Where to start?

I really do not learn. The reason I left my first blog was because it got me into trouble at work - or rather because some anonymous cunt (yes, first casualty of me going private is my language) reported it to a director of the organisation I work for and he didn't exactly see the funny side. Since moving here I have strived to never mention my job, in spite of there being so many great/sad stories that I often want to talk about, but one good thing I think is that such restraint can now officially be lifted.

(Any reference to person or persons in this place will of course be made with identifying details altered.)

But let me start with a story about management because this is what we talk about every day at work with certain phrases being much employed in relation to it...'Disgrace'....'Scandal'...'Obscene'..and more in that vein.

This week a leaflet we send out to adopted parents and kids twice every year as a means of keeping them informed was rejected by our media and communications department, not because it was inflammatory, not because it brought the organisation into disrepute (my own particular speciality apparently), but because it was the victim of cost cutting. Never mind that not every one has internet access - they want it to go out on e-mail.

I am all in favour of our organisation not wasting money but I would approach money saving from another angle.

For a start, if my Chief Executive decided that he should jump before he was pushed and decided to take early 'retirement' aged 53, I would not send him on his way with a pay off of £297,000 (enough to pay 20 teachers for a year) and a guaranteed pension of £97,000 a year. Offensive enough, but at the time he went the organisation was looking to make approximately 800 job cuts by replacing all admin jobs with a Call Centre and a typing pool, (only we weren't allowed to call it a typing pool - it was officially a 'Professional Support Team' - where they would do all the typing).
This was the bright idea of a very well known company of Chartered Accountants - Price Eye Watering or something like that. For their knowledge and expertise at making people redundant, by which of course I mean making organisations more efficient, they have been charging our organisation (funded by local tax payers btw) £1.5 million a month. Me, I wouldn't spend money on bringing in consultants because if I was appointing highly paid directors I would expect them to be well capable of making strategic decisions themselves rather than bringing in others to do their thinking for them.

Our departed Chief Exec was very keen on the new plan and so was the man who covered his post when he went.

Our NEW Chief Exec upon appointment a month or so ago was not so keen. In fact so unkeen was she, she scrapped the plan. It was perhaps unfortunate that at that late stage the Call Centre and Typing Pool that was Not a Typing Pool had already cost £35 million, not including Price Eye Watering's fees. Still, at least the previously Acting Chief Exec did the sensible thing in his circumstances and cleared his desk that same day - his circumstances being that if he walked he took £97,000 with him which wasn't bad compensation for a Job Badly Done. Back to me and my cost cutting ideas - I wouldn't pay for failure but maybe it is only poorly paid people that get the sack these days?

Of course it isn't only failures in local government that walk away with huge payoffs, is itMr Steve McClaren?.

And don't get me started on the England players - Peter Crouch being the honourable exception.

There was never the slightest possibility I was going to be able to avoid the subject of England was there?