L'enfer, c'est les autres

The second of two

This is a disgrace.

Today the Danish company Vestas is going to the courts to remove workers from its Isle of Wight factory who have occupied it in protest at the decision to close the factory.

The company make wind turbines. Yes wind turbines, the things that are supposed to help us prevent the earth from heating up to the point that we will all need to grow fins and gills. It is the only factory in the UK that makes wind turbines. We will then be importing from abroad……again.

The Isle of Wight is a small community. It doesn’t have a huge amount of employment that is not seasonal. Unemployment is above the national average and there are around 60 jobseekers for each job centre vacancy.

Plus if renewable energy is the future then what the hell are we doing reducing the capacity to produce turbines in the UK? Its madness, pure madness.

Congratulations to the protestors their friends, families and supporters.

Contempt to the managers who delivered notices of dismissal along with pizza.

But still the warm glow remains.

There is a tube strike on my line. I won’t go into it…..ok just this once. This guy got sacked for opening the doors on the wrong side of the train. His union brothers and sisters don’t think this is fair as the company should have fitted some contraption to stop him from doing this. Therefore they are striking.

And two things strike me (geddit?),

1) Opening the doors on the correct side seem kind of fundamental to the job and imperative for safety (I don’t want to think I’m landing on sweet platform and instead come tete a tete with a piece of curved wall)
2) There’s an element of duty and responsibility missing in the argument…while we are at it lets automate the entire function of the tube….then we will have no need for….. oh c**p!

Anyway the non-noxious by-product of this is that I took a walk along the Thames on the way to work. Thirty beautiful minutes in the sun with my thoughts. An event less frequent than a leader in the Daily Mail on the valuable contribution of immigration to the British economy.

There is so much going on that sometimes it’s a struggle to process it all and little breaks prove all powerful in helping to put everything in order and take a fresh perspective. To deal with the big, the small, the rational and the emotional.

Sometimes the hardest things to get your head around become easier with time. What I don’t know is whether this is because we need the time to figure it out, or over time we just capitulate and find an easy route. Is the human brain designed to find a solution or the right solution? And in the end does it really matter?