football team to dissipate my emotions. Although the fable has a common premise, the telling of it can focus on different subtexts depending on your chosen paradigm. Is it about stupidity and egocentricity, about not believing everything you are told, about the ability of Foxy to use the mass hysteria to his own ends? (Hmmm, I have a mental picture of cunning bankers licking their lips). And the ending is just as malleable, with some characters playing different roles and some happy endings focussing on escape, some on revenge.

Like I said – clear as mud. I know I can’t live in an Enid Blyton world, but surely I deserve some rational linkage between the levers pulled and the outcome? Isn’t that what we all want? Even if we see the world through a heroin haze we should be accorded the respect to know what the best gear is before we stick ourselves.

Keep warm, people, I’ll talk at you again soon..

Anne

... and now for something completely different!

I’m not a big fan of schadenfreude; bitter is something I prefer in a pint glass or (if at the golf club) in a pink gin. Today however, ‘Bigotgate’ has led to much mirth and hilarity in my cell and I cannot wait for the election debate tonight. Brown has a perfect opportunity to cover himself in even more sh*t and I want to watch. To amuse myself until the next political cage fight, I have reproduced the New Labour Party dictionary definition of bigoted below.

Bigot, n. one who asks awkward questions, a proletariat with incisive inquisitorial skills, an honest citizen who voices the question on 80% of the country’s lips, a semi sentient impediment to trite PR answers with ‘a zero factuality content’ (q.v. ‘American Political Language In The Nixon Years’). - adj. bigoted, having the qualities of a bigot. – n. bigotry, blind or excessive zeal in matters of truth which concern society as a whole.

Bring it on!

Anne