DREWspective

In less than a month’s time, the Mayor of London - and I hope to God it’s a new one - will be elected.

Last week, the almost unbelievable happened: a leaflet from the BNP was sent in the post, addressed to nobody in particular. Of course, I didn’t know it was from them until I opened it.

It turns out that they themselves are putting forward a candidate for the mayoral position, with their main issue being the state of the immigration system in the UK. They blamed the wave of immigrants for housing problems, crime, unemployment and a few other things I can’t remember. A selection of people - mostly, if not all white - were quoted as being in agreement, complete with photos.

Now, I ain’t no fool; I don’t trust the BNP with the dead skin off my dick. If they came knocking down my door, offering me a hook-up with a girl just like Valisa, there’s no way I’d give them my vote. (The brown skin takes care of that.)

But, as much I’d hate to admit it, there is one thing myself and the BNP agree upon.

My scope doesn’t extend very far out of London, but it’s obvious, even to the blind, that there are way too many people in this country.  You know there are way too many when you can’t afford to buy a house or even rent, or when you go to work in the morning and find yourself pushing past a solid wall of drones. (Sorry - commuters.)

I thought the situation was "bad" enough years ago, when it seemed eastern Asians were coming over by the plane load. That was nothing, compared to the influx of eastern Europeans, once certain countries were accepted into the European Union. I’ve heard, and am starting to see, Chinese people getting in on the action as well.

Before you call me a racist, I’m not targeting or blaming any particular group of people. Resident Brits are adding to the problem as well, when they have large families and consume more than they need.

No blame, that is, unless we’re talking about the government. At the end of the day, they’ve let all of these people in, usually without any kind of warning (there wasn’t even a limit on the number of Polish people who could enter the country), while providing benefits to those who don’t want to work.

For me, when people complain about immigration and there being too many people coming into the country, it seems to be about what the government calls multiculturalism - or what I call "otherculturalism". Otherculturalism is where the traditions of a particular culture is compromised to make way for outside traditions, to the extent that it gets overridden completely.

Though not restricted to religion, one good example of otherculturalism is Christmas. Is there anyone who isn’t "offended" by something about it these days?

I personally don’t have any problem with anybody of any ethnicity, nationality or so on, as long as they pull their weight and aren’t up their own arse. It’s a cliché, but I mean it.

The problem as I see it - and a few of you think so as well - is when immigrants and people who don’t pull their weight are treated (or at least, perceived to be treated) like royalty, compared to long-standing nationals who work their arses off and get almost nothing back.

There’s that, and the idea (sometimes fact) that these people - foreign or national - separate themselves. Sometimes they choose to do it, but I’ve heard from a Czech girl that the government likes to place immigrants from particular countries in particular areas.

What really doesn’t help - and this is where I see that people get angry - is that the government keeps us in the dark about who the heck these people really are, where they came from and why they’re here; in the meantime they’re suddenly working with you at your job, while strange buildings and weird shops with funny-looking language are being opened in your town.

While I certainly wasn’t angry, I remember being very confused and uninformed, when I’d come home from university in 2002, and found Polish shops in my local area. Back in high school, there were increasing numbers of Somalian kids at one point. Both times, nobody had said a thing. I ended up making a fool of myself.

Before you accuse me of being a racist again, I should mention the biggest culprits of otherculturalism:

Brits.

Have you seen what we’ve (read: you’ve) done to Spain? The Meditteranean? Any other popular holiday destination? If not, I suggest you go to any of those places, during the summer.

I’ve had two permanent jobs in two years, all of which lasted for less than 12 months. That’s when I decided to move into freelancing, but unfortunately it didn’t work out. So now I’m back to the predictable grind, which—in this position, anyway—I’m beginning to hate.

I tell you this because there’s a reason why I’ve left the other two jobs. I realise now that it’s had nothing to do with money: one of them was a well-paid job, which was relatively easy to get to in the mornings. The other one wasn’t either.

No, the primary reason for me leaving both jobs, and why I might leave this one, was blame culture.

Some of you may know what I mean by blame culture, but I’ll explain further. My definition of blame culture is where you’re in any size group of people, and you find they use excessive negative language for just about anything. These people never seem to be satisfied; actually, whenever something good happens, they act as if they’re entitled to it. But give them a problem, or something they don’t like, and they’ll talk your ass off about it.

People call me negative, and I freely admit I have moments where everything that comes out of my mouth is negatively charged. That comes with the way I’ve been treated by people, who are just as negative if not more so. But there’s a difference.

Despite my negative nature, I prefer spending time focusing on solutions and methods. I don’t like beating myself up over mistakes I’ve made, whether it’s being late or messing something up on a web site I’m working on. Fuck belly-aching; let’s see if we can learn from the problem and prevent these things from happening again.
But I end up beating myself up anyway, because most people I’ve worked with are firmly entrenched in blame culture (at least, on the job): they spend time focusing on problems and fault-finding. They’re not happy unless they’ve assigned or passed blame on someone else.

Now you’ll find out just what the heck this has to do with anything.

A couple of weeks ago, I was brought up on a few "mistakes" I’d made since starting my current job: trivial things such as being late on occasion. Under normal circumstances, you’d probably agree that this would be a one-to-one conversation, wouldn’t you?
Well imagine my horror when I found myself "locked" in a narrow room, mostly taken up by a large table, with three people.

(This was particularly bad because, when I was at university, I received a barrage of criticism while being trapped in an "interrogation room", with a large heavy table and two senior staff members standing directly between me and the door. I don’t appreciate being trapped.)

While I was arguably being criticised for the heck of it, I was a little dizzy from reliving that moment at university. But it was the discovery of a disturbing trend within the office, that I’m very sure is being replicated in many other companies: the trend of withholding praise and dishing out criticism (hence the title). How many of us have worked in a company where that was the norm?

I’ve calculated that for every positive comment I’ve been given at this job, I’ve had roughly nine times as much criticism, nit-picking and blame assigning - possibly more.

I have made a number of mistakes on the job, ranging from coding issues to almost bringing down a site, which were mostly to do with a lack of information and people unwilling to help. But boy do they love to talk about it when it happens. They bring at least one other person to crowd you; they ridicule your comments and methods (even if subtly); they talk your ears off for several minutes.

The only thing that results is in me being afraid to make any more mistakes, and consequently becoming more mistake-prone.

I want to keep this post short because it’s been long enough already.  I will end by saying, it’s likely I won’t be there much longer at this rate.