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News and Comment January 2021

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30 January (Part 2) - All Covid; from trivia to a little less so. Jabs and jobs

Two bits of Covid related information, let’s do the really trivial one first.

I had an appointment time for my vaccination yesterday and chose a suitable train. As the time approached Network Rail enquiries said it was cancelled. First train for six months and Thameslink let me down. The choice was arrival a few minutes late or about 20 minutes early. I took the latter course obviously.

Despite the early arrival there was no one else at the clinic and I was called in almost immediately.

I showed my booking number and “Name?”, and it was then that we discovered that the internet was down. Back to waiting room.

Someone came around with a tablet and in went the details. By then four more people had shown up. More details taken. Eventually we were all handed sheets of paper printed from the tablet to be taken into needle man - in reverse appointment order - not that that mattered.

From then on, all was well including Thameslink on time. Maybe with no computer I will never appear on the stats.

Being a little more serious Bexley Council staff continue to be a little puzzled, maybe annoyed, by what they see in the Civic Offices.

First it was regular staff displaced by Covid testers to alternative rooms that they regarded as slightly risky and then it was an allegation that library staff had been press-ganged into being testers. Yesterday’s report was rather more interesting.

It alleged that at a time when Council staff are losing their jobs due to the budget balancing cuts, a new recruit has appeared in the Civic Offices testing centre. Alleged to be the offspring of a very senior man indeed.

I don’t know how that can happen. Wouldn’t the Head of Human Resources have something to say about it and, doubling up as Bexley’s Monitoring Officer as he does, is responsible for keeping Bexley Council on the straight and narrow, surely he would never allow such a thing?

Unless he has a very blind eye. On the other hand maybe no one else suitably qualified could be persuaded to do the job.

Even if it is true it hardly compares with the good old days when a Bexley Director employed his wife as Deputy. No one was nicked or reprimanded for that funny business so it would be silly to expect anything different for something on a much smaller scale.

 

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