He was probably too outspoken to survive very long

The first of the autumn political conferences was the TUC (Trades Union Congress) Conference held at Brighton in September. This is an old TUC badge displayed on a building in Bloomsbury. Not sure why it incorporates a fasces, which later became the emblem of the fascists (the TUC is definitely not a fascist organisation, although it still has syndicalist tendencies in some of its economic proposals).

Thursday morning, and it was obvious that work placement Gerald (long-term unemployed, aged about sixty, pedantic in an funny-amusing sort of way) had left the company. “I think you can safely assume that he won’t be coming back” said Eric Morgan smugly. Eric then explained: “Gerald had a way of upsetting Mr Bottoni. I knew after the meeting on Monday he was for the chop.” Eric Morgan is the IT Administrator and company gossip, late fifties, over-weight, married to Jean Morgan one of the sales estimators (with whom he has spectacular screaming rows, often bringing the sales floor to an embarrassed halt). He is the sort of person who enjoys telling you bad news.

Gerald had originally been an accountant, but after a redundancy had found it difficult to get another job, and had been out of work for a number of years. He had joined the company on the same day as myself, which is how we had got to know each other. At that time we were both temps, but whereas my post had become permanent, Gerald had remained on a temporary work placement scheme.

The last I saw of him was on Wednesday when he came onto my floor while waiting to see the Managing Director Marc Bottoni. The tea trolley had come round at that moment and I stopped to have a cup of tea and chat to Gerald. He talked about the political conference season and revealed that he had voted for all three main parties at various points in his life.

“All parties go through cycles” he said. “They start off all evangelical and enthusiastic, and then they get into power. Then they win a second election and the scumbags start to attach themselves. You’ve got to realise that there is big sea of opportunist scumbags rolling around public life waiting to worm themselves into whatever organisation looks like it’s going to get into power. They don’t care about ideology or anything. They just want to get into power and boss people around and line their own pockets. So when someone like Thatcher came along in the seventies and against all the odds began winning elections all the scumbags jumped on her bandwagon. And eventually the scumbags took over, and dragged the whole party down. I’m talking about people like Michael Portillo.”

“Or John Bercow?” I suggested.

“And Bercow” he said.

“Or Chris Patten?” I suggested.

“And Patten” he said. “All the scumbags are interchangeable and could pop up in any party, changing their views to suit the circumstances. They dragged the Tory party down, and when it began losing elections they jumped ship. Now the Tories are going through a sort of purification process and will probably start winning again. It’s Labour that’s got a big problem now. They are the ones being smothered by the scumbags.”

“Who is the biggest opportunist scumbag?” I asked.

“Rupert Murdoch” he said without hesitation.

I liked Gerald, but he was probably too outspoken to survive very long. He had reached a stage in his life when he didn’t care about anyone or anything. He was determined to speak his mind.