Awareness

I've just read "Small Things Like These" by Claire Keegan, a really beautifully written book, which makes a very important point, in a very gentle way, about being aware & doing something about things that are wrong . It really made me think.

We are aware on so many levels. We are conscious of our surroundings & sensations. We can feel. All our senses heighten our awareness. Our conscious brain is our mechanism to think, perceive & understand. We can override our instincts, our conscience, our awareness when something isn't right. Sometimes we don't want to "put our head above the parapet". We don't want to "rock the boat" & speak out. We desire "a quiet life".

 

I really understand why that happens. Dissent can be difficult & painful. It often takes bravery.

Katharine Gunn, who worked at GCHQ, said "we don’t live in a society which is transparent, fair and just". Terry Brian disclosed what was going on at Winterbourne View. Claire Gilham, a district Judge, spoke out about hostage taking & violence. Shahmir Sanni alleged that the leave campaign broke campaign rules to win the Brexit vote. Harry Templeton challenged Robert Maxwell about his pensions fraud at the Mirror.... There are a huge number of people in the UK who would not be silenced by others, despite being threatened, excluded & losing jobs . 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/09/i-had-a-moral-duty-whistleblowers-on-why-they-spoke-up

They stood for what they believed in. They refused to stay silent about wrongding they were aware of. There is beginning to be a change in our culture now - whistleblowing, Me Too & anti bullying for example are becoming more acceptable. But it's still easy to ignore or demonise dissenters & whistleblowers.

Every single one of us needs to try to be aware & if we know that something is wrong we must have the courage to act. There is so much wrong in the world today it seems overwhelming. But each one of us is able to change the world for the better when we work together.

Dominic Raab - Bullying / Robustness / Abrasiveness - People Management

Bullying - An ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that causes physical, social and/or psychological harm intentionally. It can involve an individual or a group misusing their power, or perceived power, over one or more persons who feel unable to stop it from happening.

Bullying isn't - single episodes of social rejection or dislike, single acts of nastiness or spite, random acts of aggression or intimidation, mutual arguments, disagreements or fights.

There is a difference between management & leadership. A manager controls a group or individual in order to achieve a specified objective. A leader  influences, motivates, and enables others to contribute to the organization's success, setting the tone and the culture for that particular organization. The question is what is the best way to achieve good performance from people working for you & what example should a leader set?

The problem with Dominic Raab is that he seems to feel that positive ways of leading a team don't work as well as negative ones. He is undoubtedly an able man. He is a Grammar school boy who studied Law at Oxbridge. He has held ministerial posts in Justice, the Foreign Office, Housing, Brexit & been Deputy Prime Minister. So is obviously valued by the Conservatives.

He faced 8 formal complaints by at least 24 civil servants in 3 Whitehall departments going back to 2021, which led to the Tolley enquiry. We don't know how many informal complaints there have been, but it isn't unreasonable to imagine that this is part of a pattern of behaviour & there were probably more unofficial complaints.

Having seen much of the coverage of this sorry affair I have reflected on my professional life as a headteacher. I know how difficult it can be to deal with bullying effectively in schools. I also know that there are effective ways of getting good performance from a team. 

1. Be Transparent.
2. Set Clear Expectations. Define your goals and intended outcomes
3. Praise Recognize and Reward Good Work.
4. Don't Micromanage. Provide autonomy to your employees
5. Encourage Diversity.
6. Make work enjoyable
   
7. Create A Positive Company Culture. Facilitate open, ongoing communication and collaboration
8. Identify your employees' needs.
9. Optimize your workflows and processes.
10. Provide open access to organizational knowledge.

I will work hard for a boss who knows his / her job, works hard, respects those who work with him/her, praises achievement & provides development & training where it is needed. I won't work anything like as well for someone I don't respect & who treats me badly.

That is the lesson Dominic Raab & his like need to learn - Priti Patel, John Bercow, Gavin Williamson, Liam Byrne, Christina Rees. A Unite survey found that 25% of parliamentary staff working for MP's had experienced or witnessed bullying in the offices of MPs, while a GMB survey found 20% of 68 respondents reported having personally experienced behaviour that may constitute bullying and /or harassment from their MP employer. 

It could possibly be that these people are wimps who can't take the heat in the kitchen. It could be that staff are "activists" rising up against their masters in a "passive aggressive" way as Raab said. But actually the bottom line is that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck & quacks like a duck then the chances are it is a duck!

 

Uk Pay Structures & Artificial Intelligence

Currently hundreds of thousands of people are taking or will take strike action over pay & conditions in the UK - Nurses, Ambulance workers, Junior Doctors, Passport Office staff, Environment Agency workers, University staff, Teachers, Civil Servants, Rail workers & Postal workers. It is a sign of general discontent with worsening conditions & real terms loss of income over many years. 

Some groups have settled - Criminal Barristers 15%, Arriva bus drivers 11%, some BT workers 16%, Unite & Unison Health workers 7.5%. 

Meanwhile the highest paying jobs in the UK are;-

1. Chief Executives and Senior Officials – £79,835
2. Marketing, Sales and Advertising Directors – £77,695
3. Information Technology Directors – £73,571
4. Specialist Medical Practitioners – £68,614
5. Headteachers and Principals – £66,686
6. Public Relations and Communications Directors – £66,510
7. Financial Managers and Directors – £64,193
8. Aircraft Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers – £62,778
9. Functional Managers and Directors – £61,139
10. Senior Police Officers – £59,141
11. Train and Tram Drivers – £58,868
12. Barristers and Judges – £53,110
13. Health Services and Public Health Managers and Directors – £50,789
14. Rail Transport Operatives – £50,561
15. Electrical Engineers – £50,487
16. IT Business Analysts, Architects and Systems Designers – £50,396
17. Business and Financial Project Management Professionals – £50,287
18. Research and Development (R&D) Managers – £50,027
19. Taxation Experts – £49,916
20. Senior paramedics – £49,909

The highest paying Companies in the UK are;-

1. Citadel – financial services company (£121,759)
2. Contino – business management consultant (£108,128)
3. White & Case – international law firm (£10,115)
4. G-Research- quantitative finance research firm (£101,066)
5. Google Cloud – cloud computing services (£99,677)
6. Palantir Technologies – software company (£98,095)
7. Squarepoint Capital – investment services (£96,933)
8. Bank of America Merill Lynch (£94,393)
9. MongoDB – developer data platform (£93,993)
10. Pegasystems – software company (£93,844)
    

The current Minimum Wage rates are;-

Age 23 or over (National Living Wage)	£10.42
Age 21 to 22	£10.18
Age 18 to 20	£7.49
Under 18	£5.28

It seems that there are huge discrepencies which need to be addressed. Pay structures are immensely complex.

What people are concerned about is this graph relative to the cost of living & rate of inflation, which means that their salaries have fallen markedly in real terms for years. Alongside that many would argue that working conditions have also deteriorated. Add to that the undoubted gender & ethnic inequality in the workplace.

The UK desperately needs to move into the 21st century. We need to embrace diversity & transparency. There should be equal learning & development opportunities. Education should value both academic & skills learning equally. There should be effective monitoring & auditing. Flexible working which increased during Covid, needs to be encouraged. 

We are entering an age of robotics & artificial intelligence that will revolutionise the world of work. Our government needs to be ahead of the game in order to benefit from it & also protect people from the possible adverse effects. 

I don't see much evidence that we are on the right track. Workers are discontented now. How will they feel when A I really impacts the world of work?

 

 

Politically Incorrect

Can you be "politically incorrect" if you are unaware? Can you re-write history? Can people today apologise & make reparations for what was done by others, years ago? Should monuments to people who achieved something in their lives be removed because some of the things they did are not acceptable today? I find all of this quite challenging. I can't see any of it in black & white terms, (sorry), of right & wrong.

A post about Golliwogs on my Facebook page prompted me to think about this. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwog

There must be thousands of children, like me, who had a Golliwog that we loved & cuddled & took everywhere with them. There was something very jolly & cheerful about the image which was comforting. We knew nothing of this dark side to the toy & image, which I do understand now. There are now a lot of "politically incorrect" toys. Attitudes & understanding have changed hugely. But lets not forget that we who played with Golliwogs did that because we loved them, not because we had racist attitudes.

The Golliwogg first appeared in 1895 in Florence Upton's book The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls,  published in London. 

https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/golliwog/homepage.htm 

Hopefully human beings do learn lessons from the mistakes of the past. We have the capacity to improve, be better people, be more understanding & aware. I think I can understand racism better than many white people because my mother was German. I was born in 1945 & have a very German name. My childhood was not easy. But that does not mean that I feel discriminated against today or have a desire for apologies or reparations for the unkindness & bullying. I feel that the past is history & what matters is now & the future.

It is undoubtedly true that colonialism & slavery are a huge blot on the history of the world. Amazingly it can be traced back 11,000 years & into the ancient world of Egypt, China & the Middle East! We only tend to think of slavery in relation to Africa. Slavery existed in Africa well before colonialism & Africans themselves participated in colonial slavery. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery

Human beings are a combination of good & evil. They have the capacity to be both saints & sinners. Life is a constant battle to be the best person you can be & not be greedy & self serving. All religions are allegories based on that fact. 

It's a good thing that we now acknowledge what has been done by people historically. It's a good thing that we are now more aware. I just don't believe that people today can apologise for sins they did not commit. I don't believe that reparations can be made by people today to the actual people discriminated against if they are not still alive. Tearing down monuments does not change anything. 

What we should do is ensure that the truth is told about these people, both good & bad. 

 

Silence

Most of my life is lived in silence, apart from listening to radio 4 news at meal times & watching TV in the evening. I mostly only watch programmes that I have recorded, I can't bear the intrusiveness of adverts for things I don't want or need. I can't concentrate on two things at once now, so listen to far less music than I used to, which I feel is sad. I certainly need silence to read, research or write, which I do a lot.

I actually like the calm of silence. I have started to meditate again & find it very restorative & relaxing. The pattern & routine of my retired & single life suits me fine after the stress & manic activity of my working life. I have time to think & there is plenty going on in the world to think about now. 

All in all I value silence & can find noise quite intrusive. I'm not antisocial, I do value good conversation & the exchange of ideas. 

There is a downside to silence though. Silence in the face of wrongdoing is itself wrong. If we see bad behaviour - aggression or intimidation & do nothing, we diminish ourselves. If we refuse to give evidence against something wrong we have witnessed, we are not being good citizens. If we promulgate fake news & lies & don't call it out, we are knowingly distorting truth. If we fail to support people who have been discriminated against in any way, we are complicit. There are innumerable ways that silence is not acceptable. Silence just makes wrongdoing acceptable & victorious.

Putting your head above the parapet for a belief in truth & justice isn't easy. It can open you up to the very behaviour that I abhor. Yesterday I watched a peaceful Extinction Rebellion protest in Oxford. A very mixed group of demonstrators of all ages. 

https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-truth/

 

It's a group who feel that the truth of the Climate Emergency is so dire & important that civil disobedience & disruption is justified. The disruption they cause to peoples daily lives makes them very unpopular in some quarters. People don't like being brought face to face with the possibilities of climate change & they really don't like being inconvenienced. If you believe that the world & everything in it is seriously threatened by what man has done over decades & you don't believe that politicians & big business are doing enough to avert catastrophe, should you be silent?

It is arguable that climate protestors are very brave because they suffer inconvenience & risk themselves by their actions. Some of the activists do actually risk physical harm or worse. How many of us are willing to stand up to wrongdoing? How many of us simply hide behind silence? 

Silence isn't an option.