Sunday 14 June 2009

In any report

In any report, you should have enough courtesy to quote your statistics.

In any report, you should have the decency not to lie.

In any report, you should mind what you say because you could rip families apart and tear children to pieces.

In any report, you should know better than to quote people who have no decency or honour, and who lie without compunction and who are openly liars.

In any report, you should be able to divorce yourself from the prospect of making money from other people's misery, or get someone else to write the report.

In any report, you should have the civility to be honourable and fair.

In any report, you should check your facts and check your facts again, weeding out any suspicious 'facts' that you cannot support.

In any report, you should mind what you say because what you say could smash children's safe havens where they escaped to from bullies and shouting teachers and the slog of eternal tests and quizzes and homework when you'd been at school all day and wanted a rest and a play because you were a kid after all, and the weariness of being taught and being frightened by not achieving and not attaining, and being found wanting, and being called names and being branded an 'outsider' and being called gay and being hit by bigger kids and being laughed at in the shower while they pointed at your penis and having chewing gum stuck in your newly-washed hair in the science lab and searching for your carefully constructed story that you poured all your creativity into which disappeared off a pile of work and hearing whispers about you that you couldn't quite hear but felt were about you, and being asked if you had nits by six different people on the first day of school in a new school when you didn't but they didn't like you because you wrote good stories and the teacher approved of you because of your writing, and being herded through huge corridors and knocked from one side to the other because big people barged past you or called you 'cute' and thought you looked like a doll, and someone stole your favourite pens out of your very own pencil case and you never knew people who nicked things before, and you found your coat on the floor of the cloakroom with a ripped sleeve and boot and shoe prints all over it and it was your only winter coat, and your mum couldn't afford to buy you another one, and girls who wanted to be your friend and asked to borrow your gel pens never returned them and weren't your friends after they borrowed them and wouldn't speak to you and giggled with each other if you tried to talk to them, and the girl who was your friend lasted a week and moved on to another friend and another friend and another friend until she'd been through everybody.

You could hurt people doing that.

2 comments:

  1. I think his business is hurting people if they do not agree with him.

    ReplyDelete