... And Again

I've just had the exciting experience of being made redundant. I'm getting to be quite good at it. This will be the fourth time that I've managed to bring a company to its knees.

I can do it to all different sizes of business too. I'm no one-trick pony only capable of destroying small-scale businesses, oh no! I've ranged across the whole gamut of corporate life. The smallest was a one-man (well, temporarily two-man) design company. I was only there for two weeks so I moved pretty quick. The largest was Nortel - although I probably can't take all the credit for that one as I was only part of the total number being removed.

There are those who will try and take my success away from me, blaming it on bankers making appalling short-term decisions or lending to people whose earning potential was slightly less than that of a dead whelk ("Of course you can borrow 5 times your salary to fund your desire to live well without actually having to study or work hard. I know - yes, life is so unfair. Here you go, if you could just sign here and here - Oh! You brought your own crayons, good").

I used to work with someone, although not for long, who had seen his last two jobs disappear. We sat next to each other in the drawing office of Brooklands Aerospace in Salisbury. You probably haven't heard of them for the very good reason that only a month after this chap started work the company folded in a most spectacular fashion. He, no doubt, will try and take the credit, but I know that was my first.

The public, and our own dear Prime Minister, are baying for blood and they've chosen to put Fred Goodwin on the block simply because he presided over the biggest British corporate loss in history and has walked away with a £693,000 a year pension. This seems unfair as, while it is a goody, it's also his first. Beginner's luck I say.

My problem is that, while I am extremely good at being made redundant I am, unlike Fred, extremely bad at making money from it. Maybe I should hire myself out to work diligently and hard for company's competitors, watching them crumble around me.

I could make a fortune.

Mistaken Identity

So, Antonette Richardson has been found guilty of manslaughter.

Who?

This delightful creature was so incensed to be called a queue-jumper at her local Sainsbury's that, rather than simply either arguing her case or deciding that she had been rumbled and moving to the back, she called her fella on her mobile who waded, knuckles-dragging, into the shop and punched the man who had the temerity to say nasty truths about his woman.

So far so Britain. However, either Richardson was so traumatised that her pointing finger wavered or her thug, Tony Virasami, was so blinded by justifiable fury that he thumped the wrong man. Kevin Tripp went down and cracked his head on the floor. He died shortly after.

Virasami pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Richardson showed her remorse by saying how shocked and disgusted she was that he had hit the wrong person.

I think that may bear repeating. She expressed horror that her thug had hit the wrong man. Not that his first course of action was to lash out at someone who had only expressed himself verbally, but that he had directed his ire at someone she didn't point at.

I think the reader is more than capable of drawing their own conclusions from this incident without me rattling down the 'Hell in a Handcart' track so beloved of the Daily Mail so I shall spare my thoughts on what could constitute suitable punishment, suffice it to say that the words "scold's" and "bridle" would figure, along with the phrase "for life".

Why Widget?

As this question was bound to come up at some point I suppose I ought to get it out of the way before really starting.

We (that is my family and I) own two cats. Both were garnered from the League of Strange Cats. They were both picked up at the same time from the same cage and are, as far as can be determined, the same age. And there the similarities end.

Widget is the male, a black and white tom with a suitably aloof approach to life. In fact, unless there happens to be a slow-worm or other fast moving potential prey in the vicinity, his approach is decidedly horizontal. This could be confused with laziness.

I however, choose to see it as carefully thoughtful and considered.

Incidentally Sparky, the female, is a black sack of purry tartishness. Hardly a fitting name for a blog.

Going Postal

So, here it is. Post 1.

Bit empty so far but I'm sure it will fill as things occur. I aim to use this as a sounding board for things which annoy, infuriate, enable, en-joy my life as they happen (or shortly after).

I am hoping that it may prove to be interesting, enlightening and infuriating, ideally all at the same time. It will cover such topics as religion, chickens, science, politics, drivers and cats - in fact anything that either provokes my interest, that prods my anger-glands or that gently tickles my sense of joy.

It will, due to the nature of life, be irregular until such time as someone pays me to write it.