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13/8/2012
To Serve or Abuse? So the Able Bodied Olympics are over and weren’t they great? Medals and lots of them, a general lack of rain and a lot of goodwill have given us two weeks holiday from economic misery. But I think there’s something more to it than that.
G4S, who were going to staff the Olympics, couldn’t fulfill their contract. This is the privately owned company that dumped unpaid staff under a bridge overnight in the rain the day before the Jubilee celebrations. The company soaked up unemployed people to work for no pay for an extended period of time with the intent of putting a majority of them back on the dole after the Olympics. So the Army took over the majority of Olympic security at short notice. On the night this was announced the news showed an aerial view of the stadium with soldiers walking around it and I was struck by a simple movement that one of the soldiers made: as he was approached by a civilian the soldier moved towards him and leaned forward in a gesture of confident, competent service. The picture at the head of this post by David Hoffman is of a G4S Olympic security guard acting in an 'illegal and oppressive' manner. We’ve all been on the end of petty people in uniform, people who are evidently bored with their job and would like you to know that you will pay for their tedium because they’re wearing a uniform and you’re not. You give them what they consider A Funny Look and you’ll spend a lot more time getting where you need to be or doing what you need to do. They can be a monstrous pain and downright dangerous. They’re also paid a pittance by the private companies that employ them and treated with contempt by their bosses. If I was dumped under a bridge in the middle of the night in the rain, without a toilet or breakfast, with no pay and the knowledge that if I told my boss to go boil his head I would be sanctioned by the DWP which would leave me literally penniless for some weeks, then I would be incredibly happy to give someone – anyone – a hard time if they gave me the slightest opportunity. That said, many are 'overly enthusiastic' about their jobs as a matter of personality. Happily, the army doesn’t go down that route anywhere near as often as private security groups. People volunteer to join the army, a respected career, and that’s a huge difference to start with, but perhaps the biggest difference is that the army indoctrinates soldiers into the concept of service. These men and women are trained to kill and to balance that incredible force they’re taught to approach their job through a filter of being of benefit to people, of serving a population rather than seeing people as the thing that gets in their way. I’m not a person that joins in with the sentimental noise about Our Boys – particularly since so many Boys are women – but the fact that the army went about bag searches and general safety measures with dignity rather than cockiness, pleasantness rather than tedium and confidence rather than a jobsworth attitude seems to have made a lot of people feel very safe and very happy, rather than abused and infuriated. Then there were the Olympic volunteers, whose attitude seemed to be one of pleasure, competence, effectiveness and cooperation. They didn’t wear a pseudo-military uniform complete with little black hat, but something that clearly identified them so that people could ask for help. They weren’t schooled in impersonal standoffishness, but allowed to be themselves. I was frankly astonished at how many ordinary people, from all kinds of backgrounds, all ages, all ethnicities, volunteered to show people where the toilets were, and did it with grace and humour. They are called ‘Gamesmakers because they are helping make the Games happen. We want Games Makers to be inspirational, open, respectful, team-focused, distinctive and have a 'can do' attitude.” It worked. There is a part of every one of us that would like to put on a uniform and boss people about, perhaps even to abuse them. Fewer of us would accept the cost of being sent to a desert to be shot at but that is part of the price of legitimising power. Most of us are born with the awareness that altruism makes everyone’s life better, including our own, but we are steadily taught that ‘Being nice gets you nowhere.’ Perhaps that depends on where we want to go. |
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work Archives
May 2020
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |
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