White Van Man is a generic name for guys driving 3,500 Kg max vehicle weight vans, some are self employed builders and plumbers, but most of these vans are used to carry cargo, often for parcel delivery companies, in what is known as “multi drop” driving.
Back in the day, multi-drop meant 15 to 30 drops per day / route, no great pressure.
And then things “progressed” as more and more companies chased after the market segment and bought each other out….
First it was the number of drops per day went up, there are guys out there doing 80 or 90 drops per day, and not all of them are on city routes where the drops are 300 metres apart as the crow flies.
Then it was offering a service where each delivery is before X time or the delivery is free, which meant the driver didn’t get paid… great when half your load is “before midday” and another 10% of your load is “before 10 am”
Then it was “load your own fucking van” which saved warehouse employees.
Then it was “plan your own fucking route” which saved office employees.
Lately it is “You lease your own fucking van, get it sign-written like THIS in OUR company livery, and we will let you have a route, self employed, load your own van, plan your own route, and any parcels delivered outside the scheduled 1 hour window we don’t pay you for.”
You see where this is headed, technically the term for what the courier companies are doing is “externalising” the shit end of the stick to the white van man, who is no longer an employee, but a self employed subcontractor…
You see where the capitalism / market always works crowd don’t actually live in the real world, where it doesn’t always work, unless you re-define work as meaning to make the 1% at the top more money by screwing everyone else.
Also, just as there are always men desperate enough to fuck fugly fat bitches, there are always men desperate enough to sign up for then onerous “franchise” jobs.
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Now I want to take on an apparently, at first sight, completely different and unrelated subject, The Spearhead.
Bill has just put all comments into moderation only.
Now, I was certainly a *participant* in the causes for this, because I called out Eric on his bullshit, and yes, this was against comment policy to flame another user, however, I could say right back that I should not have had to flame Eric, or Keyster, they should instead have been banned by Bill.
Why them and not me?
Well, like the white van man example above, it all depends on what a thing really is, as opposed to what you think it is.
Bill uses WordPress (as indeed to I here) to generate the content at the Spearhead, but wordpress is a magazine publishing CMS, which is kinda appropriate to my use here, and appropriate to the Spearhead, which is an online Men’s Rights Magazine.
Or, is it?
To MY mind, the unique selling point of the Spearhead is NOT the articles themselves, but rather the comments and user interaction that they generate, and the WP comment plugin sucks donkey balls at that.
If Bill had ported the Spearhead over to slashcode, which is all about threaded comments, commenter relationships and cliques, and commenter karma, the Spearhead would be quite different, and to my mind more vibrant.
Most importantly, socks like Eric (and indeed Eric and myself having a flame fest) would not be able to steal the show, we would be automatically related to a few branches on the comment tree, and certainly the likes of Eric who in effect posted anonymously would never be able to generate karma or gather a clique as he has now, effectively under the radar…
As Zen says, the spearhead looks like it is entering middle age and heading for decline and oblivion, Bill is tired of all the work, which is understandable if you are trying to do (as I posit) something with a wordpress plugin that can be done a zillion times better with slashcode… and the beat goes on.
In many ways there are strong analogies here to white van man as a way of making a living entering middle age and heading for decline and oblivion.
Things tend to regress either to a mean or to an extreme, totality or oblivion being the two extremes.
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The Spearhead used to be the equivalent of a working men’s club, it was relaxing because only working men went there.
Then, just like wimminz, which some of them may well be, there came an influx of people who were not working men, and the atmosphere changes, as it will unless either the management throw out the non working men, or the working men are enabled by the management to stand at the door and control admissions.
While there are men who hold completely crazy views, for example NAWALT, it is a peculiarly wimminz or trolls trait to declare belief in mutually contradictory or exclusive things.
Pete Nolan may have been a fruitcake, but he always sang the same sort of music, in the same way that every Eagles album and track is different, but has a common flavour, which is different from every Metallica album and track.
But when you get an album with one track that sounds like it is Metallica, the next sounds like the Eagles, the next like Tracy Chapman, the next like Bob the Builder, it stretches credibility to be told this is all one artist…
To me at least this is Eric(a) / Keyster et al, and the host of new names / socks and suddenly all the longer term posters get red arrows irrespective of what they actually say.
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Getting back to the white van man analogy, this is a lot like blaming those guys who say fuck it and quit driving, and those guys who put up with anything the courier company wants, for the decline of the courier industry, and I mean decline in standards and work ethic and quality of service.
I, with this blog, am the driver who said fuck it.
bill, with the Spearhead is the guy who puts up with what the courier company wants, doing more and more work and hours for less and less hourly wage, while piling up more and more personal liabilities.
Bill HAS to do 80 drops a day to stay afloat, that is his ONLY priority.
I can say fuck it and take one job every other week, delivering an empty van from city A to city B
Bill HAS to put his hand out for cash, and he has to have threads with 100 comments to get the ad revenue.
I never need to ask for a penny and I could give a fuck if this post gets any comments at all, because there is no ad revenue.
Bill accepted what to me were unacceptable terms for limited contact with his kids.
I refused what were to Bill acceptable terms for limited contact with my kids.
It isn’t that one of us is more right than the other, it is that we are different, though we may stand under the same broad umbrella, and that raises that interesting question, is a thing what you really think it is?
Is the Spearhead a magazine, or a working men’s bar / comment forum?
To be sure, I walked away from mgtowforums (which I think gets it more, right, it is all about comments and threads, but IMHO that should also be slashcode, not a forum/board) because of a disagreement / difference of opinion with Nacho, and it looks like I will be doing the same with Bill, not that either one will miss me, because after all, I am the wrong type of Man.. lol
Related articles
- What Does the Colour of Your Van Say About You and Your Business? (smallbizbee.com)
