Thursday, February 28, 2008

These are my personal views etc

I discovered today by accident that NGO X now has a blogging policy. It states that you should tell your manager if you "already have a personal blog, website or social network page which indicates in any way that you work for [NGO X]".

Bugger. Here I have been carefully self-regulating all these years, but now we have OfBlog. I think I'm caught out by that "in any way". You would not need to be Inspector Morse to work out who I am and where I am a 0.6FTE.

The policy goes on to say, in essence and inter alia, that I must not say anything "potentially offensive" on my blog about anyone else who works for NGO X. Even if in-my-personal-view-and-not-that-of-my-employer it happens to be bang on.

Theoretically, I've done that. As in, there is someone who might theoretically get to joella and theoretically recognise herself and theoretically be offended. So I need to pare. I think they'll let me get away with saying that the lightbulbs in the New Building gave me a headache, but I should probably cleanse certain other references before I present myself for inspection.

I have a feeling that edited-and-republished posts appear as new in certain RSS readers, so bear with me if you get a lot of sanitised old stuff popping up.

Part of me thinks it's fair enough, another part knows that there ain't no justice.

joella

8 comments:

Ben said...

Thankfully I'm not Inspector Morse, because he couldn't investigate a public litter offence without two or three bodies turning up at key intervals.

Having informed your managers of Joella's existence, is it likely that they would then sit down and trawl through every post of the last six years? I'd have thought you're on safe ground without invoking Minitrue procedures.

beth said...

Trawling through blogs to look for people saying bad things about people they work with...Do you reckon someone is being PAID to do that? If so - why isn't it me?

Anonymous said...

Don't tell them, he posted anonymously.

Ben said...

Mind you, NGO X is still ahead of the US Air Force, which has simply blocked all URLs containing the word blog.

nuttycow said...

But the re-posting is good for me who, having just found you, is now having to trawl through 6 years of posts. Phew.

Anonymous said...

nuttycow - i share your pain, having just spent time composing the tosh below, only to have discovered it was unlikely to be read, as the blogpost was back in 2003...

*****

Be honest, dearie, if it was someone poor and ugly you would be saying 'Ah, but the sign says 'for those having 'around' five items or fewer', and engaging them in a bit of a chat about the weather.

Much as I sympathise with you, I'm afraid whilst you worry about the other people who have 'more' than you , you will never join us merry band of brigands, the disciples of Tom Hodgkinson who have realised that all that stuff about money and career and things is just distracting us from the real business of life, which is to enjoy ourselves...

And for all the dosh that she has got, if she he is harnessed to that way of life, then it is in fact more likely that she is in fact looking at you in the queue in M&S thinking 'If only I could replace my beautiful visage with one as happy, smiley and carefree as that belonging to joella..'

You see, when you get to the end of life's journey you will be kicking yourself for having spent so much time worrying that you weren't in First Class, when you realise that the point of the journey was to enjoy the view, which was pretty much the same in Standard Class, even if you don't have quite the same freebies..

p.s. for what it is worth, decent self-respecting blokes, such as myself [well there's not much point in false modesty is there] find funny, intelligent and interesting women such as yourself ten times as shaggable as laetitia who, despite not being as jumped up as you make out - her dad actually had to be 'elected' to get to Parliament - is probably too fussy over trivial stuff like the size of wallet to ever get to find out about important stuff like the size of willy..

tomato said...

I can't believe this. (Actually, I *can* believe it. It just hurts more to say it that way.)

There I was thinking that just by refusing to join the NGO X facebook groups I was keeping my private and office work lives the way I want them - unentwined, with just a few tendrils of exception.

I understand the concept of libel and all that, but really, when *do* you get to tell someone you've had a shit day at work? Where are the boundaries? Is it like that 'pane of glass at home' thing? Do I just need to get some glasses?

(slightly hysterical tailspin...)

Jo said...

Anonymous 1: I think I have to... my only defence otherwise would be that I didn't know there was a policy, and I've just pissed on my chips there by blogging about it. But yes, unlikely they will read it all. If they know what to search on, however... Minitrue indeed.

Ben: I *knew* there was a reason I didn't join the US Air Force.

Nutty: welcome! A young man called Lance once declared he was going to read the whole back catalogue but I don't know how far he got. I think it's patchy, myself.

Anonymous 2: I read all my comments, never fear.

Tomato - I've come to the conclusion that all is entwined these days. Several NGO X colleagues maintain two Facebook profiles, but I really can't be arsed...