My thanks to today's Your Thanet for this item! As I was unable to reproduce their piccie, I have transcribed, as accurately as possible, a sign on the 3rd Floor at TDC, spotted by an intrepid Your Thanet reporter at last month's Full Council Meeting and photographed.
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I can forgive flu spelled as flue and singular when plural is needed ( although this tells us something about the poor level of education of the probably highly paid author, with possibly the most generous pension scheme in Thanet) but what I cannot forgive is the arrogance implied in this notice.
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"the germs on commuters is pretty awful" seems to me to sum up the arrogant attitude of staff employed by TDC to serve us, the community and tax-payers.
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Fellow citizens who pay the wages and generous pensions of illiterate and arrogant Local Government Officers might just be offended as I am at the implication that we are dirty, unwashed and germ ridden.
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Most of us might not enjoy a tax-payer funded TDC car-loan; a generous motor mileage allowance and reserved parking in Mill Lane that TDC staff can enjoy and may just have to use the Loop, as dirty unwashed plebs but please remember TDC staff, that your status used to be described as 'public servants' and we the public, your paymasters, do not like insults being added to the injuries of a catalogue of your inept and incompetent administration.
12 comments:
I am surprised they haven't all been issued with decontamination suits for when they have to deal with us their employers.
Bertie
Your post reminds again of the story I recounted recently.
When I was a child (and the noise of Noah building that boat was awful etc) we lived in the caretaker flat above a local County Council welfare clinic and ambulance station.
My dad was ambulance driver.
A weekly clinic there was for the former Suffolk Regiment men who had survived being POWs of the Japanese. One of my tasks on Chest Clinic day was to stoke up the boiler fire because that is where the physios immediately burnt the expectorants.
It was some time in the 60s that the term "Social Worker" first made noises in the Clinic Environ.
The idea that someone could serve just one fifth of an apprenticeship and emerge to call themself a "Professional" (One year training)caused bemusement.
The first of these two breeds duly appeared (I don't know whether CQSW existed then but of that ilk) and decided to enter the Clinic across the ambulance forecourt and into staff entrance.
Even the consultant Chest Physician would not do that. If he was new to the Clinic he came to the front door and knocked. A wise, as well as courteous, strategy to first introduce himself.
To cross the garden to use the alternative back door meant passing the scrutiny of our Airedale. To use the staff entrance meant crossing the territory of the resident Pit Bull aka our dad ... the forecourt.
To the non-public sector wiser eye there would have been tell tale signs. A highly polished outside brass tap. Milk bottles that were not just rinsed but washed dried and polished so the milkman would not ever say there were dirty bottles at the clinic etc
A male and female of the species Social Workus Public Sectorus made their way across the forecourt.
The male variety snorted back footballer style and spat on the forecourt.
This was gonna be good. Out goes Dad.
"Do you remember the days of TB son ? Coughs and sneezes spread diseases and so forth ? You can clean that up"
I now know that Social Workers are trained to a naieve belief that assertiveness can be an alternative to aggression or submission.
My brother (later RAF liaison officer with SAS Oman 72/73) and myself preferred the immediate surrender option. But the social worker was not wise to this.
He told Dad if he wanted it cleaned he is the ambulance driver so get and do it.
Dad agreed readily but set out his terms ... namely he would use the social worker's suit jacket to that end. His further terms were that the social worker would still be inside it.
I recall an occasion at Primary School when my older brother stood mesmerised as this kid said "See my finger see my thumb see my fist now here it come" I was running to the scene shouting "Chin him quick" But older brother stood listening and got a nose flattened and blood everywhere.
And so it was with the social worker who stood in some disbelief searching silently for his next fine example of assertiveness training as our dad chinned him.
He was not even in a recovery positions as he was dragged by his ankles through the offending glob.
"You know I will report you" said the social worker as he limped into the Clinic.
"I got an inkling about something else too" says the old fella "You'll be working in shirt sleeves the rest of the day because that jacket ain't going inside"
Come the day the ow fella is called to see the MOH (then still in charge of ambulance discipline etc)
"Right" says the MOH "I take a very dim view of a report I have had of your conduct. Am I to understand that we are giving you so little work you have resorted to creating your own caualties ?"
The MOH sent an informative memo to the Social Services about avoiding cross infection.
The guy who bred corgis he exercised on a gang lead ? The dogs got a concurrent signal to crap on the pavement outside the clinic. He went home with the crap in his pocket ... dad was laying in ambush the other side of the wall with the littkle coke shovel to scoop it up.
Seem to remember I got the job of cleaning it.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit on this one Bertie? I doubt if the minion responsible has anything like the views you prescribe about the great Thanet unwashed.
Methinks that you are becoming increasingly bitter and twisted in your old age. Perhaps it is time to go out and do something useful with your own life than to continually whinge about how poorly others are are doing on the flimsiest (and always disputable) of evidence.
Or why don't you address the real problems of our age, like poverty, the increasing national budget deficit, the looming pensions crisis, the murder of babies by unfit carers or parents, etc., etc., etc..
Your clear hatred of all things TDC has made your blog almost missable and is turning you into a laughing stock. You most certainly will not influence or change anything with your current tactics.
Or perhaps you could turn your attention to our beloved Nottingham, who purports to be all things to all men, and the saviour of Thanet and the universe. I am astounded to see on the TDC website that the scrutiny committee of which he is a member has cancelled its September meeting through lack of business. And yet according to Mr.Wonderful everything is wrong at our council. To me this shows that not only is the councillor a straw man himself, but is also failing to do his duty to raise the issues of which he has apparently so many concerns. Which presumably then are all just blog talk?
In view he is now proved to be not only vain and arrogant, but also incompetent, lazy and useless.
Discuss.
Have to agree 12.35, that this item is a bit light-weight but what the heck, it's the silly season and it makes a change from:
1. Euroferries dreams.
2. EKO LLP being unaccountable to democratic control.
3. A Leader with 2 adverse standards rulings.
4. A deputy with 1 adverse standards ruling.
5. The waste of tax payers money in legal fees for items 3 &4.
6. EKAP exposure of TDC's loss to taxpayer,possibility for corruption and inept financial management in:
a. maritime Services
b. Housing repairs & maint
c. endemic disregard for cPR's.
7. Absent Cllrs booked in wrongly.
8. Meetings with developers not minuted.
9. Source of hospitality obfuscated when developer freely admits providing it.
10. Acceptance by TDC of a developers sponsorship when a live planning application is before TDC.
11.Political parties being offered £25,000 each as political contributions.
12. Erecting security fencing for private allotments using tax-payers money allocated for municipal allottments improvements.
13. Unwillingness to recover £45,000 for Dreamland Security fencing or enforce compulsory purchase after owners failure to restore or repair a listed Scenic Railway burned down 20 months ago.
14. Closing toilets whilst sponsoring dubious entertainment.
Goodness, me. The sun is shining and I could be here all afternoon at this rate.
Yes, but you make my point for me. Your forensic investigation capability would no doubt be able to uncover the same or worse in any business, council equivalent or government in any country anywhere in the world. The fact that you choose to pick on some aspect of TDC almost every day and then ruthlessly go for the jugular of staff and councillors to the point where it seems to the bystander that you wish to destroy them. This is not normal behaviour. Where does this come from? Is there something sinister in your background that we should know? What is your history? Can we help?
12.35 get back to your tax funded job in the Council, and leave Bertie alone.
17:40(also presumably 12.35), the problem I have is quite simple. I would like to see open, competent and highly principled and more effective local governance from TDC, particularly when it is a Conservative Council.
Of course, it is always easier to snipe from the side-lines than be in the thick of the many problems that TDC has to cope with, but there are, I believe, too many areas and issues that seem to need addressing which would indicate the pressing need for a rigorous self-examination by the controlling group at TDC in 'partnership' with all its Councillors of both main parties.
Lets face it some TDC staff are arrogant, be interesting when some of them have to come down to earth as the public sector gets slashed.
Tony, you have just reminded me of this from the Minutes of the Governance and Audit Committee meeting of June 2008:
"Councillor Cameron raised a query in relation to a question he had asked of an officer in relation to ‘asset disposal policies’. He was asked ‘why do you want to know’? As a Councillor he did not expect to be asked this. Sue McGonigal suggested that the question may have been asked to better understand what information was required. He added that there was too much secrecy and that it could have been a freedom of information disclosure. Councillor Moores added that he had had the same problem trying to get simple answers to simple questions.......".
What hope for us pleb rate-payers if our Cllrs, who are meant to be running TDC, complain that they are treated like this by 'their employees'.
Indeed Bertie; methinks the Cabinet Member's protest too much.
The Cabinet member posting should be mindful that the Apostles know everything?
D3
WHY DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ............I was under the illusion that all information was avaiable bar that which is restricted makes you question who is in charge maybe the lunatics are running the asylem and we realy are in The Matrix, NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS ON PLANET THANET
The only sick people in Thanet is the Council..Promoting fairtrade, green issues, yet all drive to work. Last sat I visited the market in the Old town. There I saw the Mayor and all the officals, 3 policeman. 1 traffic warden, 5 offical cars coned off for parking, was this all in aid of opening a market with only 7 stalls. If so what a waste of public resources.
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