Jobcentre plus

I’ve just completed four weeks of unemployment. It continues to be very emotional. But I do think that I’m starting to get the hang of it.

Today I went to a jobs fair. I went mainly on the suggestion of the nice man at the job centre. I can’t knock what the jobs fair was about because if it helps just one person find employment then I think that it could be measured as a success. Many of the stalls were promoting jobs or volunteering in the care/service sector. Sadly there was nothing to help the recently redundant Materials Manager from the engineering sector. Although, I was tempted to apply for a job with M&S (nice uniforms) who seemed to be recruiting (avoids cheap joke about working in ladies underwear). Failing that there’s always Morrison’s who were also there looking for staff.

I had big plans for when I was made redundant but so far none of them have come to fruition. Things seem to take longer to happen than I’d hoped and also I think I was born with a yellow streak down my back as I too often plump for playing it safe. I have ambitions but seem powerless or lacking in the courage to take the risks that could enable me to prosper. Imagine someone standing on the edge of a high diving board over a swimming pool. I’m the one that turns around and goes back down the steps. Perhaps one day I will have the courage to jump.

I feel I must speak out in praise of the Jobcentre Plus staff. It can’t be easy working under the yoke of the sadistic Tory government with the culture of fear that they have engendered. The Tory bastards have created that climate of fear to oppress hard working government employees. But despite all that all the staff at my local Jobcentre in Norwich have been friendly, polite and as helpful as they are able to be. I kind of think that there is only one thing worse, in the jobs market, than being unemployed, and that’s working at Jobcentre Plus. So under the circumstances they do a good job and are, in my experience, nice people.

The morons who subscribe to and repeat Tory propaganda ad nauseam would do well to get from behind their Daily Mails and experience the full effects of the Conservative parties own peculiar brand of fascism first hand as I have done.

100% Unemployment

Day two of unemployment. Going well so far. Yesterday I went out for a celebratory breakfast. The full English. I considered it a rite of passage. I also realised that if I am to survive this ordeal I need some structure to my day. So last night I set the alarm. First task of the day is a brisk walk for an hour. I need to keep up with my exercise levels. Don’t want to turn into a slob. Then I’ve spent the day searching for jobs. Trying to get to grips with the DirectGov website which is actually a pile of piss and very user unfriendly. A bit like the ConDem government so no surprises there then!

Tomorrow I have my initial ‘Job Seeker’s’ interview. Wish me luck. I think I may need it and a nosegay apparently.

The darkest hour is just before dawn

You can’t help but absorb some of the bad vibes from around yourself, unless you are a person of iron will. I am not a person of iron will.

I have a month left to work for my current employer. On the whole I’m pleased that I’m being made redundant. Yes it means that I’m losing my income and I know not when and if I’ll be able to get another job but I loathe my job with a passion. It’s a hateful soul-destroying job that apart from a wage in no way fulfils me; so a result. Unfortunately many of my co-workers (also losing their livelihoods) are not quite as philosophical and sanguine about it. Their stress and general unhappiness manifests itself in many different forms and it rubs off. As a result I soak up some of their pain, like blotting paper.

The whole of the branch of the company I work for is being closed down, eventually. Our redundancies are staggered. Different people going at different times depending on the job that they do. I am reminded of pictures from World War One of blinded soldiers from the front shuffling along in single file one after the other a hand on the one in front and a sighted person leading the way. Hardly the same thing I know and I have no intention of playing down the horrors of war but the whole process does upset people profoundly.

We are in a queue waiting to be pushed off the edge. It’s the waiting that is the most upsetting. People want to move on.

N.E.X.T.

 

No longer playing it safe

It’s possible that I’ve made a very big mistake. I think I may have come very close to getting a new job. A job with more money doing what I know best. Doing what I can sort of do with my eyes closed. I have decided against it!

Am I mental?
Possibly!

I’ve done purchasing type jobs for over thirty years and quite frankly I’ve had enough. I think I’d rather stack shelves in a supermarket than carry on in supply chain solutions. Virtually all my life I’ve played it safe. Safe is no longer an option. Not enough of us take the risky option I fear. Sometimes we have to take risks. Sometimes it’s the only way to get what we want!

When I’m finally made redundant (sometime early in the New Year) I’m going to head north. Well north-ish. I’m no longer a young man so going west is out of the question.

I’m heading north in search of gritty creativity.

Life begins at 58!

The fog is lifting

For the first time since I learned that I was being made redundant I feel that I’m in a better place emotionally. My outlook is starting to be a bit more positive. This is quite unusual for me.

I suppose I’m more fortunate than many in that I don’t feel that I have to find a job at a certain level. Within reason any job (if I can find one) will do. I now see redundancy as potential freedom. All my life I have harboured a desire to create; to paint, to draw, to write; all my life I’ve allowed life to get in the way and stop me from immersing myself in my art. Now there will be nothing to stop me. Yes I will need to find some kind of employment but that’ll be all I’ll need, some kind of employment.

The other thing is that I won’t be tied down necessarily to where I live. Looking for inspiration I could well go off and live elsewhere. How liberating is that?

I’m not pretending that it’s all going to be a bed of roses. I have no doubt that I won’t get everything I want. There will be things I’ll need to do without but I’m going to set myself free.

I think the most exciting thing is that I’ve no idea where my life is going to go. All I know is that it’s going to change. I need to harness that change and use it as a catalyst for a more interesting life. I will have doubts, and I will have panics but I can see that my life could well be enriched by it.

As one door closes, another one opens.

Tip toe

I hope upon hope that once I am made redundant I can find other employment. I fear for the future. I can’t see that, at my age, I’ll be able to earn what I have been earning. I will probably have to take a much lower paid job. But regardless of any future salary I am determined to live my life in a simple and frugal way. I very much want to reduce my material footprint.

All the fun of the fair

Life is like being on a rollercoaster at the moment; a mixture of a few highs and a great many dramatic lows. Work is so painful now as I know I’m going to be without a job but don’t actually know at the moment when I’ll leave. I am feeling terribly misunderstood.

Emotionally I am more often than not at low ebb. I am finding it hard to concentrate on anything for long.

On the occasions I’m feeling up or optimistic it rarely lasts as something happens or someone does something to put the dampener on life.

I so want to move forward.

Scrapheap challenge

When we were told at the beginning of last week that the branch of the company I work for was closing it really didn’t come as any surprise to any of us. It had sort of been on the cards for quite a while. In fact for me it came as a relief. When you have something like that hanging over you it’s often good to have the certain imminent truth rather than a speculative possibility. Others did not take it in quite such a sanguine way.

The next day and reality set in. the emotions of it and of life brought me down to earth with a bump. I went into a deep decline. Life seemed pointless; nobody loved me, everybody hated me, so to speak. I was preparing myself to go down the garden to eat worms. I’m not good with rejection, especially when I feel that rejection is unjustified. On the scrap heap at 58!

Its 41 years since I left school and not once have I been registered unemployed. There was a brief period in my earlier days when I had three weeks off when I was between jobs but apart from that I’ve been a wage slave all of the time.

I’m scared. I’m scared for my future and I’m sad for my colleagues that are also losing their jobs, some of whom I know will suffer quite badly financially. But I’m coming to terms with it. I now see it as an opportunity, albeit not necessarily an easy opportunity. I’m hoping it will afford me the opportunity to be more creative and perhaps find employment in a different sphere, and perhaps even in a different location. I’ve never overly been fearful of change and it could well make life much more interesting. I’ve come to realise that material wealth is not the be all and end all of life. There is more to life than trinkets.

I’m coming to terms with the soon to be ‘bereft of employment’ situation. My future path is a stony one, but compared with many persecuted souls it will hopefully be no great hardship either. I’ll keep you posted.

John Jarrold Printing Museum

Last Saturday we had the pleasure of visiting the John Jarrold Printing Museum in Norwich. Spending a fascinating couple of hours there. The museum which has limited opening appears to be staffed mainly by retired folk. Nothing wrong with that I might add. Many of whom worked in the printing trade. I’ve been in love with printing since my first John Bull Printing Outfit as a kid.

The museum has a really good cross section of exhibits from early letterpress to latter-day offset-litho, as well as examples of ancillary equipment related to the printing and bookbinding world.

The print museum is housed in part of a very fine building, a former yarn mill. In many ways the museum undersells itself but that’s also part of its charm. Having said that they could tweak the presentation a bit to improve the experience and no doubt increase revenue.

In my early years as a buyer I worked for a firm of manufacturing stationers, Swallow Manufacturing Co Ltd, which did its own printing. I was charged with buying the printing supplies. I loved that bit of my job.

If you ever find yourself in Norwich on a Wednesday with an hour or two to spare you could do a lot worse than going to this fine establishment.

“With twenty-six soldiers of lead I have conquered the world” – this saying has been attributed to a number of famous people over the years, including the great Karl Marx and it adorns the museum brochure.

The wages of sin

For every £1 million that is paid to some fat-cat executive you could employ 40 people at £25,000, 50 people at £20,000 or 66.6 at £15,000. If you raise the wage rate from the minimum wage (£6.08) to a living wage (£7.20) it would cost, per person, £1.12 per hour, which is £44.80 for a 40 hour week, or £2329.60 per annum. For every £1 million that is paid to some fat-cat executive 429 people could benefit from an increase from a minimum to a living wage. Now I realise that a living wage is still far from ideal and that any company that is serious about their business would pay more but it would be an improvement on what many have now.

Now I realise that the above is an oversimplification and that the costs of employing people are not directly proportional to their salary but it is accurate enough to highlight how unbalanced and unfair most businesses attitude to wages and staffing are, in that one person’s wage can be so high that it is the equivalent to 40, 50 or several hundred people’s wages put together.

Do bankers, footballers and multi-million pound earning captains of industry et al actually work any harder than the poor soul on minimum wage working as a cleaner care assistant or other equally valuable job? I think we know the answer to that, don’t we?

The minimum wage should be a living wage!

The living wage:
"An idea whose time has come"- David Cameron

The Blue Meanies are all scoundrels

As I’m sure you can imagine I have no truck with nationalists or patriots. I’m with Oscar on that one. The concept of a British identity is as impossible to define as a sense of Britishness is laughable. And, don’t get me started on the Bulldog-spirit or the retro-racist-speak from circa 1940. It’s all phoney. It has nothing to do with national identity or interests and everything to do with oppression.

It can never be said enough but I am no lover of capitalism. I don’t like it but accept that until a majority want it changed that’s the way it is going to be. Having said that if I had a choice between the partially-regulated (and one may say highly successful) capitalism of mainland Europe and the rape and pillage model that the Tories love, I know which one I’d plump for!

David Cameron is an even bigger tosser than I ever thought possible for effectively giving away any influence that we might have had in Europe. This is particularly foolish in my opinion because I’m convinced that the €uro will bounce back, aided by the new disciplines that will be put in place. This will put the €uro-zone countries in an even stronger position within the EU. The €uro-zone will be firmly in the EU driving seat. Cameron’s made us the fat smelly spotty lad that no one in the playground wants to play with. We are the Shit-Leg* of Europe

The company I work for is a manufacturer. Yes we are that rare commodity, a company that does engineering/manufacturing in the UK! Guess where the majority of our customers are? In the €uro-zone of course! If our economy is to survive and bounce back it’ll be companies like ours that will need to thrive. If a country doesn’t make things then it is lost. Even Switzerland has a manufacturing industry! The way the Tories are acting UK plc is rapidly going to become an offshore banking business, and nothing else; a place where only the rich can afford live permanently; a place where the non-rich servant-proles are bused in on a daily/weekly/monthly basis to do the menial tasks and are then sent ‘home’ again. If the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish have got any sense they’ll break away from the United Kingdom. For us English that aren’t millionaires I guess we’ll be forced to live in Calais and beyond. I suppose it could be worse, couldn’t it?

*a reference to a poor persecuted lad at my school all those years ago

People need to stand on their own two feet!

Amongst the narrow-minded rich and middle-classes there is a concept of the undeserving poor. The idea that those at the lower end of the income and wealth spectrum are all feckless and lazy continues to pre-occupy those that can only think in black and white. Sadly what most of them fail to grasp is that if we had some fairness in society, a level playing field that truly put us on the road to genuine equality, then less of what they see as government hand-outs would be necessary. Incidentally I've always thought that in the main 'those on benefits are living a life of luxury in abject splendour' is a myth that is as far from the truth than it could possibly be. And before you offer up examples about so-and-so who's never done a day’s work in their life base your utterances on pure fact rather than supposition.

 

If people are to work and ‘pay their way’ in the world society needs to get real. Those misinformed Daily Mail* readers et al need to understand that there are no quick fixes and that some fairness needs to be applied. There are far too many forelock-tugging cretins spouting things like “there’s plenty of jobs about, they just don’t want to work” etc. etc. For a start there are more unemployed people than jobs to go round and of the few jobs that there are so many are far too poorly paid. Society seems to accept employers exploiting many many workings with the same indifference with which it accepts the obscenely overpaid people at the top.

 

In principle I’m not agin the notion that people should provide for themselves economically. Although I would always be concerned that there were enough safeguards in society to provide for those unfortunate enough to not be capable of doing so. But if we are to enable more people to provide for themselves and not have to suffer the indignity of relying on the welfare state a very simple framework of provisions will need to be put in place. Those will include:

 

• Decent affordable housing for all (the most important foundation for a stable life-style)
• Affordable transport for all
• Free Numeracy and literary skills courses for adults
• Relevant training schemes for those looking for work
• A living wage as the very minimum for any job
• Enough jobs to go round

 

 

 

 

*the paper that supported Hitler

The coalition isn’t working

To the unemployed person it doesn’t matter what the level of unemployment is as for them it’s 100%. Today’s unemployment figure of 2.62 million people might well fit nicely with the Tory economic model but these are real people, real people that are being denied the right to work. My lady is one of them, a victim of the Tory local government cuts. A large proportion of this unemployment has been created by the government when it didn’t need to be so. There are alternatives we just need a government with some courage and a sense of fairness.

This government is destroying lives. You do wonder how ministers manage to sleep at night. I suppose it’s because they really don’t give a shit!

I am a customer and shareholder of Barclays Bank

Does that make me a bad person?

I don’t like capitalism but, as I’m not prepared to opt out of ‘the system’ and live in a ditch, I’ve learned to live with it as best I can. As have most other people in this country I might add. Virtually every financial transaction is an act of capitalism. It’s a shit system but that’s the system, sadly. We can change it but the majority don’t seem to want to. If you have a pension, an endowment policy or some other kind of life assurance savings policy you will indirectly be investing in the stock market, and probably in Barclays Bank or some other institution that is oft held up in public as worse than the rest of them. It does often seem very random about which companies people chose to hate or hold up as examples of “the unacceptable face”. That doesn’t mean I necessarily approve of everything that Barclays do I might add.

To date my working life has been spent in the private sector, so as you can imagine I have been well and truly shafted by capitalism over the years. Early on I was a bank clerk working for Lloyds Bank as it was then. My first ever bank account was with Lloyds, although I switched from them after I left. Over the years I have been a customer of a number of banks, including the Co-operative Bank, who I still have an ‘Oxfam’ credit card with. But I have always found Barclays to offer excellent service, their branches well sited and relatively plentiful and their online banking is first class. So much better than a mutual I also deal with. I acquired the Barclays Bank shares via the Woolwich Building Society. As a member at the time that the Woolwich demutualised I was issued with some of their shares. I held on to them. When Barclays bought the Woolwich I was then issued with Barclays shares in their place. I’ve held on to them. They go up and down like the proverbial Tower Bridge, and this year those peaks and troughs, mainly troughs I have to say, have been quite extreme. I consider them as a long term investment; a little something for my retirement.

As most people who work in the private sector will know, pension arrangements these days, by and large, tend to be shit. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to retire as my pensions aren’t going to be great but I have no desire to work until I drop. I worked for a company for 16 years and paid into their pension scheme. I left about 6 months before that company finally went bust. The last owners ran it into the ground, stole employees’ pension contributions and never made their promised contributions. Because of this, a failed marriage and challenging finances through much of my life my pensions will fall short of anything decent. In an attempt to supplement the meagre pensions that I will no doubt get when I eventually retire I have invested the Barclays shares along with shares of a few other household names into an ISA. My pensions and savings will possibly only just keep me above a poverty existence. And, I am not over egging the pudding here I can assure you. Retirement, despite not arriving soon enough, is going to be a struggle for me, that’s of course if I am spared. That said I know that many millions are going to be a lot worse off than me because they will only have the state pension and other benefits to live on; pensions and benefits that become less valuable virtually by the day. A civilised society would certainly not have the inadequate pension provision that we have in this country.

That’s my excuse, what’s yours?

Capitalism doesn’t work and is not efficient

You would think that in these lean times buying parts for industry would be a piece of cake. But, I suspect if you were to ask any buyer in the private sector if their job at the moment was a doddle you would get a resounding “No!”

There is a perception peddled by much of the press, big business and the Tories that the private sector is ultra efficient and the most effective driver of the economy. At best this is utter nonsense. I’ve worked all my life in the private sector and it never ceases to amaze me how little people care about their company, their job or their customers.

Unless your only procurement requirements are for water coolers, photocopiers, fork-lift trucks or telecoms your are unlikely to have a long queue of suppliers desperate or even willing to sell you the goods and services that you require. I’ve never understood why you almost have to beg suppliers to accept an order. Nobody seems to want business. It is an everyday struggle.

I suppose if you are buyer for the likes of Tesco, Glaxo Smith Kline, BAE or other big spenders then you could well be beating suppliers back with a stick every single day, but I’m sure it is not the case for the majority of supply chain personnel in most SMEs up and down the country.

It is a sheer fallacy that capitalism and market forces fill demand. They do not. They take the path of least resistance. Their destination is making a ‘fast buck’. Far too many businesses in this country are no longer interested in manufacturing, investment or the long term. If you are relying on the private sector to drive us out of recession I think you could well be living in cloud cuckoo land!

Richard Griffiths is a jolly good actor

I had a bit of an email-banter with a work colleague today that I thought I’d share with you. I’ve removed company identifiers and changed the names of individuals to protect the innocent. I’ve also ‘cut and pasted’ it so that it appears in the order in which it was written:





From: Aitch, Deidre (company name)
Sent: 28 July 2011 07:49
To: Me (company name)


Subject:



Morniiiiiiiiiiiiing

Algernon at 50

Regards,
Deidre Aitch

---

From: Me (company name)
Sent: 28 July 2011 09:39
To: Aitch, Deidre (company name)


Subject: RE:



That’s strange it looks like Richard Griffiths to me!



Technically you can’t possibly know what anyone will look like at any point in the future because the future doesn’t exist. What would be technically correct would be to say “what Algernon might look like at 50”. I have my suspicions that this is in some way meant to be derogatory. If that is the case I feel I must frown upon it and point out that this sort of slur doesn’t help with trying to engender a polite and harmonious workplace. It’s all about karma; send out the right vibes and those vibes will reverberate and be reciprocated. Big respect to all. Boom Shankar!



Regards
Me

---

From: Aitch, Deidre (company name)
Sent: 28 July 2011 10:21
To: Me (company name)


Subject: RE:



Dear Me


GO FUCK YERSELF!!



Regards,
Deidre Aitch
Some Job Or The Other

---

From: Me (company name)
Sent: 28 July 2011 10:35
To: Aitch, Deidre (company name)


Subject: RE:



Anatomically impossible and poorly spelt! It’s a good job that I’m not easily offended.



It’s a classic tactic of those that cannot rationally analyse and/or justify their actions to turn to abuse as a defence mechanism. My sympathies are with you.



Regards
Me

---

From: Aitch, Deidre (company name)
Sent: 28 July 2011 10:59
To: Me (company name)


Subject: RE:



Wordsmith!



Regards,
Deidre Aitch
Any Old Title

---

From: Me (company name)
Sent: 28 July 2011 11:03
To: Aitch, Deidre (company name)


Subject: RE:



I shall take that as praise, given that it could never be applied as abuse.



Regards
Me

---

Are you starting again?



Regards,
Deidre Aitch
Whatever you want

Protestant work ethic

”Work is the curse of the drinking classes”

Following on from my previous post I’d like to challenge the notion of work.

Is work really necessary?

That might seem to be a ridiculous question to ask. Almost as a reflex action many people would reply “of course it is”.

One thing that does have some bearing on this issue is what you define as work. Is it how you earn a living? Or is it something by which you earn your living but do not enjoy and have no interest in? This distinction is important because for me work is something hateful, and if I were to do something that I enjoyed it would become a vocation!

I’m not naive enough to think we can all have vocations. I also realise that there are many unfortunates that would love a job of any sort. But I do feel we have gone too far down the road to becoming cogs in a vast money machine. There should be more to life than just making money. Money should just be the oil that lubricates and enables the good things in life to happen. Society does not put enough emphasis on happiness, collective or individual. Society currently dictates that we should ‘live to work’ and not ‘work to live’. That surely can’t be right can it?

All my life I’ve had to put up with shit jobs that I’ve hated. For as long as I can remember I’ve dreaded getting up and going to work. The only time I didn’t was for a brief period when I was self-employed. I’m not sure how much longer I will have to work, I’d like to retire in the next five years, but depending on who runs the country I’ll have to do another eleven or twelve years at least, and quite frankly I struggle with that prospect.

”Beam me up Scotty”

*The title of this post does not choose to highlight a particular religion and hold it up as an example. As an atheist I have no desire to live in a non-secular society.

The Day the Immigrants Left

Last night’s programme The Day the Immigrants Left introduced by Evan Davis had a predictable outcome. Centred in the Fens it took white English unemployed and put them into jobs that these days are mostly done by immigrant labour. Predictably most, although not all, of the unemployed failed to cope with the jobs they had been given. They were unable to work as quickly and as efficiently as their immigrant counterparts. This was in effect a ‘reality’ television programme so it was hardly scientific. These were false situations and they were being measured against experienced people. But the programme did make some interesting points.

I know that it is stating the bleedin’ obvious but we sadly have an underclass in this country that is virtually unemployable. The reasons for this underclass are complex and varied but a lot of the responsibility lies, as I’ve said before, with Thatcher. On last night’s programme training was mooted on a few occasions which I found an incredulous notion. Why is the goal of a job now seen as the be all and end all of human existence in this country? In my opinion we have too much training and not enough education. What many of the poor souls in last night’s programme seemed to lack were life skills. The fundamentals of forming working relationships and operating in a polite and respectful manner. Why should they have these skills? No reason at all, as they have been failed by society for several generations. What comes naturally to someone of my generation and background doesn’t exist necessarily in the world of the white long term unemployed.

I suspect the desire of the programme was to redress the balance on the argument that immigrants are taking English people’s jobs and thankfully I think it succeeded at that. I think that this country has benefited both culturally and economically through immigration. Immigration is a red herring with regard to the plight of the white underclass. Their problems have very little to do with unemployment. It’s deeper and wider than that. When are we going to stop failing these people?

No-pay day

This recession, this unwelcome manifestation is hitting people in many different ways. I feel for those that have lost their jobs, for those that are about to lose their jobs, and those on short time working, which incidentally includes myself. I have no idea if I will come through this with my job intact but hopefully these measures that the company I work for is taking will do the trick. Each employee has to take five days off without pay per quarter. Small beer compared with what is happening in some companies, but never the less it represents a cut in pay; a cut that most of my colleagues are not happy with. I feel sorry for those single parents and others with young families and large mortgages, for them the loss of 1.6 days money per month is a hardship, although it might not sound like it. No doubt some will have to tighten their proverbial belts a bit further.

For me, whilst I shall miss the money and have to watch the pennies a bit more carefully, I welcome the extra time off, and I plan to put it to good use, writing this for a start. Whilst it’s considered as a no-pay day you do get some money. The government actually gives you £21.50 for the day. Hardly compensation for most, but it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. As far as I’m concerned time not spent at work is a valuable commodity, and I see this as an opportunity to do something that I enjoy, write. I plan to write a book. I’ve no idea if it will see the light of day, but I’ve made a start. I shall use my other no-pay days to continue this project. Today was my first no-pay day. Watch this space.

Chariots of smoke

Today at work the blokes in the factory organised their own alternative Olympics. See Great Britain keeping it's end up on YouTube by clicking below: