Thursday 14 February 2008

Mike's manic moments

It's only Thursday, but what a week it's been! I am typing this from the Red Star in the relative comfort of the little office while I keep an eye on Ivor and Karl who are also beavering away (I don't know what at - that's the beauty of windows!)and looking busy.
On Monday I went to P&O Ferries in Dover to try and get them interested in our learning program and dangle the idea of a learning agreement. The old "Win - Win" pitch, but it is something we want to do, as seafarers are "hard to reach" workers and generally don't get offered much in the way of 'nice to have' training.I went with Malcolm from the Dover office of RMT who works with shipping and he thought it went well. I now have to try to move it on, so watch this space.
Tuesday was a good day as I was meeting up with Richard at Ashford who is a learning rep for ASLEF. It was quite an odd start to the day as when I boarded the train the train for Ashford there were a number of rail workers who were happy to complete lna's so I got them to crack on, but the conductor said "Ooh I can't do that my dad will kill me" "Why" says I "Cos he is doing something like that today" The penny dropped as I realised the resemblance - he is the spit of his dad, who of course is the rep I was going to meet up with! Anyway, Richard and I had a great day talking to loads of people at Ashford and conducted over sixty lna's - brilliant! Mind you, I better buy him another lunch soon as all he got was crap fish n chips!
Wednesday, and all the trains were up the swanney, but I eventually got to the Red Star in time for Ivor to bundle me out of the reps class to stop annoying them, but not before I was able to give Lara from S.London branch her briefing and badges before she zoomed off to be our hot shot at a national awards ceremony in Manchester.(pix to follow soon!)Then spent loadsa loot on essentials for the centre; lovely! And now here I am, back at the centre working wid da boys trying to get more of you lot to take your release entitlement!

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