Levy Blues and Amateur Cardiology

Today, the Pensions Levy manifested itself in its virulent form by launching scathing attacks on our payslips. The air was full of the voices of staff comparing the damages. I'm not sure why, but my take home pay isn't decimated to the extent of those of some of my colleagues. Maybe Payroll made a mistake and I will have to spend the rest of my life paying it back. Ulp. But calculating it manually, it makes sense. Lucky me!

I have a horrible feeling that in spite of industrial action, the levy is here to stay, and this is only the beginning. The likelihood of raised taxes for those us fortunate enough to still have jobs is rearing its ugly head. And maybe redundancies down the line. Who knows? The sheer magnitude of this country's financial mismanagement is growing by the day. I've started to resist watching the news and its nightly doomsaying of RTE's resident Apocalypse Forecaster, George Lee. I can't take it anymore. I might succumb to some terrible cardiovascular condition if I watch another five minutes. Even the weather forecast now reads like the Simpsons by comparison.

Speaking of cardiovascular conditions, this site has lifted one of my posts from about three months ago. And tagged it "Heart Disease, Signs, Symptoms".

Well, thank you, Doctor MacFUCK! Now the last time I looked, my laptop did not have a USB attachment for taking blood pressure and ECG readings in order to transmit them over the web. I imagine such a device would be useful, but I have enough leads coming out of my computer already, thank you very much. But your remote diagnosis is greatly appreciated. What treatment do you suggest, "Doc"? Virtual beta-blockers? Licking JPEG images of foxgloves so that I may benefit from the digital digitalis therein?

The failed academic/ author in me is somewhat flattered by the citation which turned up during a random search for sites linking/ referring to me (I'm bored tonight). However it doesn't cite the source. Which, according to any text on academic biblographies, may be construed as Plagiarism. I'm aware that writing material on the Web and having it openly accessible leaves one wide open to such abuses. Mind you, given that McFuck didn't even attempt to remove the "Govstooge" references from the body text suggests nothing more than a simple copy and paste exercise. That's an instant fail as far as my previous experience will attest. Knobjockey.

Think I need to lie down now. Where's my angina spray when I need it?

The Great Paper Chase

Christ, what a week it's been. It's been one long marathon of alternate annual review forms and meetings and drafting new role profile forms for 2009. I have been buried in paper. The paperwork with these things is UNREAL. The clerical officers were grand though, none of them made any additional work for me. Bless them all.

The meetings varied in length from ten minutes to half an hour, depending on how the private audience with the manager was valued by the clerical officer, or how scared they were that the EO might swear at them.

I had to schedule a lot of meetings for early in the morning, a time when I'm not at my best (see OED definition for Uncaffeinated Troglodyte), however several other EOs and HEOs beat me to the meeting rooms for the afternoon slots.

I even had some bastard nick the room which I had legitimately booked at one stage. I didn't protest, because I thought this might happen:

Govstooge: Here, I had this room booked for 3.30!
Other EO: Whoops, sorry Govstooge, but we won't be long. Can you give us half an hour?
Govstooge: For fuck's sake, I go for my COFFEE at four!

So I ended up having to do the review in a quiet-ish corner of the canteen. Over coffee, naturellement. Still not ideal when the canteen staff were dropping things that go CLANG and the HEO with the incredibly evil laugh kept overshadowing the proceedings. And other members of my staff, seated a safe distance away, kept glancing over to look at our facial expressions, to gauge where on the five point scale their colleague was going to come.

Sometimes I think what it must be like for the clerical officers. Most of them are older than me. Some of them even have adult children older than me. And, to make matters worse, I am one of those people who still occasionally gets asked for ID when doing a beer run. Some of them don't give a shite and happily sign the forms. The others think it's all bullshit, but sign the forms anyway, anything to get them out of the way. And I don't even have to bring in a gun.

My own review, now that's a story for another day.

I'm glad it's all over now though. Did I mention I had several other shitty things to be getting on with?

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

I've had to wash my mouth out today. Not surprising, the regular reader would think, considering the frequent bursts of staccato expletives that issue from me almost constantly. Maybe my HEO called me aside to tell me that I was upsetting the rest of the section.

Not quite.

Today I conducted PMDS Annual reviews with a number of people. I was organised, professional and courteous throughout each meeting. In short, very manager-like.

So where did the swearing come in?

It didn't.

Today in the meetings I used phrases - unconsciously I might add - that included:

"Going Forward"
"Across the Board"
"Sweeping Changes"
"Singing off the same Hymn Sheet"

Fuckityfuckityfuck! HEO-speak on an EO salary! Uhurrrgh! I'm turning into one of them!

I'm off to the church now to seek absolution before what remains of my soul is gone forever.

Bleargh.

... well, at least I didn't use "Touch Base". I fucking hate that one.