Justify your existence internally

Recently, on a not particularly busy day, while processing the usual 150 to 200 emails that flow into my inbox daily, I was inspired to click on one bearing the subject line: Justify your existence internally. 

  I was in a philosophical mood that day, contemplating as I had been doing the pointlessness of life in general and the senseless wasting of my own particular life within the four walls of that particular office. Could the email be the key of some spiritual revelation, something, anything, that would encourage me to live with myself for another day? It turned out to be, of course, the title of a seminar on internal communications.

  It figures.

  The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place, as G B Shaw is widely believed to have observed one hundred year before Twitter was even invented. But even absent the cacophony of social media George Bernard would only have had to spend a couple of hours inside any office to come to his conclusion.  

  Meetings. Meetings about meetings. Pre-meetings, meetings’ agendas and meetings’ minutes. Hours, days of meetings. Short reports, memos, grids and lists. Meeting notes. Relaying meetings to those who weren’t there, email threads, whispered gossip about what happened and who said what. Box-ticking, form-filling, feedback and postmortems to dissect how all of that went.

  No decision is ever reached during a meeting, you understand. The first you hear about a decision is two months after it was taken by someone in authority without consulting anyone and you only find out when you get locked out by the new security system or the website colour scheme turns acid green.

  By then, it is absolutely inappropriate to bring it up in a meeting. That’s not what meetings are for. They are not about the past and they are emphatically not about making things work better going forward. Or foreseeing and mitigating real problems. Or averting possible crises.

  Meetings are about meetings.

  At the end of my working life I’ll be lucky if 20 pc of my time will have been devoted to accomplishing the actual tasks I’ve been nominally paid to do. By the time it’s all over (praise be to god) I will have spent almost 80 pc of my time as a scribe, a compiler of grids and assembler of notes as well as ‘meat in the room’ for endless meetings that won’t result in any change, unless it’s for the worse, due to the total breakdown of communication that is the after effect and the leitmotif of the business of meetings.

  I’m not even angry about this, no longer scandalised or disappointed. I’m simply exhausted. Talked out, minuted out, post-noted and over-listed. Meetings, town halls, memos and complex email threads with an ever-changing cast of 12 people in CC is how the office pond life – that layer of mid-to -top level management whose job titles are completely impenetrable and whose salary level is a daily slap in the face to the rest of the workforce - justifies its existence internally.

  The rest of us, with real tasks, skills, goals and deadlines are just audience, cyber witnesses, clerical courtiers, while our own, one, precious life ebbs slowly away.

  Good luck robots. Do your worst.

The Upside Down is where shame has gone to die

Stranger things are happening, people. 

Thirty years from the fall of the Berlin wall, it turns out it's possible to gaslight a nation, spread disinformation and anxiety, foment division and hatred and get people to vote for, indeed clamour for, policies which go against their own best interest without a single shot fired or protester tortured.

A willingness and facility to lie, a dormant media (more interested in politics as horse race with occasional televised gladiatorial combats than in thoroughly researching topics and preparing for interviews) and the sheer quantity of information available are all it takes to dull people's critical faculties. Throw in a visible enemy (why not immigrants, that always work!) et voila' your got yourself some tasty, freeze-dried culture war where brains should be.

Twitter, sure, FB, digital tricks and dodgy Russian money - all have contributed to transform our public landscape in a murky Upside Down where white is black and everything ends up grey, fluffy, unsubstantial, un-pin-down-able.  Some of these things are technological and new, some, like corruption, have been with us forever.

But shame is what seals the deal and our fate in this particular political junction; or rather, the absence of it. The death of shame is the water you add to the instant coffee of ideological obsession. My bastard is better than your bastard. My liar is more honourable than your liar. My Islamophobe is classier than your anti-Semite.

In the last couple of days alone we have witnessed the spectacle of the Conservative Party Press Office Twitter account disguising itself as some neutral fact-checking outfit for the duration of the leaders' ITV debate to  propagandise for Johnson, then coolly reverting to its usual title: job done! A bizarre post-propaganda move that proved too much for Twitter itself (and they do have strong stomachs that lot) but is still currently being defended by the Conservative front bench on the ground that 'Labour lies need exposing' and the truly Kafkaesque 'no-one gives a toss about social media'. 

I have myself just got involved (against my best human and comms judgement) in an exhausting twitter exchange with somebody claiming that it's Remainers' scaremongering that's driving much needed EU health professionals away, even while simultaneously claiming that there's way more EU doctors now than in 2016 but there's still shortages because of all the EU immigrants seeking treatment. 

Do people hear themselves? The lack of shame makes us deaf to reason itself.
  
Where is the line? Is there even a line anymore, as our American friends may well have asked when a self-styled pussy-grabber was elected President thanks to evangelicals' and conservative women's votes?

It takes the hapless Prince Andrew, a man so genuinely clueless, so terminally privileged, so comically un-relatable that few can be bothered to rise to his defence, to show us the faint outline of where the line now is. So here we go: when in doubt, don't accept the lavish hospitality of a convicted paedophile: it looks really bad! And if you have done (we are all human) for goodness' sake don't talk about it and hope the whole unseemly row will blow over soon. 

Of course secret, as yet undiscovered, paedophiles are still fine - we don't want to get too puritanical now. As for paedophilia itself, the jury is out of course. I mean, it depends, doesn't it, on who's doing what to whose children, in exchange for what type of incentive and whether a newspaper is about to find out. A blanket policy of revulsion and unconditional censure is, frankly, tantamount to communism.

Las Vegas - Can we stop asking why and focus on the how?

Feather dusters don't kill people. Nor do garden hoses. As a rule. That's not what they are for, anyway, and therefore they're quite clunky and inefficient as means of mass slaughter. Although, sure, a sufficiently driven and nasty human of average intelligence can use just about any tool for the purpose of killing. So yes, in that narrow sense alone, it's people who kill people.

But guns, and particulary semi-automatic weapons, are built with the sole purpose of maiming and killing. This is what they do, efficiently so. So when nearly 60 people are killed and 500 gravely injured by a single pensioner taking aim at them from a hotel window it seems reasonable to conclude that it's in fact the guns who should be the protagonists here, the salient detail, not whatever obsession, ideological delirium or personality disorder affected the human who pulled the trigger. A retired accountant with no army background. A nobody. Another angry old man -  among many other angry men, young men, middle aged ones, old ones, men of every hue and colour and background - with an inflated sense of grievance, or destinity, or of his own importance. Who gives a shit why? How is finding out why going to stop this happenig again? 

In Britain, Italy and in pretty much every other modern democracy we are replete with catankeous old men and angry young men, narcisists and wife beaters. There's no scarcity of nasty, violent, self-obsessed men (ooops, I mean people, of course!). Yet an old man would have a tough time murdering and maiming on that scale, in a matter of minutes, no matter how crazy or ideologically driven. 

So, again, it turns out that it's the availability and prevalence of guns - not immigrants, not Muslims, not even terrorists (who can thankfully be quite clumsy with explosives) that causes people to be killed in their hundreds with this regularity and inevitability. Give bad intentions, 'evil' , temporary insanity, male chauvinist pigs, you name it, a baseball bat and someone will get hurt but for a good old fashioned massacre you..... kinda need automatic weapons.

Today is not the time to have this conversation. The time was 15, 30 years ago before the US become so flooded with the bloody things that only mass confiscation, not restrictions on sales, is likely to make a substantial difference now. 

But still, going forward, you'd think it might be desirable to start mitigating against future senseless carnage as soon and as much as bloody possible, don't you? 

Yet the country that forces the likes of me to declare we are not Nazi war criminals on entry and frowns on 120ml bottles of shampoo can't have that conversation. Its politicians' hands are tied, mainly with dollars, and its media is pitifully muted on the subject, so that its citizens come to believe they do live in the best/most rational of all possible worlds, like the starving North Koreans who think it's the rest of us who are having a tough time. (This reminds me of those ridiculous US commentators spewing nonsense against 'Socialised Medicine'. Ask any European if they mind NOT having to choose between between eating and paying the morgage or getting cancer treatment. Go on, see what they say.). 

In the cacophony of bullshit platitudes about prayers and unity and resilience and the courage of first responders the NRA ayatollahs still won't release their grip on the levers of US democracy. They didn't after first graders were felled at Sandy Hook, they won't do it now. They can afford to fuel several 9/11s every year with no consequence, no censure of any kind, barely a whisper of a timid debate. Policy makers can't even collect the right statistics on gun crime.

The ultimate form of terrorism, it seems to me, is when a mature democracy reduces its own citizens to the status of living target practice for the convenience of its gun industry. It's an awfully big gamble, even by Vegas standards.

Opinions on shape of Nazis differ

This morning I heard Today's presenter John Humphrys ask BBC North American EditorJon Sopel whether there was any "factual truth, though, in the President's assertion that there was violence on the other side too".

Humphrys wasn't asking a political contributor a devil' s advocate question. He was talking to a fellow BBC journalist who, to his shame, engaged with the question.

So, to recap, your licence fee now pays for senior BBC journalists earnestly to discuss whether anti-racist protesters objecting to an armed and intimidating neo-Nazi and KKK invasion of the public space could be described as 'as violent', and therefore morally reprehensible if not morally equivalent to the Nazis themselves.

I'm no longer sure how John Humphrys would have covered the Second World War - Churchill's speeches say*, Bletchley Park*, the Resistance* - particularly under the editorship of Sarah Sands.

Reflexive neo liberal right-wingery, fueled by hatred of redistribution - oops, I meant the left - in any form, is now chasing its own tale, fouling its own patriotic foundation myth: we are better than them (enter any nationality/value here) because we fought the Nazis/at least we are not Nazis.

Fighting the Nazis is officially a dodgy pursuit not just in Trump's America but also in May's (Brexit) Britain.

*Rabble-rouser, Hackers' Central, violent extremists????

Reasons why Britain will likely be utterly screwed in these EU negotiations - No 658

The Department for Exiting the European Union, DExEU, with its Spanish Inquisition- like acronym, seems run like a cross between a masonic lodge and a (minor) Cosa Nostra family that barely survived the latest drug war and is on the run from all the other families.

A year after its creation they've only just managed to appoint a Special Adviser to the Secretary of State (David "I don't carry notes" Davis) who is also his Chief of staff, meaning David "Notebooks are for losers. It's all 'up here', so it is!!" Davis has been without either all this time. The chap in question is a Tory Brexiteer who lost his seat at the last election- we'll glide over the symbolism there.

But here's the thing: no one - or at least none of my contacts in various think-tanks, public affairs companies and Parliament - seems to know how you get in touch with people there.

Needing to invite some top mandarins from DExEU to an event I resorted to calling their press office (it was the only number provided on the website) and was told they 'they think' the email addresses follow the pattern name.surname@dexeu.gov.uk but they could not confirm. I found another number for the Department on Dods' Vacher's Guide and proceeded to be connected to the very same press officer who told me they "don't have a receptionist" and to basically stop wasting her time.

In desperation I called a number appearing on the bottom of an email (address @cabinetoffice.gov.uk) of a top DExEU civil servant who once took part in one of our events and the phone was answered by a Polish lady who announced I was speaking to the Cabinet Office. I tried to ascertain with her whether I should invite her boss with the @dexeu email address or a @cabinetoffice email address and she told me, somewhat flustered, to 'try both'. I was then passed on to a more senior colleague who said he thought the other top civil servants I was trying to reach were 'probably' at both addresses but he didn't know for sure because 'they hadn't been in touch for some time'.

Why would, after all, the office of the DExEU Director of Analysis ever wish to speak to the office of the DExEU Director of Market Access and Budget or the DExEU Director of Cross-Government Policy Coordination?

Why would you make sure there was a receptionist on duty at all times and a streamlined, coherent suite of email addresses, making it easy for MPs, stakeholders or god forbid, European apparatchiks or even expert riffraff to reach the Department by phone or email during the gigantic negotiations which are its sole reason to exist?

Once the nice Polish lady is deported they won't even have enough competent, hard working EU migrants to man the ship.

Move on, nothing to see here. Literally.

Scenes from (the end of) a Marriage

As a Brexit bill is presented to the Mother of Parliaments I'll attempt to illustrate Britain's EU divorce psychodrama for the benefit of my continental friends.

The build-up

You're fat and ugly and I never loved you. 

You got me under false pretenses. How was I to know that by walking to that church, having invited our families and friends, by reciting those words and exchanging those rings I would be MARRIED to you? I thought we were getting a curry, or something. 

I want out. And when I go, I'll stay gone. I've had enough of your shrill, demanding ways.

Ahead of divorce proceedings

No point dragging this out: let's come to an amicable understanding and sod the lawyers.

Of course, I'm not prepared to pay any financial settlement. I owe you nothing. NOTHING you hear? The fact that I was in mess financially before we married and my net worth has massively improved since has NOTHING to do with our partnership.

The kids

What  about our many kids, you say? I'm of course prepared to recognise and take credit for the achievements of the inventor, the award winning artist, the techie wizard and the budding entrepreneur. I might be willing to contribute towards their research grant/seed money/ university fees. But the glue-sniffing obsessive-compulsive masturbator who's been stealing from our petty cash is your problem. He can't possibly be mine. 

Divorce proceedings

The way I see it, there are are two ways of going about it: 

1) We can come to an amicable understanding in next to no time - say the length of a rumba on Strictly? This really should be a breeze because, when all is said and done, it's in your interest to give me exactly what I want as you need me much more than I need you. Or...

2) .....I'll come round in the dead of night with a Kalashnikov, kick your door in and shoot myself in the foot right in front of you. You won't like that, will you? Think of all the blood and the gore... And I'll refuse to go to hospital and I'll just limp on my bloodied stump for the rest of my life just to SHOW YOU!

Seeing other people

Look, before we met I had 'dated' most of the rest of the world, whether they liked it or not. I'll be a very hot commodity indeed when I'm back on the market. Just saying.

Your loss is my future girlfriends' gain. Yes, girlfriends, PLURAL. Take that, you frigid cow!


The recap

So, really, there's nothing to this. It's a lark. A doddle. A bit of a joke, even. Things will both exactly the same and much better than before. Or Armageddon. Depending. No way of saying. Can't be sure. But it will be your fault either way. 

By the way, I can still bang you whenever I want, right? It doesn't even count as sex if I don't fancy you (which I don't). It's basically exercise.

Sent from my iPhone

In this post-facts world I've become post-nice

Is this jokey post which is doing the rounds on social media harsh and uncouth? Probably.

 Now look at this bona fide piece of campaign literature by the Leave side -no joke this - sent to households in areas where the campaign estimates potential supporters might be.

After re-posting the first image on FB I had a polite but unsettling exchange of views with a distant acquaintance who holds very different views from mine but has never interacted with any of the serious articles I've posted on the referendum or conversations I've generated about it. The joke though, was too much. The joke, she protested, was "unbelievable smearing by pro-Remain smug elites." (She left out 'metropolitan', I assume in her eagerness to make her indignation known.) 

I then uploaded the second picture and pointed out that the Leave side "certainly seems to be appealing to people's lowest instincts AND assume they are stupid" (Free access for Turkey in 2017? No more Queen or Royal Family? Wah?). I argued that they are defining the terms of this conversation - avoiding all serious discussion about the economy or Britain's place in the wider world and making up ever more shrill scare stories and ludicrous post-facts aimed at racists with low IQ. I didn't think it was necessary to add: "I don't believe that those who want out are all racists with low IQ. But sure as hell is funny, hence the jokey post, that the Leave side treats them as such."

She replied along the lines of "you are lumping everyone in with one campaign or the other", whilst many outside the Westminster bubble, in the fabled 'real world' have switched off from both campaigns, feeling that "it's a dirty political battle with ugly messages and tactics on both sides, and so (they) rise above it by seeking out their own facts." She concluded castigating me for reposting the joke: "With so many issues at stake it's staggering that you should believe that people voting leave are all just stupid puppets."

Hmmm. "A dirty political battle with ugly messages on both sides". More a case of : if you are challenged to mud-wrestle with a pig, you both end covered in mud. 

But. But. But...

A) mud-wresting a pig doesn't turn you into pig, and 

B) the pig really enjoys it. 

A grotesquely distorted figure about the cost of EU membership is still painted in metre-long letters on the side of Boris' #blunderbus. EU immigrants (of which I've had to reluctantly acknowledge I am one, after a peaceful and productive lifetime camouflaging on these shores as an EU citizen) are collateral damage, sneered at, baited and smeared by huge sections of the national media. Turncoat would-be leaders make up their mind and formulate policy on the hoof and lie to voters with a straight face on TV, using the NHS, (an organisation beloved by the nation, but one they are savagely indifferent to as a matter of record), as the institutional equivalent of a human shield.

Yet my reasonable and intelligent FB acquaintance cannot abide a silly joke, taking the low opinion the Leave side betrays of the undecided it targets at face value. 

Look, I know this whole thing is won or lost on turnout and I don't believe that I have the power to rouse the masses either way. I reposted a silly joke. It didn't even have Hitler in it. At all. Like, in any form.  

Am I "stooping to the level of those you find unsavoury yourself"? Possibly. (Hardly).  But, see, I'm disenfranchised in a poll which will decide my future, lumped with 'cheaters and scroungers' by screeching headlines every morning before I've even had a cup of tea.  So, yes, in this post-facts world I've become post-nice.  I'm mad as hell and I'm laughing bitterly at the silly jokes about the racist imbeciles the Leave campaign think are their secret weapon. 

Unless they are proved wrong, there will be plenty of time for tears later.