Stupid things people have actually said to you.

[johnnystress]

Please find below the latest gems from my government-mandated 'Becoming A More Compliant Drone' unemployment course.  There's a whole book to be written on absurdities from this Tuesday's classes alone, but I'll restrict myself to just two.  Please do not take this thread as a moan: I found it genuinely amusing, and genuinely stupid.

grrrrrr

[O Lucky Stevie!]

Maybe he thinks your digestive tract works like the Mouse Mill:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyNs27kxolM

That'd be hunger in Ethiopia sorted if it did.

[House of Usher]

Please find below the latest gems from my government-mandated 'Becoming A More Compliant Drone' unemployment course.

Appalling. Please tell me there were people there (yourself?) who openly scoffed at/ otherwise challenged this idiocy. The great absurdity is that governments have to put on charades like this so they can satisfy voters and taxpayers that people without work are being kept busy and under pressure. That's far more important than that the whole pantomime should produce any useful results.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Had a script submission recently that was clearly written by a frustrated film student

"Panel: sudden jump cut to advancing soldier, he is grimacing as the girl escapes the tent fleeing his grasp. She screams as he grabs her shoulder"

.................. you're not even thinking about this as a comic are you?

[TordelBack]

There were a few panels like that in last week's Age of the Wolf...   

[BPP]

Please find below the latest gems from my government-mandated 'Becoming A More Compliant Drone' unemployment course.

Appalling. Please tell me there were people there (yourself?) who openly scoffed at/ otherwise challenged this idiocy. The great absurdity is that governments have to put on charades like this so they can satisfy voters and taxpayers that people without work are being kept busy and under pressure. That's far more important than that the whole pantomime should produce any useful results.

If you scoff you are liable to be kicked out. Remember than under the mantra of post-foucault late-liberalism it is YOUR fault you are unemployed, your refusal to take responsibility and act upon yourself as a member of the community. These courses are in ensuring you regulate yourself, not scoff at the experts. Scoffers are refuseniks who wont learn. Cut off their benefits! Refuse them Scottish farm-fished salmon in a ginger and chilli dressing! Its notnthat there are no jobs, its that there is irresponsibility!

Everytime I read party policy papers and think-tanks on employment I bash my head against the desk.

[TordelBack]

Please tell me there were people there (yourself?) who openly scoffed at/ otherwise challenged this idiocy.

In fairness there was a bit of spirited debate (the folks running the course are actually pleasant enough sorts, idiotic statements aside), and I argued withseveral more major points raised (believe me, I haven't even scratched the surface of the stupidity with those two examples, but those were easily summarised and life is short), but I'd say that 60% of the class appeared entranced. 

At one of the (many, many) breaks I commented to my neighbours that I found the whole thing immensely depressing and was rounded on fairly smartly by several of same, who apparently found the insights, err, insightful and heartening.  There were however a few other vocal dissidents, and I would note in particular that the gentleman sat in front of me, a pleasant man in his late 50s who had previously been a senior manager in a financial institution (as yet unnamed, so presumably one of the more catastrophically incompetent ones), said not one word nor wrote a single note throughout.  Perhaps he was overhwlemed by the 2 hours spent imparting the revolutionary new strategy that one should make a list of all one's income, then all one's outgoings each month, and if the former was less than the latter, reduce your expenditure.  Glad I didn't miss that one myself. 

[TordelBack]

ADDENDUM:  A few late-afternoon glasses of homebrewed wine later, I feel I should qualify my mocking of the whole unemployment/training system I find myself enmeshed in. 

I'm coming at this with the baggage of someone who was fortunate enough in life to reach the ripe old age of 40.5 without ever being unemployed, since the age of 15, indeed on occasion I've simultaneously had 1 full-time and 3 part-time jobs (plus a full-time college course), some of them surprisingly well paid.  I'm also very lucky in that my wife still has a job, albeit an increasingly poorly paid one.

I'm finding the whole experience frustrating, amusing, depressing, de-humanising, and most of all worthy of comment in unequal parts probably because I'm coming to it fresh so late in life.  I'm sure there's no bloody novelty about it for folk that haven't been as insanely lucky as I have, and I'm sure my bleating and snide remarks come across as crass and superior for this reason.  If so, I apologise, I'm an insensitive privileged bugger, but I am what I am.   

[M.I.K.]

I'm sure there's no bloody novelty about it for folk that haven't been as insanely lucky as I have, and I'm sure my bleating and snide remarks come across as crass and superior for this reason.   

No and no.

[JOE SOAP]

Please find below the latest gems from my government-mandated 'Becoming A More Compliant Drone' unemployment course.  There's a whole book to be written on absurdities from this Tuesday's classes alone, but I'll restrict myself to just two.  Please do not take this thread as a moan: I found it genuinely amusing, and genuinely stupid.

I remember FÁS Director General Rody Molloy being interviewed after the the fallout of the expenses scandal and the economy, and how he boasted how well the unemployment authority were doing that they could afford to spend -never before seen- Herculean pots of money on courses for the jobless and expensive junkets/holidays for themselves during the boom- a time of nearly full employment.

The interviewer proceeded to ask Rody what were FÁS - the unemployment authority going to do now -having wasted all the money- in a time of rising unemployment when that money was needed most. He could barely answer.


Rod Molloy now has a nice pension.

[TordelBack]

Rod Molloy now has a nice pension.

Indeed.  I, Grud help me, actually worked for Fás in the mid-90's (as an archaeologist on several of their castle restoration sites).  I have still never seen anything like the corruption and waste I saw then, and I've spent the last 15 years working with developers and planners.  I used to witter on about it in the pub at the time, and I don't think anyone believed me.  I had a 5 year contract, and left after 11 months.  More precisely, I went on a short holiday, and the view from outside was such that I couldn't face coming back.  I always said I'd write a piece about it for Phoenix and name some names, but naturally I never did.  Now I'm back in their clutches, I bloody wish I had.

To pick just a few examples, one of the foremen had used the qualified tradesmen and materials to re-roof and re-wire his house, while one of the co-ordinators had used them to build a boat and another had had his entire garden paved and edged with hand-cut and punched granite. 

[Roger Godpleton]

Dere's more to Oirland den dis.

[JOE SOAP]

More'n you could handle. Big hands and Big Wangs.

[Frank]

Dere's more to Oirland den dis.

[JOE SOAP]

For Roger:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVr4UP9ntLs&list=UUfJOsk44wjzby9H64jDd4Nw&index=1&feature=plcp