The Tory government as always proves it is in government for the rich. They vilify those who get welfare benefits, picking on a few extreme examples to stir up scape goat feelings against all the poor. They have hit Tax Credit payments and so reduced the income for 70 per cent of working families. The minimum wage is still kept excessively low and has not increased in line with real inflation. It is now considered lower than a living wage, the minimum wage is in fact a pauper's wage and less. The Tory party have been careful not to anger pensioners and kept their welfare benefits and incomes sacrosanct. There is good reason this has happened as it a fact pensioners vote more than any other part of the nation. However, there are rich pensioners who claim benefits they don't need to actually receive. Just as there are pensioners who have not contributed to society by working their entire lives. Just as there are people quite capable to work who have chosen not to work and continue to receive benefits.
If the UK continues on this course there are some inevitable consequences. The poor will continue to get poorer. Crime will increase, the toll on the NHS will get higher, state pensions, state welfare, state education and income will all reduce. The deficit we are told is going down, but the word "deficit" is used to describe the amount of money still being lent by the UK to survive. The future fuel energy costs of the UK will increase as there is no sustainable plan to encourage green energy. In winter people will die in their homes because they are unable to heat them. The building projects of the future do not exist. The UK needs homes. So those who own property will see the values increase but will not be able to move home because the costs of a new home would be too high. Proportionately fewer and fewer new mortgages will be taken up. Over crowding in properties will increase. Landlord's will maximise the income of properties by illegally converting them or building sheds in gardens. Ghettos will grow and gentrification of the better places will increase. Society is gradually becoming segregated by choice and poverty.
Here is a fact. Poor people spend more money than rich people do. Poor people have no choice, because they are poor the proportionately spend higher amounts. This in turn goes back into the economy instantaneously. It is the poor who create liquidity, not the rich. Yet this is not recognised. Certainly not by the Tory's. The future is very bleak if another term of Tory takes the ballot box. Given the hubris of the entire present cabinet I cross my fingers and truly hope they don't.
Saturday, 29 June 2013
Sunday, 16 June 2013
Horrors of Open Plan Offices
Whoever invented the open plan office needs a good kicking. I'm sure they are probably hiding under a table somewhere, in a conventional office. Because if they had any brains they'd realise there was a hit list and this is one individual who must be near the top. If not on the top, even, in doing a Google search there is some vagueness as to the original inventor. The word "architect" crops up. Yes those people who design things for others but don't give a damn about the results, otherwise they would of designed them better in the first place and worked or lived in the places they designed. The hypocrisy is they don't.
Open plan offices are a cauldron of noise, they are unbelievably difficult to concentrate in, because there is always some idiot who speaks up loud or because of their own insecurities and psychologically unbalanced mind desperately seek attention. In the open plan office they can get all the attention they want. Whether this is in talking about what they saw on TV, their pets, their family, sports. The subject is irrelevant. This is probably the biggest bugbear of any open plan office. Some employees need for silence to do calculations, read, or undertake any complex task requiring concentration it's essential. The open plan office takes this away. Those individuals who have these difficult tasks are then under stress and strain, not just to do their work but also not to make mistakes. It's not like they are colouring in a picture by numbers, what they are doing is difficult and their need for clarity is essential. Therefore mistakes happen and in business those mistakes can cost money. Whilst an employer may see the advantage of cramming in employees tight like battery hens, they rather not consider these other costs.
It is mind boggling how employers mix functions of office workers under the open plan office. When mixed all out office war can take place. For example, a group of people who are constantly on the telephone should not be put next to a group who barely use the phone. It is as though the telephone users intentionally want to stop or harass the non users from doing their work. Their job involves communication, not thinking and there is a blindness to understanding someone else may need to concentrate. They talk normally or loudly, they don't try to subdue their voice. They fail to understand or see the effect of verbal diarrhoea.
In an open plan office individual's are more likely to be interrupted while they work. They are seen not just as sitting at a desk and getting on with the job, they are seen as available to others. Available to be spoken to, when they would rather just get on with it. Some people also can not help but talk while they work, and try and engage others in what they are doing. Like the telephone employees it's as though they are looking for approval, as they discuss items or work. By discussion they take away their own decision making process, they share it. If uncomfortable in making a decision or because they don't have confidence in their own abilities. These people are a hindrance as they are being overpaid, and not doing the job they should be doing. But they are human beings, and it could be the personal need for social contact which makes them this way. Especially if they don't get the chance to speak to others outside of the workplace.
Hot desking. This is another useless concept bought in by employers with the advent of open plan offices in a way to reduce costs. No office worker has a dedicated desk, they may have an area but not a dedicated desk. Unless it so happens they have a disability. Then they do have a dedicated desk. However, by dedicating a desk to this individual there then becomes less choice for the remaining hot desking employees to sit anywhere else.
Windows. In the open plan office when one person opens a window the draught is felt fifty metres away in another part of the office which may be quite a bit cooler. On account of convection currents and sun light streaming through the window. Further to this some office workers like a little bit of air and may have a high body temperature, whereas those who like as much warmth as possible because they enjoy a hotter climate don't like the window open.
It is with a great deal of irony how open plan office may even be cited with architectural awards. Awards for all kinds of reasons, the most natural light, the most eco friendly, the most sociable, however the one thing they should be given an award for they are not. This is as suitable places to work in. The employees end up facing the brunt of it them. This especially goes for the newer offices. The ones where the toilets never work properly, the air conditioning is ineffective or only effective in a certain part of the building so every other employee is baked like a jacket potato, or worse frozen. Lets not forget to mention how it is employers think when a lot of their employees are crammed into an open plan office those employees will require less stationary, or less toilet roll than they did previously.
The resounding effect of open plan offices is a great deal more stress and a reduction in productivity. You can tell the employer to you are blue in the face, but they don't hear. At which the whip is cracked and you're asked why an urgent piece of work has not been actioned. Oops, as you think back to a piece of paper which happened to be handy while sitting on the crapper.
Truthfully, open plan offices stink, in more than one way.
Open plan offices are a cauldron of noise, they are unbelievably difficult to concentrate in, because there is always some idiot who speaks up loud or because of their own insecurities and psychologically unbalanced mind desperately seek attention. In the open plan office they can get all the attention they want. Whether this is in talking about what they saw on TV, their pets, their family, sports. The subject is irrelevant. This is probably the biggest bugbear of any open plan office. Some employees need for silence to do calculations, read, or undertake any complex task requiring concentration it's essential. The open plan office takes this away. Those individuals who have these difficult tasks are then under stress and strain, not just to do their work but also not to make mistakes. It's not like they are colouring in a picture by numbers, what they are doing is difficult and their need for clarity is essential. Therefore mistakes happen and in business those mistakes can cost money. Whilst an employer may see the advantage of cramming in employees tight like battery hens, they rather not consider these other costs.
It is mind boggling how employers mix functions of office workers under the open plan office. When mixed all out office war can take place. For example, a group of people who are constantly on the telephone should not be put next to a group who barely use the phone. It is as though the telephone users intentionally want to stop or harass the non users from doing their work. Their job involves communication, not thinking and there is a blindness to understanding someone else may need to concentrate. They talk normally or loudly, they don't try to subdue their voice. They fail to understand or see the effect of verbal diarrhoea.
In an open plan office individual's are more likely to be interrupted while they work. They are seen not just as sitting at a desk and getting on with the job, they are seen as available to others. Available to be spoken to, when they would rather just get on with it. Some people also can not help but talk while they work, and try and engage others in what they are doing. Like the telephone employees it's as though they are looking for approval, as they discuss items or work. By discussion they take away their own decision making process, they share it. If uncomfortable in making a decision or because they don't have confidence in their own abilities. These people are a hindrance as they are being overpaid, and not doing the job they should be doing. But they are human beings, and it could be the personal need for social contact which makes them this way. Especially if they don't get the chance to speak to others outside of the workplace.
Hot desking. This is another useless concept bought in by employers with the advent of open plan offices in a way to reduce costs. No office worker has a dedicated desk, they may have an area but not a dedicated desk. Unless it so happens they have a disability. Then they do have a dedicated desk. However, by dedicating a desk to this individual there then becomes less choice for the remaining hot desking employees to sit anywhere else.
Windows. In the open plan office when one person opens a window the draught is felt fifty metres away in another part of the office which may be quite a bit cooler. On account of convection currents and sun light streaming through the window. Further to this some office workers like a little bit of air and may have a high body temperature, whereas those who like as much warmth as possible because they enjoy a hotter climate don't like the window open.
It is with a great deal of irony how open plan office may even be cited with architectural awards. Awards for all kinds of reasons, the most natural light, the most eco friendly, the most sociable, however the one thing they should be given an award for they are not. This is as suitable places to work in. The employees end up facing the brunt of it them. This especially goes for the newer offices. The ones where the toilets never work properly, the air conditioning is ineffective or only effective in a certain part of the building so every other employee is baked like a jacket potato, or worse frozen. Lets not forget to mention how it is employers think when a lot of their employees are crammed into an open plan office those employees will require less stationary, or less toilet roll than they did previously.
The resounding effect of open plan offices is a great deal more stress and a reduction in productivity. You can tell the employer to you are blue in the face, but they don't hear. At which the whip is cracked and you're asked why an urgent piece of work has not been actioned. Oops, as you think back to a piece of paper which happened to be handy while sitting on the crapper.
Truthfully, open plan offices stink, in more than one way.
Saturday, 15 June 2013
The British Class System
There has always been a class struggle in the UK. To state otherwise is being blind. The worst part about this struggle is how the entire British population are blamed for the sins of only a select few. What always comes to mind is the old colonial British Empire. The lust for greed and riches from far off lands wasn't something the general British people wanted to do. It was a sense of dominance carried by the upper-class elite. It was also these person who reaped the benefits of pillaging the British Empire. Not ordinary working class struggling Joe Bloggs. When I look at the way some continents view the UK I can see their envy and hatred. It is deep seated in how the British came to their lands and took. Yet, were they to see the poverty suffered by the lower and working classes of the UK at the time there might be some sympathy. To imagine a hundred or two hundred years ago the general populace of the UK were ill educated, poor and mere plebs to the rest of society. We were no more enlightened than the general populace of say Pakistan or India now. Or even those poor subservient classes of China. It is only those who see themselves above the rest of us who gained by keeping everyone in their place. Like the Indian caste system. A very similar societal norm was indigenous to the UK. But this is not elaborated on in history books and clues can be gathered from political history. From the Labour movement, from equal rights and one vote for each adult, regardless of gender.
So in today's modern UK we see a threat from terrorists and extremists who perceive us as rich, slovenly and decadent, but are so wrong. Were they to know and understand how tough it has been for common society and the worker, the poverty stricken they might feel different. Education can be a leveller, just as can be winning the lottery. Unfortunately for the most of us the common threads of society, NHS, education, politics are all being butchered. Eaten away by economic cuts, moves to the centre ground and meddling politicians who think they know better how to organize something than the experts. Lastly not forgetting the cauldron of religion which acts to segregate the peoples further. Multi social groupings don't work, multi culturalism is a fragile concept which again can be torn to pieces by the want of poverty and a voice.
Maybe the ideals of communism would be an answer to it all. But then maybe not just as Animal Farm portrayed. Inherently human beings are selfish, whether they're on two legs or four. An societies are divided by classes, classes which will always be salient and tangible. The class system is here to stay regardless of what is ever thought, written or deliberated. Accept it and get on with it.
So in today's modern UK we see a threat from terrorists and extremists who perceive us as rich, slovenly and decadent, but are so wrong. Were they to know and understand how tough it has been for common society and the worker, the poverty stricken they might feel different. Education can be a leveller, just as can be winning the lottery. Unfortunately for the most of us the common threads of society, NHS, education, politics are all being butchered. Eaten away by economic cuts, moves to the centre ground and meddling politicians who think they know better how to organize something than the experts. Lastly not forgetting the cauldron of religion which acts to segregate the peoples further. Multi social groupings don't work, multi culturalism is a fragile concept which again can be torn to pieces by the want of poverty and a voice.
Maybe the ideals of communism would be an answer to it all. But then maybe not just as Animal Farm portrayed. Inherently human beings are selfish, whether they're on two legs or four. An societies are divided by classes, classes which will always be salient and tangible. The class system is here to stay regardless of what is ever thought, written or deliberated. Accept it and get on with it.
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