There is no Undo button

You're not supposed to talk about emotions. But. This post does.

I deliberately haven't written about what it feels like to walk into a room, with the rest of your Department, stupidly missing the signals until noticing two union reps in the room and some very serious faces. The sinking feeling. The inappropriate laughter and jokes in the face of not quite knowing what else to do. The pin drop silence as the words arrive that you stupidly thought wouldn't be said. The numbers scrolling across the screen. The obvious discomfort of the person speaking. The desperate frantic effort of thinking of ways to mitigate the numbers, to do things differently, to avoid the inevitable.

I'm a girl. I don't cry easily. I'm a geek girl, we don't, I don't think. Sat in a room, a question asked, dangerously close to losing all composure.

I know, we know, we are the web team. A thousand words since from people who don't know the fragility of decisions within a Council trying to reassure, to rationalise, to comfort. Friends trying to understand and failing, I've been there before, I've made people redundant myself, why is it hitting so hard now when relatively it didn't then?

I got my 90 day at risk letter the day after. That was 3 weeks or so ago, now. Now I watch on Twitter as others are delivered the same news, sweeping waves of noticed presents for Xmas. Good people. Dedicated people. Committed people. I hear the whispers and the things I knew deep down would happen, now are. A sense of inevitability encapsulated in a moment as I think of all the people I have met who are good, so very good at their jobs, loved their jobs, could have been paid more somewhere else but didn't want to be, wanted to be where they are now. Friends. People I respect. People who have given freely support, kind words, laughter and received the same from me. In some cases, even surrogate dads.

How is it different? I don't know. But it is. I took voluntary redundancy shortly after making a man 30 years my senior redundant. It didn't bite me anywhere near as hard as it would have done him. And yet he took it with a grace and acceptance that I am failing to have.

I know, rationally, that there is 'at risk' and there is 'at risk'. I know, sort of, that should there be no place for me any more in our Department, I would find, somehow, somewhere else to be. So it is not for me, this shock or sadness. It is for others. If I am not permitted that, I think we live in a sorry world indeed. So forgive me my current irrationality, my ups and downs, the biting anger which shows through when I don't pay attention. It is the sheer scale of this thing. I would be the first, the very first, to acknowledge and accept that local government needed streamlining. I could have sat and explained to anyone who had asked, why and where. I could have and have suggested ways to mitigate that and some of those things, the practical suggestions have been implemented.

But, you see, it feels a little like a bulldozer to fix a problem which needed finesse. It has caused such sadness, anger, resentment and horrid words to be uttered. In some cases, the damage of this will never be repaired because some words said can not be forgotten. Situations like this bring out the very worst in people, as well as the very best, and I am not proud, not proud at all of the fact that I have veered wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other in the last 3 weeks - on the one hand it has motivated me to get off my behind and work as hard as I possibly can to tick off as many of my open projects as I can - on the other it has meant that some days I have done nothing but listen to others bile, resentment and anger.

Resilience is an often used word at the moment, as is emotional intelligence. Well, I know a lot more about myself than I did 3 weeks ago, I can tell you that for nothing. I'm not thankful for that, but I can acknowledge that. I have tried my very best to remain a credit to the Department within which are, frankly, some of the most inspiring and professional people I've ever worked with, and tried not to be an embarrassment.

I have failed. But in failing I have learnt a harsh lesson. I should have written this post 3 weeks ago. The cycle of acceptance says everyone deals differently. I was stupid - I missed the one thing which would have allowed me to coral my thoughts, vent my anger, and move on.

I work for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. I am proud to work for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. If I do not continue to work for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, I will still be proud that I did. If I am permitted to remain working for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, it will be a while, I think, before I can be proud again, but we will rebuild, we will reshape, we will absorb. It seems after todays announcement from our Finance Department, we have no choice.

But don't expect me to forgive this disproportionate bomb landing on a Borough which was just, only just, pulling itself out from the gutter. Don't expect me to rationalise it away. Don't expect me to forget, when the Borough in which I live, Hyndburn, and the Ward in which I live in, Scaitcliffe, are some of the most deprived areas outside of London you will see. As I walk out of my door each morning, opposite the house with its windows stoned in by the local 'youths', don't expect me to have a short memory. Someone made a deliberate conscious choice to ensure the people with nothing ended up in deficit. Anger does not come from seeing my friends made redundant, because they will find other jobs, because they are good at what they do.

Anger, sheer blinding white heat anger, comes from a financial policy which says exclusion will be compounded, that deprivation will be practically enforced and that neglect and abuse will go unchallenged and unnoticed. In a Council where shared services are already happening, where 8 Directors have been let go, where a Chief Executive post has been merged, where voluntary redundancies and early retirements have all already been cycled through, there comes a point, there really does, where you think, do they know the devastation they wreak? Do they understand what this will do on the ground? What happens if no one wants to run the libraries or the play centres or the creches or the thousands of other services which West Somerset, for one, will most definitely not be able to run any more?

I think the answer is no.

There's no Undo button.

90 minutes (and the rest)

Social media, I am told, is for telling stories. So here's a story about what led to a 90 minute meeting played out through many media and communication channels, but which ultimately was about something as simple as asking a question, and receiving an answer.

It started with curiosity. Someone at work mentioned there would be a public consultation meeting on Monday evening (8th November). I asked our Director on Twitter if it might be okay if I went, because as someone who shall rename nameless correctly identified, us digital geeky types tend to understand the most complicated technology easily, but boggle when it comes to the vagaries of local government and democracy actually in action.

In the process of discussing this, @marcschmid popped up and asked me if I'd like to tweet from the event. I agreed, it's something I've wanted to get done from our official account, @blackburdarwen for ages.

In the midst of this #gab10 happened and I didn't really think about the mechanics of what we'd be doing, simply that we were doing it. I finally got around to mentioning we would be doing it on Sunday evening.

Monday came, and in the absence of @sturgey I attended the final planning meeting. The meeting might have been shouted about by the Communications half of our Policy & Communications Department but the planning, intricacies, paperwork, research, challenges, agendas and minutae were the responsibility entirely of the Policy half. It's the first time I've had the pleasure of working with them on something and it was a pleasure. Well organised, everything dotted and crossed - I left the meeting a little in awe, but also a little sad to find that tweeting was perceived to be a frippery, an irrelevance.

Time passed. Policies noise levels (we share an open plan office) rose throughout the afternoon to a crescendo and then fell away as the organisers drifted across to King Georges Hall to ensure everything was in place and look after the details.

5pm suddenly crept up. Wielding nothing but an iPhone (mine) and a mifi (using 3G) off I went. Arrived. Plugged in the iPhone. Plugged in the mifi. Watched the yellow flashing light. Watched the red flashing light. Experienced that sinking feeling which comes from tying to get a 3G signal in the basement of a Victorian building. Went outside, sat on the bottom step. Watched the lights, watched the Apple spinning circle. Time passed. Mild panic reared its head. Someone nabbed a technician working for the theatre. He couldn't help, radio'd someone who could. Time passed. I paced. Time passed. Got introduced to Tom Moseley from the Lancashire Telegraph. Stress levels slightly too high to be attempt anything other than briefly charming. Wondered off muttering about relays and network cables. Later discovered Tom had managed to find the only corner of the Windsor Suite I'd not tried for signal and set himself up comfortably. Time passed. Technician arrived. Found a network cable. Plugged it into the back of the mifi box in a vain hope. Hope dashed.

Sit. Think.

Call the other half of the web team. He delivers a laptop, summoned from someone somewhere. @tomstannard appears while I'm waiting in the foyer for team member to turn up. Try not to babble. Try to convey everything under control while quietly fretting. Team member turns up, saving me from acting as a temporary theatre usher. Set up laptop, plug in network cable. Start talking to the laptop, practically begging it to work. Tap in wrong password. CLONK goes the laptop. Cringe. Am sitting in the sound booth at the back of the room. Hunch down in my chair so no one sees me. Tap in right password. Watch it load. Watch it load. Time passes.....

Try and log into Tweetdeck. Nope. No joy. Finally concede that twitter.com in old mode is my best friend. Finally start tweeting, hot, bothered and slightly hyper, 3 minutes after the meeting starts.

25 tweets and 30 minutes, possibly 40 minutes later - I lost track - I'm exhausted but it's working. A new found respect for the media team who sit behind us in the office, as I realise how hard it is to hear words said, pick out salient points, ensure no skew or bias, distill to 140 characters, add the hashtag and hit the tweet button. On a track pad. Later find the mouse in the bag. Smile quietly to myself. Sit back. Watch. A room full of people engaged and discussing. Yes, discussing hard, deeply depressing, difficult cruel subjects. But here. Talking. Engaging. Discussing. Involved. Democracy.

The point of this post is that perhaps it is not the post you expected to see. It is the post of one tiny little cog in a massive machinery. Many people contributed to one girls ability to sit at the back of a room and watch, observe and listen and then pass it on to the big wide world. It is the mechanics of a process. It is teamwork (I saw some of our team members in Communcations actually doing their jobs in the wild yesterday for the first time), it is thinking differently, it is management at senior level having faith, it is Leaders saying yes and having patiemce, it is persistence and relentlessness, it is planning and foresight, it is acknowledging that people who cannot attend physically might want to attend nevertheless. But most of all, very most of all, it is simplicity itself. Document what you see, what you hear - and pass it on.

With thanks to The Guardian Society daily for quietly and unobtrusively making my day.

Just numbers?

Read the emails. All the emails. The ones explaining in clear terms what had been calculated. The kind ones warning us of what we'd read tomorrow morning. They helped. I read them. I couldn't comprehend.

I talked to my other half. He didn't understand, but in the process of talking, I slowly did.

Then I read The Guardian and I wished to go back to this mornings oblivion.

There is nothing I can write here. Nothing I can say. Not because I'm self censoring because I think everyone knows whose side I am on and whose I am not, but simply that there are no words to describe the sheer enormity of those numbers and statistics.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I believe they do all the talking for me.

{void}

IP blocked

I'm going to ask my partner to IP block this blog tomorrow. Self censorship entirely, no one has asked me not to blog. Call it a hiatus of respect. Respect for the people, perhaps myself included, who have given blood, sweat, tears, determination, single mindedness, enthusiasm, innovation, passion, heart, fire, honesty, love and belief to our jobs in the public sector.

I suspect tomorrow is going to be bad. But the soul wrenching will not be for me. It will be for friends. For the time they have given freely, for the extra hours and the 'extra miles'. For the stress endured and the smiles given freely to customers. For the straight talking and the talking around the edges. For the inspiration and the 5am starts. For the sometimes ridiculously abusive working conditions. For the endless patience and the being caught on the back foot, rallying and turning things around. For the hard budget decisions which have already been made, for the posts which haven't been filled and the people who have stepped into those gaps, often with little training or guidance. For the street cleaner who used the water in his sweeper to put out a car fire, for the gritters out until 2am, 3am, 4am. For the Officer who makes us more carbon and energy efficient meaning we save money, to the Recycling Manager who reduces our expenditure on Landfill Tax. For the determination to provide a good service despite the snow and ice, to the people who commit to communicating who we are and what we do, 24 hours a day when it really matters.

I love my job. I know very many people who love theirs too. They grump and they moan, as do I. But fundamentally, they too are militant optimists, believing in the service they provide and the difference that it makes. Their voices are never heard digitally, but they are there and they are many. I don't presume to speak for them, only to acknowledge them, to point in their direction, to say 'this is what we do, this Local Authority I work in, this is what we do and we are proud of it'.

I am afraid. Change is scary. But, ultimately, I guess I can always go back to data entry, right?