National Abbatoir to open, thousands of jobs created

Hmmm. So no deal has been reached on our unpaid leave as yet. And time is marching relentlessly on until Budget day.

Today's planned strike was averted because of the "breakthrough agreement" on 12 or so unpaid leave days for the public sector.

But now, following dissention from backbench TDs, everything's up for grabs again. Backbench TDs, some of whom I might add, have alleged that "sure don't a couple of pints help a nervous driver to relax a bit?"

Even our revered Tanaiste, Mary Cockup... ahem, Coughlan, has agreed that nothing has been confirmed yet. This is the same person on whose behalf taxpayers, public and private, forked out €9,000 to keep a limo waiting for her at the WTO talks in Geneva last year so she wouldn't have to walk, or God forbid, use a taxi whose previous client was a cuckoo-clock maker. Not to mention John O'Donoghue's profligacy.

We all have to make sacrifices. The country is on its knees. For me and many of my colleagues, it's not the pay cut/ unpaid leave that galls us. It is the failure of our public "representatives" to set an example.

It's no wonder people are dying of swine flu. The country is being run (into the ground) by a shower of porcine individuals, all with their filthy heads in the trough.

George Orwell summed it up nicely in Animal Farm (and again, the pigs were running the show) with the quotation:

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

It's put me off sausages for life.

Revolution's just a T-shirt away

"Bunch of WASTERS", screamed a driver, slowing down especially to make his feelings felt about our picket line. Our windswept, sodden picket line, not a hundred miles from one of the many flood-damaged areas.

Undaunted by this comment, or by the wind whipping up our holes, or the rain dampening our placards, we marched stoically on outside the Department. The more publicity-shy of us (including me) tried not to catch the eyes of the reporters from local radio.

Overwhelmingly, though, the attitude of the passers-by was supportive. Horns tooted, thumbs were raised and at one stage a person stalled their car in order to get out and applaud and cheer us. I was pleasantly surprised at this response, it could not have been better if we had been a lynch mob cheerfully garrotting Sean Fitpatrick, emasculating Roddy Molloy and delivering reverse colonics to the entire cabinet, and Bertie too.

And more to come on the 3rd December. It's unrealistic to think that we will avoid a pay cut in some shape or form. We are lucky to have jobs. If I had remained working in the private sector (where I gained most of my work experience to date), I would now be on the dole queue, as my old firm let go a third of its workforce recently.

Cutting the pay of the lower paid public sector workers simply because they are an easy target when the above named fuckmuppets - among many others - got away scot free is sickening. And this is the motivation behind my ticking "yes" to industrial action on the union ballot papers. And I am not alone.

And no, I wasn't in fucking Newry afterwards. I was at home making a nice curry.

Where's Noah when you need him?

They came from all over the county, even in spite of the inclement weather. They braved floods, fallen trees, plagues of locusts, frogs, airborne germs, even car stereos stuck on local radio stations.

They overcame all these obstacles.

For the forms.

There was a tremendous sense of camaraderie in the Department this morning as each staff member arrived with a tale of woe about their journey to work. Each of us regaled the others with the gory details, like war veterans comparing scars. The dripping rain gear on the coat stands and the sodden umbrellas bore grim testimony to the battles fought and won this morning.

The outdoor smoking area attracted only the diehard adherents of the weed today, and those experts who could manage to keep their fags lit.

Occasionally, when the howling gales outside made it seem as if the Department roof was going to be swept away, there was much shuddering and invoking the Almighty: "God, will it ever stop?"

Departing colleagues were wished a safe journey home. Even the normally horrible ones who make me want to mount a rifle on my computer monitor.

The sense of "we're all in this together" was, I think, a foretaste of what we will experience on the picket lines next Tuesday. COs, EOs, HEOs and even APs picketing the gates of the Department and hopefully being choreographed well enough to not poke each other in the eyes with the sharp placard corners.

Striking paper pushers will elicit no sympathy from the passing public in this climate, and we will come in for abuse, I've no doubt. We'll be an easy target. But like today, we will cope by sharing war stories, this time over pints in a nice pub around the corner.

Mind you, the warm fuzzy feeling I had for most of the day disappeared rapidly when some sadist in the bowels of the building decided to inflict a Fire Drill on us. Bastard.

Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

I’ve often imagined what a world without clerical officers constantly competing for your attention would be like. And I have to say, it’s pretty damn boring, and far from the nice quiet Utopia I had imagined.

I made the extra effort today to get into work about twenty minutes before the picket lines were set up. I wasn’t alone. It was scarcely bright outside and the place was full of sheepish looking EOs and HEOs. A tumbleweed overtook me as I walked with coffee in hand down the corridor to my own section, where I was joined later by some EO colleagues and the HEO. It was business as usual for us, and I put away the vodka bottle I had been saving for later.

Later I joined a cluster of managers having a look out the top floor window at the picket line outside. Cars were passing tooting their horns in what seemed to be support. Some colleagues were in it walking around in circles and holding placards. One looked up and spotted me grinning out the window and waved back with a middle finger extended.

Some EOs were driven mental by their striking subordinates phoning their own work extensions from the picket line for a joke. They sat through the cacophony rather than taking the COs' phones off the hook. Silly EOs.

In my own immediate area it was quiet as fuck. Nothing, and I mean nothing, happened. I was beginning to have clerical officer withdrawal symptoms. I missed the proffered leave forms, the queries from the public, the random shite spewed by the office bore, the humming colleagues (humming tunes, that is, not humming as in "somewhat lacking in personal hygiene" - because I wouldn't miss those).

As I was leaving the COs were chanting loudly and I didn't want them to add "scab" (I'm not! I didn't touch their work!) to their repertoire. I managed to slip out unnoticed.

I can't believe I missed them all, today though. Because tomorrow I will be contemplating killing them all over again.

You can't get me, I'm part of the Union....

I got my ballot paper on the proposed industrial action regarding the Pensions Levy from my trade union today. My union are proposing up to two days' strike action. With strike pay equivalent to net pay. (I'm wondering will "net" be with or without the deduction of the Pensions Levy?)

Tomorrow we will know the result of the equivalent CPSU ballot on their proposed industrial action to take place on the 26th February.

If this does go ahead, I'm wondering what the rest of us do.

There are no plans that I'm aware of to close Government Departments on that date. The rest of us will probably have to take up the slack in dealing with queries from the public and other duties. Meaning getting leave on that particular day is probably out of the question. At least, for those of us who will, on that day, be at the very bottom of the pecking order. Nads.

Is it really "passing a picket" if the rest of us are likely to be striking on the same thing at a later date? It's probably not, but if I do have to come into work on that date I'm going to make my own placard with "I'm a fucking EO, I couldn't get the day off, leave me alone" for the benefit of any militant strikers who may not know me.

I've never been on strike before, so I'll have to put a survival kit together for the days. So far I've listed:

- Waterproof gear, in case it rains (hope the union laminate the placards so the ink doesn't run, because then we would look completely fucking stupid)
- Earplugs so we can't hear the abuse passing members of the public who were recently made redundant will roar at us (I'm a sensitive soul really)
- Large hipflask full of lovely yummy single malt Scotch to keep me warm.
- Throat lozenges
- Shovel for digging latrine
- A set of those foot outlines people put on the floor when they're learning to dance, so we are all co-ordinated and don't crash into each other. The corner of a placard could take someone's eye out you know.
- A second placard with "HELLO MUM" on it in case a TV crew stop by.

Viva La Revolucion!