sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Oh, and I half-discovered this alleged grass-roots campaign about getting Tony Blair an email address.

Here's what I think: like, yeah, Tony's really going to open his own mail. Just like the senior operative in the Chief Executive's Office at Telewest, my ISP, told me that he'd never actually met the CEO. On my current capital markets research project, no-one more senior than MD opens their own mail. My last CEO had her secretary print out all her mail once a day, and she scribbled on them on the way home, and got her assistant to mail responses... oh, about three days later.

I can just imagine. "Hi, Cherie. Good day at the office? Can't chat, I've got 4.3 squillion emails to get through before I get to the new NHS funding proposals. You go on up. Start without me?"

Or this: "Gordon, can you do the budget meeting with the others? I really have to catch up on my email, you know what it's like when you're out of the office for a few days with heads of state. Just backed up to billy-oh." (I don't actually know Tony would say that, it's just my imagination, OK? We're not close, y'know.)

And what happens to his successor? Just inherits 2.6 million unresponded-to emails? Bit like the unemployment figures. And there'll be questions in the house about what the PM's email backlog is, and there'll have to be a charter, and he'll just have to hire more peope to write bland nano-responses.

C'mon. Don't confuse the medium with the message. I don't care if Tony opens his own mail or not as long as stuff gets done. So stop faffing about the wonders of ICT, and blabbering on about e-democracy, and tell us what the war was really about, why parents are having to fund publically financed schools in the education-education-education era, and why it's not worth me applying for a post as a non-exec on my local NHS trust, because "they prefer someone from an ethnic minority -" I know what you're thinking, it didn't wash - "and frankly they already have an application on the table from someone who's not only black, but they're disabled."

Get your priorities right, Tony. Put your own house in order before you mess with other people's. Fix the education system before functional illiteracy reaches the 50% mark. Stop dumbing down higher and further education in the name of diversity and equality - you're just giving people fourth-rate degrees that won't get them a job in Macdonalds. Get the public sector back on track - do we really need to pay someone good money to be a five-a-day co-ordinator, ensuring people have five portions of fruit and vegetables daily? I know it's a little old Labour, but don't forget the unions and the workers, and stop turning into Maggie, and start being who you promised to be.