Saturday 31 March 2007

"Tread carefully for you tread upon my means" with apologies to W. B. Yeats

I fought the law and the law won. Actually it was the Job Centre and we didn't fight it was more of a white flag of surrender by me.

After proving all my current worth, emptying out my wife's fine and large collection of threepenny bits ("Leave my fine threepenny bits out of it" Mrs Prize) on the Job Centre floor for counting, photocopying an additional 15 sheets of evidence that they wished to have, been fingerprinted and giving a DNA sample I have been told that I am not entitled to Job Seeker's allowance until mid June and then only for 15 seconds when it will be promptly withdrawn again until the year 3000. I might be exaggerating a tad here but I am getting nothing, rien, nada until July. And then I will have been unemployed 3 months and will have to undergo interrogation to find out why I am such a slacker and am not working picking soft fruits or something.

I understand. I am a reasonable man and there are many people in a lot worse position than me but why did I have to undergo all this to be told that? As I had been paid in lieu of notice then I was automatically excluded from the allowance until that period of notice was over. We might have waited until then, I feel, before the metaphorical strip search of our finances.

Anyway the Job Centre is full of very nice, friendly people and it is all pastel colours and none of the furniture is screwed down. You even have timed appointments for signing on, and very prompt it was too. Eighteen years ago, when I first signed on, I was given a signing on time of 0930 and turned up promptly the first time to find that 30 other people had exactly the same signing on time and we were held in a queue that Disney Land would of been proud of, snaking around the Job Centre. Some very enterprising new age travellers would always try to sell me mind altering substances whilst queuing and, whilst admiring their commercial initiative, always thought that there might be a more appropriate time to do this.

The Job Centre also has a fully interactive computer-based, touch-screen, job-search facility in nice soothing pastel colours again. I put in my criteria and searched the whole database including Europe. And got in return 'No jobs exist with that criteria. Would you like to be a sous chef?"

However, I could not apply for my mortgage protection policy until I became officially unemployed which I now am. The MPI form itself was 10 pages long and required a further 10 pages of supporting evidence and can you find a working photocopier when you no longer go to work, can you cocoa?

Now it is a simple sum. We have £x and it costs £y to live. That's why the outplacement scheme is so important.

Easy then.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

are you looking for a job ?

Dave Watts said...

Yes I am looking very hard for a job.