From the crookde tmibres fo hunamtiy nohtnig staightr saw reve dame

I took my work laptop in to be fixed at my employer’s IT department this morning and while I was waiting I spotted this poster very prominently displayed on the office wall.

I asked the guy who was fixing my computer what he thought of it and he made a face to the rendering of which my written skills are unequal, as this sentence clearly demonstrates.

I asked what he thought, for example, of item 7 on the list (“Team members call out one another’s deficiencies and unproductive behaviours”), against which a score of 3.29 (of something) out of 5.00 (of something) had been awarded in March 2012, as against a score of 2.86 (of something) out of 5.00 (of something) in October 2011, a fall of 0.43 (of something). He said nothing - but did so in a way that I also find hard to describe.

I said that this scoring method meant that there must be 500 levels (of whatever that something is) at which “Team members call[ing] out one another’s deficiencies and unproductive behaviours” could be measured, each of which something would have to mean something if the system of measurement being used were to mean anything. He smiled an inscrutable smile and said that this was the boss’s idea and they had had a half day's training on it.

I’m not the best at reading people’s emotions but I had a strong feeling that his answer in fact meant something like “the whole thing is a load of bollocks and we all know it is, and the best way we can live with it is not to give a damn, otherwise we will all go mad.”

So I stuck my neck out and asked if he or anyone else at the training had asked their boss what the hell it was supposed to mean.

He smiled - more intelligibly than his last effort, I thought - and said, “She isn’t here any more.”

Now I ask you: what says more about the human condition – that no one said anything to her then or that she isn’t here now? Is my glass half empty, or half full?

Another raking from the pig-pen at Folly Farm

Here's one for future history books.

Both the following things have occurred within the organisation I work for in the past few days.

• Two parents accompanying their respective disabled children and sleeping in separate lockable dormitories were turned away from a residential kids' weekend because they did not have a CRB (police) check in place.
• A 15 year-old girl going for the first time to Spain as part of a youth group is staying alone with a local family for a week with no police check required.

In both cases my organisation complied fully with the regulations.

I think this is evidence to bear out my suspicion that the purpose of regulations like these and much health and safety legislation is not to protect people but to avoid litigation.

Let's all be open about it.

Smarting up? Dumbing down!

One of the people whose youth work I manage is 19. She works 18.5 hours a week planning and delivering work at a youth centre I oversee. She also works another 18.5 hours in another of our teams. Even at this age she's very good at her job and will become even better during the long career she hopefully has ahead of her. She’s bright, honest, hard-working, masters a brief easily, is pleasant to colleagues and young people, uses her initiative and already has a good overall grasp of the job.  I've just done her annual appraisal and marked her very highly.

She’s never been to college and admits she wasn’t that good at school. She’s not yet a qualified youth worker. As of 2010 you have needed a degree to become a full-timer, so my employer has put her on the training route at a university in London that offers the course. In fact they've decided to put her through the MA course, which will require her – alongside her 37 hours a week, a few of which we give her off for college – to study for a total of 2½ years, with one day a week attending the course and five – including Saturdays – working for us.

To summarise: that’s the equivalent of doing a BA and then an MA while working a full week, and in less time than it would normally take a full-time student to do the BA. And she is 19.

Today she came to me in a bit of a panic as she has to write an essay on Pierre Bourdieu and social positioning with reference to Traveller camps by this Thursday.

I asked if they had given her any background in post-modern theory. No. Did she know what post-modernism is? No. Had they given any guides to writing essays or studying more widely? No. But she knew how to use the Harvard referencing system. She was honest enough to say, but not in these words, that she knows, let alone understands, fuck all about the lot of it, and is unlikely to do so even when she has completed the essay. She was quite open about it, and that too is to her credit.

I am sad and I am angry; but more angry than sad. Who are we letting down more: her, for putting her through this and – because they will – making sure she passes; ourselves, for being damned fools who collude in our own emasculation; future employers, who will look at paper qualifications and see that all is well when it isn't; taxpayers, who have to pay for this travesty; young people, who have to pay for our folly; or society as a whole, for our setting the bar so low?

No gags today. Sorry.