Chris Grayling - "Hopelessly Full of Shit"

I'm several days late on this, as I've been busy, but I just can't let such rubbish pass without comment. On Tuesday, the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, gave a speech comparing parts of "Broken Britain" to Baltimore, as seen in The Wire. Basically, crime is rife and our society's going to hell in a handcart. The remedy for this, as ever, is to hang 'em and flog 'em (more prisons, tougher sentences, the same old Tory bollocks).

The politics of it irritates me, of course, but what really gets my goat is Grayling's deployment of my favourite show as an argumentative prop. Some enterprising Beeb journalist asked him how much of the show he'd actually seen and was rewarded by Grayling's admission that he'd seen "most" of the first season. There are five, by the way. Had Mr Grayling bothered to delve a little further into his own source material, he would have found that the show's writer, David Simon, has little or no time for the kind of "remedies" Grayling espouses. That's the point of the show.

Here's Simon on Graylingesque tough guy politics:

"It is possible that a few thinking viewers, after experiencing a season or two of The Wire, might be inclined, the next time they hear some politician declaring that with more prison cells, more cops, more lawyers, and more mandatory sentences that the war on drugs is winnable, to say, aloud: "You are hopelessly full of shit."

Grayling likely wasn't aware of the show's message, as, by his own admission, he hasn't seen it. It takes a certain kind of arrogance to use the work of someone completely opposed to everything you stand for to buttress your own "argument", though. That's the Tories, though, I'm afraid.

Death by Bullshit

I'm knee deep in job applications at the moment, which is an inevitable and necessary, if tedious, part of life, but the process is rendered all the worse by so many organisations' love of management bullshit.

The language slays me. Yesterday I was tapping out a cover letter addressed to a Director of Continuous Improvement, for crissakes. That isn't a job title. That's meaningless. You might as well call yourself the Officer for Being Good. A small piece of me dies every time I have to deal with such an organisation and, worse, have to do so seriously.

Sometimes I even have to attempt to play their stupid game myself, never more so than when, shudder, filling out an application form. These companies are the absolute worst. Instead of the old CV and cover letter routine, these organisations, some of whom contain literally thousands of people and positions, make you fill out a generic application form with the same questions for all their positions. They have horrendous, generic questions like Show how you have exercised tolerance of diversity, with examples. By not being a racist? Isn't that enough? I once managed a meeting with a black person without assaulting them? Do you really want me to say that? It's humiliating. I'd absolutely love to be able to simply ignore organisations that require you to fill in application forms, but I'm nowhere near that secure in my "career", tragically.

Then, assuming you manage to hold your nose for long enough to wade through the rivers of bullshit and actually get the job, you get someone with such dreadful "communication skills" that you literally can't understand what they're talking about a good proportion of the time. I insist that it's not just that I'm too stupid to understand them, either. I've got a bloody Master's (he cried in anguish, more to himself than anyone else)! In theory! I've sat through enough waffle in my time.

I detest it. Why do they do it? Surely, surely they can see the ridiculousness of speaking in such a way? Thank God for the Campaign for Plain English. I need a job with them. Failing that, my sincerest wish is to somehow get myself into the position to influence an organisation's communications. My only Mission Statement will be to do away with all facets of management studies and what passes for its language.

Places to Visit on your Gap Year

Interesting addendum to this post: the world's first cocaine bar. It sounds like a speakeasy to me.

Also, note the prices. Outrageously cheap.

The Health of Nations

So, the Democrats are in charge of, well, everything, at the moment and what they want is healthcare reform, dammit. Unfortunately, they, led by the Pres, have run into typically staunch opposition from the American right.

Ever was it so, but this fight is of particular interest to Britons (well, a couple of us) because one of the weapons in this particular war happens to be our very own National Health Service. Derided by the right, or, specifically, by the Club for Growth (as opposed to the ever popular Club for Recession), the NHS is being held up as the very model of "socialism" and all things godless and evil.

Now, there's more than enough commentary out there in support of the NHS, so there's no need for me to dwell there, but I would say that this has just been a fascinating case study in cultural difference. Of course not everybody in the States thinks of the NHS as a Stalinesque socialist monstrosity and neither does everybody in the UK think particularly highly of the system, but the coming together of even the more moderate right-leaning political analysts with, frankly, the majority of the British people is something to behold. There is absolutely no common ground between these groups (language aside). There is very, very little trust towards anyone approaching the US right in this country. It seems they've all been tarred by association with their swivel-eyed extremist ideological associates. It makes me wonder whether this country was ever particularly pro-American, as is often said. We are literally and figuratively miles apart.

Love this City

In the spirit of the last post, I snapped this as I was going over Blackfriars Bridge yesterday on the 63 bus.