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Morris World

Old men with beards don't give the right impression for the future. This William Morris fellow can't have been that good, or that bloke Brangwyn would not have given all his stuff away for us to look after. Loads of old pictures, bits of cloth, furniture, books, you would have thought he was clearing his house out ready for moving -- dumps it all on us and now we have to look after it, and that costs money. I'm all for education, education, education, but this museum business, it's not, well, business. I might be dim but I cannot see how you can attract people and make money out of a lot of old tat.

Specialist museum, money down the pan you mean: culture and heritage don't mean twaddle in a market economy. Like I said, history is a millstone around your neck. We need to fashion a new future where people don't remember the past. We live in a market economy (not Walthamstow market obviously -- we've got to get rid of that, it's so old-fashioned) but a new economy of developments, shopping centres and tower blocks, most importantly developers so that we don't have to pay for it all, I know that means we don't own it either, but you have to make sacrifices. Build a new Waltham Forest where the market reigns, or have I said that already?

I've got no truck with history, it can give you ideas, bad ideas. Someone once said without a past you have no future. Well, there is no future in that old geezer's past, so the sooner we get rid of all those nasty old-fashioned ideas like socialism, democracy and quality of life the better. I mean, "fellowship is life" -- what a stupid saying. Whoever picked that as a company motto needs their wallet examining. And as for his little booklets and stuff, not exactly Neo Labour if you know what I mean, those sort of thoughts had to go.But a nice building and park so I am told.

That why we wanted to turn the building into a wedding venue. With a bit of lottery funding (I know we have a dishonest record there but nothing ventured, nothing gained), spruce up the park a bit and Bob's your uncle, we have some loverly backdrops for photos, a nice little earner.

But I jump ahead of myself cos I farmed out most of the work, I passed it over to one of my ablest underlings. Well I say ablest, he used to run a newspaper kiosk, then he had delusions of grandeur and he had a go at my job once. Soon got rid of him from that though, I was surprised he came back in a junior post, there are probably rules against that sort of thing, but no one has seemed to notice. I remember in the miners strike (well not really, but I was told about it), he never knew when to pack it in even then, he was going to save every job and stop every cutback. But he was arrogant, pig-headed and bullied people, just what I wanted on the team. And remember there is no u in team.

He's done a good job of steamrollering downsizing packages through, cutting jobs right, left, and centre. He must have learnt some thing from the miners strike then, and he passed the Morris job off onto one of his rising stars. She seems to be modelling herself on him, she's got the same style, a complete calamity with staff relations. Claims she knows a lot about rocks though, not sure how that helps, but as long as she don't throw them, whatever turns you on I say.

She got rid of all the staff, nearly got rid of all the collection as well, a bit unlucky there antagonising so many people and having to go back on that and recruit more staff. And upsetting all the shareholders, the lottery people, again, but she did make savings of £42,000 and then spent £98,000 covering it all up, all in all a bit of a u-turn there. She got promoted on the strength of all that effort, but I think we have managed to cover that up ok, it drove a horse and cart though our equal-opportunities policy and several other policies, but no one noticed. And even if they do, we can tie up the complaints in red tape for years until they are forgotten.

Mind you she writes a good report, seems to crib it all off of the internet, she'd be lost without that. But that's the new generation for you, chancers the lot of us. And she's doing well with the new Morris dance festival, what with him inventing all that Morris dancing with bells and stuff, second thoughts she could not have thought of it, not that bright.

I really thought heads would roll on this one. The trouble is the heads are stuck so far up other people's bums, it's hard to know where to look for them.