The Political Thread

[CrazyFoxMachine]

I have the misfortune of having been unemployed for the best part of the year in the current climate...

Currently on two zero hour contracts and a housing benefit waiting list several months long.... too little work to earn regular money and too much work to claim jobseekers or look for another - we want to move house but they've started recently denying them to people on benefits so we're stuck in a damp flat that we can't afford with rude and forever-rowing landlords living overhead.

I'M PART OF THE BIG SOCIETY HOORAH.

[COMMANDO FORCES]

I know you find it hard to believe that people don't want to work, especially anti-social shift work!

No, I don't. I really don't — like most people, I know people whose unemployed status is easily as much "won't" as "can't"...

But you have neither demonstrated any evidence that there are enough unemployed drivers sitting around on the dole to fill the vacancies, nor even said whether those vacancies have been advertised locally at all. You just "presumed" and managed to indulge a range of your prejudices in one go. Well done, you must be very pleased with yourself.

Perhaps it comes down to when the company can always use their chosen 'agency' staff to cover as they can come and go as they please. The problem with this is that the company are left in the lurch, when these people don't actually turn up, or come in two to three hours late and with no excuse.

Having worked in the transport office and seeing this with my own eyes, as I had to deal with it on a nightly basis, I think I know more about this problem than you. I know you like to think that people are hungry for work but I can assure you that there seems to be a certain amount that seemingly couldn't care less.

When people have been assessed for driving jobs and passed, many have binned it after the first week, if they are on those night shifts. To cover those shifts is the hardest problem for the company, as they are horrendous for most people but suit a few perfectly!

The company had a contract with the local council that they would employ mostly from the local area to get the site and build the plant on it. When they approached the council again to expand they were turned down, as the council pointed out that they didn't keep their promise with recruiting local people. I'm sure you won't believe that either, as you prefer to live in a blinkered world where the problems are all down to Thatcher and the Tories! Yes I know you say that you've voted for everyone but from your prejudice on here I find that hard to believe!

[Professor Bear]

When I said you were mellowing, I was only joking, there's really no need to overcompensate.
And though I don't pretend to speak for him, I'm sure Jim didn't mean that all the world's ills can be laid at the foot of Thatcherism - just everything that's been wrong with Britain for the last 35 years.

[COMMANDO FORCES]

I am rather mellow in my outlook on life! Even with all these hardships that are thrown our way, I just get on with it and enjoy it as much as I can. You should try it sometime!

[Professor Bear]

Textbook hippie behavior - not a care in the fucking world.

[COMMANDO FORCES]

Perhaps I should get Planet Replicas to do a badge with HIPPIE on it!

[The Legendary Shark]

I had a decade on benefits. It was a poor time in many ways but also very easy. The problem for me, with retrospect, was that being on benefits kept me ill and being ill entitled me to benefits. What's more, as soon as I tried to work, tried to sort myself out, it was like stepping on a landmine. I was instantly catapulted from total dependence on the state to the state telling me that I'm on my own and can they have some money now, please? There was no inbetween, no transitional processes, help or advice.
.
I feel like the government has just spat me out. I will never claim anything from it again nor do I regard it as my government any more. I want as little contact with it as possible, preferring to govern my own life instead. If that government is best which governs least then maybe those are the best governed who are governed the least, or accept the least governing.
.
I'm technically homeless, living on a friend's boat, and make money driving a small truck and harvesting samphire off the local salt marsh. It's hard work and I'm skint - but I'm not ill any more and my life is better, on the whole.

[Richmond Clements]

When I said you were mellowing, I was only joking, there's really no need to overcompensate.
And though I don't pretend to speak for him, I'm sure Jim didn't mean that all the world's ills can be laid at the foot of Thatcherism - just everything that's been wrong with Britain for the last 35 years.

Indeed. Addressing what Jim said is fine, but making up things you claim he said and addressing them instead?
It's almost like there's no arguement to be had against it so you have to make up your own.

[Jim_Campbell]

I'd also like an apology for calling me a liar, John.

[Old Tankie]

What are you moaning about, Jim, you've called me worse! 

[Richmond Clements]

What are you moaning about, Jim, you've called me worse! 

This is pure trolling. Please stop.

[Jim_Campbell]

What are you moaning about, Jim, you've called me worse! 

No. I haven't. I've pointed out where you were provably wrong. On the subject of which, you never actually responded to my list of rebuttals of things you erroneously blamed on the EU. You were — the best of my knowledge — mistaken about these things. I'll link back to it when I'm not on my phone and you can set me straight if I'm the one who's mistaken.

That's not the same as ascribing a worldview to me that could be described as (charitably) a generalisation and then using that to claim disbelief of something factual I chose to share about my previous voting patterns.

If you want to link to somewhere I've accused you of lying about something (not being mistaken, not simply being wrong, but knowingly saying something untrue) that's turned out to be true, I will happily apologise.

You won't, of course, because you can't. Unless you can, I'd thank you to stop drawing false equivalence and leave "Commando Forces" to look after himself, something he's more than capable of doing.

Jim

[Old Tankie]

OK, Richmond, no problems, but I was having a joke with Jim.  I thought that's what a "Smiley" meant.  I'm learning more about this interwebby thing all the time.  Folks, if you're having a joke, don't use a "Smiley".

[Jim_Campbell]

A smiley is not a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Is anyone else absolutely terrified by what's happening in West Africa? I once read a book called The Hot Zone, wherein it describes the effects of the ebola virus on the Human body. I like to think I have a iron constitution, but that book made me feel nauseated. Those poor people.