The Restructure Roundel

Gold cherry

By airyfairy

Sun, 22 Jan 2017
  • 7338 reads
23 comments
 

. This is for all those who are now, or ever have been, working in public services.

 

The Restructure Roundel

 

 

The ID card is swiped, the turnstile turns.

My black mac greets its fellows on the pegs.

Today the new bloke’s bringing stuff to learn.

 

By close of day progress is undiscerned.

No nearer knowing if his plan has legs.

The ID card is swiped, the turnstile turns.

 

He wins the day but soon the waters churn.

New buzzwords change his champagne into dregs.

Today a new bloke’s bringing stuff to learn.

 

And so our weary caravan adjourns.

New roads of yellow brick we now must tread.

The ID card is swiped, the turnstile turns.

 

Our latest straw man very quickly burns.

He joins the other ashes in the kegs.

Today a new bloke’s bringing stuff to learn.

 

And when his day is done another dawns,

Chock full of rosy promise for us plebs.

The ID card is swiped, the turnstile turns.

Today, a new bloke’s bringing stuff to learn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture Credit:  http://tinyurl.com/hofcrss

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Comments

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Good poem, effective and very true!

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you David!  Appreciate you taking the time to read. 

Submitted by celticman on

works for me, but I burn easily.

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

There's a special keg set aside just for you, Celtic.

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

oh goodness - buzzwords. Was there blue sky thinking too? This is so depressing

One suggestion: unless you read the 'new' list of stories, you don't see the teaser which is often something that should be read. Perhaps you could put it somewhere in the body of the poem - above maybe?

 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

This is a really excellent use of form, as well as being something I'm sure many will identify with. That's why it's our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day!

Please share/retweet if you like it

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you!  Good suggestion about the 'teaser' -  I've edited and put it in above. 

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

 - it's a really annoying aspect of the site. Quite often the spoiler is really relevant and if you click on the poem from 'unreads' for instance, you don't see it at all!

 

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

Question- How many social workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Answer - None. The lightbulb's really got to want to change.

 

Joking apart restructuring must often feel miserable, pointless, disempowering ('us plebs' is sad) and unsettling especially when it happens in a 'F**k you Jack' work environment.

Submitted by airyfairy on

How many social workers does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer:  What local authority is going to buy new light bulbs just for social workers?

Thanks for reading, Elsie!

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

What a clever piece of writing.  

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you PS!

Submitted by Tom Brown on

"The ID card is swiped, the turnstile turns" the repitition turns out beautiful, very effective.

Like labourers in some futuristic Scifi. Isn't it just how it is? Tom

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you for reading, Tom.  I must admit, when I used to go through that turnstile, I used to feel my soul being pulled out through my ears! 

Submitted by Rhiannonw on

Conveys the atmosphere. Exciting new ideas often don't have very good foundations or worked-out structure. Rhiannon

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Thank you, Rhiannon.  Quite often, I think, it's people trying to fit the wrong plans to the wrong structure!

Submitted by hudsonmoon on

I don't swipe a card, airyfairy, we have 'fingerprint recognition' to clock us in each morning. Talk about soul sucking. Well done here. You nailed the experience.

Rich

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

'Fingerprint recognition'??  Now that is​ scary.  Orwell would be proud.

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

I had fingerprint recognition a few years back when I cleaned Coral's betting shop. My present jobs; tutoring creative writing for the Recovery Devon Learning Community (if you bring up the prospectus online you will find me somewhere in the middle under my birth certificate name Rachel Schaufeld and this term together with my colleague Trish Leake I tutor Flash Fiction is Fun), cleaning the Exmouth Savoy Cinema before the doors open and cleaning Bradham's builder's supplies don't have either system. The tutoring work I send in a payclaim; the cleaning jobs my supervisor sends in timesheets with my hours. When I worked in department stores in London as a Sales Assistant many years ago we had to 'clock in' with a card.

Submitted by airyfairy on

I had a look at the prospectus, Elsie - what a wonderful project.  I hope the Flash Fiction goes well.  I am old enough to remember clocking in with a real cardboard card you  'pinged' in a machine and then popped in a slot ready for when you 'pinged' out again.  And a lady, a trolley and a tea urn came round mid-morning and mid-afternoon. I don't really miss those days though - they also came with offices full of cigarette smoke and legalised sexism.  (And the tea was usually awful!)

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

Airyfairy, your deeply personal and heartfelt poem stayed with me. I was left with a deconstructionist question. You say 'The poem is 'for...those working.... in public services'. Where are the public? These individuals in the poem  are paid to 'provide a service.' However they have become so mired in their Dantean circle, backbiting, wishing one another ill and chasing one other's tails that the public have become invisible.

I hope you have been able to retire on a reasonable pension and can now lead a better lifesmiley.

Submitted by airyfairy on

Elsie, you've put your finger on one of the reasons I left - not for permanent retirement, I'm afraid, as the pension doesn't run to that, but for a year's sabbatical to regain my sanity, live off my savings and concentrate on trying to be more of a writer!  I would say that most of the people on the 'front line' of public services still care deeply about the public and are heartbroken about the current situation, and even many of the much maligned managers feel the same.  But there is a panic induced refusal at local and national government level to really face up to the fact that public services as we know them are completely unsustainable unless we take shed loads of money from other areas, or we have to tell our elderly and vulnerable that the state will not care for them.  There are no other options.  It's a political question, and though I have my views I don't pretend there are any easy answers.  So we get endless restructures, trying to square a circle that can't be squared, people fear for their jobs, find themselves demoralised by being gate-keepers when they should be providers, and yes, the public end up being a rather messy inconvenience.

Sorry to ramble on.  It is, as you will gather, something I feel passionately about, but in the end I gave up fighting.  Which is perhaps the saddest thing of all.

Submitted by Ewan on

I missed this one. Very taut writing. Public services have been about robbing Peter to pay Paul for many, many years. Unless, and until, we agree to be taxed at Scandinavian levels that will not change. It's no use expecting the likes of Google, Amazon and the Big Banks to come over all altruistic and pay a fair rate of tax, neither, I imagine, will anyone rich enough to afford good taxation advisors experience a Damascene conversion on the way to their Caribbean island home.

I totally understand your surrender. I left the Air Force after 23 years, 13 years ago. I could have stayed until last year and been considerably more comfortably off. However, the unbelievable waste in procurement, the appalling lack of leadership and the inveterate tendency of the General Staff to fight the previous war just became too much.
We pay too much money for Armed Forces that are under-manned, under-equipped (HOW?) and under-motivated. We could spend that money elsewhere; however, any Public Service appears afflicted by the same malaise.

Arggh!! Oh that hurt, I fell off my soap-box. I'll get my coat.
Fine poem, that's what I came to say

Ewan

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