POP!

This was my favourite sculpture until it was dismantled after bits of it started falling off. "The B of the Bang" was positioned outside Manchester Stadium and signified the moment a starting pistol is discharged. My life isn't grand or important-enough for an all out "bang" but I'm near to managing a fully considered "pop"! Sadly, the sculpture was dismantled when one of its giant spikes fell to the floor- not hard to see why the council would want to avoid the potential of a citizen being speared by a giant spike. That is another reason I feel there is an affinity between the sculpture and my life! (lol).

LOADS has happened since I last blogged! Ironically; when my life becomes interesting I find less time to blog.

My new job is turning out to be really good!! My biggest problem is that although I have received my first salary cheque I am still struggling financially and seem set to do so for almost as long as I was out of work! The job itself is not without its challenges of course: my fears about working for the public sector have been realised to an extent, though the effects have been mitigated by my superior who seems keen to retain me. He confided a couple of weeks ago that they hadn't expected anyone with my experience etc "caliber" he actually said to apply for the job and acknowledged that what I was doing was worth a lot more than I am being paid. If I reach the targets I've set by my 6 month review I will be bumped up a couple of grades. I worked out that I my income is still around £300 less than my monthly liabilities whilst I try to repay the arrears I've accrued after 7 months out of work. I drive 66 miles a day to and from work and have had to borrow money from friends to get to work only two weeks after receiving my salary.

I have inherited an on-going HR issue concerning two septuagenarian workers who aren't up to their jobs but are adept at crying foul and gaining support from the union. I am so NOT about retiring people who are able to do the job they're doing just because they've hit the national retirement age but one of the two is simply taking the piss: pretending to be frail to the point where AN ADDITIONAL WORKER IS EMPLOYED WHEN THEY ARE ON DUTY TO MAKE UP THE SHORT-FALL! Yet they have at least two other part time jobs in an area where few young people can find any work at all. I have had one face-to-face run-in with them where I told them I was not standing for or interested in what had gone before: they would be given training (they've worked there for 15 years!!!) and assessed thereafter and if found wanting I will initiate procedures to remove them based on their competency. I also informed them that "threatening to report their manager [me] to the union" was something that both the HR department AND the union accepted as a misdemeanor and that if if was done again, I would treat it as such.

Apart from that; it is increasingly exciting to be breathing new life into a public resource that had been allowed to stagnate. There is a lot of "We've always done it like that" despite the fact that the annual deficit has been creeping upward for years. It is not surprising: they think they know how to do what they're currently doing, it is scary to have that potentially upturned.

But upturn I must! Luckily; so far people are welcoming of my innovations. One of my key staff is polite but then fails to implement what we have discussed. I know that this is about fear and inexperience rather than implacable resistance, but it needs to change and I have something planned for them this week that is certain to shock them into understanding that I am in earnest. I have taken on a new creative enterprises network, attracted new tenants to vacant business units, started using vacant retail units for various activities which has resulted in inquiries about renting the units.

Perhaps the worst practical issue is that I am forced to use the local authorities teams and resources for anything I do and they cost on average THREE TIMES MORE than similar services 'in the real world' (!). I need a handle and lock barrel installed on the door to my office, we will be charged £305 by the local authority for something for which a local guy would have been happy to have received £100. I have asked for the lumpy, horrible, municipal and misleading signs around the site to be changed and got a ridiculous quote of £20,000. That was my 'foot down' moment. The last communication I had hinted that it 'might be possible' to achieve what I want for about £6,500!!! If they thought that would placate me I am additionally energised to find out why we were given the original quote in the first place. And anyway: it is going to take so long to implement what I want it looks like the main holiday season will be over before the job is complete.

On top of all of this, Newcastle Council finally responded to the Expression of Interest I submitted on behalf of our community interest company IN NOVEMBER 2016 to take over the community centre where I had been working as the company I'd been serving move out. Oh how I laughed. Of course: just about everything we'd planned has changed after 7 months of NO communication from the council despite some eager prompting from me until about March when I just gave up. Now they're expecting us to jump up like hungry dogs to gather the crumbs they've deigned to wave at us. My biggest worry is that if I am not there as the project developer for 6 months as planned whilst we recruit and train a centre coordinator, it will not happen. I am not prepared to risk failure on such a large scale so if my co-directors aren't able to be more active than they have been in other projects, OR I fail to engage additional participation, we will walk away.