.jpg)
Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
A Little Light Reading
Every now and again I chow down on some books. A read something and that leads to something else and before I know it I've devoured far more than I ever intended.
It began with Stephen King's 10 O'Clock people. This is a long walk for a little giggle - but enjoyable. It's about the unique chemical imbalance that occurs, and the insights into who people really are, if you happen to be a person desperately trying to quit smoking. If you're stuck on just the right amount of nicotine you become one of the Ten O'clock people and can see into the souls of the demon capatilists. I felt the tortured mind of a writer trying to give up cigarettes in this one - been there, met those demons.
Then I picked up Catcher in the Rye to see if Holden had come to terms with life any better some twenty odd years since I first met him. He hasn't. I came away this time with an intense feeling of the have's and have not's in Holden. This time I saw a young man with every advantage and every opportunity and still unable to grasp that he has any of it. Still great, still deceptively simple and captures the flight from youth to maturity without ever really making the leap. Yes, the world is a deceitful, dishonest, hypocritical place - still. Here's my book review - Holden Caulfield - Whiny, spoiled, bitch.
Next I moved to Slaughterhouse 5 - this was my first Kurt Vonnegut experience and I can't say how impressed I was. So impressed I immediately picked up Sirens of Titan - but more on that later.
Slaughterhouse 5 is just my sort of book. It's up there with other favourites that comment on life and mankind and where we fit in, who we are, what makes us tick on social and personal levels.
I'm not even sure how to explain Slaughterhouse without giving away an essential element that are the experience of the Tralfamadorian understanding of time as a non sequential element. This is an arthouse novel that works. It's all that I love about theatre in a book. It's deceptively simple and deals with the very largest aspects of life neatly and makes you rage and cower at the same time. It is summed up that in the days after the bombing of Dresden, where more civilians were killed than at Hiroshima, poor Edgar Derby will be executed by firing squad for looting a teapot. He's a school teacher you see - and not connected to anyone important. And so it goes.
Slaughterhouse 5 is why I love storytelling and why I keep banging on about treating the story as the first element and then let that story and it's telling guide everything else - Slaughterhouse 5 shouldn't work. The structure winds around itself - it reminded me very much of Tarantino's structuring of Pulp Fiction - but set from WWII until the sixties - a time where everyone dealt with life and death on a daily basis - not just the fringes of society, as is the case with Pulp Fiction.
From Slaughterhouse I picked up Sirens of Titan - Oh Lordy, Lord. This is why I have so much difficulty answering the question about who is/are my favourite author/s. I think Slaughterhouse 5 is as good a book as I've read. I wish someone had edited his - "And so it goes" - it sort of works throughout the book to round off every mention of a person dying or death being brought, but for me it got a little tiresome and 'tricky'.
But Sirens - that's an awful lot of time and fanciful, repetitive writing to make the point that lives lived, big and small, have very little meaning in the greater, bigger picture of existence. It's still a good book and Vonnegut can write and has a wild imagination - but I found Sirens testing. And the gag, made far more directly by Douglas Adams in 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy', that all of mankind, our history, our planet - everything we are - exists as a minor function of a greater being - in Siren's case - to deliver a small replacement part to get a spaceship running again. It's the science fiction version of the story killing last sentence that reads - "And then they woke up."
Next, I read Bill O'Reilly's 'Killing Lincoln' - no really, I did. Maybe I read it to get the Vonnegut out of my mouth. Like a flavourless sorbet between courses. Killing Lincoln is written as a thriller and is historically accurate - I have read complaints about the factual aspects being quoted incorrectly in the book - but they are so minor, it feels more like Bill bashing than anything else. "In one instance, the book claims Ford's Theatre was burned down in 1863 when it was actually destroyed in the end of 1862." Who cares?
It's a good romp through history and O'Reilly does remind you quite quickly, stripped of his ultra conservatism nonsense, he's a good journalist and through that, a good storyteller. I found myself growing a little frustrated with the details added for the sake of the thriller, detail that no one has any way of knowing.
When Booth or Lincoln or anyone else involved are alone, can anyone really know what they were thinking? And all too often O'Reilly decides they were thinking prophetic thoughts that help build tension to what's coming. Artistic licence taken and run with - but did we need it to be a marathon?
And then I finally got around to reading Animal Farm - how could I have not read it before? I guess it's one of those classics described by Twain as "Something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read." And these days with movies, transcripts and it being a story that is so well encapsulated in so few words, it was a story I knew well enough that I could always bluff my way through having read.
So I can now tick it off my list. I guess that's a good thing. For me - as important as the story is - it's a one trick pony - which goes back to how and why you can get by with never having read it. Don't get me wrong, it's great, ground breaking for its time, but once the idea is in place to examine the different systems of 20th century rule through animals on a farm, it's pretty much just a matter of rolling that idea out. Orwell does that superbly - no denying - his examination of propaganda to keep the masses in line is masterful - but everything is where you'd expect it to be from revolution to unchallenged dictator's empire. And the ghastly truth - nothing really changes. There's always going to be a 1% with all the power and all the money - no matter what system is employed. Sad, but true.
And that brings me to Flowers for Algernon. Here's a book I'd heard of, but knew very little about. It is deeply disturbing for anyone who likes to think about life, their place in it and what it means to be an intelligent being, trying to make sense of the world we live in.
I recently asked the following to my closest friend - "I wonder if I wouldn't be better off if I was the sort of person who could be completely happy and fulfilled with my life because my team won on the weekend."
Then I picked up Flowers for Algernon - and here was that very debate. (And so many more of life's important debates). This has been a controversial book from the first publication. I can understand why it causes so many protestations. And yet, as much as it must enrage certain groups within the community who care for and fight for the rights of the mentally disabled, it's as important a story as any I've read. Is the feeble minded Algernon better off than his genius self who tries, fails and then discovers he can't master or control the life he's leading and the world he's living in?
And what of Algernon? Does he really become self aware? Does he discover and understand through his new intellect that he's a mouse? Would that be the same sort of realisation as waking with a fully functioning mind and discovering an accident had left your body totally inert? Is that why Algernon takes to throwing himself wildly against his cage? Who knows. Algernon certainly has no way of telling us.
It's left to the reader to decide why Algernon behaves like he does - but the idea flowers will be left on his grave seemed perfectly fitting for the first mouse I have truly grieved for.
This is an extraordinary book - or maybe just a book that found me at the right time. Sometimes books have a way of doing that - but I'd list this one in the group of those books that seem to try and explore who we are in a very direct way.
I guess with Slaughterhouse I can add two to that growing list - of course, understanding who we are and where we all fit in is a wonderful quest - being happy with those discoveries is something entirely different.
Scott Norton Taylor - Inner City - Ebook for Kindle, Epub Sony, Palm or online!
Reviews: From Amazon
It began with Stephen King's 10 O'Clock people. This is a long walk for a little giggle - but enjoyable. It's about the unique chemical imbalance that occurs, and the insights into who people really are, if you happen to be a person desperately trying to quit smoking. If you're stuck on just the right amount of nicotine you become one of the Ten O'clock people and can see into the souls of the demon capatilists. I felt the tortured mind of a writer trying to give up cigarettes in this one - been there, met those demons.
Then I picked up Catcher in the Rye to see if Holden had come to terms with life any better some twenty odd years since I first met him. He hasn't. I came away this time with an intense feeling of the have's and have not's in Holden. This time I saw a young man with every advantage and every opportunity and still unable to grasp that he has any of it. Still great, still deceptively simple and captures the flight from youth to maturity without ever really making the leap. Yes, the world is a deceitful, dishonest, hypocritical place - still. Here's my book review - Holden Caulfield - Whiny, spoiled, bitch.
Next I moved to Slaughterhouse 5 - this was my first Kurt Vonnegut experience and I can't say how impressed I was. So impressed I immediately picked up Sirens of Titan - but more on that later.
Slaughterhouse 5 is just my sort of book. It's up there with other favourites that comment on life and mankind and where we fit in, who we are, what makes us tick on social and personal levels.
I'm not even sure how to explain Slaughterhouse without giving away an essential element that are the experience of the Tralfamadorian understanding of time as a non sequential element. This is an arthouse novel that works. It's all that I love about theatre in a book. It's deceptively simple and deals with the very largest aspects of life neatly and makes you rage and cower at the same time. It is summed up that in the days after the bombing of Dresden, where more civilians were killed than at Hiroshima, poor Edgar Derby will be executed by firing squad for looting a teapot. He's a school teacher you see - and not connected to anyone important. And so it goes.
Slaughterhouse 5 is why I love storytelling and why I keep banging on about treating the story as the first element and then let that story and it's telling guide everything else - Slaughterhouse 5 shouldn't work. The structure winds around itself - it reminded me very much of Tarantino's structuring of Pulp Fiction - but set from WWII until the sixties - a time where everyone dealt with life and death on a daily basis - not just the fringes of society, as is the case with Pulp Fiction.
From Slaughterhouse I picked up Sirens of Titan - Oh Lordy, Lord. This is why I have so much difficulty answering the question about who is/are my favourite author/s. I think Slaughterhouse 5 is as good a book as I've read. I wish someone had edited his - "And so it goes" - it sort of works throughout the book to round off every mention of a person dying or death being brought, but for me it got a little tiresome and 'tricky'.
But Sirens - that's an awful lot of time and fanciful, repetitive writing to make the point that lives lived, big and small, have very little meaning in the greater, bigger picture of existence. It's still a good book and Vonnegut can write and has a wild imagination - but I found Sirens testing. And the gag, made far more directly by Douglas Adams in 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy', that all of mankind, our history, our planet - everything we are - exists as a minor function of a greater being - in Siren's case - to deliver a small replacement part to get a spaceship running again. It's the science fiction version of the story killing last sentence that reads - "And then they woke up."
Next, I read Bill O'Reilly's 'Killing Lincoln' - no really, I did. Maybe I read it to get the Vonnegut out of my mouth. Like a flavourless sorbet between courses. Killing Lincoln is written as a thriller and is historically accurate - I have read complaints about the factual aspects being quoted incorrectly in the book - but they are so minor, it feels more like Bill bashing than anything else. "In one instance, the book claims Ford's Theatre was burned down in 1863 when it was actually destroyed in the end of 1862." Who cares?
It's a good romp through history and O'Reilly does remind you quite quickly, stripped of his ultra conservatism nonsense, he's a good journalist and through that, a good storyteller. I found myself growing a little frustrated with the details added for the sake of the thriller, detail that no one has any way of knowing.
When Booth or Lincoln or anyone else involved are alone, can anyone really know what they were thinking? And all too often O'Reilly decides they were thinking prophetic thoughts that help build tension to what's coming. Artistic licence taken and run with - but did we need it to be a marathon?
And then I finally got around to reading Animal Farm - how could I have not read it before? I guess it's one of those classics described by Twain as "Something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read." And these days with movies, transcripts and it being a story that is so well encapsulated in so few words, it was a story I knew well enough that I could always bluff my way through having read.
So I can now tick it off my list. I guess that's a good thing. For me - as important as the story is - it's a one trick pony - which goes back to how and why you can get by with never having read it. Don't get me wrong, it's great, ground breaking for its time, but once the idea is in place to examine the different systems of 20th century rule through animals on a farm, it's pretty much just a matter of rolling that idea out. Orwell does that superbly - no denying - his examination of propaganda to keep the masses in line is masterful - but everything is where you'd expect it to be from revolution to unchallenged dictator's empire. And the ghastly truth - nothing really changes. There's always going to be a 1% with all the power and all the money - no matter what system is employed. Sad, but true.
And that brings me to Flowers for Algernon. Here's a book I'd heard of, but knew very little about. It is deeply disturbing for anyone who likes to think about life, their place in it and what it means to be an intelligent being, trying to make sense of the world we live in.
I recently asked the following to my closest friend - "I wonder if I wouldn't be better off if I was the sort of person who could be completely happy and fulfilled with my life because my team won on the weekend."
Then I picked up Flowers for Algernon - and here was that very debate. (And so many more of life's important debates). This has been a controversial book from the first publication. I can understand why it causes so many protestations. And yet, as much as it must enrage certain groups within the community who care for and fight for the rights of the mentally disabled, it's as important a story as any I've read. Is the feeble minded Algernon better off than his genius self who tries, fails and then discovers he can't master or control the life he's leading and the world he's living in?
And what of Algernon? Does he really become self aware? Does he discover and understand through his new intellect that he's a mouse? Would that be the same sort of realisation as waking with a fully functioning mind and discovering an accident had left your body totally inert? Is that why Algernon takes to throwing himself wildly against his cage? Who knows. Algernon certainly has no way of telling us.
It's left to the reader to decide why Algernon behaves like he does - but the idea flowers will be left on his grave seemed perfectly fitting for the first mouse I have truly grieved for.
This is an extraordinary book - or maybe just a book that found me at the right time. Sometimes books have a way of doing that - but I'd list this one in the group of those books that seem to try and explore who we are in a very direct way.
I guess with Slaughterhouse I can add two to that growing list - of course, understanding who we are and where we all fit in is a wonderful quest - being happy with those discoveries is something entirely different.
One last thing - Go Saints!
Scott Norton Taylor - Inner City - Ebook for Kindle, Epub Sony, Palm or online!
Reviews: From Amazon
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Posted December 1, 2012
Great read.
A story filled with with love, hate, violence, peace and so much more. 538 pages of wondering what will happen
next. A FULL story from start to finish. Thanks to the author for sharing a great work with the readers.
Posted July 8, 2012
Couldn't put it down...
For this to have been a free book, it was wonderful. The author keeps you on the edge of your seat. I couldn't
put this down. I think this would make a great movie!
Posted April 20, 2012
Amazing
Perfectly written with great detail it was thought provoking and asked the fundemental question of would you
stick up for what you believed was right even if you would be killed for doing so.
Posted April 5, 2012
This book is AWESOME! it keeps you wanting to read the entire ti
This book is AWESOME! it keeps you wanting to read the entire time. It tells of 2 worlds, and both are
extremely unique. One of the best books I've ever read!
Friday, 8 March 2013
Please Like Me - Review
Josh Thomas jokes he has the head of a baby on the body of an old man, but his first TV offering, ‘Please Like Me’, proves there’s
a mature story head on his shoulders.
‘Please Like Me’ also does
something that is years ahead of any other mainstream show on TV – it creates a lead
character who is gay, without that character focusing on being gay.
There’s a wonderful early moment where Josh tells his friend,
Tom, that a mole on his lip bled into the mouth of a boy he tried
to make out with. Josh describes this as the third worst sexual experience of his life – which is the sort of cumulative, gentle comedy this show has in
abundance. But Tom’s response is to ask if they are simply ignoring the new
information that Josh made out with another guy? Josh issues a quick, ‘Ah-huh’ and
continues the conversation, asking advice about what one should do if they
bleed into the mouth of someone they’re trying to crack onto?
In this brief exchange, and sold by his best friend’s acceptance
to simply move on, gender becomes inconsequential, at least to Josh.
This may shock the straight world – but that’s the reality of
being gay. We don't really think about it that much. Straight people seem to care far more about who gay people make out
with than gay people do. Making out is making out – boy or girl, straight or
gay – it can be equally exciting or stressful to meet someone new, and we don’t think it’s weird or brave or anything other than normal to share that with who we're attracted to. All of that labeling and what it means is pretty boring compared to the sex of it.
The character at the center of ‘Please Like Me’ is many
things, one of those is gay. Josh Thomas, the comedian behind the show is also
gay and he’s savvy enough to understand that you need to be natural as a performer. Most actors are type cast because they can’t be
anything on screen but who they are. Those performers who can change onscreen are few and far between. How much of onscreen Josh is real Josh?
You’d need to know Josh to know that, but the bravest choice he made was not to
hide behind a character that isn’t him.
What we end up with is Josh Thomas. He’s a little weird. He
talks funny and walks oddly. He confesses to having woman’s hips and his voice
sort of breaks when he talks about anything important. But oddly, you can’t
help liking him – he just seems nice.
And it’s that character he’s brought to this, with a strange
meld of real and fiction that delivers a young man who is 100% believable and
real. He is gay, intellectual, awkward, funny, lost, young, struggling with
family, trying to grow up, supported and supportive of his friends, looking to
be loved by someone he can love and he knows he has a long way to go to
find himself. In other words, he’s a typical young person trying to muddle
through life to find a future he can be happy with. That’s a
universal quest and that’s why, whoever you are, this is a relatable show.
‘Please Like Me’ is likely to be a sleeper with
many downloads around the world from people who will watch every episode in one sitting when they discover it. It probably won’t be a big hit on air because
of its refusal to treat the gay sexual content as anything but
usual. This means Josh and whoever he’s enamored with kiss like real people.
There’s no fade away or cut to’s here. They just snog like any other young
people – they swap spit and feel each other up and they do it like they’re
enjoying it – certainly not apologising for it.
I suspect the still largely conservative TV audience
isn’t ready for that. It's still a niche market. But I am thrilled to see a gay character living a real life on screen that
isn’t full of squeals and flapping arms or an obsession with shopping, gossip
and décor – hallelujah!
‘Just Like Me’ is a dramedy in line with Girls and Louie. It
screams of an understanding of how to tell a story with humour that is
believable and still delivers great entertainment. These shows understand life
is often funny, not always to the person involved – but to everyone else invited
to watch from their ‘fly on the wall’ vantage point and in a skilled hand, these moments become even more enjoyable.
There is a great story mind at work here and Josh Thomas has
set the bar very high for himself with an awful lot of time left to deliver
more. It may well be he has some very good story heads to help him structure
his stories, because they are well structured. They twist and turn with ease
and show an innate understanding of how stories work and how to subvert what is set up and expected.
When Aunt Peg is being her usual annoying self and trying to
get Josh to go to church, Josh stands up to her and wins the battle of wits
with honest, real, logical choices that leave it clear he will not be bullied
into being a churchgoer – under any circumstances.
When Peg drives away, and Josh throws his tongue down Geoff’s throat, Peg’s unexpected return brings calamity! Now nosey, opinionated, meddling Peg knows the gay secret Josh’s been keeping from his family and she delivers her line perfectly – “See you at church” – touché Peg!
99 times out of 100 storytellers would play this out – and keep
Josh trapped in this conundrum of being forced to keep his secret by attending
a service he has little respect for.
But this show is better than that. Desperately wanting Josh
to be ‘outed’ to further their relationship, Geoff tells Josh’s father he’s the
boyfriend and not simply a friend. This is more like a real life unfolding –
not neatly choreographed so the drama escalates and gives the best bang for
your buck. It’s equally entertaining when it surprises and delivers real
moments rather than loud, ever increasing crescendos.
There is complicated, nuanced storytelling at work here. Josh
plays the martyr to his parent’s unraveling lives and still trying to guard his
mother from any emotional stress, and now essentially out and no need to bend
to Peg’s blackmail, he still attends church – but now takes his boyfriend. And
it is Peg who redeems herself and places Josh ahead of her own religion because
she loves her nephew more than she blindly accepts the church’s anti-gay point
of view.
‘Please Like Me’ has the feel good formula measured to a tee.
As quirky and insane as these friends and family are – there’s no denying, as proven by Peg, they
all love each other.
Thomas Ward as Tom, Josh’s housemate and best friend, is
wonderful because he too, like Josh, is clunky, not as a performer, but as a
person. It is this clunky, slightly awkward but genuinely good natured type of
friend, a person like Josh would have.
Caitlen Stacey underplays her best friend/ex to perfection
and Wade Briggs makes you believe Geoff, Josh’s desperate to be loved, twink boyfriend.
If I have one criticism of the show it’s that Geoff seemed just a little too
forward in picking up Josh – but for the sake of moving things along it’s a
very small complaint.
Deborah Lawrence and David Roberts have been getting praise
all over town for their portrayal of Josh’s parents and rightly so – but for
me, it is Judy Farr who is the pick of the crop. She’s annoying, meddlesome and
self righteous with little reason to be – and she makes my blood boil in almost
every scene she’s in.
That’s a quality performance. When she stood up in church
and took on religion and the right wing in defense of her nephew's life, a life
she doesn’t personally condone, it was yet another twist in the story that
plays as both believable and unexpected.
If you can watch this without being distracted by the gay
content, or by seeing a gay actor allowed to be his natural, awkward self, without
any hint of the usual screamingly clichéd gay that makes most onscreen incarnations
more acceptable to the mainstream, then enjoy it as a quality piece of television.
If you can’t get past the gay elements, then you’re missing
out on a rich, nuanced show that is far bigger than any one issue.
Whatever the case, with ‘Please Like Me’- Josh has stuck his baby’s head above the tall grass and
announced, to anyone who is paying attention, that’s he’s going to be around
for a long time.
Out of ten – this is an understated eight.
Scott Norton Taylor - Inner City - Ebook for Kindle, Epub Sony, Palm or online!
Reviews: From Amazon
Scott Norton Taylor - Inner City - Ebook for Kindle, Epub Sony, Palm or online!
Reviews: From Amazon
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Posted December 1, 2012
Great read.
A story filled with with love, hate, violence, peace and so much more. 538 pages of wondering what will happen
next. A FULL story from start to finish. Thanks to the author for sharing a great work with the readers.
Posted July 8, 2012
Couldn't put it down...
For this to have been a free book, it was wonderful. The author keeps you on the edge of your seat. I couldn't
put this down. I think this would make a great movie!
Posted April 20, 2012
Amazing
Perfectly written with great detail it was thought provoking and asked the fundemental question of would you
stick up for what you believed was right even if you would be killed for doing so.
Posted April 5, 2012
This book is AWESOME! it keeps you wanting to read the entire ti
This book is AWESOME! it keeps you wanting to read the entire time. It tells of 2 worlds, and both are
extremely unique. One of the best books I've ever read!
Sunday, 24 February 2013
The Min-Wage Generation and the Coming Revolution.
One hundred and fifty years ago, in a wilderness cabin,
three miles from the outskirts of his home town, a town that hosted his
substantial house, Henry David Thoreau wrote that most of us were living lives
of quiet desperation.
It’s an elitist who creates pseudo isolation to carry out
deep thought. Thoreau was such a man – a deep thinking, poignant and insightful
elitist. He’s a wonderful example of the duality of society. In Walden he gets
back to nature by artificially creating a life cut off from the rest of his
privileged world – so he can ruminate on that world and the life he has cut
himself off from.
There is no comparison between a person slumming it for a
period of time of their choosing and being trapped in that state with no means to
rise above it.
The modern world survives because of this duality of
society. If those on the bottom rung ever fully understood what the rest have –
the revolution would begin tomorrow. And that’s how revolutions do start. Society
ambles on until the ‘haves’ become so out of touch they allow the ‘nots’ to see
what they are missing out on and then anarchy ensues.
Am I talking about the one percent - the mega rich who rule
us? Of course. But it’s such a misnomer to allow the far larger affluent portion
of society to level all the blame towards so few in an effort to avoid any blame. Someone supported the system that allowed the corporations of
the one percent to evolve.
Anyone who truly believes the mega rich are the only reason
that inequality exists on such a massive scale are living in denial. There is
no traditional middle class anymore, but it’s wrong to assume there’s no middle
class. They simply can’t be defined as one single group anymore, because the
‘old’ middle class has hemorrhaged into at least three sub classes.
The working class can still largely be defined by those who
get paid by the hour or exist with a degree of direct government assistance to
meet the basic requirements of life. This group can and does exist below the
poverty line.
But who are the new splintered middle class? There is the subsistence
wage earner who works for a low wage at the level of, or just above a country’s
minimum wage. A yearly dollar figure that is akin to the sharecropper – a form
of economic slavery that demands any level of work in terms of hours, a total
commitment to the job, always being on call, but with little or no benefits or
rewards for extra work and extra commitment. It is a job that demands a lot and
gives back very little.
This new class allows the guiltless upper middle class or
corporate level middle class to get rich by paying a minimal percentage of the
profits to the over worked, dedicated to the company, wage earner. They are
guiltless because they remain far below the true wealth of the one percent so
they pass the blame, while actually being the ones who enact and enforce the
policies that make the one percent the one percent. They are the gatekeepers to
the one percent; the jailers to the lower classes.
Then there are the small business owners who work even harder
for far less than they pay some of their hourly waged employees. These people are
tangled in the red tape and paper work that makes their likelihood of success
even slimmer and all for the hope, that if they commit 100% to their business,
it may, eventually, rise above a constant struggle and become profitable. These
are the people who should be allowed to employ an ultra flexible workforce, but
who are denied the benefit because to do so now requires complicated accounting
and legal procedures that only the larger corporations have resources to fund –
giving those larger corporations the advantages that should only be afforded a new business trying
to gain a foothold.
These small business owners do have the advantage of working
for themselves and not having to answer to a corporate HR department that
requires arbitrary targets and who micro manage every aspect of their business
using terminology stolen from the slickest pony tailed advertising executive
from the nineties.
The down side of the small startup business is that after
giving it your life and soul for any number of years and virtually sacrificing
your quality of life to try and help it survive and flourish – you may be
repaid with foreclosure and a mountain of debt.
But some still make it past the early start-up years and
create a sustainable and successful small business. Maybe they hit on the right
formula early, or, after putting in the hard grind they built up to a
profitable business so they can reap the rewards of less hours and more income.
Now it is their turn to access the advantages of an unjust system that offers
benefits to established businesses who can increase their owners take home pay
by hiring hourly waged employees and paying them as little as is legally
possible. That is the management model du jour – the ethos of the modern
business/management executive. It may not be the most ethical way to increase profits - but it satisfies the legal criteria - and that's the new benchmark.
The final and most prolific group of the newly fragmented middle
class are those who manage to climb the corporate wage ladder to a position
where comfortable and adequate compensation is actually given or exceeded –
let’s say the $120,000 plus bracket of wage earners.
Only above these new categories of middle class do we reach
those who are genuinely rich. But even here there are levels of ‘rich’ and most
don’t qualify, nor do they consider themselves to be part of the reviled one
percent.
Beginning with the CEO’s and top-level executives who earn 2
to 5 hundred thousand to a million a year; the partners in law, accounting,
advertising and similar consultant based firms who earn a similar amount. Even
the top ranking non partners in these firms should be included and the many in the financial sector who, even after a few years service in a stock
brokerage firm, a hedge fund or merchant bank, can take home a bonus of many times
the minimum wage in a good year. These people are all part of the new elite.
They cannot be excluded from the responsibility for the financial inequalities
in our society. For them to point the finger of blame entirely at the 1% is
trying to spin and deflect the focus away from their own very comfortable
existence.
But it’s not these individuals who created the problem –
it’s all of us. It’s a corporate attitude that has been learned and taught over
years. We have all slowly been schooled and indoctrinated into accepting this
inequality. It’s not anyone’s fault individually. It’s all of our faults
collectively.
Of course the mega wealthy have the most skin in the game.
They alone have the means, the power and the control of their corporations to
change the system from the top. BUT – it is a rare and extraordinary leader
that dares to dismantle the throne they sit on while they are still seated. So
even to the 1% we need to concede an understanding of how they arrived so far
above and why they feel no need to change a system that has evolved over
centuries.
It is said a despot rules by fear, a monarch rules through
honor and a republic through virtue - which is why the spin and hoodwinking of
how society assigns great wealth is so very well hidden. We now live in a corporate
republic where corporations have been legally declared as people. Just as
corporations as people make poor citizens, they return a virtue-less society.
When the corporate skirt is lifted to reveal the economic whore
underneath, anarchy and revolution will follow. It may be a modern quiet,
lengthy revolution that is likely to come about through peaceful means, but
eventually it will arrive. How - I’m not sure – but the next big thing in
revolutionary forces – the next Twitter empowering vehicle that allows the
masses to work collectively, allowing a mass of individual voices to once
again wield real power, may emerge from no-where overnight and make the
difference. Who knows what form it may take – but the certainty is, when the
inequality reaches a tipping point between what is being lost and what people
have left to lose – change will come.
The seeds are being sown right now for change. There is a slowly growing awareness and concern with our current system’s continued
justification of the injustice leveled at the minimum wage earners; the
worker who is paid by the hour; the person who is at the forefront of the
business, the person who must endure the horrific onslaught of abuse from
disgruntled customers and clients. Clients who are entrapped by the bright
lights and promises of signing on or being loyal customers, only to be
relegated to the back of the queue and neglected once they have bought into a
binding, non negotiable and fixed contract.
These workers, many via a phone line, are now the public
face or voice of an organization. They are the people who deal with our
complaints, needs, payments and wishes at the shop front. They are the people
who serve at customer desks or checkouts and they are also the people rostered to
a minimum number of hours to save a single dollar at the expense of service and
quality to the customer.
The same workers are then told lies to cajole them into
giving the company even more. These lies have become standard management processes; “You’ll
have to work short staffed because we have two members who called in sick today.” “We need you to working an extra hour because we’ve been hit by a rush.” - No - the truth is you, the supervisor or manager, tried to get away with rostering on the minimum staff possible and now must convince those staff you have working to work harder to make up for that decision.
There’s a subtle pressure on the worker to show company
spirit and commitment by working those extra hours or an extra shift and it’s
all a calculated corporate policy to squeeze the most productivity out of the
least number of people. And what choice does a powerless worker have when jobs
are so few and a queue has formed, of eager replacements to take any vacant job? Say no to overtime or
working in stressful under staffed conditions and a new name tagged John or
Jane will be in your smock before you can say, “Next please.”
These minimum wage workers are never offered full time
positions with any of the corresponding full time benefits and are continually
told slightly less than the truth by their managers to extort the most from
them. Slowly, over time, even the most trusting employee becomes aware such
practices are standard and not, as stated, a one off anomaly that couldn’t be
helped. It becomes obvious they are working for a management who either lie or
continually make poor management decisions.
The truth is these little white lies are the result of the
modern post graduate business school principles of good management techniques
that try to minimize wages and maximize profits by making decisions based on
quantifiable methods and not on a flexible policy and common sense. The result of micro management
from distant HR departments that formulate models and assessment criteria for
every aspect of the business creates the need for floor supervisors to create
the white lies to explain poor decisions to staff. It’s the only way to stave
off a disgruntled workforce asked to work harder for no more.
The poor decision was made by an executive in a distant
office who set the staff level for a trading period based on historical
comparable data. We did X dollars in business last year on this day so we
should roster on Y number of staff for today. And when the data lies it is the on floor manager who must explain the poor decision to staff in a way that stops them being disgruntled - hence the convenient white lie.
Those working harder and longer as a result are the minimum
wage earners. They are the workers the public deal with on a daily basis; the
single teller in a bank or post office; the retail salesperson, the checkout
cashier or company phone consultant, the nurses and aged care workers in privatized
care facilities. These are the workers left to explain all the corporate
decisions as if they stand by and agree with them. They are the ones explaining
to customers why so few staff are working within such a large store, or why a
product has been reduced in size but not in price, or why a product bought for
years is no longer stocked, but has been replaced by the vastly inferior home
brand, or why someone’s elderly parent who is a palliative care patient has no
air conditioning turned on despite the very hot day.
And it is these poor minimum wage workers who must deal with
the barrage of anger and frustration coming from a community who is being poked
and prodded by corporate profit into ever increasing lives of quiet
desperation.
Today, the lower your wage, the more likely you are to be
pushed out front to deal with the customer. The minimum wage requires you take
maximum responsibility.
It’s okay for Rupert and James Murdoch to swear they were
uniformed, didn’t know or couldn’t recall vital decisions or critical business
practices in the multi-billion dollar company they run. It’s fine for a litany
of CEO’s to front enquiries during the fallout from the GFC and claim they
couldn’t recall, were unaware, ill-informed or not briefed about the practices
of the companies they run. But should a twelve dollar an hour employee not know
the weekly specials or the required customer protocols – they will be
disciplined, sent for retraining and if it persists – fired. That’s the duality
of our modern society – that’s the cutting edge of the modern inequality.
In days gone by, shaving a penny or selling bread below its
stated weight was illegal – in fact the term ‘baker’s dozen’ comes from a time
where selling underweight bread brought the seller a fine, so they threw an
extra roll into the deal to ensure your dozen rolls came up to weight. Today's companies cut and shave things just as fine - but would never dream of offering more to ensure they deliver on their promises.
Instead today's companies
put young entry level employees in the complaints window, because most of us
have the sense to know the multibillion dollar company’s chiseling and price
gauging decisions – decisions that are certainly morally unethical, are not
being made by the young face we’re expected to vent to.
Many business people defend themselves by stating they are
doing everything required of them within the law. But shouldn’t we be demanding
our business leaders and our leading businesses work to a higher social
standard than just scraping past what is strictly legal?
Every person who complains about the attitude of Gen X or
Gen Y or the new Millen-Gen needs to consider how those young people formed their
attitudes. We, our companies, our society has parented these generations and
created their attitudes and views of the world we now ask them to be part of.
How else should they act, but to be schooled and motivated by the way they have
been treated?
“Do as I say, not as I do” – has never sounded so hollow. It
is the disparity between what is preached in company induction seminars and the
reality of work place practices. If you treat a worker poorly, steal their
breaks, ask them for extra time, effort and care – while chiseling cents from
their already meager pay, if you sack them for taking a stale piece of cake
that was destined for the bin, while allowing managers to indulge in junkets
and large corporate expense accounts, if you show them a principle of making
money by hoodwinking customers, spinning half truths into full truths,
exaggerate the attributes and uses of products, and hide information that a newer,
better product exists or is about to exist – those workers will learn those
ethics and apply them equally to the rest of life.
This is not the world that is espoused in the multitude of corporate
training videos, in the endless HR lectures and induction seminars about being
a good corporate citizen. These young workers have seen the other side of the
coin – the reality of how things really work and they will know the corporate
ethos pounded into new employees during induction classes are just things corporations
are legally required to cover in order to get you onto their floors to do their
bidding.
Of course there is a chain of Chinese whispers that perverts these
best desired practices, chipping away at their edges so the reality is far
different when the lowest employee actually makes the sale – and this is the
Billionaire buffer – the system of distancing executives from the coalface practices
that allows the powerful to reap all of the benefits of a corporation while
accepting none of the responsibility.
“Be innovative, be forward thinking, never disobey or break
company policy, rules or directives, go that extra mile and at every
opportunity make the customer happy and want to return and shop with us again.
But be prepared to be sacked if you don’t meet your sales quotas, your customer
served quota, your speed at the register quota or deliver efficient end of day
register, cash, sales and invoice reporting – and make sure that critical
reporting is done in less than five minutes after closing off to avoid
additional overtime payments, or be prepared not to be paid for that extra time.
Also – one last thing, we’re making you a casual employee
regardless of the hours you work. That means we can give you zero hours a week
if it suits us, or 50 hours every week, we can sack you without notice, give
you no benefits, no retirement fund contributions, no sick leave of any kind
and you will have a changing weekly roster issued one week at a time – but you
will be required to give us all the considerations that would go with being a
full time employee. The alternative is – we give your position to someone
else.”
There is a revolution coming and it’s not going to come from
where anyone is looking. It won’t come from workers who are trapped in their
quiet desperation. It won’t come from local business and suppliers who are being
squeezed out of business by the huge corporate juggernauts.
It will come from the parents of the children trying to
forge lives in an increasingly hostile work environment, an environment being
ruled and guided by the same companies that are making retirement funds swell.
Eventually, the profits being added to the retirement accounts of the parents of the next
generation will not be enough to stop them taking action to change a system
that is denying and robbing their children of an honest reward for effort.
Yes – the new, infuriating and increasingly over involved
generation of helicopter parents will lead the coming revolution.
Ask a teacher or a sports coach how powerful these people are?
Ask them if they think anyone can outlast them in a war of attrition?
Family unlocks Thoreau’s quiet desperation. It unlocks that
frustration. Frustration about work, about dreams lost or feeling powerless. If
you can watch your child grow healthy and strong, become educated and capable
and settle into a life that screams of a positive future – life loses much, if
not all of its desperation.
And the modern parent has never been more certain their
child deserves a fair go.
Twenty years ago when a parent/teacher conference
went badly the child would be in trouble the moment that parent got home. “Why
are you so disruptive in class? Why aren’t you concentrating? Why aren’t you
doing your homework?” And no excuse would be good enough. A new start and
greater commitment would be required from the child – end of story.
Not any more – today parents know exactly who is at fault.
“Why can’t you control your class? Why aren’t you teaching
in a way that holds their attention? Why are you setting homework without
adequate instruction?”
You cannot tell today’s parent their little Johnny is a
halfwit. Even if he’s the sort of child who will hurl a brick up a tree to
knock a tennis ball from a branch and then watch the same brick descend to knock
him unconscious, you have to concede he’s a genius. It’s no longer politically
correct to criticize someone’s child.
Every child is golden and if you disagree
– you haven’t searched hard enough for the gold.
Today’s children are Einstein in mathematics, Mozart in
music, Shakespeare with the pen and Leonardo in the sciences – just ask their
parents. And let’s not forget sport, because they are better than Beckham and
faster than Federer. Anyone who doesn’t make them the star of their team isn’t
fit to coach.
But someday very soon, these same helicopter parents will
stop long enough to notice the corporate structures they’ve allowed to evolve are
treating their children as less than ordinary.
When this awareness reaches a critical mass there will be a
backlash against the legally compliant, but ethically and morally corrupt corporate
world. Demands will be made for companies and governments to become accountable
on not simply a legally compliant level – but a moral, ethical and socially
responsible level as well.
When mum and dad watch their golden Jane or John, with a graduate and postgraduate degree, celebrate a job that comes with a smock, a
nametag and no benefits, they will come for the heads of those
in charge and demand the ethics of corporations change.
Let’s hope it isn't far away, because it is an
unsustainable society that pays those who manage our wealth many times the
minimum wage and then fights and complains about paying less than the minimum
wage to all the rest, including those who teach and care for our children, our elderly and our sick.
Somewhere we have lost our perspective about what is truly
important in our advanced, civilized society. We have allowed our quiet desperation to become too desperate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)