Rising late, I saw that Hove was wreathed in sea mist yet the sun was doing it’s best to get through. Delayed by Marmite toast and strong tea I eventually hit the prom around mid day and found cool air, sunshine and mist. A perfect combination creating an odd sense that Brighton was a stage existing in a bubble out of step with the rest of England. Many would argue that, indeed it does. Tourists drifted in as the mist drifted out and by 2pm the weather was ready for sun bathing and ice cream…..and yes, the dog did get his share.
Hooray! January is over. What an awful month! You get up and it’s dark, you go to work and it’s dark. You come home and it’s dark. And it’s cold. And it snows. And the snow instantly turnes to slush or black ice. And it rains. And there are car accidents and there are traffic jams and the bloody train system closes down.
But January is over. We’ve survived and on Monday the sun broke through just as I got to work. Isn’t the sun fantastic? We British are stalwarts. We persevere through these bloody winter days but every now and them we get a glimpse of what life is supposed to be like and it’s beautiful.
The people who do road works have decided that the wiggly bit in the A23 just before Handcross isn’t difficult enough for drivers so they’ve added a few hazards. They have run a line of cones along the outside lane and painted two extra sets of centre lines down the road. So now there is a chicane where drivers can’t tell where the middle is and so meander around like morons.
The Wiggly Bit in the A23
Still, we have a bit of sun at last which creates some great light just after the rain.
Sun on the South Downs from Edburton Road
And in Brighton today I noticed a great new bit of street art in St. George’s Mews along with some written words seeming to blame globalisation for poverty in Africa.
Wandering around downtown this afternoon found myself at the bottom of Trafalgar Street. A new art gallery named ONCA has sprung up. ONCA stands for One Network for Conservations and the Arts and they work with artists and communities, running themed exhibitions at their gallery at St George’s Place. Proceeds from sales go to support conservation projects. At the moment they have some excellent work in an exhibition named Ghosts of Gone Birds also some good paintings. They have a new project due to run from February to May named ‘Our Time In Ice’ and are inviting submissions from artists.
The painting shown is by Oliver Harud who uses the style of a film noir/graphic novel to tell the tale of the extinction of an Australo-Pacific honeyeater bird named the Bishop’s ‘Ō‘ō.
They have a new project due to run from February to May named ‘Our Time In Ice’ and are inviting submissions from artists.
Jeremy Bowen speaking at Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College (BHASVIC) this evening. Sponsored by City Books of course. He spoke for around half an hour on the middle east to promote his new book The Arab Uprisings and then took questions. No great surprises but a listenable speaker with a good mix of political opinion and light hearted observation. Political power in the Middle East is now The Muslim Brotherhood’s to lose, lose they could if they don’t provide jobs, education and healthcare and Gaddafi‘s inner circle were connoisseurs of sophisticated fashion and design. Also he told a nice little anecdote that gave a glimpse into the oh so enviable life of a foreign correspondent. Woken by a phone call he was told to get going: “First Honkers, then Pekers” and the caller hung up. Mr. Bowen had to ring a BBC official for clarification, “First Hong Kong, then Peking”. Now why don’t I get calls like that?
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Gorgeous day in Brighton on Saturday. Autumn comming in but sky clear and the sun warm. Some great paintings on display in the Ink_d Gallery on North Rd. I was particaulrly struck by the Fragments work by Carne Griffiths.
This afternoon the Krishna Concoiusness people held their festival of Rathayatra for Lord Krishna on Hove Promenade. This consisted of a very large cart holding Krishna, in His most merciful form of Jagannatha, being pulled along the prom by his devotes while others dance “in ecstacy”. Many people are aware of the Krishna followers as some strange cult but Krishna is a Hindu deity and there apeared to be many Hindus there. One man in a wheel-chair carried a fantastic shrine decoracted with flowers on his lap while his friend pushed him along.The people looked gorgeous; the women in colourful saris and the men in white or orange. The atmosphere was jovial and friendly and tourists mingled freely with the dancers. It made me think how different traditonal Englsh festivals are. We people of Anglo-Saxon or celtic descent seem to have either very private homely festivals like Christmas or, when we do go public, our festivals tend to get fairly sinister like Guy Fawkes Night in Lewis which seems not disimilar to The Whicker Man.
Drove home today down the A23. Crossed under the M27 and took a right at the mini roundabout into Mill Lane. Under the bridge and put the pedal to the metal intending to swing out into the overtaking lane and hammer up the hill as I often do. A brief thrill before getting home that I’m sure many Brightonians also enjoy. However, it seems the powers that be have deemed this dangerous and have arranged for the middle lane to be painted out with white traffic separation lines. One must now progress in single file – Hey ho. It was nice while it lasted. No doubt this was done for safety reasons and who can argue with that.
ME!
One problem with employing professional road safety staff is that they feel obliged to go around making things safer. No, hear me out. By this I mean that they will arrive at their desks on a Monday morning and wonder what they can improve this week. However, they will not have a clear target of exactly how safe society should be and since there exists no corresponding organisation going around making things more dangerous the net result is a gradual ratcheting up of rules, controls and general restrictions on individual freedom. Health and safety gone mad as it’s known colloquially.
I give the road markings as one example but this affects all areas of our lives. The human race is engaged in a gradual process of domestication. Think about it. Europeans and North Americans can’t even visit India without becoming ill. Like monkeys reared in captivity we cannot now survive in the wild. This is why men crave danger. This is why people go bungee jumping. This is why young men kill themselves performing dangerous stunts.
This domestication especially affects our work lives where large corporations develop codes of conduct and dress codes. How did we reach the stage where our employers can dictate our etiquette and attire? It’s mind boggling.
Yesterday I became a little emotional at work. Not much. Just a bit. I considered that someone had not performed their work properly and this was preventing me performing my work while I was under pressure to meet deadlines. I did not shout, I didn’t insult anyone. Perhaps I swore, I was definitely more forthright than usual. Having reflected a while I now realise that my behaviour may have been considered “unprofessional” by a senior manager present. He noted that there seemed to be emotion around this; the implication being that the issue should have been raised in a calm manner. We should have sat down and discussed it coolly.
Bollocks!
Many years ago I returned from working in Africa and could not figure out what the fuck had happened to the IT industry. Most people seemed unable to understand technology yet they pontificated confidently on the subject and held down highly paid jobs. I now realise I had been absent during the “professionalisation” of the industry.
All industries go through various stages as they mature. First an inventor, then a craftsman, then a professional. The inventor understands his work inside out because he created it. The craftsman understands most of his work because he loves it. The professional understands just enough of his work to make money. I had left England as an IT craftsman and returned to find IT run by professionals. It was the Blair Bullshit era when the government was led by the likes of Mandelson and Campbell and the whole of Britain was Talking Bollocks and raking in the lolly.
Since that time I have learned the stuff that they teach people who do not understand IT in order for them to work in the industry. PRINCE2, ITIL, COBIT. Like the highway code, people may be trained in this stuff so that they can operate the controls without having a clue how things functions or knowing where they should be going.
So now, IT is like every other “profession”. Staffed mainly be people who don’t care about their work. People who take no pride in what they do. People who are capable of ensuring that the right emails are cc’d to their boss while other emails go unanswered. People who assess requests from colleagues according to the benefit to their careers. Think about it: What is more unprofessional, doing a crap job or losing your temper that someone is not doing a good job?
These allegations are not aimed directly at my current colleagues. A foul temper is as bad as incompetence (Jones first law?). However there does seem to be a general trend in large corporations to suppress emotion. But passion is an emotion and if your work without passion then your results can never be more than mediocre. Corporations strives to suppress our individuality. Their goal is to embed intelligence in the process so that numpties can be employed for peanuts. In the words of John Lyndon: “They made these feelings go away, a model citizen in every way”.
Or perhaps more appropriately: “Anger is an energy”. I could be wrong? I could be right?
What an idea! A 999 fun day! Experience all the violence and ghastliness of the emergency services in a fun day out. In fact it was no such thing. Just the police, ambulance, life guards and various other organisations setting up shop on Hove Lawns to let the public get a better look at the work they do. I was particularly interested in the Newfoundland dogs which are trained to swim around picking up struggling swimmers. Beautiful animals and they save our lives. What could be better. Though watching this video I can’t help thinking that one of the men should have had the guts to jump from the helicopter rather than throwing the dog in.
Art Photography
Anger is an energy – but not good for your career prospects
Tags: anger is an energy, brighton, code of conduct, corporations, domestication, dress code, IT, Mill Road, profesionals, rules
New Road Markings on Mill Road, Brighton
Drove home today down the A23. Crossed under the M27 and took a right at the mini roundabout into Mill Lane. Under the bridge and put the pedal to the metal intending to swing out into the overtaking lane and hammer up the hill as I often do. A brief thrill before getting home that I’m sure many Brightonians also enjoy. However, it seems the powers that be have deemed this dangerous and have arranged for the middle lane to be painted out with white traffic separation lines. One must now progress in single file – Hey ho. It was nice while it lasted. No doubt this was done for safety reasons and who can argue with that.
ME!
One problem with employing professional road safety staff is that they feel obliged to go around making things safer. No, hear me out. By this I mean that they will arrive at their desks on a Monday morning and wonder what they can improve this week. However, they will not have a clear target of exactly how safe society should be and since there exists no corresponding organisation going around making things more dangerous the net result is a gradual ratcheting up of rules, controls and general restrictions on individual freedom. Health and safety gone mad as it’s known colloquially.
I give the road markings as one example but this affects all areas of our lives. The human race is engaged in a gradual process of domestication. Think about it. Europeans and North Americans can’t even visit India without becoming ill. Like monkeys reared in captivity we cannot now survive in the wild. This is why men crave danger. This is why people go bungee jumping. This is why young men kill themselves performing dangerous stunts.
This domestication especially affects our work lives where large corporations develop codes of conduct and dress codes. How did we reach the stage where our employers can dictate our etiquette and attire? It’s mind boggling.
Yesterday I became a little emotional at work. Not much. Just a bit. I considered that someone had not performed their work properly and this was preventing me performing my work while I was under pressure to meet deadlines. I did not shout, I didn’t insult anyone. Perhaps I swore, I was definitely more forthright than usual. Having reflected a while I now realise that my behaviour may have been considered “unprofessional” by a senior manager present. He noted that there seemed to be emotion around this; the implication being that the issue should have been raised in a calm manner. We should have sat down and discussed it coolly.
Bollocks!
Many years ago I returned from working in Africa and could not figure out what the fuck had happened to the IT industry. Most people seemed unable to understand technology yet they pontificated confidently on the subject and held down highly paid jobs. I now realise I had been absent during the “professionalisation” of the industry.
All industries go through various stages as they mature. First an inventor, then a craftsman, then a professional. The inventor understands his work inside out because he created it. The craftsman understands most of his work because he loves it. The professional understands just enough of his work to make money. I had left England as an IT craftsman and returned to find IT run by professionals. It was the Blair Bullshit era when the government was led by the likes of Mandelson and Campbell and the whole of Britain was Talking Bollocks and raking in the lolly.
Since that time I have learned the stuff that they teach people who do not understand IT in order for them to work in the industry. PRINCE2, ITIL, COBIT. Like the highway code, people may be trained in this stuff so that they can operate the controls without having a clue how things functions or knowing where they should be going.
So now, IT is like every other “profession”. Staffed mainly be people who don’t care about their work. People who take no pride in what they do. People who are capable of ensuring that the right emails are cc’d to their boss while other emails go unanswered. People who assess requests from colleagues according to the benefit to their careers. Think about it: What is more unprofessional, doing a crap job or losing your temper that someone is not doing a good job?
These allegations are not aimed directly at my current colleagues. A foul temper is as bad as incompetence (Jones first law?). However there does seem to be a general trend in large corporations to suppress emotion. But passion is an emotion and if your work without passion then your results can never be more than mediocre. Corporations strives to suppress our individuality. Their goal is to embed intelligence in the process so that numpties can be employed for peanuts. In the words of John Lyndon: “They made these feelings go away, a model citizen in every way”.
Or perhaps more appropriately: “Anger is an energy”. I could be wrong? I could be right?
Fulking Bonfire
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