Friday 7 August 2015

CURTAINS INDUSTRY IN MELTDOWN.



Now, lessbeclear, when I said Big Society, I only meant that  we should abolish the welfare state and let people fend for themselves; poor people, that is.
I never actually meant that Mrs Behemoth should run child protection.
Well,maybe I did,
But I don't now.
Time to move on. And let's not get into the blame culture.
Unless its of the party opposite.

Many jobs are said to be in jeopardy today as the British curtain industry predicts a slump in consumption.

Speaking in his office, Mr Ali Baba of the Forty Curtains Emporium in Sparkbrook, Birmingham,

 
 said this  is the biggest threat he had ever faced.  

 
Mrs Camilla Jabalala of Kids Company was my biggest customer, 
no, really, I mean biggest customer; 
she could wear several sets of curtains, all at one time, cor blimey, and I will go to the foot of our stairs, as we say in Birmingham, and every time she met a govament minister or some worthless celebrity  parasite

 
- and believe me, sir, they were bloody well queueing bloody up to pat her bloody fat arse -

 
Well, yes, I said all along,
it's curtains for her.

 and they gave her some more money, she wouild waddle in here and purchase a fucking lorry load of brightly coloured curtains which she would wrap around herself, cor blimey, sir, she was a one-woman curtain-buying phenomenon.  
I don't know what we will do without her.  Shout at everyone she would, sir, about how it was all for charity, her curtain extravagance, but the staff paid her no mind.  
Hulking great bloody gabshite, pardon my French, sir, that's what they called her, Esther Rantzen on steroids
  And the very best cushion covers, too, that's what she wore on her fat head, sir, the very best, the brightest and noisiest cushion covers;  Gawd strike me dead if that ain't the truth, sir. 
 My nephew,  sir,  he owns the establishment next door, 

 
 here, on this most excellent Stratford Road pavement and he can do you a smashing deal on some flowers for the little woman.  
You do have a little woman, sir, a memsahib, at home; not one of those joined-together-in-holy-arseholers are you, sir, like everybody at the BBC?

  
 You have never done anything but, sweetie.

I mean, that Sir Alan Yentob, sir, he comes down here for a Balti, now and again, sir, with extra garlic, on expenses of course, and - pardon me, sir, for the crudity - talks like a cunt.

This, this noisesome woman - and her groupies -  is the triumph of charisma over qualification, of wannabeism and self-celebration over a properly managed and resourced, professional social services agency. God help us all if trash like this wangle their way into the Bukkake Chancellor's, long-term economic plan  The care of children is the statutory responsibility of the state and should be properly funded, slipping a few quid to this gobby baggage, that she might do, on the cheap and on the wing what should be a binding, formal repsonsibililty of the state is a disgrace.  Professional social workers, that's what you need, loads of the bastards, not lardy blabbermouths.

44 comments:

Alphons said...

There is nearly always something slipery and slimey under every stone you turn over.

Doug Shoulders said...

She’s in charge of social work is she?
Seems about right…loud, gobby noticeable..that’s the way to go… Next thing you know, your put in charge.

SG said...

Looks like she uses the same curtain emporia as Winnie Mandela - they have much in common! Regarding the august Chairman, didn't Private Eye call him 'Botney'?

Mike said...

My wife worked in Social Services in Highbury & Islington in the 80s. There is nothing good that can be said about what she experienced there. Her office was next to the IRA section adorned with tricolour on the wall - I kid you not. This was during the reign of la Hodges. It was very hard to tell the difference between clients and staff. When I picked up my wife in the evening, in my best Savill Row suite, after a hard day in the city, my life was at risk.

mongoose said...

"Would you, son, give three million quid to this loon, and a week later and it all gone, not wonder, or ask what the hell? And where is my money?" "No, Dad." Such is the wisdom of infants. But not of politicians.

call me ishmael said...

Yes, Botney, although I have repeatedly called called him much worse, here, over the years, as mrs woar recalled; everything that stinks about the PBC, he and Thompson, mr sg.

I dare say you are right, mr mike, and Hodges goes, still, unpunished, pretending, in her stint on the public accounts committee, to be the people's champion; doesn't undermine the case for properly funded and qualified statutory staff, to which end Scotland is taking huge strides in training, registering and monitoring workers at all levels, apart, of course, from those in CEO positions, which are all political appointees.

No, she wasn't in social work, mr doug, that's the problem; like Rantzen, friend and lover of sex abusers, Mrs Curtains pretended to an expertise she didn't have and anyone with a thought in their head would've shown her the door, along with the idea that child protection js a matter fof the bizarrely charismatic. Fucking Geldofism. Another alphons stone under which all sorts creep and crawl. Jolie, McGregor, Bono, Comic Relief and now this creature, all holding Villainy's coat for him.

Was it mr mike, reminded us of the dwarf, Paddy humanitarian, saying, every time I snap my fingers an African child dies, and someone in the audience yelling, Then stop snapping your fucking fingers? That is about the height of if, showbizzers, grandstanding for the IMF; freaks and lunatics like Mrs Curtains, shouldeting aside proper statutory provision and filth lime Cameron and Schmidt cheering her on as they sell it off, stupid fat bitch.

Bungalow Bill said...

It's another branch of Stupidity's triumph, the fairly recent notion (pervading most areas) that training and technique don't matter as long as you guff away with the right sort of heartfelt claptrap. Dave will have thought it daring to associate himself with this daft bag, but you never see his arse for dust once he knows he's backed a loser.

Cunts UK.

call me ishmael said...

That's the future of broadcasting, mr bungalow bill, Sue Perkins presents The Great Social Work Bake-Off, in which a bunch of empty-headed TeeVee wannabes, just like her, decide how best to further damage vulnerable children. Riveting television, bold documentary, fascinating light entertainment, a sure-fire BAFTA. winner.......

mongoose said...

I don't think it ever had anything to do with children. It was a vanity project from the start. A right-on, tick-all-the-boxes vanity project for the chattering classes to coo about.

call me ishmael said...

And it highlights the chasm between govament and governed, the commentsphere awash with observatikns such as these, here, an ocean of whathefuckism, You know my naivety, mr mongoose, I am a man of constant sorrow, I've seen Trouble all my days. Distracted by larger Villainy I only ever saw the fat one as symbolising some blokes' affection for plumpitude, it's a free country, or so I am constantly told, and I thought there was room, in TellyWorld, for more than two fat ladies. that's all I thought she was, sofa candy for blubberophiles, I never knew she was actually let loose on vulnerablistas, as a practitioner, had a stable of PAs, to assist with her own vulnerabilities, the lazy, fat slob and played Santa with millions of others' pounds. She went, like HamFace, to one of those expensive schools for cheap spivs, so no doubt she'll be found something, as they call it, probsbly find her a reinforced seat in the Lords, with the proper charity cases.

tdg said...

I think she is very astute. She exploited the two most concentrated motivators of mankind: sex and money: to maintain client numbers, and then raised cash against the third: sympathy for the weak. Institutionalised emotional racketeering, you could call it.

alphons said...

It is a very sick world. Which ever country one looks at one find the same thing. Those in power are there in reality for their own benefit. They have conned/frightened/bribed the population into "accepting" them, and their quirks and desires, and have built around themselves a safety wall. That wall needs to follow the Berlin wall.

I wonder if the old advert about "Getting the strength of the Building Societies behind you." was really wise.

call me ishmael said...

I have known othes like her, mr tdg, astute and charismatic, criminal justice abounded with them at one time, Crime Czars, prison theatre groups, Ray Wyre, the BeastMan; Vivien Stern of NACRO; cons turned counsellor, like John McVicar, Rowntree, Fry and Cadury Trusts, at one time there seemed to be a new prisoners' charity every week, when actually people only needed to heed the Howard League in order to make some progress.

Camila is not the first, although, as you say, she brings a different twist and made fewer bones about her own avarice; people made fortunes more obliquely from Live Aid, surely the most cynical emotional racketeering of our times and Comic Relief never fails to nauseate. Whatever all these people were engaged in, it wasn't charity.

There is no way of predicting the outcome of Corbyn's intervention but it may, mr alphons, upset things in England as they have been upset Scotland, not that the elected tribesmen are any different from the elected Tories. There are SNP fuck-ups on several fronts but as Cameron endlessly blames Gordon Brown, so Gnasher and her crew endlessly blame England and both seem to prosper from it

Woman on a Raft said...

Hands up, I was fooled. The reasons for that, despite being warned by members of the commentariat, are:
- a generally idealistic message should not be dismissed. What else is Christianity?
- someone overweight and dressed oddly should not be dismissed for that alone.
- she was claiming to work with the kind of young people I wouldn't touch with a bargepole, and they do need help.
- Over the last 15 years I have not been impressed with qualified social workers, so why not let the amateurs have a go?
- there was a formal charity with a board of trustees. They are supposed to do the supervision which a member of the public cannot provide.

However, this all turns out to be tosh because I forgot the first rule which is that there are organizations which abuse of the term 'charity', particularly after changes in the law in 2006. I just did not spot that this was a cover, a fake charity, doing very little but looking plausible. This usually means that beyond a small number of people genuinely wanting to work with children, the purpose of the organization is as a holding-tank for political wannabes where they can be financed obliquely and their work passed off as 'research' or 'support'. They are given the pocket money needed to start a political or para-political career.

Woman on a Raft said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mongoose said...

Reading some of the stuff, they seem to have been a bit better than I gave them credit for - in intention anyway, if not execution. The batards nation is fixated with do-goodery and mending things - "Something must be done" - when it would be a better idea to concentrate on not breaking things in the first place. The way the State bends us to farm our children is appalling and, it has to be admitted, that we yield to it so often is a fucking abysmal indictment of us all.

lilith said...

Elbys son told us last year that he'd witnessed Ms Batmanjelly handing wads of notes to scrotes who'd be back half an hour later totally off their faces.(He runs a cafe below KC offices)

call me ishmael said...

I, too, am generally unimpressed, ms woar, by police officers, teachers, nurses, doctors and social workers but that is no reason for vigilanteism, free schools, witch doctors or gobby fat ladies dressed in curtains. I think that the office of constable, for instancd is so crucial an exemplar of our society that it should require a three-year degree course, instead, morons and bullyboys are given a few weeks training in cynicism by old lag layabouts and set loose on the rest of us; general practitioners, until recently, qualified and then never needed to read another word, much less study and refine their practice. Until we all pay proper taxes, recruit, train manage and retain skilled public service workers we will remain hostage to charismatic filthsters and to vermin like Ian Duncan Smith. That would be the plsce to start, mr mongoose, stating the bleedin' obvious, everybody paying enough tax. MediaMinster, we shouldn't need reminding, wants only to commodify our children, sexualise them and apprentice them to Usury; the weakest, along the way, will, in the service of our betters, be drugged, buggered, beaten and jailed. And as long as we demand that things are done on the cheap anything else we say is horseshit. Be good to hear Mr Corbyn addressing them ishoos -the beasting palace that is Westminster, the Crown, the Courts and the press.

call me ishmael said...

The probation service, ms lilith, used to have a Befriending Fund, a discretionary petty cash account, for urgent cash needs among clients - for that to work, to be replenished and remain available for a genuine crisis, it had to be scrupulously managed by professional people, not by volunteers and zealots happily giving it all away.

mongoose said...

But there will never be "enough" tax. Or charity. And government funding of a charity is no longer charity, it is taxation and the State. And the example is before us here. How many more £3millions are being squandered this very day? The sad truth is that the State is a piss-poor spender of money. It is the nature of the beast. It cannot be undone or improved upon. Oh, look at Scandinavia, they say. Yes, but six people live in each country there, not sixty million. So in a post-industrial country with lots of people in it, we need some other way.

Comrade Corbyn has the answer - if only he knew it. What is an appropriate Clause 4 for the 21st Century? Surely there are things which we hold and value in common. Maybe these should be provided by the State, funded via taxation, and its providers paid at some proportion of the national average wage - possibly 100% thereof. But this is not some Marxist fuckwittery. This means trains and teachers and libraries. It does not mean armies of cunts marching about the land with clipboards telling me that I may not take the kids to Brownies without a pass from Caesar, or that I must have five dustbins because we are pretending to sort your dung, or a fucking windmill on every corner because we are pretending that the world has not been warmer than this for 10 of the last 11 thousand years. Fuck all that. If the State understood its competence and mission creep could be restrained - indeed declared unlawful and maintained as so - one might find a proper Third Way. A Liberal, co-operative sentiment instead of a jackbooted I-know-bestism. Because they fucking don't.

call me ishmael said...

You know I have always decried the trashing of the first Clause Four and that therefore I don't disagree with a word of that, mr mongoose, except that the scale of necessary provision is greater than it has ever been and as it becomes apparent that all you have worked for and more will ultimately be paid to providers of private care we will find ourselves. toilng, striving, aspiring and doing the right thing in what I believe is a called a zero-sum game, in which the state and its owners in Globacorp will inevitably reap what we have sewn.

Mike said...

The root cause of the shit state the so-called first-world is in is, in my humble opinion, the failure of education. IE morons pretending to be adults.

In an enlightened country, such as Malta currently is, high class university education is available free for those who qualify. What is more, they give students money for books etc, as well as modest spending money (incidentally, more for science students than arts). In fact, this is the same system that I personally benifitted from some 40-odd years ago in the UK which allowed me to escape from the slums. The qid pro quo is that it should be a proper, not a pretend, education.

The present system in the UK (and Australia) is where kids, many lacking even basic skills of reading and writing, buy a pretend education. Because "universities" are now money making establishments, standards are sacrificed to mamon.

So the end result is that the professional ranks are now filled by those who ought never to be in such positions. And the ranks are swelled by many inadequates because few are able to command and manage.

And because, in their hearts, many realise the sham of it all, this leads to cynicism and dishonesty.

Its too late now, I believe, the system is too entrenched up its own arsehole.

Mike said...

PS: forgot to state the obvious: a proper university education is only suitable for approx 10%, and joke courses and establishments should be binned; and tech colleges should be reinstated.

mongoose said...

Indeed, Mr I, I do know that but that doesn't mean that I am wrong, old friend. You need only listen to the radio any day of the week for an hour and you will hear the dogmatic exchange that has been going on since Margaret Hilda stalked the burning land. In no operational situation I have ever encountered from building a bridge to buying an ice cream has it been considered a good thing in itself to spend more money. And if you want to be on the team whose essential tactic is to shout "Tory Cuts!", or its bastard cousin "Austerity!" this is your problem. You have to be about more than just spening more money. You have to demand more value. Because the patient, English majority will not elect you otherwise save one go in three or four.

In my various dealings with government doing stuff - and I have estimated here before - at least half of expenditure is wasted. And that is not ambulances and crews standing idle in want of a motorway smash but just simple idle pissing it against the wall of incompetence. This is why the Comrade - and you - need a new Clause 4 to stand around. What the fuck is Corbyn for?

Bungalow Bill said...

Socialism isn't about indulging the profligate, or it shouldn't be. It ought to be instead an assault at root on the idea that public service and provision are a drain on the virtuous productions of the money makers, of the entrepreneurial class. That was the great lie of Thatcherism and the gateway to the vulgarity and crassness of much of our society and business life now.

For every wasted penny in the public sector there is surely the equivalent in the private world of the banks and the corporate shysters. Indeed, the idiocy and incompetence on show in most small and medium size businesses is scarce to be credited when it's seen close up. What we need to change is the way we see ourselves: as economic units, to be justified or damned by how well we knuckle down in the service of a fucked up and virtual capitalism; or, better I suggest, as participants in something both more complex and more fulfilling, the objective of making our own and each other's lives as open and liberated from oppression as possible. The intelligent use of monetary exchange, and the honouring of the trust upon which such exchange is founded, is part of that objective but only part. Socialism, as our host has often observed, has much to be proud of in eradicating bigotries and structural inequities and that should not be pushed aside.

Someone coined the phrase "tragic humanism " for what we should be recognising in ourselves and I think that's about right. Tragic because we must always fall short and because we die, but humanist because we are here together and that is all we have in the end. I don't know how you would theorise or label any of that and yet you know when you see it done well and you know when you see it done badly.

call me ishmael said...

I think it probably is too late, mr mike, that's why we call it Chronicles of Ruin and if I had children of an age I would request that you sponsor them for Australia; bad as your own MediaMinster is it remains a diluted version of our own; people such as Gove and Osborne and Burnham and Balls, who chose Ambition over Learning. How many times, here, have I cursed, present company excepted, the gilded dross of Oxbridge, Yale snd Harvard? World wars, recession, torture, hunger, GlobaCrime, these fuckers can't even manage a system so heavily weighted in their own interests. I have also often queried the fact that Cameron's parents didn't seek a refund from Eton, so staggeringly ignorant is their son; silly me, I had assumed that they, themselves, would know the difference between their son and and an educated person. George Dubya Chimp went to Harvard, didn't he, and was prominent in their version of the Bullingdon Club, couldn't overemphistate that fact.

If anyone has the inclination to soil their minds they will find, in the Guardian, a piece by some cunt called Henry Porter, about KidsCo, informed by his very own daughter, Charlie, hsving famously worked there, real journalism, that.

call me ishmael said...

That's a prayer for our times, mr bungalow bill, a catechism for the NewPeople, the Children of Silicon Darkness and a Battle Hymn for a new Republic. I'm glad I come here.

call me ishmael said...

Well, I won't say, again, mr mongoose, that I agree with you, even though I do, largely, because it doesn't matter; we are the keepers of a sentimental flame, most if us, here, one fed with a failing bellows. Thd NewPeople, and I don't simply mean the young, damn our sophistry and our theories and ideologies and they just want something New, even if, as in Corbyn's case, or Gnasher's, or Sid Poundland's (who he?) it is actually something old.

I think it was mr tdg, who suggested that even an elected revolution, however disagreeable its proponents, was better than no revolution at all. Should Corbynism triumph it must forge its own Clause Four, shaped by those of them who can do thinking, that is, and we must wish them well.

I did hear someone comment that Entryism? That was the Blairites, wasn't it. And I saw a lovely lady on the PBC, saying, nationalisation of public utilities, reform of MediaMinster and a purging of the MoneyChangers, this IS the centre ground.......

Mike said...

Mr Bungalow Bill: Are not socialism and capitalism not sides of the same coin? They have been captured by the greasy-pole merchants all cut from the same cloth. The public sector is now as much a career choice, and a way to make money, as the private sector for the ego driven opportunists. Now heads of so-called charities, not to mention Directors of Social Services, earn more than bankers - because its the only way you can get quality people, so they say. They all speak the same bullshit. In the final analysis its about controlling the many and extorting their capital for personal benefit. Neither side of the coin gives a flying fuck for the little people.

call me ishmael said...

There is another slant to mr mike's proper derision of Blair's uni4all and that is the endless opportunity for auto-didactism afforded by the Internet. mrs woar mentioned, the other day, van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait and within seconds all can see not only the work but also an infinity of commentary on it. Auto and mutual, the learning opportunities; I heve learned much here, these past years, from comments on subjects I have posted and from discussion with and recommendations by others. I sometimes wonder how, in what we call the arts subjects at least, a teacher or lecturer can compete with the cyber competition.

I was at the new dig, at Stenness, in Orkney, recently, and partly took in a lecture by an archaeologist from the University of the Highlands and Islands, he knew his stuff, but that Neolithic stuff, it's all much better on the telly.

mongoose said...

Yes, I know, Mr I. I am just cross that Comrade C is cocking it up before he has started by being unfocused on what the problem truly is. We will quibble no more over the fine print of disaster.

How many characters in a tweet is it? 140-odd. That should be enough although I am sure that the old one was twice that. He could invite the world to write a Clause 4 for 2015. The new people could engage with that surely? I am sure that the Comrade reads these pages for his inspiration. I'll leave the idea there.

call me ishmael said...

And he could really have swung the IRA. connection to portray himself as a visionary realist. pre-Major, pre-Blair, pre-Brends The twittered constitution, gotta be better than the Big Society.

Mike said...

I agree with your point on the internet, Mr I, but I suggest some qualification. I think I have said before that without the ability to question and analyse, which a proper education should provide, the danger of the internet is that we are fed propaganda and Govt mis-information. Look at the way the main stream media has developed; the internet offers more scope for shaping weak minds. Also, the young seem to be losing their youth obsessed with social media, which to my mind is the modern Sodom & Gomorrah. All over the world people are now glued to their iThing and telling everyone what they are doing - as if anyone give a fuck.

call me ishmael said...

Oh, yes, for sure. I would hang Mark Zuckerberg, tomorrow, today, even, believing that Facebook and Twitter are accursed engines of enslavement, through which, uniquely in retail, the customer provides the product - his or her own life, to be marketed-on - as well as offering him or herself up for ridicule, bullying and worse; the seizure and storage and analysis of email for surveillance and further retail exploitation are utterly sinister and I have damned them often enough. You and I, however, can now view the Bodleian library online, instead of it being the preserve of Inspector Morse and of notional scholars. As for reading and writing and adding-up, estimating, dividing and multiplying, knowing shere places are and when things happened - basic11-plus knowledge - in Britain, at any rate, all that antedeluvian stuff is lost in Ruin's flood and cannot be learned from cyberspace, only by repetitive rote and consolidating practice and exposition.

Proper education, if Cameron is an example, it cannot even be bought with stolen money; lifelong learning, which is what I meant, rather than primary, secondary, tertiary and higher ecucation, has made electronic monks of us all, poring over manuscripts in cyber abbeys snd monasteries; that's what I meant, earholing at la Scala and the Albert Hall.

Mike said...

Totally agree on that Mr I, and apologies that my message came out a bit like teaching granny to suck eggs. Yes, abundant access to the raw material has been a transformation.

Bungalow Bill said...

Mr Mike, I agree. It's the waste of potential among the dispossessed (I mean globally) that is so dispiriting. They hardly trouble to pretend now, any of those who rule over us, that they give a fuck.

call me ishmael said...

Sophie G. was on Monday's Radio Four Front Row, talking about herself and about dancing for Rudi at the Paris Opera, worth a listen, a fascinating performer, but you have seen her, haven't you, mr mike?

Mike said...

As it happens, Mr I, I have seen her. Can't get the programme as the iPlayer thing doesnt allow foreigners access.

Mike said...

Correction: I was thinking of Sylvie G. Don't know Sophie G.

call me ishmael said...

Sorry, the ballerina.

blackholesunset said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
yardarm said...

A thought on Clause Four. It went out of the window very fucking rapidly back in the Great Tits Up in `08, didn`t it ? RBS, Lloyds, were nationalised at lightning speed: the City was saved from the consequences of its own greed and ineptitude. Don`t recall any whingeing about loony leftism then...no sneers about being a return to the seventies...Labour did it but Ham Face and Pansy Face supported it and carried it on. Wealth remained privatised: the very considerable losses were nationalised.

And apart from hundreds of billions of our money used as dole for the entitlement class of the City the Bank of England created 375 billion of Magic Money so the ' wealth creators ' could, er, carry on creating wealth. Imagine the fucking fuss if that had been done for manufacturing, say.

call me ishmael said...

Sorry, mr bhs, pressed the wrongbutton. Yes, it was that programme, such a difference from the usual showbiz and writer trash, hearing a proper artist, she's probably stark, raving bonkers, in a Beethoven sort of way. Her last show will be in London, this New Year's Eve; I wish, occasionally, that I was rich, instead of handsome.

call me ishmael said...

What's going on, mr yardarm, is the political caste, MediaMinster, at last showing its true colours by blatantly threatening a coup against democracy resurrecting itself in one of the rotten old parties. This could end very badly, or, some would say, very well. If they block or usurp Corbyn's election, they'll be fucked completely, parliament at last seen for what it is, a bunch of snorting Toby Youngs. Chais and meltdown, Scotland would secede, quite rightly, from the banana republic which NewLabour is proving us to be. Any judicial review of these goings-on, let alone the public perception, would bring down the roof.