Thumping the staff...

...is always wrong, but why is it that the only places you see signs that say "Please don't punch our staff - we always prosecute" are where the customer service is crap to begin with. Examples include:

• Railway stations


• Onboard trains


• Airports


• GP surgeries


• Post Offices

and of course Royal Mail sorting offices. I had a parcel to collect from the main sorting office in Birmingham today, and saw no fewer than three signs saying "don't thump the staff". Fat chance - can hardly find the buggers. Twas a long queue and no-one serving. Eventually some shabby looking character in a high vis jacket (don't they all wear these now) turned up. Not the best advert for the dear old Royal Mail... anyone would think that they had become sloppy through lack of competition.



But this sign really made me laugh - even the bloody trade unions have to get their oar in! Clearly it's always wrong to thump someone, but if they wear the union tie, it's a whole lot worse!










Funnily enough, I've never seen a sign like that (the punching one, not the Wilkommen one) in John Lewis or Marks & Spencer. Perhaps people don't thump the staff there as the customer service is much better. Funny that.

How to save a few £100k from the public payroll

Greetings to fellow rantees...apologies for my five-month hiatus. A dear friend recently pointed out that he missed my whimsy and musings, so I've decided to get back into this here blogging lark.

Today's subject of conversation: a suggestion for where to swing the axe when Dave's in No 10.

Children's Commissioners.

First of all, why do we need four of these people (one each for England, Scotland, NI and Wales)? Are the issues affecting children in Scotland that different from those in Wales (viz, lack of access to booze, teachers not letting them play their iPods in class, shops 'stigmatising' them for wanting to buy cans of spray paint...)? Or is this just another one of those pig-headed notions that came out of devolution?

But do we really need anybody doing this job? I mention obviously because of this story but why do we need some unelected public servant (the English one paid £130k pa in 2005; possibly more now) to "speak up" for children? Don't we have government ministers at the Department for Big Hugs and Ice Cream for this?

Causes taken up by the Commisars de Yoof include:

• obviously the one mentioned earlier, that Messrs Venables and Thomson shouldn't have been tried through the criminal system for the brutal and sadistic murder of a toddler;
• ditto, raining the age of criminal responsibility (predictably, as it's higher in goody-goody PC Europe);
• attacking the Government for detaining the children of failed asylum seekers in secure accommodation prior to deportation (both in England and in Scotland);
• lobbying for a smacking ban... and doubtless heaps of other stuff.

What ties all this together? It's an explicitly Left-wing agenda. No notion that children's "rights" should be balanced with responsibilities. No recognition that the authority of adults should take precedence. Nothing. Just the usual "don't blame the kids" PC Guardian group-think in the public sector that seems to be utterly immune to the ballot box.

Well, Dave should think differently. Sack them - all four. Have a Tory Minister for Children at the (hopefully renamed) Department for Education. If people don't like what the Minister proposes re children's "rights", they can vote him or her out.

Simple.

PS - any idea that comes out the UN tends to be a crap one. Just ask Saddam's Swiss bankers how debilitating the UN's "Oil for Food" sanctions were to his bank balance.

UPDATE (15/3/10): The Telegraph's Ed West puts it rather well here.