Some genius thought that it would be a good idea for
local government employees to tweet throughout the day, describing their
functions and successes under the #ourday hashtag. For a glimpse into the
surreal world of people who believe meetings are an end in themselves I suggest
you take a look. Here’s a taste of a few I saw:
“We're busy planting winter bedding in Stratford &
carrying out safety inspections in play areas in Stratford & Lighthorne
Heath #ourday”
“Today our Housing Needs Service is being assessed for
their Customer Service Excellence accreditation. Good luck guys! #ourday”
“The Ethnic Minority &Traveller Service supports
schools with young people from ethnic backgrounds: tinyurl.com/SoT-EMTS #ourday”
Of course, Twitter is the perfect place for an ambush, so
along with the earnest and the self-congratulatory came the finely honed wit of
some of Twitters finest:
“10am cup of coffee time. Only allowed Nescafe Gold blend
cos of that austerity. FML. :o( Evil tory toffs. #ourday”
“Yippee! @LewishamCouncil have just elected a Young
Mayor; he'll be able to waste up to 30k a year. Not as bad as Senior Mayor.
#ourday”
“Council wasters getting upset about hijacking of #ourday
tag. Well stop tweeting and do the bastard job I pay you to do.”
We done okay, here in Deadwood, but there’s always more
to be done; we needs to git ourselves some good, strong diversity and equality
machinery in the justice department and sort out this berg for good. There’s
always a danger we could slip back into the old, frontier-town ways and that’s
where we need to be vigilante to keep the peace and maintain har-mon-ee, y’all.
Yes sirree, once upon a time this was a rough and ready town. These
lawless streets were home to vagabonds and wasters and drunks and jest ‘bout
anybody could do jest ‘bout any thang they dang well wanted. Days was you
couldn’t move but there’d be a gunfight, or a saloon bar brawl… or a lynch mob
bayin’ at the jailhouse for the Sher’ff to give up some gunpoke or some injun
for a bit of rough street justice.
Course, this made plenty of work for deputies and posse
members - and later for carpenters and grave diggers and undertakers. Then the
bars would mop up the mobs, making work for bartenders and whores… and in time,
the docs. Why, in those days, the wives stayed at home cooking and cleaning and
keeping house and jest about keepin’ pace with replacing the population lost to
those wild old times.
But then we got educated. There ain’t much call for
gunslinging hereabouts these days and most young guys don’t really want to do
the job. Instead of leaving school they stay on, get soft, then alls they’re
good fer is pushing paper. Not that I’m sayin’ that ain’t real work y’hear. The
lord knows there’s a lot of paper to push and it ain’t gonna push itself; ever’thang
gotta be filled out in triplicate, in eighteen languages.
Strange, the old town don’t seem quite so lively no more,
but they say that’s a good thing and who am I, the Diversity Evaluation &
Ethnic Efficacy Monitor, to argue? Some say Deadwood finally lived up to its
name… I don’t get it.
