Dancing on Ice and the Olympics

I think it was time for Sharon Davies to go, and I'm not at all surprised that neither the public or the judges voted for her - you don't dis Torville and Dean! I wonder if they had had words, actually, as I felt Christopher Dean's congratulations to Pavel rather than Sharon was rather pointed, and usually the departing skater gushes about what a privilege it has been to work with T and D, but Sharon had to be prompted to do so by Philip. Hm.

I am surprised that they keep marking Danny and Frankie so low - they were behind Sharon Davies in the scores, he looks like he skates quite well to me, but clearly I know nothing. And I'm a bit disappointed with Mikey - he was so good to begin with, but doesn't seem to have progressed very much.

I've been watching a lot of the Olympic skating as well, mostly on iplayer because I only recently discovered the BBC highlights are on in the middle of the day. The live coverage is in the middle of the night, which obviously can't be helped, Vancouver being 8hours behind here and all, but given that most people aren't going to be able to watch that because they have to be up for work/school the next day, it seems odd that the BBC has the highlights on at 1.45pm when everyone will be at school/work. Thank heavens for iplayer!

Anyway, I really enjoyed seeing the little re-cap of when Robin Cousins won his Olympic gold thirty years ago. I DID get up at 4am to watch that, it being half-term and me having my first major crush on Robin. It was funny seeing the clips of him in 1980, he looked so young and, well, callow, is the nearest I can think of. I couldn't help wondering what I'd seen in him, and thinking that he is much better looking now that he's older. (As an aside, can you name a single woman who you genuinely think looks better at 50 than 20? Unfair but true.) And then it occurred to me that my 12 year old self would have thought present day Robin an old man and not looked twice at him, whereas to me at 42, his craggier face is more appealing, and that, of course, is exactly how it should be.

Apparently there has been controversy, on lj and in the wider world, about the Russian who came second in the men's figure skating and whose name I'm not even going to attempt to spell. To be honest I'd have liked him to win because he looks very like an old and dear former colleague of mine, which of course is no reason at all, and also, even if he was obnoxious about it, he DID do the quad jump and Evan L (not spelling that either), for all he was great, didn't. And to be honest I would have felt that the Russian should have won, except for the fact that dear Robin said half way through his free program, that he thought he'd made too many errors and that Evan L should get it. So, 'nuff said.

The Gordon Brown bullying saga

Any kind of bullying is a dreadful thing. I escaped it at school, thankfully, but a boss of mine, who has now been promoted on away from me, didn't really ever pick on me, but the fear she engendered by the way she treated some of my colleagues, the whole 'it could be you' effect was really awful. What I remember as being the worst was the unpredictability. With most people in authority, I have found, you learn the rules, whatever they are, and you abide by them, however ridiculous, keep your head down, do your homework, or whatever, and they leave you in peace. This woman had no rules. What was right on Tuesday was an excuse to scream at you on Friday. And it was who you were, not what you did or didn't do. If one of her favourites ballsed things up then it was somehow somebody else's fault. Nightmare.

So I have seen, and to an extent, vicariously experienced, work-place bullying, and I would never try to down play it or pretend it isn't awful, but what has bothered me most about this whole news story is the fact that the confidentiality of those people who phoned that anti-bullying help line has been breached by that dreadful woman, as far as I can see for political point scoring, although she has denied this. It's all very well saying she hasn't named the callers or given details of their concerns but she has given away that they called at all. With my former boss that would be more than enough excuse to pick on the people she would assume it must have been. How many people are in that office? They're all now under suspicion of having been the ones. The atmosphere must be appalling.