Stupid things people have actually said to you.

[Frank]

My Dad asked me what do they put in food that makes it organic.

Genuine LOL there!

Secondary lols. Apparently, someone's working on a US remake of Father Ted; your Dad needs to be on the writing team.

[von Boom]

My Dad asked me what do they put in food that makes it organic.

Genuine LOL there!

Secondary lols. Apparently, someone's working on a US remake of Father Ted; your Dad needs to be on the writing team.

Ugh. I bet it'll go over 'bout as well as the US Red Dwarf.

[Hawkmumbler]

My Dad asked me what do they put in food that makes it organic.

Genuine LOL there!

Secondary lols. Apparently, someone's working on a US remake of Father Ted; your Dad needs to be on the writing team.

Ugh. I bet it'll go over 'bout as well as the US Red Dwarf.

And US Inbetweeners...and US IT Crowd...swagerjackers.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

It maybe would work if it was about a buncha bumbling rabbi. But a show about narraback priests would be terrible.

[vzzbux]

Chalk another one up for the Daily Mail.
There is missing the point and there is being in another time zone.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2304168/And-crime-hate-Sex-Pistols.html






V

[Hawkmumbler]

I swear, if The Daily Fail's articles themselfs didn't give me a migraine then the comment section certainly would.

[Albion]

Richard Littlejohn is a complete drokking idiot.

[Hawkmumbler]

Richard Littlejohn is a complete drokking idiot.

And a homophobic bully, anyone familier with the Lucy Medows situation?

[Professor Bear]

In fairness to the commentators, if you click on "best rated" or "worst rated", you'll find the mood thankfully errs more towards tolerance and noticeably against outright idiocy even on the Daily Mail's website.

However, I am shocked - shocked - that Richard Littlejohn is annoyed at laws that make bullying minorities illegal.  If they make that against the law, how can an honest man engage in hounding someone until they commit suicide?

[CrazyFoxMachine]

I'd love to be wrong but as far as I'm aware they're still yet to even say anything approaching "we're sorry" about that. But then saying that would be admitting something I suppose and they know it was probably their fault.

I don't have the words for how John LittleRichard makes me feel. It makes me want to punch something for a very very long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL81QClpLaA

[Hawkmumbler]

This was the response a petition I signed recieved a few days ago;

"It is regrettable that this tragic death should now be the subject of an orchestrated [attack on us], fanned by individuals... with agendas to pursue."

Fuck them.

[TordelBack]

I'm currently gritting my teeth and training myself in as a coach-tour tour guide (like my father before me), which is usually part-time rostered work with 14-hour days, allowing me plenty of off-time to keep pushing for 'proper' work and allowing me to be flexible enough to keep the kids out of impossibly-expensive creche (although I do not fancy the gig at all, I come fully equipped with the necessary heritage-based verbal diarrhea and have contacts through my Dad, and I'm getting nowhere with getting the kind of full-time work I do want).  As part of this I've been lucky enough to do informal ridealongs on tours when there are empty seats, in order to allow me to cog some of the required patter and get a feel for the lunchstop and toilet logistics. 

Anyhow, I got a letter from Social Welfare giving me an appointment to come in and get a new 'services smartcard', which clashed with one of my scheduled off-the-books training trips.  I tried to phone and request a new time, but two afternoons of automated switchboards later and nobody knew anything about it, which is par for the course.  So I girded my loins and queued up at the sweltering SW office, fractious kids in tow, initially for an hour before stupidly missing my number flashing up while I was writing down jobs vacancies info from the noticeboard and having to wait another hour (my own moronic fault that one).

I got one of the helpful people this time (there are now three I dread to the point of coming back another time if I see them at the windows), and I explained why I would prefer another time, and she went off in to the back to talk to someone about changing my appointment.  She came back and told me that it was fine, but she had to inform me that if I missed another appointment my benefits would be stopped. 

Now regular readers of my tedious whining may remember that I've been here before, and in fact did have my benefits stopped when I went through the same process to get a SW appointment rescheduled so I could attend my son's school play, but nobody had bothered to tell the person I was meeting. The difference this time is that while I'm still registered as a jobseeker (which I actively am) I've used up my time and now don't get any benefits (because my wife works, which is fair enough, although a wee bit annoying after 25 years of paying Social Insurance contributions). 

So this time I thought feck it, in for a penny, and pointed out that I hadn't  "missed an appointment", I'd asked for it to be rescheduled a fortnight in advance so that I could continue with my plan to get some bloody work, or to put it another way, to seek a job. 

The response (and here I don't blame the lady I was dealing with, who couldn't have been nicer, but rather whichever backroom policymaker had issued the edict) was that jobseekers had to be available for work at all times, and if I couldn't attend a scheduled appointment then I was not considered to be available.  No exceptions, other than documented job interviews or serious medical issues.  At this point I thought I had fallen asleep in front of League of Gentlemen:  "I'm sorry Mickey love, you can't attend your job interview, because you have to complete your course on how to get a job interview".

I pointed out that I was trying to improve my skills so that I could get a job interview that I'd actually have a good chance of getting, and further that I'd had the decency to come in and queue up and ask politely in advance so that I wouldn't be wasting anybody's time, and further again that this was just an appointment to have my photo taken for a card, and thus not exactly critical in getting me back to work, and all I got for my trouble was a threat to take away benefits I'm not actually receiving.  "Sorry, no, that's the policy I'm afraid.  Just don't miss another appointment and it'll be fine".

Jovus wept.

[Professor Bear]

The short version of my last dealings with the Jobseeker people is this: they sent me on a course to teach me to get a job, but the course clashed with an actual job they'd sent me to, so first it was explained that this was my fault, then I was asked how I was going to fix it.  I won't lie, I did not handle this with my usual grace and impeccable good manners.

TB: the easiest way to move an interview with the SS office is to get one of your mates who runs a business - any business - to sign your jobseeker sheet and say you had a job interview with him at the exact time of your SS interview, putting the responsibility of moving your SS interview on the attending clerks.
The turn of phrase you put in their mouths suggests they have you pegged as a troublemaker, though.  I know from several people who work in Social Services claims that the place is a hotbed of petty, bickering arseholes who run the average office floor like a high school common room*, and they will fucking ruin you if you let them hang something like a missed interview on your shoulders, so make sure they acknowledge that as their mistake and not yours.  You've already had them throw it in your face once, and they will do it again and again.


* and in recent years, they've apparently added the delightful atmosphere of anti-immigration sentiment.

[TordelBack]

TB: the easiest way to move an interview with the SS office is to get one of your mates who runs a business - any business - to sign your jobseeker sheet and say you had a job interview with him at the exact time of your SS interview, putting the responsibility of moving your SS interview on the attending clerks.

I know, I know, but it just seems daft to be telling porkies when I feel I have a legitimate reason to reschedule an appointment to have my photograph taken, since I'm trying to retrain myself into a pretty shit minimum-wage but eminently viable job in a growth industry at my own expense (since they don't offer and won't fund the relevant highly expensive heritage guiding qualification course: which I used to teach a module of!). 

Also, I'm pretty sure an appointment requires the agreement of two parties.  So I don't see how I'm missing an appointment by requesting a different time prior to giving my agreement.  An assumption of my unconditional agreement as a condition of my engagement with jobseeker services when my own contact times with them are deeply conditional seems to me to represent an unequal contract provision, and thus an invlaid one.  But I digress.

And yes, I do suspect that I'm on the proverbial naughty step and have been for a while, which is hilarious when I never went near them for a quarter of a century (except when I was briefly employed as a trainer by the state training agency!) and I'm not entitled to dosh from them anyway, and am only continuing to bother to sign-on at all because of the putative chance of subsidised/free access to courses to help me get a job. 

It's just hard not to rail against the inflexible stupidity of a service whose sole stated goal is supporting the jobseeker in finding employment.

[SuperSurfer]

...a service whose sole stated goal is supporting the jobseeker in finding employment.

Perhaps signing people off is the actual goal and supporting the jobseeker to find employment is secondary.

There are many committed people working at Job Centres who genuinely do want to help people back into work. But they are under extreme pressure to sign-off many 'clients' and are penalised for not doing so, despite not having official targets (that would result in bad press for the UK government).

A couple of years old but still very relevant:
"Jobcentres 'tricking' people out of benefits to cut costs, says whistleblower
Soaring number of sanctions against unemployed amid claims that DWP staff are being told to trip people up with paperwork"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/01/jobcentres-tricking-people-benefit-sanctions