THE POPULAR FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF CPSA
FIGHTING ON IN OUR 45th YEAR BUT A BIT RETIRED NOW
FREEDOM! UNITY! SOCIALISM!
ONE CIVIL SERVICE UNION,
ONE GLORIOUS DESTINY!
REVOLUTION UNTIL VICTORY!
ROUND AND ABOUT
by Judas Iscariot - July 1998
Poor old Charlie COCHRAN's having yet more trouble with his new team. You will recall the contretemps Terry TC COLLINS had with his secretary CAMEL over the new colour scheme for the new CCSU corporate image. Seeming to have had her way over the colours, the grossly overpaid teagirl went on leave. While she was gone, COCHRAN found the courage that had escaped him in her presence, and gave orders to revert to the old CCSU house style.
Turning up late after a five and a half-week break, the sickening CAMEL discovered this, promptly complained of an upset stomach and went home. Although not thought relevant, TC was wearing the same pink shirt he had previously sported to devastating effect. She had realised that a) staff can't take sick leave on top of their annual leave, and b) staff who take sick leave around a weekend get the weekend days counted into their sick record. So, by coming in for half a day and then bunking off after CHAS had left for a meeting, not only did she not have to explain to him but also she protected her sick leave record in the most effective way possible.
COCHRAN's next task was explaining to his minion Paulette KEATING that the point of giving her newspapers to read each morning was to search for trade union news stories. It seems she'd got used to reading the theatre and book reviews for the first couple of hours each day and took umbrage when asked to do something of use to the union. Complaining bitterly that she wasn't really interested in anything as mundane as that old tosh, she wandered off muttering imprecations. Her equally industrious colleague IMOGEN has been offering to teach all comers how to sit properly whilst using their computers. And she's the expert on the interface between the human and technological advance. When CHAS asked her to do just a touch of work, she told him about her RSI problem. Every other such sufferers gets RSI in the hands and arms, but IMAGINE has RSI over the whole of her body. She'd run this line on the so-called management at the old PTC and the softies had fallen for the tall tale and bought her a voice-activated gizmo for the computer. They failed to get any work out of her either - she developed laryngitis.
CPSA's PTC watchers have been watching with growing amusement the desperate bid by the Assistant General Secretary, HUGH LANNING, to become the next GS. The airhead has assiduously developed a cunning plan. He's accumulated under his plethora of titles of AGS, deputy chief executive, joint finance director, deputy kitchen hand, first alternative doorman and vice-chairperson of the non-existent Sports & Social club, just about every internal function of all four headquarters.
HUGE PLANNING's calculated (no doubt in his role of substitute deputy accountant), that if he's responsible for everything that moves, then he'll be absolutely indispensable and therefore the obvious choice to take over from the GREAT SCOT (who shows no intention of ever disembarking the gravy train). What any fule no is that he has it all arse about face. He hasn't twigged that the more things you are in charge of at Falconcrest, the more things there are to go wrong. And more people around to ensure things do go wrong. And it didn't take long - the total debacle of asking members which electoral constituency they wanted to vote in prior to the first set of elections is a case in point. This was a direct result of HUGE's brilliant idea of refusing to let GORDY the GOPHER merge the CPSA and PTC computer systems before the onset of the balloting period. We now await the inevitable re-run if the MODERATI don't win absolute control in the first ballot. Huge had better start Planning now how he is going to get out of this one. Re-runs do not come cheap.
His plans are going awry in other areas too. As a result of trying to con Barry's favoured, and favourite, legal officer out of HQ and bury her up in Leeds for the next millennium, he's undoubtedly singled himself out for special attention from BLADDER. Add to this his incredible plan to remove the said legal officer's only support staff from her London office without a word of consultation, and you can start to get a feel of the amount of hostility he's building for himself. He must be cultivating a death wish - he advised SKIPPY that he didn't like the fact that she'd spotted a number of very obvious errors in the material passed to her for publishing by the real joint financier, DAVE NOBODY. When SKIPPY flatly refused to publish the erroneously worded statutory notice - even though NICK SHITE had published it wrongly in last year's PTC Journal - LANNING told her she should mind her own business and stop interfering. This is not likely - especially since it was the publication (or otherwise) of just such a statutory notice that led to the downfall of her predecessor, FRANKENSTEIN.