Carry On Biting

So lets have a think about this. Not for too long because really no thought is needed. Imagine biting someone at work and still having a job afterwards.
No?
Bit too far to stretch the imagination isn't it. For most of us the thought would be ridiculous. Apparently though there are exceptions to this rule. The good old world of professional premiershit (notice my deliberate misspelling there) football being one.

If your name is Luis Suarez the message is, from the top down, go ahead and behave however you like. We will fine and ban you from a few games but carry on regardless. His team will keep him on and the police won't prosecute. He is to be offered 'anger management classes' though.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Can you tell how cynical I am about that. Bit like offering the Yorkshire ripper classes in how to handle his issues towards women.

So green light to carry on. Carry on biting. They could make that into a film. Mike Tyson could play him (can you see what I did there?).

What's truly disgraceful is that his team management have basically said he is too valuable to lose. Meaning of course that as premiershit (oops I did it again) football is all about money now and there are no professional standards, they simply can't afford to lose him. So morals, sport, sportsmanship, basic good decent human conduct count for nothing anymore. Not where sport and money are concerned. Much the same as big business everywhere then.

Suarez has 'apologised' to Ivanovic, the Chelsea defender he very kindly introduced to his teeth, and asked the Football Association to donate his fine to the Hillsborough Family Support Group. What's the word I am looking for?
Yet he has also previously been fined for racial abuse, and already had one ban for biting another player whilst at Ajax (I thought that was a scouring powder?) I see a pattern emerging here.

Mark Lawrenson, Football Analyst said...

"What Luis Suarez did has absolutely no place in football and he is going to get - and deserves - an extremely lengthy ban.

"You cannot bite people anywhere, let alone on a football field. It is the type of thing you do when you are a baby. He's a world-class player but he gives you world-class trouble."

I agree with most of what mark Lawrenson says apart from one fundamental thing. He (Suarez) does not deserve a lengthy ban at all. What he deserves is to be sacked and banned from playing again. Ever. And prosecuted for this criminal offence. Maybe he could, as part of his sentence, be made to do something useful for once, like helping out at a soup kitchen or sweeping the streets.
Perhaps he could visit offenders in prison who have been sentenced for assault or racial abuse and try to explain to them the differing standards in society and why he has no criminal record and enjoys a luxury lifestyle, whilst they are spending their time at her Majesty's pleasure.
Maybe he could, eventually, get a normal job (if there are any left) somewhere and then, during an 'angry' moment, bite a co worker and see how much 'support' he gets from his management.

But he won't. And he won't be either punished or disciplined in any meaningful way either. He will go on playing and setting the most appalling example, assisted by the management of his team, his fellow players, the football association and the police...

Same old eh, same old....

Patricia's Had Enough

This is 'what I wrote' at Mondays (8 April 2013) gathering of Write Night. We split into pairs and discussed our work environment, then wrote for thirty minutes about a fictitious situation set in that environment where the person was dissatisfied with the job. Patricia is a fictitious person too

 

Surveying the empty classroom at the end of the day, when all of the children had gone home, Patricia was struck by one inescapable fact. How much she hated it. Immediately her mind went into its teacher mode, 'Hate is a very strong word Pat'. She had to admit to herself that whatever the word was, and plenty were now coming into her mind, she just didn't want to be there. At all.
There were the dreams she was having about driving a busload of children over the edge of a cliff, that was on the nights when she could sleep, when the fear of another Ofsted inspection or complaint or grievance wasn't keeping her awake.
Patricia remembered all those years she had trained and fantasised about being a teacher, the nobility of the profession and the good she was doing for people and their lives, worn away by the day to day reality of doing the job.
The classroom she had tried so hard to personalise and make into a creative learning environment with the examples of students work, past and present, some interesting quotes and art, the Blob Tree that she used so often to encourage some self awareness in her students. None of it seemed to matter. The room was cold. The paint was peeling. It smelt of the large numbers of bodies that had been there that day, most of them against their will and boy didn't they let her know it. Repeatedly. Loudly. Aggressively.
It struck her how much it felt like a prison. Ok not the typical one with a bed and a toilet, but nonetheless she felt trapped by it. Confined. Controlled. She was in urgent need of an escape plan. In that moment Patricia was seriously considering setting fire to it and burning it to the ground.  Imagining what, if anything, she would keep (answer nothing) and could picture clearly the headlines in tomorrow's paper. The scandal. The shame. But mostly the sheer joy she would feel. The release. The service she would be doing to humanity.
It was time to look for another job.