Not EU an' all !

The Home Secretary, John Reid, has made an announcement that when Bulgaria and Romania join the EU in January 2007, there will be tighter rules on who will be able to come to the UK and work.

Over the years I have worked with lots of different nationalities and have always found it to be an enriching experience. Having heard people younger than me talking about "wartime" and "peacetime" certainly helps to put things in perspective. They have a great deal more life experience than most people I know and also realise that even in a country like the UK, jobs are not everywhere or just given to anyone. Therefore I've always found people from other countries to have a much stronger work ethic than many British people. From time to time your average foreign worker will probably pull a sickie, say they'll do something but then forget or tell you some juicy bit of gossip they've just heard and promised they would keep to themselves. They're just as likely as anyone to make a fool of themselves at the Christmas party, take the credit for someone else’s hard work or maybe even be a bit of a waste of space that's very close to being fired. That won't have anything to do with them being from somewhere other than here, however, it just makes them part of the working human race along with the rest of us wage slaves. In the main, they're just like anyone battling through life with bills, commitments, relationship worries and are generally doing their best to survive from one pay day to the next. The only real difference between them and the rest of us, is that they'll probably be doing it without being able to catch up with their loved ones in the flesh on a regular basis. A conversation with a parent, sibling or friend will probably be a series of quick chats on the phone followed by emails, letters, text messages and the like. As well as not knowing anyone here, they’ll be starting from scratch with the basics we take for granted like a bank account, a place to live and a few friends to get hammered with on a Friday night.

On the one hand, it's a good thing that the government are taking steps to limit how many people from other countries can come here to work. After all, the UK is not all that big a country and there are only so many jobs to go around. On the other hand, many of these people probably wouldn't come here at all unless they found it was really necessary.

Someone who speaks English as a first language, doesn't need a work permit and has firm roots here is virtually always going to be a better bet from an employer's point of view. Therefore, after leaving everything that's familiar to them, they'll probably find themselves earning minimum wage as a office junior, builder's mate or similar.

Hardly a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow is it ?

Rather than cursing the idea of more overseas workers about to board planes bound for our shores, we should consider what it must really be like to leave everything that's familiar to someone and to make a new start in another country and give them a bit of support.

Feeling a bit crossed off !!!

A female member of check-in staff, working for a major British airline is being hauled over the coals because of the cross she wears around her neck can be seen by the passengers she deals with. Due to something which seems to be referred to these days as "religious sensitivities", she has been told that it has to be hidden from view. As a devout Christian, she is not prepared to do this and a right old argy-bargy is now in full swing. After being told by a rather stroppy jobsworth supervisor that they held the "power and authority" to send her home without pay unless the item, described by the manager as "jewellery", was removed as it did not "comply with uniform standards".

What possible difference can it make to anyone if this woman wears a crucifix around her neck ? Assuming she doesn't wear it while playing the tambourine, quoting from Leviticus or plugging her Bible study group at the same time as asking people if they've packed their bags themselves, I really can't see any issue. I felt more put off during a recent visit to the local council offices by the tongue piercing of the woman behind the counter than I would ever feel about something as inauspicious as a cross. I'd only gone in there to renew a residents parking permit and had no desire to see a metal stud poking out of her mouth.

Somewhere along the line there is probably a good intention behind the ruling and it more than likely involves the concern that people of other religions will be offended by seeing a Christian symbol. Would they really be offended, upset, annoyed and generally put out by this ? Somehow I doubt it. Although I’m no expert in religion, I would like to think that tolerance of others is theme fairly central to all ideologies. If it isn’t, then it should be, even at the more fundemental end of things.

What concerns me the most about these sorts of situations is the way the press cover them. They always tend to attack it with the "Muslims get this, Sikhs get that and this is supposed to be a Christian country after all, so how dare anyone be different...!!!!" kind of screaming headline. I can only see this sort of approach as one that will stir up trouble and create more problems and divisions.

If a person wants to wear something that displays their faith, then that's fair enough in my book.

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Straw Blimey !!!

I would think it is perfectly possible that Jack Straw is wishing he had kept his views to himself, having caused such controversy over his comments in his newspaper column about Muslim women wearing the veil. What with it being Ramadan, Jack may have thought Muslims in general would be too busy going without food, drink, sex and fags to have paid much attention to the musings of a would-be Deputy Prime Minister. If they were reading anything, Jack may have hoped it was the full 114 chapters of the Qur'ran, rather than the local rag where he writes a regular column.

Jack Straw is, of course, no stranger to being on the front pages for all the wrong reasons. In September 2004 he politely shook the hand of a certain Robert Mugabe and said "nice to see you" and claimed afterwards he had no idea who he was being introduced to. He said he hadn't realised the man whose hand he was shaking was that of the not exactly popular Zimbabwean leader as the lighting in the room hadn't been very good. The news coverage that followed portrayed Jack as a narrow minded racist who thinks all black people look the same, especially if it's dark. Although I've never met the man, I'm fairly sure and he is on the level and doesn't hold any colour prejudices.

However, putting his head above the parapet and deciding to put pen to paper and say that he would prefer Muslim women to remove their veils when attending his advice surgery, was probably not the best idea. I agree that it would be more than a little off putting to have a conversation with someone you can't really see, however, surely an experienced politician such as Jack Straw would realise that his views would be taken out of context. What Jack wrote was an account of various polite requests to Muslim women to remove their veils during face to face meetings. With another female member of Jack's staff present, this suggestion has been agreed with and all has been polite and amicable. As well as Jack fulfilling his duties as a constituency MP during these appointments, a civil discussion on the issue of veils has often followed. Just the sort of behaviour to be expected from rational adults and, from what I can tell, no one has ever been offended and no one has parted on bad terms.

So how then can this issue have descended into such chaos ?

Unfortunately, it seems in this country it is not possible to have a rational debate about such matters. The press always seem to want to hijack such discussions for it's own agenda. I find it hard to believe that Jack Straw didn't think this would be the result, so however nice a guy he seems to be, it does make me question his recent actions and the motives behind them.

Your inbox or mine ?

Email at work is great isn't it ?

At the click of a mouse, you can get the important and the not so important information anywhere from the other side of the office to the other side of the world in seconds. Whether you work for a corporate giant or something a little smaller, it's pretty much a given that your day starts with a trawl through your inbox.

There will be emails with big red exclamation marks next to them signifying the "high importance" of the information contained, as well as ones that have been forwarded through five or six different layers of management all "cc-ing" you in so you're kept "in the loop". The fact that you've been sunning yourself on a beach somewhere for the last week and a half having forgotten to leave your "out of office" message active is neither here nor there.

When important things happen and change in an organisation, email is often the way that staff are informed. Although many delete without reading those emails not relating to time off, pay rises and changes to the opening times of the canteen doesn't seem to matter. When read with a critical eye, bad grammar and spelling in work emails often stands out. It's tempting to return it to the sender with the errors highlighted, however, this is probably to be avoided unless you own the place or at the least are not easily replaced.

Anyone who wants to pretend to be busy for a while can have their inbox up on their screen and stare at it intently for a few moments on the pretence of organising their emails into easily identifiable folders. It makes it easier to do this, however, if the emails you receive are about slightly more important matters than the "what time are you going to lunch?" variety.

Those who work from home can use email as a good way of feeling like they're actually doing something. They can open a bottle of wine while the opening credits of "This Morning" roll and at the same time adding "fyi" to email after email before forwarding them to their staff who are back at the office busy doing some real work.

I can remember having a job in an office where the computer didn't even have a mouse let alone an electronic method of synchronising fag breaks with people in other departments. Therefore email is still a fairly new phenomenon and I think we're still getting used to it. In the office world before email all the important changes to procedures, new product launches and the like were more than likely circulated on paper. Staff scribbled their initials at the bottom of increasingly tatty looking bits of paper to say they had been read, understood and passed to the next person. This was the practice used where I worked in the mid-1990s, but more often than not we were too busy to actually read anything more than the first few lines. We used to quickly sign to say we had read the all important bit of paper before passing it along the line and hoping it wasn't anything too urgent or that we would ever be asked much about it.

Sounds pretty much like an email !