Except of course I am not. I wanted a title that had a job in it and there aren’t many finer examples of the job/song fusion than Glen Campbell’s classic.
Since my last post there have been a number of job related events in the news, some of which echo my comments. If you recall it was a well constructed discussion on the changing face of our language, focussing on what is or isn’t acceptable at a given point in history very poor excuse to use the word c**t in my blog.
Messrs Ross and Brand put some of my theories to the test (not sure that they actually read the blog, probably just heard from a friend, Ricky or Jimmy or someone) by ringing up a well-beloved icon of British comedy and recounting what one of them did to his darling grand daughter over the back of a sofa. good family entertainment. Obviously this caused outrage when it was broadcast with the BBC receiving well over 1 complaint, unless you count the Grandfather in question then it’s just the 1. You know the rest and now (not so) poor Russell and (could never be described as) poor (in a million years) Jonathon are either out of a job or on unpaid (playing tennis in the) garden leave (unpaid – I know and with christmas coming, how will he cope?)
Thus 2 blokes leave work because, ostensibly, they were doing their jobs, as they were paid to do, as they were, however ill-advisedly, allowed to do.
Last week, no one can have failed to have been moved by the grotesque way in which baby P was made to suffer by the people he should have been able to trust most. It is totally beyond my comprehension how his mother, her lover and the lodger were able to do or allow to be done the things he suffered. I hope that one day the enormity of what they did will hit them with 1000 times the force of the kick in the teeth/stomach/groin they will undoubtedly get from some of the people they will encounter in the prison system. It probably won’t though.
And the people who could, perhaps should, have prevented them from being able to purpetrate their vile acts, were they doing their job? I don’t want to point the finger here, I think (and I will expand on this in my next entry) that a lot of people are unable to do the job they want to. I am sure that at some point each one of the careworkers that encountered baby p, along his sad little journey through life, wanted to scoop him up and take him somewhere safe, somewhere 17 month old children deserve to be, in a warm, loving family where they will be cared for and nurtured. But that isn’t their job and in doing their job, one presumes to the letter as each and everyone of them is still in post, they were unable to intervene in a decisive and, ultimately, life saving way for this child.
Some people have expressed their outrage that a pair of middle-aged men were allowed to go on air in the way they did and, well, do their job to the best of their abilities, offending a minority as they do. How outraged should we be that the whole of our ‘care industry’ are not as free to offend a few parents and to do their jobs sufficiently well to save the life of baby p and improve the lot of countless children, abused and neglected.