Alexander's Gastric Band

I wish I'd looked after my feet (apologies to Pam Ayres) I remember watching a bit of that Skinny and Pirhana programme where some poor former sloane who had gone to seed (quite literally as the grass was growing in the insoles of her Romikas) and had failed to move with the times - more market garden dahling than Covent Garden.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the poor gel's trotters where exactly that with heels like two wodges of parmareggio that had been used as door-stops for a considerable period of time. Skinny and Pirhana sorted her out and turned her into a glowing elfin footed lady that lunches a clone ranger with a range rover.

I passed the Skinny one in the foyer of my building one day last year, all I could think was that charity should begin at home dear and what is chic about collarbones like pepper and salt pots?

Getting to the point, I have wondered if I should go in for one of those stomach-stapling efforts a drastic band. Am I desperate enough to shift weight? Well I am sometimes but most of the time most of me is ok. Never being skinny is not never being happy in my case, however given the choice I would prefer to shift some ballast.

I just don't know if I have the interest in joining Alexander's Gastric Band. Of course, I could make money as a regurgitator like that Ginger lad on the end of the pier type variety shows who let on to swallow goldfish (slices of carrot) and other items like coins and washers and then promptly expelled them from wherever they had landed.

I will start at the bottom - not my bottom but my feet I am going to look after my feet - good feet will take you anywhere I have spent £32 on foot products and my feet are going to rock I might even get a pedicure. I am lucky to have good feet, its just that over the winter I have neglected them. Posh (if ever that was a contradiction in terms) Spice, has feet that defy classification with bunions as pronounced as a fiddler's elbow; how she gets them into her jimmies I do not know maybe head first miaow

Here's one I prepared earlier

Sometimes I wonder if writing funding applications should be banned and instead you just buy a lottery ticket and if it comes up your project gets funded - it cuts out the sweat equity, saves money on funders having to pay for assessing officers and assessment panels of the great and the good who know as much about the real world as my arse does about snipe shooting.

At least there would be no more anxiously waiting to see if what you have sat up late and worked countless weekends to justify the money you are asking for for a service you believe in. No the tumble of a few balls would consign you to either the ranks of the lottery millioncares or the try again next timers. No endless pondering and soul searching if something had been written differently would it have made the quality cut-off, all that would matter would be a few numbered balls. No need for the excruciating feedback where the feedbacker has all the empathy of a frozen pea. Truth is we in the voluntary sector put ourselves through the funding lottery including lottery funding, we are like students who blame personality clashes on getting bad marks when in simple terms there is just not enough money to go around and no matter how good, how effective, how needed our particular project is we are up against others that are just as good, effective and needed and somebody has to win the lottery and somebody has to lose its the luck of the draw

Mine's a double Bill

We opened our offices on Thursday night to newly unemployed people to come along and get some advice on their job options. We weren't inundated as the article hadn't been published in the Belfast Telegraph (it was published on Friday 20th but more on that later). However we did have two people come to seek support and by pure coincidence they were both called Bill.

Bill 1 was a man in his early 50's with a lengthy sales/territory manager history and a track record in selling to the construction industry. Bill was self employed and relied on sales plus commission and unfortunately the sales weren't coming in and the commission had all but dried up. Bill 1 was frankly "old school" with buckets of experience and very little idea of where to begin in marketing himself in new potential employment contexts.

Bill 2 was 23 with 4 A levels at grade a, a 2:1 Law and a MSc in Corporate Governance and had a dilemma try to get an apprenticeship with a large Solicitors or spend another 3 years on a Doctorate. Bill 2 had some temporary admin work but was becoming increasingly anxious about his career prospects.

Both Bills were supported to explore their options with Bill 1 undertaking one to one mentoring sessions aimed at building his confidence and awareness of the world of working for someone else and intensive interview preparation to move him from patter to competence based interview proficiency.

With Bill 2 we used some careers interest software and then a SWOT analysis of each of this identified options - Bill 2 has the opportunity for a funded Doctorate including a reasonable amount of tax free "bursary" Bill 2 will probably opt for the Doctorate and will either pick up on professional legal practice when he completes it or move into the private sector in a company secretary role or into further research/policy. The foregoing represents a basic overview of our work and while it might help to pay their Bills it won't do much to help us pay ours.

The article has resulted in a request for support for a company due to close with 38 people scheduled to lose their jobs and a list of other people contacting us individually. We are opening our offices Tuesday and Thursdays 5pm-8pm as part of our committment to do our bit to support the newly unemployed and I hope that others will do the same. It is going to get worse and everyone doing their bit can help to make it better.

Belfast Telegraph Article 20th February 2009

Losing your job is a shock and a loss that can hit you in much the same way as bereavement with all the feelings of shock, anger and denial as you struggle to come to terms with the impact on you not just financially but emotionally; your self-worth and confidence can take as big a hit as the one you feel in your pocket and for anyone facing unemployment the biggest risk is reaching the point of seeing yourself as unemployable.

You are the same person with the same skills, knowledge and experience that contributed to the performance and productivity of your former employer or business – you haven’t changed but the economic landscape has and how you negotiate it in these challenging times must change too.

Your short-term goal needs to be re-entry to employment as soon as possible before the rust sets in. How quickly you do this will depend greatly on how you view your employment expectations in the current tight labour market and how you align those expectations to the reality of the jobs that are currently available now and the salary levels they command. This will involve you looking at positions and sectors that you would not previously considered and identifying how you can transfer your existing skills to new business contexts. For example, you may have a track record in financial services, marketing or procurement in the private sector, have you considered how your skills could be applied in local government, health care or the community and voluntary sector? You need to adopt an innovative approach to becoming employed and who knows you may find a rewarding career opportunity that will challenge and bring out your talents. You may of course opt for a survival job, by this we mean a job that can give you the space to explore your options and perhaps look at training and volunteering opportunities that can do so much to provide personal challenge and reward.

Whatever you do to find work will require work from you and you may need help and support with the nuts and bolts stuff such as CV’s and application forms and interview practice, especially if you are newly unemployed following a lengthy period in the same job or with the same company those skills can get a bit rusty.

You may also need some one to one personal guidance and mentoring to get you over that initial hump and of course, you may also need to sort out your benefit entitlements and seek advice on dealing with the financial side of reduced income and reduced earning potential. Seeing all these things as challenges and not threats will be a positive first step in moving from unemployment back into work.

It can be useful to apply the ACIP model – think of it like a new brand of tea or coffee or soft drink the first sip isn’t enough and you need to drink more before you decide whether it’s for you or not.

By ACIP we mean:

Alternatives – what are your current options for employment?

Consequences – what are the consequences of each option?

Information – what information do you need to help you decide on your action?

Planning – what is your personal employment action plan and who apart from you is involved in it?

You might have lost your job, been placed on redundancy notice or fear you will be next when the job cuts come, but this does not mean that you have to lose hope.

Ok Computer

I appeared briefly and led with my chin on last night's late and live; I found the experience much warmer in both temperature and in terms of the meeting and greeting and general down to earthness than I experienced with my last televisual on Nolan live. That experience is embedded in my brain like the bit in Starwars when Princess Leia is having her chain yanked by Jabba the Hut.

The heat in the studio was horrendous and I got to wondering just how well the wacky baccy would grow is such balmy climes - puts a whole new connotation on chilling out in the green room. I also wondered if my less than thick thatch would expose a shiny expanse of blood pudding coloured scalp under those unforgiving lights. I also had my comment on the current economic downturn and the responsibility of our Government to resource organisations like mine to support the newly unemployed published yesterday in the Belfast Telegraph I was pleased with it because it was balanced and complimented the comments by John Simpson and The MD of the Construction Federation - Not quite a media luvvie but anything that keeps the issue up there is a plus.

I need 12 portable PC's, 2 external drives to store files, a hub and ideally internet access wherever they go. Software wise MS Office, foam-filled on wheels suitcase sized flight case, 50 headphone sets will 1,000 disposable ear covers, and 50 memory sticks oh and 12 wired mouse. Oh yes and ideally a portable electronic whiteboard and a few gangs of four and some disk imaging software. This is my wish list for Mobile-IT (say it like mobility) I want my colleagues to be able to offer the same service to unemployed people out in the community via community organisations but not all in fact not many at all have enough working kit to allow us to deliver our programmes off site. I have set myself a challenge to try and get this equipment or the £10K to buy it - I have looked at leasing but we don't have the money to do this. This seems like a tall order but I believe it is doable. Any ideas would be very gratefully received :o)

Escaping the rant race

My comment on unemployment appeared today on page 5 of the Belffast Telegraph and hopefully they will follow up with the advice piece which I feel will be of help to people not faced with unemployment before now. They have also given me an opportunity to publicise our service to the newly unemployed which will hopefully act as a catalyst for other organisations to do the same. By pure coincidence I was asked to participate in the audience of Late and Live on UTV tonight and whilst my only other television appearance was in 2004 on Nolan live (my friends and colleagues told me I soothed his savage breast) when I was being grilled, nay filleted on his spit regarding social housing; I held my own on that one so I hope tonight will be less challenging. Whilst I have no major hangups (apart from my lantern jaw which one could use to hang one's Gannex on an inclement day) about my looks, size and advanced age, I much prefer to be behind the scenes and 'a good face for radio' seems apt.

I remain seriously concerned regarding the impact of the current economic downturn/employment situation and the potential for racial tension turning to racial violence. I have had a few preliminary discussion with colleagues and I am going to try and do more.

Home thoughts from a broad

I have decided that to do nothing about Mr Facile and his racist comments would be letting myself down. I sincerely hope I don't have set eyes on this bigoted little twit again but when I pondered on things I realised that Mr Facile might not be alone in his views and that there might be others of his kidney venting their racist spleen when working to supposedly support community development.

When I apply for government funding, European grant aid or submit tenders to deliver services, I have to demonstrate my organisation's equal opportunities and diversity policy and often how my organisation meets the needs of section 75 groups (section 75 of the Northern Ireland act) I have got to thinking that if consultants working with community organisations and undertaking government/public/European funded work like evaluations, business plans and feasibility studies, in order to be elegible for this public money, must complete mandatory equality and diversity training. I know its only an on paper thing and a lot of racists and bigots are savvy enough not to overstep the mark but at the very least it lets them know that they could be in the frame if someone likes me complains.

I am going to contact a number of our political representatives tomorrow and start the ball rolling. I am also going to speak to the Equality Commission and see if they will support me.

Watch this space.

Mind your PQS'

I waited for a while before comitting my claws to the keyboard on my return from attending a community planning day. I was there because my organisations provides services to each of the communities/neighbourhoods involved the the activity. In the interests of respect for those attending I don't wont to give much concrete detail except to say that I attended because I have a lot of respect for KO and his colleagues and wanted to offer my support.

It wasn't an easy meeting as those attending and the communities and organisations they represent are at different places and colloborative working whilst on the service is alive and well, there is understandably ethno-centrism and apprehension over pooling resources for a common goal and the possible resulting loss of resources for area based activities. However, there is a willingness to try and there has been a lot of effort from community activists to get things to the point they have got to. Some have different ideas on the focus of the joint activity and unfortunately, this took a lot of time to bat about with the emphasis on another model which has it merits but needs to be adjusted to reflect some fundamental differences - not least location. Anyway, getting to the focal point the group used a facilitator who specialised in business improvement (which also as an aside happens to be my MSc)

He didn't really help; no in fact, he hindered and was at best naive about how community deve lopment operates and at worst (we'll get to that in a moment) downright patronising and offensive. I felt sorry for KO and his colleague who had worked so hard to drive the project and found it back to first base. I think that can be fixed but they need the right project champion someone who knows how to negotiate and consensus build.

Anyway, Mr Facile who I will incidently not be attending any further meetings with, during one of his gambits spoke of how a particular community needed to be wary of the encroaching [insert minority ethnic community here] and followed up with a post qualifying statement that he wasn't being racist it was a reality. Oh dear; I very quickly told him that I found his comments offensive and I found it unconscionable that he should choose to single out any minority ethnic community as taking over an area;

This is Northern Ireland we have a bit of level on the prods and micks stuff but hey there we have one heck of a leap to make in terms of how we create a sense of belonging, equal opportunity and not least a safe place and space for minority ethnic communities and migrant workers;

Racism and xenophobia which manifests itself in the same intolerant, violent and murderous behaviour as witnessed here over the last near as damn 40 years, is alive and well in a town near you and me. We may have skimmed some plaster over the sectarian stuff at least enough to stop most of the murders and bombings but those same mindsets are alive and well and waiting to be applied to the next threats - this time to our economic freedom i.e. "They are over here and taking our jobs/over loading our health care and schools and taking our houses and benefits"

That a consultant should choose to jump on this bandwagon sickened me to the stomach. I think he thought he was ok among the white faces but It wasn't just me who was shocked and sickened and I hope he learned that you don't need to be in a green room to end up with a red face.

Inter-dependence day

I scared myself today; not by bungee jumping, cleaning false teeth (long story that one) or checking my bank unbalance. Yesterday, my work email account started to go a bit booga wooga. I was tantalising myself watching the emails coming into my blackberry and not my work inbox. By 5pm everyone in the office was having the same problem and despite doing all sorts of stuff to the server and our IT boffin doing his thang remotely, not an email got through.

I worked from home this morning and again they were a popping into my blackberry but the old in box was as empty. I felt the panic rise; we were waiting for stuff and had to get other stuff out; ok I could use my gmail account and click my claws on the minsicule blackberry but this only provided a bit of a solution. European funding applications, partner organisations depending on stuff getting to them and the hassle of having to send everything with a I am sending this via my gmail account as we are experiencing problems with our system, please reply to......

The problem was fixed at 4pm today but the damage to my nerves was done.

I realised today just how much we depend on email. I was forlorn today and didn't know what to do with myself as most of the documents I was working on and created were either received by email or I needed to send them out by email. Even formal letters tend to be sent as templates as attachments - I probably only send out one letter a week. I had 148 emails in my inbox at 4.20pm this afternoon and of course, I had to look at them all even the ones I had already squinted at on the blackberry.

I am very fussy about sorting and storing my stuff and archiving it but today was a wake up call and left me wondering how I would run my business if it all suddenly went back to letters and faxes. The idea of having to communicate with 15 European partners by letter, fax and telephone does not bear thinking about when I can click 'send' and reach their in boxes in 2 or 3 minutes and also using google groups for discussion forums and document uploads for projects.

When I was an office junior in 1973 a calculator was a luxury and photocopiers and faxes not there yet. My next job had two directors who invested in new technology and we had a computer the size of a transit van and a telex machine with binary tape and electric ibm golfball head typewriters with inbuilt correction tape I thought I was in tomorrow's world. Today was strange but as well as scaring me in terms of how dependent we are on email/internet communication it made me realise that tomorrow's world very soon becomes all our yesterday's.

From my own correspondent

I have a good friend and colleague (who has given me permission to quote them here) the wonderfully talented KO as I shall term him who needs to be blogging too. KO gave me some comments on my blog generally and also some feedback on the current recession here in Norn Iron - KO doesn't pull his punches :o)

Yes, we have the biggest rise in unemployment in thirty-seven years – yet, unsurprisingly, given the piss-poor standard of public administration in Northern Ireland, complacently favourable comparisons are being made with levels in the sceptr’d isle. Maybe we shall all be treated to the vision of the sun being eclipsed by massed squadrons of flying pigs and late evening and night time vistas of thousands of blue moons - accompanied by the receipt of the resources you need. Eh? What do you think? Like, do you think it’s going to happen?

The question is what would KO and come to think of us the rest of us do?

Opportunity Knocks but it also costs

There is an assumption that Northern Ireland is not experiencing the battering of recession currently being experienced by our close neighbours here and across the shuck. We are certainly not a safe haven and it has to be remembered that our starting point in terms of productivity, skills and employment and in particular the highest levels of economic inactivity (call it long-term unemployment in a yellow mac and sou'wester) which sit at circa 27% of the working population and are more like 50-65% in some of the most deprived areas in Belfast.

Hence we have a push and pull - the push, well more of a gentle nudge really, given the needs profile of the folks we work with and the personal, social and emotional employment barriers we are working with them to address and the pull - ensuring we work our little cotton socks off to ensure that the newly unemployed are not a feeder into a shiny new category of 'New long-term unemployed' both present similar challenges but need a different approach to dealing with issues of confidence and self-esteem; those in door marked 'Push' require help and the dignity of risk to build theirs and at the same time access to employment and training opportunities and lots of one-to-one mentoring support. Those in the door market 'Pull' require help to retain their skills, confidence and self-esteem and at the same time receive support to market themselves in the current labour market. Sounds similar? it might be and we have staff with the skills to work with both - unfortunately we don't have the resources to work with all.

That is the dilemma without support the Pull will become the Push and the Push will be pushed further back.

I had the opportunity following yesterday's blog and by sheer coincidence to write a piece for the evening paper. My thrust was asking our NI Executive to demonstrate leadership and innovation in giving organisations like mine and dedicated, experienced people like my colleagues the resources and flexibility to both push and pull - otherwise we all might as well shove off.

Unemployment is Everybody's Business

It's lunchtime and the day job is today's blog; so much for relaxing and using blogfoolery to ensure yours truly deeply madly takes a break. The newspapers are full of stories about people being made redundant, losing their jobs and it is cutting across every sector and every level of position - no matter where you are on the corporate success ladder, it's a long way down from any rung. When I studied business improvment for my MSc, we learned about supply chain management, lean manufacturing and the theory of constraints; well folks when the supply chain breaks down, the food chain isn't too far behind.

We are working to support the newly unemployed, those with their first taste of being in that position of not having a job to go to and the despair that goes along with not knowing how they will deal with the personal financial stuff and not least the emotional impact of loss of status. I have been giving this a lot of thought and while my day job focuses on supporting services that meet the needs of the long-term unemployed, economically inactive and workless within the hardest to reach, hardest to help/vulnerable groups, I an others have realised that unless we act to support those new entrants to the unemployed market, they will very quickly become our traditional customer. Call it the rust factor and unlike a shiny car with all the fancy finishes and warranties and rust proofing and special paint, being unemployed cause the rust to set in very quickly - not months but weeks.

Our approach to the newly unemployed needs to be similar in terms of the skills we need to support them in their job search, stuff like application forms, CV's, interview preparation and the other bread and butter stuff around confidence and self-esteem. However, before we can do any of that we need to go back to business basics and look at how we deal with expectations in a tighter labour market and what the market will or won't support.

This is going to be the hardest thing for many highly, skilled, qualified, experienced to take - the fact that what they had to offer a year ago has become so devalued in the current climate. That reality is going to need to bite PDQ and we are in the era of survival jobs - transferable skills or no transferable skills the biggest leap that many newly unemployed are going to have to take is that work will mean minimum wage or just above, limited progression routes, unsociable hours/shift patterns and perhaps boring repititive work.

Working with people already devastated by losing their job and all the other personal sense of worth accoutrements that go hand in hand with having a job, will be a tough enough job for those of us working to support them; selling the new labour alternative (pun maybe a wee bit intended) is going to take more work.

So there you are that is the punch in my lunch for today. We need resources to work with our traditional client group and we need additional resources to work to prevent major inflows into long-term unemployment. Unemployment, it's coming to a dole queue near you.

Doesn't matter if you're crazy, if your thin, you're in

This is a lunch time blog but if you are reading this as a woman in the public eye who is vulnerable to mental ill health, don't eat and read. Why? according to the UK crass Media it doesn't matter how mad you are as long as you have shifted the ballast that you were carrying when the madness got in.

You can be a bi-polar, self-harming, drug-addled alcoholic who needs a revolving door on the rehab unit but if you have attained size 8 or below, your doo lallyness will be forgiven and forgotten and you will have magazine deals, exercise dvd and at home withs comming out of your well-toned, tanned and taut tush. In essence, you can be on another planet but if you can squeeze your arse into the latest skinny jeans and have your legs like chopsticks floating about in your UGGs you will be welcomed with open arms and open cheque-books.

Heaven help you if you fall off the wagon because the bread knives will be out quicker than you can say "go large" if you are fat you don't fit and if you are fat and prone to mental illness/addictions, you brought the mad cow disease on yourself.

A couple of examples to prove my point: Britney Speers when she was the blobit her mental state was linked to how she had let her 'hot bod' go and was cramming in more full fat coke and cheeseburgers than Elvis on his day off - once she had starved, exercised and got her sixpack (stomach not coke) back she was back to the babe, no matter she remained ill she was thin again.

Kerry Katona from blimp to hot in the slurp of a lipo shunt - cue pictures in sexy tracksuit and her addictions/illnesses fall to the bottom of the lithium bottle.

So there it is folks if you lose your marbles no matter as long as you get thinner not fatter.