Huddersfield

I've been watching Cardinal on iPlayer over the last week or two - it's a detective series based in northern Canada; very well written & acted although not one for you if you're a bit squeamish.

Is there no, like, mirror of this...you know, young stunners astrally projecting into blokes' beds at night. We could sort of offer a prayer along the lines of "In the name of Jesus, as long as you don't wake up the wife, are you free on Tuesday?"

I was involved in trying to set up & promote home working about a decade ago, partly as a response to austerity, partly a 'green' issue & also a bit of an attempt to support work-life balance issues. FWIW, my conclusion was that the people who were conscientious in the office were conscientious when they were home-based, & the lazy b@stards who spent half the day on fag breaks, gossiping in the kitchen, never doing the visits, case notes, planning, etc. always behind whilst always finding time to complain that they were under stress were the ones who did f**k all at home. Whilst that's probably predictable, the latter group also tended to be the ones though that were most hostile to home-working, whereas the more someone was a "good" worker the more they were inclined to try to find the best mix to work efficiently.

Rajiv van la Parra. He wasn't a bad player as such & had the ability to skin the opposition down the wing with a few fancy stepovers thrown in for good measure. The crowd generally loved him but the problem was that after causing panic such as he did, his final ball would either be nothing more than a gentle pass for the opposition defenders to clear away, straight into the legs of his marker or he'd pass it back down the wing pretty much to where he'd started from. I remember one or two games he had where he had real influence but the vast majority, all you got was a bit of exhibition stuff & nothing to show for it.

My opinion here is worth exactly what you are paying me for it, but if I was to pull one game out of there that might buck the odds it would be Arsenal-Watford. Arsenal aren’t playing for anything, Watford could stay up if they get a point & Villa lose at West Ham. So you’d expect Watford to go at them hell for leather especially early on. Of the others, I don’t see much that will defy the odds too much. Southampton maybe a draw based on nothing more than I was down there for their last game against us a year back & with nothing to play for they looked bored. However, if I knew how to beat bookies then I’d probably have a bigger house so hey-ho!

Haha, honest, no worries! I think it is a decent contribution to be honest & I enjoyed reading it...I've worked with some heavy duty people in my time & I'm fascinated by them & how you can judge them when making critical decisions. A lot of this stuff wasn't anywhere near the mainstream when I was dealing with it, but looking back, a lot of what both Gladwell & Hyatt are saying fits with how a lot of people that were involved in making assessments on dangerous people actually behaved. I was always taught, & went on to teach many people dealing with complex individuals to "trust your instincts". I often used to wonder how I'd articulate that, & in some cases many (often people who had limited practice experience) would dismiss at as judgementalism; something you had to overcome. Being honest some people's instincts were dominated by fear (essentially they were in the wrong job) but I like the way theory is increasingly starting to catch up with real world behaviours.

Anyone had any luck seeing Comet NEOWISE? We’ve not had a clear night here since I don’t know when, so no luck for me so far but I keep trying

Well I like it 😟.

I've looked at Hyatt's work for a while now, mainly because my wife became interested in statement analysis as a tool for the work she was doing at the time. It's a fascinating area of work. Also of interest, & following a similar concept, is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell...he talks about "thick-slicing" (the way most people tend to make judgements based on spending time with them) versus "thin-slicing" (in effect, intuitive thinking). I think that in time, criminal interviews will start to put some emphasis on non-verbal responses in the first second of answering rather than the subsequent verbal responses. Of course, Hyatt is trying to make a name for himself here so there is a danger he is focussing on finding what he wants to find, but nontheless, I agree that he's very credible.

My wife hails from an Irish family & in general is a hater of all sports. Only very occasionally does she ever show the remotest interest other than the odd HTFC trip to Wembley & an ABE approach whenever England play. However, she got massively into Ireland in 1990 & my abiding memory of that tournament isn't anything to do with England but the penalty shoot-out with Romania. I forget which penalty, but, with our 5-year-old football mad son next to her, when Romania scored one of theirs, at the top of her voice, she shouted "oh sh*t". My lad was literally boggle-eyed & went on to tell all his teachers & mates that his mum was swearing at the telly. To this day, he teases her saying that was the first time he realised parents could swear. I was the one that had been taking him to actual real games for a couple of years & had managed all that time to keep the obscenities in my head, & there she was swearing at the football. I also remember Charlton telling the tale about how the Taoiseach had asked him what gift he'd like from the Irish people if he won the World Cup & he said a mile of the Shannon for fishing. He reckoned the reply was "win it, & you can have the whole bloody river'.

I’d have given anything to be that talented at any one of those things never mind all three. Jammy bugger.

He was also a very good chess player: https://en.chessbase.com/post/remembering-ennio-morricone-november-10-1928-july-6-2020

Sorry to hear about the redundancy. I remember when it happened to me - I was having to remortgage, worried if I'd even keep the house, felt down in the dumps & very scared. You might be different, but for me, the financial bits resolved long before the psychological. Everyone kept saying that something would turn up & to look on the positive side, new beginning, etc. I remember just wanting to punch their lights out! Having your job taken away against your will is a big loss to most people. All you can do is fight for what you can get & then hopefully find the time to work everything out. Look after yourself & best of luck with everything.

I think that's the bottom line really...I won't lie to you, whenever I had to do a redundancy process, I'd pretty much look around at the start of it all & ask myself who were the most useless people in the room. Sometimes (probably most of the time) they'd also be the ones taking off days here & there & might have disciplinaries against them. But in some cases there were people who would turn up faithfully & do sod all, so they would be low scorers on Bradford. Where I worked we added other questions in to at least try & find the fairest outcome we could, given that taking anyone's livelihood away is a shitty thing to have to do. But you're right, a crap employer will use the best of systems in a crap way. Karma is what it is though...when I got hit by a redundancy process, someone obviously looked at me & decided I was the most useless

Pretty much everywhere uses it - it was the system I was trained in & I don't totally disagree. There's lots of ways to work it though. There's an in-built discrimination in there towards people with long-term health problems & also it can be used against whistleblowers if they've ended up on disciplinaries. All complicated really, but used theoretically correctly, the people who come top of the redundancy pile "should" be the ones who cause the biggest headaches in the workplace. Obviously I'm not saying everywhere uses it properly though, but nowadays companies who don't use it, or something pretty similar, are likely to find themselves on the wrong end of a flurry of tribunals.

My first ever proper gig was Iron Maiden (with DiAnno) at Huddersfield Poly, Feb 1980. I saw a 1-1 draw away at Port Vale the day after & thought this was how life was going to be. Gigs & football 😄

Generally speaking, a call either to ACAS or her union is a good starting point. She should have the equivalent redundancy rights as anyone in terms of entitlement to pay, albeit with some added complexity calculating it. I'd have thought (I'm not an HR specialist but worked in fairly senior jobs in my time where we had to make redundancies...plus have been made redundant myself a couple of times) that they'd not be overly fussed at getting rid of anyone on ZHC for the simple reason that they can make the savings as you suggest by simply not offering work & saving a wad of redundancy cash. Is it just a single hotel or part of a bigger chain? Most employers of any size follow what they call the Bradford system, which is basically just a way of offloading what they see as people with problematic sickness or disciplinary records, usually followed by offering VR. It's always a bit tricky to say how any one company will precisely do it, but they all have to follow some general principles in law, hence getting formal advice is always a good place to start

I was maybe about 3 or so years too young to tell my mother not to bother with Xmas dinner as I was off to a gig. I remember they did one of their legendary TV interviews though a few days before for the local news - they were a bit better prepared than Bill Grundy but at the time I remember thinking it was one of the funniest things I'd seen (while listening to my mother, not averse to a fair amount of cursing herself, telling me they were disgusting). From memory I think it was Harry Gration - "Is it true that you encourage the audience to jump on stage & attack you?" JR: "Yes, we call it audience participation, don't we Sidney."

There's a few specific gigs I'd have liked to have been at...Bob Marley in Brixton, Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park, etc. The Sex Pistols played their last ever UK gigs on Xmas Day 1977 (one of them a fundraiser for striking firemen, unemployed & single parents to buy Xmas presents) in Huddersfield. From people I talk to it sounds like I was the only person in the town who wasn't there, which is a shame. Bands more generally though, definitely (maybe) Oasis. Their best years coincided with me bringing up kids so gigs were a non-starter but I'd loved to have seen them.

I forgot about tattoos - as per above, I used to hate them until my son persuaded me to get one done for my 50th birthday. I've had a couple more done since then.

I won’t lie, I was absolutely bricking it in the way up but honest to God, I’d recommend it to anyone. One of the biggest highs I can remember after I landed (& I was strapped to a Para as well which helped).

I signed up for a charity parachute jump when I was in my mid-40s. I just came home & said I’d done it, never asked anyone & right up to the day folk were trying to talk me out of doing it. The way I saw it, it was cheaper than a sports car & less scary than riding a motorbike!

What stinks about all this, regardless of what truth may or may not ever come out, is the simple fact that if someone left a 3-year-old, who then disappeared, in a council flat to cross the road for a couple of pints at the Dog & Duck, they'd be absolutely hounded as scum for the rest of their lives. If she was found, even her body, we'd all be expected to participate in some national vindication of them, but as far as I'm concerned, whatever happened to her was as a result of the kind of behaviour that your average half-wit knows you never do.

Fergus Suter was never capped by Scotland in spite of probably being one of the top players of the late 1800s...I am guesing from his name that he had connections to Irish Catholicism but he was also, of course, a controversial figure in terms of his professionalism. So I'd be intrigued to know what stopped him playing for Scotland - class, religion or professional status? Another intriguing character was Andrew Watson, the first ever black international. He was very probably amateur - he didn't need to be paid to play as he came from a very wealthy background. He was unlikely to have been Catholic, & was described somewhere or other as one of the best players of the day. He was capped three times, all in the same season, so again it begs the question why so few caps for an obviously skilful player? I don't know how big a deal prejudice &/or sectarianism might have been at different points in history & how far it might have affected selections, but I suppose I lean towards thinking it's probably unlikely that it played no role at all.

And one more thing...why does Queen's Park have an apostrophe in the name & Queens Park Rangers doesn't?