He was bloody lucky

At 12 o’clock today the company joined in the Europe-wide silence for the victims of the tsumani disaster.

Yesterday the company initiated a collection (already several hundred pounds raised) and Marion Conway has said that the company will match the amount raised by the staff. After the noon silence Scott Ryan came over to the Marketing corner and told me that Clive Ripley (former sales rep who left in very acrimonious circumstances last year) had gone to Phuket for Christmas but had been on the other side of the island when the wave had struck.

“He was bloody lucky. He’s back in England now. I managed to get a text through to him, and he said he was alright.”

“I thought he lived in Thailand permanently? I thought he was giving up sales and going out to Thailand where he was going to live some kind of The Beach lifestyle?”

“In his dreams, mate. In his dreams. He’s got to work for a living like the rest of us.”

PS I don’t often make political statements on this weblog, but I was really irritated by Tony Blair talking on the radio this morning and saying the government would match the amount of money raised by the people. It’s surely not a matter of matching – the government needs to give whatever is necessary to alleviate the suffering, however much it costs. Later in the same interview he said the government would give many times more than whatever the people manage to raise. As if it was some kind of bidding war.