Ha Ha Ha: so I'll guess we'll have to stop all the mailshots to Buckinghamshire

Why Wearside's poor are the most generous of all

When he was a boy, Peter Brown did a paper round that took in the swanky part of Sunderland where the footballers lived, and a nearby decrepit, run-down council estate.

“At Christmas I’d get more tips from the poor area,” says Peter, who now volunteers in a charity shop in the city. “The footballers hardly gave me a thing.” Peter’s experience is typical of giving in Britain. According to the Giving Campaign, the poorest fifth of the population donate, on average, 3 per cent of household expenditure to charity, while the richest fifth give 0.7 per cent.

And nowhere are the masses more generous than in Peter’s home city. This summer, the Giving Campaign named Sunderland top in Britain for charitable donations, ahead of Blackpool, Motherwell, Dundee and Newcastle. London, Harrow, Twickenham, Kingston-upon-Thames and Ilford were shamed as the most miserly.

I always thought it was commonknowledge that the poor give more to charity than the rich. It's been a bit of an education working for a charity that whenever we get even the remotest interest in our work from people living in somewhere like Hampstead or Buckinghamshire or Hertfordshire, we drop everything we're doing and dream up new strategies based on recruiting other potential donors from such areas. Whereas if it's someone from The North... well, they're lucky to get a thank-you.

Denial

So I had the meeting with my boss and someone from HR over my apparent inability to do my job and me not meeting any of the criteria on my job description. This came as rather a shock to me so I spent the days up to the meeting collecting all the evidence that I have indeed been following my job description and am actually rather good at my work.

So in I went, armed with reems of paper containing all the evidence. Imagine my surprise when my boss denied that she'd ever said such a thing and she thought I was doing well... Huh? So I went over some of my concerns from previous times she's slagged me off (to my face and to other people) and of course she denied the lot! So now all I have to do is produce a plan of my work for the next few months and all apparently will be well. Ho hum. Not that I trust her at all. No doubt we're not at the end of this strange situation.

So since then I've been really trying to do things how she likes them done. This involves changing what I write with her corrections and then changing them back again when she next looks at it (and has forgotten all about ever suggesting such changes). Not surprisingly I've spent the past 3 weeks drawing one table which lists some reports that are due in the next 12 months.

Save Whitelocks!

Regulars fight to save pub 'treasure'

One of Britain's most famous bars is facing ruin at the hands of one the biggest independent pub chains, according to devotees of beer and jam roly-poly who claim they are being shouldered aside in a bid to attract free-spending thirtysomethings.

The full story's here

It makes me wonder where they get these categories from - aren't I a 'free-spending thirtysomething'? I remember many good times at Whitelocks, now it looks as if it's about to be yet another victim of the plastic-isation of Leeds city centre.

Trouble at t'mill

Well, I had my monthly meeting with my manager yesterday during which she said she wanted to give me an informal disciplinary warning. Apparently I am failing to meet any of the criteria on my job description! She also mentioned that I'd had bad references. This all came as rather a shock - as she had recently been praising my work and a few weeks ago I had an appraisal where she didn't bring up any concerns about my work. SO off I went to see the personnel representative who assured me that my references were excellent and we looked at various ways of dealing with this. I'm also off to see my union representative today, find out what they advise. But I'll probably have to have a big meeting with my manager next week to go over all this and put forward my case - something that I'm certainly not looking forward to...

Disgraceful

Airline refuses deaf teens flight

A group of deaf teenagers going on holiday to celebrate the end of their A Levels were told to leave their plane because they did not have an escort.

"They said there was a problem because we needed to have a hearing person with us. After having an argument with the captain they kicked us off.

But Iberia defended its actions, saying it was only following regulations, although the UK Civil Aviation Authority says it has no such regulation.