Progress of sorts

After weeks and months of chaos, things feel like they're finally starting to come back under reasonable control. There are signs of progress:

• at work, in the form of a handful of fixes which ought to address the current stability problems
• at home, in the form of articles that have been on my to-read pile since sometime in February
• with my feet, today being the first blister-pain free day I've had in over a month. With hindsight, I really shouldn't have continued to run on them after the first time they started bleeding

Now all I have to do is address the perennial question of my continuing education — something that comes round at this time every year, and bothers me for a month or so before I realise that, thanks to (a) doubts about my abilities, (b) worries about not being motivated enough, (c) an accute lack of confidence, enough time has passed to make the whole thing impossible for another academic year — and all my problems with be solved.

Maybe.

Health and Safety a la Grecque

Over on their blog, Pater has a good rant about a sudden H&S crackdown at their boatyard that is being used to gouge owners on the one hand and the workforce on the other:

It ... is now forbidden to sleep on boats in the yard, and it is forbidden to paint your own boat (a rumour that people would not be able to work on their own boats at all has been denied). Though this has not yet been put into effect, it will be part of the new contracts, which will include the labour cost of antifouling and half the cost of a hotel and car hire for ten days. To cover the cost of this the fees have been increased substantially. At the same time a contract no longer entitles you to use the marina, which means that an annual contract is pretty pointless. Moreover the yard has substantially cut the wages of its employees and increased their hours, with the promise of further cuts to come. The management pleads that this is all due to events outside their control — excessive demand for the marina, requirements of the health authorities, financial stringency. At best it is all a result of bad management, at worst it is a case of management trying to take advantage of the crisis at both ends, cutting costs by cutting wages and intensifying labour and raising revenue by jacking up fees.

Once a sociologist, always a sociologist...