Private vs. Public

I spent the last four hours in a bar talking shop with a friend. The friend in question works in the public sector whereas I know nothing outside the confines of the private sector. We have a great deal in common, but we also seem to clash over many issues. Mainly over my desire to make money and retire as soon as humanly possible compared to his desire to improve everyone's quality of life.

Both of our parents are or were teachers, and for the remainder of this post I will use the present tense. As it turns out they both teach English and are near, or have already hit, the Glass Ceiling in the world of teaching English.

We both agree that teachers are, for the most part, much maligned and deserve more respect and financial reimbursement, however we agree that there are a number of bad apples letting the side down.

So, back to my friend, and his job in the public sector. This guy works hard and goes above and beyond what's required of him in order to do an outstanding job. And it doesn't stop there. This guy takes his role very seriously, refuses to merely give 95%, and is an all-round good guy. He is exactly the sort of person you want managing a team of Business Analysts or leading one of your Projects. Simply put, this guy doesn't quit.

He doesn't get stressed, he doesn't work late to prove how 'dedicated' he is, he genuinely just delivers what's promised within the allocated time frame and then clocks off at the end of the day. He is the epitome of a self-managed hard worker.

To summarise, he is exactly what the private sector needs more of.

We got into a very involved conversation about the different recruitment processes employed by the public and private sectors, and the incentives offered by each. He is earning a salary comparable to mine, however he receives neither an annual bonus nor a pay-rise. To me this seems ludicrous. A person who is, to boil it down to the simplest, working five days a week to maintain and improve the quality of living of the entire nation doesn't even get a cost of living raise? What the hell is that about? Cue me advocating the virtues of a career in the private sector over a plethora of empty bottles, preaching about how you can perform adequately and still make the grade.

My dad worked his ass off for too long for the joy of the job and the benefit of his students and ended up getting dicked on by the powers that be. My friend's mum is still in the game, working as a head of department whilst simultaneously managing special education for the entire school and how is she rewarded? That's right, she has the threat of a pay cut hanging over her.

In summary, the people that really matter to the good of the nation (the teachers, the police, the paramedics, the social workers) are all getting a short straw. My friend tells me that "you've got to be the right kind of person to do these jobs," and therefore the remuneration isn't a massive factor. You've got to instinctively want to work your fingers to the bone for your fellow countrymen. This business model seems to work for our respective parents, but I can't help but wonder how many potentially awesome teachers decided against a career in education to pursue a far more profitable career in the private sector.

Granted, there will always be good people willing to do the right thing for the next generation, to try and educate them, to try and help them become all they can be. But there must also be an equal, if not greater number of moral, intelligent people who just want to make some paper and provide for their own as best they can regardless of anything else. Surely that's evolution?

Start With the Basics

OK, you're in the conference room. How do you know it's a room? That's right, check for the presence of walls, a floor and a ceiling. If all three are present, then yes, you are indeed in a room. Congratulations.

nPower's Generous Goodwill Gesture

That's right people. Your eyes are not deceiving you. That's a goodwill gesture of £1. Pop the Cristal, I'm going to party like it's my birthday, or perhaps 1999, I haven't decided yet.

The English are fucking sheep. But not like the Welsh.

This article was first published on kenandgeoff.com in December 2005. At the time there were fears of a fuel shortage in the UK.

For centuries, the Welsh have been the butt of jokes by the English, accused of all kinds of dastardly deeds, the most prominent of which being the fornication betwixt a man and a ewe. The practice of bestiality has been around since the dawn of time. In 1683 Denmark passed a law that in one swift move outlawed both homosexuality and

bestiality. The punishment for such an infraction; being burnt to death. Although not an aficionado of sausage-fests, it seems a little harsh to tar both gays and animal-rapists with the same brush.

Anyway, I'm not talking about copulation with animals, the point I am trying to make is that the English are behaving like fucking sheep, like Lemmings leaping from a cliff.

Last September, a proposed barricade around certain petro-chemical plants was suggested. This call to arms was not taken with the same vigour as the previous action in September 2000. However, what seems to be the vast majority of England who read The Sun and The Daily Mail, were suddenly spurred on to a spate of panic buying.

For two days I was driving past ridiculous queues at Petrol Stations, looking on in awe and disbelief. Had I got it wrong? Was I being complacent and not preparing for the imminent fossil-fuel-free catastrophe? Well, no, in a word. I was exercising a degree of intelligence sadly lacking among many of my fellow countrymen. Let's not be sexist, there are a shit-load of dumb bitches out there too - you know who you are.

On the first day of panic-stricken citizens buying as much petrol as their cars could hold, I surfed over to the BBC and got the heads-up on what was going on out there. The official report from the Beeb was that two thirds of fuck-all was happening. Interesting. What were all these jizz-masters doing at the pumps?

Anyway, things carried on this way until practically every local Petrol Station had exhausted their supplies of unleaded. Then came the real "news" reports. The juicy gossip. Although I always try to prevent more than the average number of brain cells dying daily, I did happen to catch the frontpage of The Sun, running a headline along the lines of: "They told us not to panic, now the pumps are dry!". I know exactly what you're thinking, and you're right. That isn't a Sun headline. There are two things that give it away. One being the use of more than four words, and Two being the use of words containing in excess of one syllable. There is a very good reason that The Sun stick to their incredibly successful formula: LCD. Always appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator.

So, let's take a look at the facts. The country was told not to buy excessive amounts of fuel. However, doubtless millions of people did buy far more fuel than usual in a very short space of time, far exceeding the normal demand for petrol. When supply cannot keep up with demand, stocks fall short, end of story. So the headlines should have read something along the lines of: "They told us not to panic-buy. We didn't listen and now we're going to have to wait a couple of days for the Petrol Stations to get their next delivery. What in God's name is wrong with us?" But that would obviously require far too long an attention span, and be far too close to the truth for a tabloid headline.

The people queuing at the pumps, all doubtless tuned in to Galaxy 102 reminded me of not one, but ninety scenes from Shaun of the Dead. The vacant, yet determined stare of the un-dead, hell-bent on filling up with 95 Octane.

I try to explain people's actions in order to make them more bearable. Chinese Whispers is the best excuse I've thought up so far, the media being the whisperer and the general public being the whisperee. Not the usual Chinese Whispers, where a phrase such as "My Hard drive light is always on" translates to "It's a long hard night when I bring the porn." But the all new 'noughties' Chinese Whispers where "Stay calm, this is a temporary problem that will be resolved in no more than a few days" translates, quite understandably, to "omfg, wtf, go buy shit-loads of fuel as the entire industry is about to grind to a halt. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, what am I going to do?"

I dread to think how the public will react when an Extinction-Level Event hits our shores. Oh wait, we've already had the Avian Flu story, unfortunately there was no simple answer to the problem so most everyone just, well, conveniently forgot.

To conclude, the English public generally behave like a donkey following the carrot on the Media's stick. However, much like when you pretend to throw a ball for a dog and it runs off over the horizon at a rate of knots, the public thought they saw the ball go in the direction of 'Catastrophe', whereas the media had actually thrown it gently towards 'No Great Shakes'.

*No media moguls, members of the Great British public, dogs, donkeys, sheep, lemmings or even Welsh people were harmed in the writing of this article.

**The Sun is far from the worst offender. I remember seeing them running anti-BNP headlines a couple of years ago. Kudos to them.