Mat’s Blog

The one with all the Striking November 26, 2010

I don’t know what it is that annoys me so much about people going on strike. Maybe it’s because I am grateful to be in full time employment and grateful that I enjoy what I do; maybe it’s that I know I have a commitment to the girlfriend, Elvis, Dexter, Ralph, Percy and Nyssa to keep being able to pay for the things in my world that need paying for. Whatever it is, people who strike always hit me as ungrateful and childish. After all, isn’t it a child who will shout if they don’t get their own way? And scream? And throw their toys out of the pram? Lets face it, that’s pretty much where that expression comes from in this circumstance. Anyway. Why does this work? Why? I don’t understand.

Lets look at a few. The Scottish FA had a bit of an issue this weekend because the referees all went on strike. At this moment in time I think they are planning on flying foreign referees in to  cope with the demand and keep the games on (though if the forecast is to be believed I expect half of them will be called off because of snow). And why are they on strike? Because managers and players criticise them. Well, boo-frickin-hoo. I expect some of my staff criticise me. I know some of my previous managers have (and mostly rightly so) but it is how you take it on board and deal with it that is the issue. The Scottish Referees have made no friends doing this, least of all the lower league’s games who were all called off as a matter of course. It seems foolish, really, to alienate the very people on which you rely to make a living.

And this week, Quelle surprise, the French are once again on strike. They seem to strike a lot? I mean, they strike so often that we over here in Blighty have to have a system for lorries (operation stack) to deal with what happens when they strike at the ports. What I don’t understand on this occasion is that obviously, a strike isn’t having the effect they want, if they strike once every couple of months about it. They need to use their foolish French intitiative and come up with something new, a different way of getting peoples attention. The boy who cried Loup, if you will. Nobody cares, the French, get over it.

Similarly, the tube strikes. I have blogged about these before too – and, to a lesser extent, the post office. They all seem to want to keep things exactly as they are in the face of a changing economy, especially royal mail in this instance where times have moved on and not as much cash comes in through letter posting since the vastly superior emails came into common use. In fact, if solicitors start using email like the rest of us (the Mother has recently informed me that they have, which is scary) then there will be precious little that isn’t mail ordered in the system.

Add to that the fire fighters. I noted with interest like I said that their ill-advised, potential-death-ridden plan was called off at the last minute. Almost like they were never actually going to do it anyway. Now those of you who read this blog relatively often will remember this

Well, predictably, since putting it online I have received several not-so friendly comments. One of which I deleted as, guttingly, I couldn’t think of a witty enough response to it. I kind of wish I hadn’t deleted it and thought about it more, but I was raging at the time. So, here are the comments. Theyre in a strange order, though.

As for food; it’s not been bad; the worst I had was some nachos that someone else didn’t want at work, and the odd nice coffee but apart from that it’s OK. Not great, but OK. I would have liked to have gone to the gym more this week but with the return of minitwang, coupled with the fact that this week I am super tired. The problem with my week off for Dublin, as awesome as it was, was that I didn’t really get any rest. Add on top of that the Lightning Seeds mini-stalk straight after I was back to work and lo and behold I am still exhausted and Christmas is coming up.Sigh. I am a foolish.