Monday saw the neo-Stalinist Labour Party at its most vindictive. Last Friday talks between employers and the Fire Brigades Union had reached a point where agreement was a matter of tidying up the language on the long running pay deal. Then the nasty, vindictive, and entirely petty wreckers on the employers’ side moved in – and now the agreement is in tatters.

I am not a member of the FBU and would normally say that my sympathies lie rather a long way from their normal political and rather anarchic agenda. Today I am right behind them, although I would probably vote against any strike purely because I have never seen my time in the Fire Service as a “job”, but as a “vocation”. And, yes, I have managed to climb the promotion tree and enjoyed a career in the process. That is perhaps why I am so disgusted by the employers’ side deliberately wrecking an agreement for purely political reasons, and it simply re-inforces the contempt in which I have held them for some time. These are not people with the interests of their communities at heart. These are not the actions of people of honour or of good faith; they have the typical attitudes of jackals and hyenas – incompetents who resent the professionalism of a service they haven’t the balls to be a part of, but want to reduce that, instead, to their own usual levels of mediocrity.

Let me make it clear that I have not arrived at this position lightly. Too many years of watching these cretins wrestle with budgets they do not understand, policies they create out of ideology which they know will cost millions, and are unworkable or destructively damaging, but couldn’t give a damn as long as their petty demands are met. In one Local Authority area the Chairman of the “Public Protection Committee” – in law the body responsible for providing you and me with both a fire service and a police service, moved into the Headquarters, set up an office suite between the two service heads, and insisted that the mail to the Chief Fire Officer and to the Chief Constable be opened by his secretary and copied to him. Not only was he not authorised to do this, but he was, as an out of work miner, utterly incompetent to take or make policy decisions on the matters these professionals deal with every day.

Yep, the ASI has found a report informing MEPs how to spend as much taxpayers money as possible.

A colleague of Guido’s was hauled in before his Illustrious Leader Lady and warned that he is to be investigated for possible anything-ist attitudes and behaviour, whatever they are. His crime? Responding rather directly to a question from a friend about the ‘wit’ of someone in the friend’s brigade who had taken it upon himself to “modify” [read: nullify effectiveness – ed.] some protective equipment. This colleague is rather forthright – especially on the subject of half-baked and really idiotic ideas – and used irony (something he is very good at) to make his point.

Someone is obviously accessing, without authority, the e-mail system on the friend’s computer. We thought at first it might be their IT, but it isn’t. So…that narrows it down to someone on the station, or some clerical substitute for a fire fighter, who thinks it’s OK to read other people’s mail – the law says otherwise. The snooper, having found the e-mail and read it, admitting in an anonymous letter to the [ mistitled ] head of our organisation, that he/she [the snoop] had had to read the offending paragraph THREE times to understand it, then wrote to the head of our organisation suggesting that these remarks were made in seriousness, that said colleague had suggested that the person who had “modified” the equipment should be made to wear it at an incident involving certain chemicals (This is called Ironic Comment, folks) – and should be instantly dismissed for his “irresponsible and cavalier attitude!” Also, that the organisation should “review its recruitment policies to weed out such patently unsuitable people”. Oh, and he/she copied the letter to the Minister for Fire Services, pointing out that irresponsible remarks such as these “could be used to make political capital against the government” [again, anonymously-ed.].

Well, Guido has to say that he detests anonymous snoops. They deserve to be exposed as the nasty, mean minded, and filthy little oiks they are – then ostracised by all at the office; particular effort being made to ensure they know that you are taking steps to prevent them having access to your correspondence, files, or any other information. It is most unlikely to happen in this instance, however, and we are likely to lose one of the most dedicated and effective tutors we have. All because some oik has broken the law to spy on his/her colleague(s) and use the material for personal [politicial] gain.

What we have here is a misunderstood communication – having seen it, Guido can vouch for the fact that anyone who truly understood both the question and the response would instantly have seen the seriousness of the action which gave rise to it – and the irony in the answer. That makes him think that the anonymous snoop is most likely the moron who did the damage in the first place! And it also suggests that the idiot still does not comprehend the seriousness of his/her actions!

If Guido were the Chief Officer in this brigade he would now be instituting an investigation into the identity of the person who snooped. Why? Because they have broken the law and should be made to answer for it. They may have exposed a somewhat unwise exchange between two friends, but to do so they had to have accessed private data on a computer to which they did not have the right of access. The law in the UK provides some protection from our bosses snooping on our e-mail – it barely deters them because not many people know about it – but, it is still the right of the individual to enjoy private communication without prying. Recent court rulings have re-inforced this, here – the one exception being where the recipient or the sender is plotting a crime or transmitting material which is offensive or criminal in nature. Whoever it is should be exposed for another reason as well – they are patently a danger to the organisation, using a position which gives them access to information systems and files which may contain other sensitive information for the purposes of exposing it to interested groups or parties – why else make reference to its potential use “for political gain?”

This, probably more than anything else, exposes yet another lie in our wonderfully “modern” Britain. The new head is a woman, one who does not hesitate to use bullying tactics when it suits her and at the same time use the gender card to ensure that any man who falls foul of her ideas is labelled sexist. She tried it that morning. We will see what the Union has to say about this, but personally Guido hopes it exposes the entire sham

A free and fair society? Here? Try the other one – it has bells on it.

Well, boys and girls, looking at the ol’ calendar in the ol’ SysTray, I see that it’s that “special time of the year” once again, and time to rerun this ol’ Seasonal Favorite:

Dear Editor—I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there are no Canadians.
Papa says, ‘If you see it in the blog québécois, it’s so.’
Please tell me the truth, are there Canadians?
Virginia O’Hanlon
115 West Ninety-fifth Street

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there are Canadians. They exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Canadians! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Canadians! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Canadians, but even if you did not see Canadians coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Canadians, but that is no sign that there are no Canadians. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Canadians! Thank God! they live, and they live forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, they will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

the blog québécois

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