Was it worth bothering?

This quote is taken from the bloody application form that took me about 3 weeks to complete and evidence properly. The problem was my yearly development review has for the last few years been just enough to show that I was competent. To use it as a means to assist an application took considerably longer.

The quote reads:
" We are committed to the employment of people with disabilities and from ethnic minorities. There is a policy of guaranteed shortlisting of those applicants."

I am not disabled and am white British as well as being heterosexual.

Wonder if I will make it to the shortlist.

Totally Random.

Well it is no longer in my hands.

The dreaded application form has finally been submitted. What happens next is no longer up to me.

On a much much lighter note I saw this and couldn't help but you know,,,, respect. What dedication.

Random post I know but thought it worthy. (Yes I'm a muppet). As so many of the comments on the original article say the love of a mother. Where in society did we all go poo?

What have we become?

I have read, re-read and then checked again this and after looking once again through the extensive online library that is available on WW 2, I wonder how we, in today's society, ever get away with complaining that life is too stressful. I have visited the Normandy beaches, been to Dachau and also in my own small way been in a war zone. Admittedly it was the first Gulf War and the pilots and nav's were the ones who were up there taking casualties but when the air raid siren goes and the Patriot batteries suddenly let go, the sphincter goes snap. "Be in time, mask in nine" was a phrase drilled into us during basic training. My respirator must have been smoking when I finally got in on, approximately 2 seconds in my eyes but probably about 9 in all honesty. It was only afterwards that we learnt it was a Scud 2 still in it's booster phase on it's way to Israel, luckily as so many of them were it was a dud.

Anyway, back to the point of this, someone I work with has gone off with stress. Fair enough, he/she is 24 living alone, got no financial worries and still lives with his/her parents. He/she has contacted a solicitor in relation to taking legal action against the job for imposing excessive work requirements upon him/her. He/she has to respond to incidents utilising the driving training that he/she has received, he/she then has to deal with the "victims" and on top of all that he/she then has to deal with crime reports that he/she has generated or have been allocated to him/her.

I will admit to having been ill with stress 5 years ago, a prolonged 11 hours with a very smelly sudden death that had seen the partner wrap tea towels and all other forms of material around the badly DE-composed body. It was instantly treated as suspicious and was a scene. I had a world of personal poo going on at the time, debt, personal problems and that incident was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was ashamed to admit that something was wrong but after several weeks of not being able to eat I had to face facts. Something wasn't right. I was eventually "fixed" after a couple of months and released on the public again.

The point of all this is to ask what sort of pathetic society have we become? I have watched, read and listened to numerous accounts of D-Day and wonder if the worst ever happened again could those monumental events ever be repeated? In my heart of hearts I don't think so. Look at my feeble excuses for going a bit odd, the numerous claims for injuries from little traffic shunts and the other similar stories. I no longer believe that we live in Great Britain anymore. What we now reside in is a festering corrupt and self centred society that doesn't give a shit about anything that occurs beyond the end of our garden path. I remember the silver jubilee and the street parties, did we have the same with the golden jubilee? No political correctness.....oh stop it, must go now.

Regards.

Application forms.

As you are aware from my previous posts and I apologise to non-police readers, I am currently doing an application to get away from the dross I have dealt with for the last 9 years.

Is completing the application itself a part of the selection process? I sometimes wonder why I haven't applied previously for vacancies and now am reminded why. The bloody application form. Firstly and the least trivial it is to be typed in Arial font 11, ok I can do that. They then give you 8 areas that you need to focus on and evidence. For my part these areas are:

1.Respect for race and diversity.
2.Teamworking.
3.Community and customer focus.
4.Planning and organisation.
5.Personal responsibility.
6.Problem solving.
7.Effective communication.
8.Resilience.

This is the stuff I do everyday and never feel the need to big it up by telling everyone and his dog about it by putting it on a piece of paper and getting it signed by 3 people.

They then leave you to get on with it after providing something called a Job Description Questionnaire and an Integrated Competency Framework. They also usefully provide you with an aide to assist you in your application which basically tells you if you haven't got the skills don't apply. Incidentally the box on the page allows you approximately 700 words in the required font. That is not a lot.

The evidence to support your application must be contained with your E-PDR (Electronic-Personal Development Review) but that only went live from the 1st January 2009. Prior to that you got pieces of paper from people saying that you had done a good job etc. which you could add into your PDP (Personal Development Portfolio). This was a tangible document which was forwarded with your application. I used to get all these bits of paper, put them in my drop file and at the PDP time just get a big hole punch and stick them in it. A quick session on the computer for my PDP 1(?) and job done for another year. I was officially competent! Hooray.

I have a good number of pieces of paper I have acquired over the last 12 months which I now wish to use in my application. In order to do so I have to enter them as a PDP(S) and then scan them on. I also have to then do a PDP5 to evidence the information that is contained in the PDP(S) and e-mail it to about 6 people to get them to sign it off as real evidence. I feel a bit of a rant starting. Going for a cigarette outside.

Aahh, that's better.

Anyway this application has proved to be the biggest BA I have ever dealt with. Send me to worst hate crime you could ever imagine or worse but please don't allow me to ever fill in one of these bloody applications again.


Must go and type some more self aggrandising stuff again. I wouldn't mind, I'm not going for promotion or even trying to leave the country!

Oliver Cromwell 2009

When Cromwell did his thing to the Rump parliament he was leaving them in no doubt about their position, they were no longer acting in the interest of the country. His speech was:

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue and defiled by your every vice.

"Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches and like ESAU sell your country for a mess of pottage and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

"Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

"Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God.

"Which of you has not bartered your conscience with bribes?

"Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the commonwealth?

"Ye furdid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

"Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation.

"You were deputed here to get grievances redressed; are not yourselves become the greatest grievance?

"Your country therefore calls upon me to to cleanse the Augean stable by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this house and which by God's help and the strength he has given me I am now come to do.

"I command ye therefore upon the peril of your lives to depart immediately out of this place...

"Go and get out, make haste ye venal slaves be gone - so take away that shining bauble there and lock up the doors".

Does that sound vaguely familiar in this current climate? Any offers for someone to be a 2009 Cromwell without the dictatorial aspect?

I am not too bright.

Please excuse the last post, it was done without proper referencing and now I feel a right Woppa.

Anyway, back to bloody application and how do I now evidence planning and organisation?

Busy few weeks.

I may not be able to post for a couple of weeks but all is well.

The copious amounts of typing, re-typing and further re-re typing of my application will I'm afraid, take priority.

It's pretty life changing and if successful won't be the lowest of the low anymore, probably the highest of the low. Work it out if you wish to. Will still be a Constable and still confused, just in a different role.

Anyway, unless anything particularly noteworthy comes along you won't be hearing from me. Depending on your point of view this may be viewed as either a positive or negative. Will still be adding my inane comments though.

Regards.

Health and Safety gone mad.

I will firstly apologise for the length of the link that is attached.

Yesterday I was physically fighting with a 6'8 body builder who had been causing problems at a local mental health ward where he was a voluntary patient. He is an asylum seeker from the Congo who has had his application refused however due to his current state of mind he is deemed as not fit to be returned to his country. He was given the option of a so called detention centre or "voluntary" admission to a psychiatric unit. He has been a handful whilst there but the balance was tipped yesterday when he started assaulting staff and other residents with chairs and whatever else he could find. It was a bit of a mess and really touch and go when we arrived. After about 20 minutes of fast talking and agreeing with him he was coming with us. Where else are we going to take him?

He was initially calm whilst booking him in to be assessed by the crisis team, this chap was not suitable for detention at a hospital as he was already supposedly under the care of a mental health team. Anyway his antics start as soon as his handcuffs are removed. He is looking for a weapon and tries to pick up a computer monitor to throw but thankfully they are screwed down. It takes 3 of us to merely get the handcuffs (x2) applied to the rear to control his arms. He is taken straight to a cell where due to his behaviour he is to wear a safety gown for his own protection. Can't have him hurting himself can we?

I won't go into all the details but he was very strong and in the end it took 6 of us to be able to remove his clothing and perform a safe cell exit tactic. This may sound excessive but his strength, his frame of mind and the fact that we were all tired after 45 minutes of struggling with this chap. Anyway later in the day he was sectioned by the crisis team and is now receiving the care he needs. I hope he can now improve enough to go back to his family at home. That is not sarcastic, that is what he was telling us during the struggle about how he wants to go home as well as that today, he will die in order to keep his shirt on.

There were quite a few of us with bumps, bruises and various other marks that were the result of the struggle. The custody Sergeant duly noted every injury on the custody record.

Today I walked into work and opened my e-mails. There was a not so polite bollicking from the Chief Inspector of custody berating me along with the other 5 officers for not exercising due regard for the health and safety implications of our actions which resulted in our injuries minor though they were. I promptly e-mailed him back and asked him to review the in cell footage and tell me how he would have dealt with it. As a result apparently I am going to give him a damn good listening to in a week or so as he is a day worker and I am a shift worker. That is the first time our "shifts" will coincide. What a joke.

I am not a fan of his due to previous associations but can't help but agree with this Chief Con who wrote about this H&S nonsense in 2007, here is the link.

Sensibilities from a senior officer? Surely not.