The Judge RANTS!
Date: 13/01/10
Snowed Under
I'm beginning to detest this weather.
This is how it has gone for me so far:
Last week, I was due back in work on Wednesday. We had a heavy snowfall on Tuesday night, so no buses got up to us at all the next day. I had to phone the office to tell them I couldn't get in.
Because our Council was running out of grit for the roads, the main road from Wrexham up to us (a village of nearly three thousand people) wasn't gritted at all on Wednesday night. This meant that the roads were so iced up on Thursday morning that there were no buses up to us until early afternoon. So that was another day's work lost.
I managed to get to work on Friday, but nearly an hour and a half late for the same reason.
We had another heavy fall of snow on Sunday night into Monday morning. Again, this meant no public transport until late morning (and then only an hourly service), by which time it wouldn't have been worth going in to work anyway.
I got into work OK on Tuesday, but had to finish about half an hour earlier than usual because of an appointment at the dentist.
It started snowing heavily again on Tuesday night, and has scarcely stopped since. This is how my front garden looked shortly after 4pm:
For once, though, this was irrelevant, because last night I came down with some bug or other which produced aching shoulders, a cough, a fair bit of phlegm (sorry) and my drifting in and out of sleep every half an hour or so. So I was able to phone the office to tell them that I was ill this time.
Now here's the rant bit: as some of you will know (and others will have figured out), I work for a Depratment of Government. Because it, like most other parts of the public sector in recent times, has been taken over by management consultants, accountants and other fraudsters, caring for the staff has gone right down the Swannee. So it is that, instead of recognising the difficulties some of us will have in getting into work in bad weather like this, those in charge seem to take a great pleasure in being as mean-spirited as possible when compensating those of us in that position for the time that we lose as a result. Even when they are shamed into doing the right thing, they then seem to delight in making the process as difficult and aggravating as possible.
So it is that - as of Tuesday lunchtime at least - I still don't know whether I will have to take leave to cover the two days I lost last week. And as for Monday of this week, well the message seems to be, "Forget it".
The Depratment operates what it calls the 'four mile rule'. That means that in bad weather you are expected to get in to work if you live within four miles of your office. The trouble is that that rule was clearly designed for fairly flat urban areas with good public transport networks. Up here, four miles horizontally equals about four hundred and fifty feet vertically, and the weather up here is almost invariably worse than down in the lowlands where my office is.
But of course, "rules is rules" and "guidance is guidance", even if it flies in the face of reason or reality.
And do you know the thing that really sticks in my craw? The fact that this comes from a section of the same government machine which has all but ordered local councils not to grit any roads other than the main routes because of the grit shortage, so leading to me and my neighbours not being able to get out of the village! Incompetent wankers.
I'm feeling a little better this evening, but I won't be going in tomorrow either. For one thing, there's little likelihood that we'll have any bus service before mid morning at the latest, and I'm unlikely to feel well enough to walk down to the bottom of the village and stand around up to my ankles in it in the hope of catching anything other than pneumonia.
