13 March (Part 2) - The chocolate fireguard - will it stand the heat?
This
is going to have to be strung out for one more day as it needs to be savoured;
by me at least. I keep imagining the mayor sitting in her parlour in the pantomime
dame’s outfit thinking how clever she is to recommend that Nicholas Dowling
goes and reads a book on chairmanship; then I think of what Nick did when he read
her email. Maybe I am easily amused but this one is going to run and run, all
because mayor Val Clarke thinks she can out-smart Nick.
Maybe I should introduce him properly. Nick is a young man (by my standards) with a BSc
(Hons) degree in Public & Social Administration. Public Administration? Nice one
Nick, maybe you should be Mayor. He also has a small string of mathematic
qualifications which is why he is able to
count to 15 without getting stuck at eleven.
Perhaps I should introduce the rest of the people behind Bonkers too. Other
than Nick, there is a Legal Executive, a retired Police Inspector, someone who
managed a factory employing 1,300 people, a Trade Union official (by coincidence
in the same industry as the factory manager) and someone who spent a lifetime
sitting at a steering wheel with 40 tons behind him. He is sometimes a little
reticent about his lack of academic qualifications, but as we keep telling him,
he had far more responsibility and skill than
someone
who sits in the passenger seat of a small car all day long. (Click on
‘passenger seat’ for explanation.)
Chairmanship is not a completely foreign territory to four of the six but maybe
we should bow to Mayor Val Clarke’s
superior knowledge of such things; she claims to have read Citrine’s ABC of
Chairmanship which whilst it may now be out of print is still widely considered
to be the chairman’s bible. If she knows that book inside out as she implies,
she is never going to make any mistakes is she and all that has been reported before
must be malicious tittle-tattle?
So what did young Nick do when he read that email from the mayor…
You may have guessed already but I’m not going to tell you until tomorrow;
which may be seen as a cruel suspense for
the mayor but after seeing the tearful
eyes of all the young mums of disabled children streaming from
last Wednesday’s meeting it is hard to care. If the
mayor can withdraw support on the
grand scale from such deserving people while being part of a gang that refuses to
reduce their allowances which are almost exactly half what they spend on the disabled,
why should she think she shouldn’t be subjected to criticism and ridicule?