Hunting Snarks

Speaking of the "Big Society"
Can anyone tell me what it is?
There was a government minister on the news this morning talking about The Big Society.
It's a Very Wonderful Thing, this Big Society.
That's all anyone ever tells you.
It's very wonderful.
That's it.
It reminds me of the Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll.
An epic poem where all these random useless geezers set out to hunt a snark.
"They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap."

Nobody knows what The Snark looks like and nobody has ever seen it but everyone knows it's pretty damned awesome....

G'day

Update: who is getting the new Work Programme contracts?
One of my ex-colleagues tells me that  "Ingeus have the work programme for all the north east".
As I hadn't heard of Ingeus I naturally Googled  them.
It's a multinational company owned by Thérèse Rein, the wife of the ex Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd. ".... (with) more than 70 offices in Australia, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Korea, Sweden and Poland, and with over 1,000 employees"
I thought HMG was moving us away from huge firms with huge bureaucracies involving themselves in the social sector  and was encouraging local initiatives aka "The Big Society"?
Australia ey?
I am now saving all the corks from my wine bottles to dangle from my hat before I head off for an interview.
However as the Ingeus website says: "We are not currently recruiting but any future vacancies" I think I'll have quite some time before my corky hat project rolls out.
That proposed June launch for the Work programme is continuing to look ever-so-slightly unlikely. Cobber....
and while I'm on the subject......
As Ingeus is owned by an Australian doesn't this mean that all our tax money to pay for the running of the Work Programme is going to .....Australia?

Doctor, doctor

"Doctor doctor, please
Oh, the mess I'm in..."

There is obviously a problem with time ...
The Work Programme (aka Welfare to Work,Single Work Programme) is due to go "live" "sometime in June".
Interesting.....the contracts to deliver the "Programme" have been awarded to huge cash-rich private companies.
A lot of these companies have no experience in delivering this sort of programme, so they'll need to sub-contract to organisations with the appropriate experience.
This may or not be a problem, depending on whether you think it is a Good Idea for private companies to be granted contracts  to deliver a service  to clients who may be vulnerable and socially challenged solely on the basis of how much that company has in the bank.
However I have to ask a few questions:
Question One:
The "Work  Programme" is due to start in a few weeks, so where are the workers to deliver it?
Who is going to work with the workless clients?
I see Group 4 have won contracts to deliver the Work Programme.
Their previous expertise lies...elsewhere.
Do they propose to use their security guards to deliver the Work Programme? 
I was made redundant back in January, along with most of the specialised and skilled team that I was part of. I worked in employment support.
Since my redundancy I have been looking for work, naturally in a similar field.
No such posts are being advertised anywhere.
There isn't a day that I don't look, and there are no jobs in employment support being advertised.
Given that it takes quite a while to advertise posts, contact respondents, arrange interviews, conduct interviews, contact interviewees with results, induct successful candidates in their new posts.
I have to ask...how are they going to do all this in......a couple of weeks?
I applaud any constructive changes that will happen.
The system was a mess and nobody understood it. There were/are people who were simply being warehoused as long-term invalids who could work, and it would potentially improve their mental condition by doing so.
Question Two:
Where are all these new jobs for the Newly Well going to be found?
If I can't find one, and I don't have  a history of long-term sickness and I do have a history of helping people to get jobs, then what chance has someone with no recent checkable work history and a record of illness?
Question Two: What encouragement is there going to be for people who are currently on benefits to take a job on or near minimum wage? Since the slump salaries being offered for most jobs I'm looking at seem to have dropped  about 15%.
Why would someone who is getting their rent and council tax paid take a job that will make them worse off?
Currently there are a lot of firms, feeling the pinch, offering jobs with hours "as and when". Currently it would be madness to take such a job with totally unpredictable hours and risk losing welfare benefits.
Question Three:
If you're going to try and introduce more flexibility into the system can we expect an improvement in the delivery and speed of welfare claims?
I think it took about eight weeks after my redundancy to get any welfare payment. If I hadn't had a (small) redundancy payment I'd have been destitute.
 If someone makes a new claim after losing a job and gets no redundancy payment at all they might starve waiting for their claim to come through.
If such a delay happens when new welfare claims are made  then the temptation is going to be NOT to take a job and to stay on welfare. Better the devil you know....
Question Four:
The last time I saw my Job Centre Adviser he asked me whether I had thought about "relocating" to find a job.
What encouragement is there going to be for people to look for work in other areas?
I live in an area that has traditionally been an unemployment blackspot.
Since the slump...
I have no job.
My partner has no job.
However we have grown-up children who aren't dependent so we can move if we find a job somewhere else.
In order to locate such a job firstly we will need to attend an interview in another area.
Jobcentre Plus operates a Travel to Interview scheme, where your out-of-pocket expenses will be paid if you needed to travel out of your area to attend an interview.
Sensible. If you're encouraging people to get out of the unemployment trap you can't expect them to fund a three-hundred mile rail trip. They don't make giros that big.
However if you look on the JobCentre Plus website it says:

Travel to Interview Scheme and In Work Credit

Jobcentre Plus can help you to get to your job interview ..... Find out more, including how to apply.

Important update: Travel to Interview scheme is now closed

I rang my Adviser and he said "It's not closed, it's discretionary"
Well, so it should be. It's public money. But anyone looking for information on how to get to their out of area job interview from the Jobcentre Plus website is simply told it's "closed".Not available to you,chummy. Kaput.
So they aren't going to even attempt to look for a job elsewhere.
There should be an online database, run by Jobcentre Plus that matches client's CV's with jobs in all geographical areas and informs a client when a job pops up.
There are plenty of independent companies that do this already, but most of them do it badly.
Time for someone to do it properly.
History Lesson:
Are you troubled with economic and financial problems?
Are your people suffering hardship?
Is your country going to hell in a handbasket?
Are 20% of your young people workless and are many resigned to remaining so?
You're  a busy government and God understands how hard it is for you to get on top of things, that's why She invented history.
So that you could learn from it:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/new_deal.htm

Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

You may remember that on 24th March : A Bigger Boat I wrote about a job which was being advertised by Hays recruitment agency.
I suggested that the job might not exist and that it was being advertised purely to pad out the Hays website and lure in unwary candidates.
I decided not to register with Hays as they insisted on yet another CRB check and I have more than enough of them already.
Anyway. I got an email from them just the other day:

Thank you for your following application(s).
Advocate, 1379823, 12/05/11,
Unfortunately you have been unsuccessful on this occasion.
Many thanks
Rachel Dobson

(I was puzzled. I hadn't actually applied for this "vacancy".
So I wrote back:)

Hi Rachel
Thanks for the message
Can you please confirm whether I am actually registered with Hays ?
Following my last conversation I thought that I wasn't registered until I had a CRB check done specifically for Hays?
Also, as this post is still "live" on your website, can you let me have some feedback as to why I wasn't successful?
Best wishes
Graham Chalk

(Please make a mental note: I asked for feedback as I "hadn't been successful")

Graham,
You are not registered as you have no Hays CRB, but your details are on our database......
Many thanks
Rachel Dobson

Team Manager


Hello Rachel
...............Could I ask again-as my application for the Advocate post was unsuccessful, may I have some feedback please?
(Please make a mental note: I asked for feedback as I "hadn't been successful")

Graham,
The role was filled and should have been suspended from the website.
Many thanks for bringing it to my attention
Regards
Rachel Dobson
Team Manager

Oh and the job I hadn't been successful in not applying for?
Guess what?
It's still live on the Hay's website....

The Day I Became a Terrorist

Being as I have farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr too much time on my hands I tend to mooch about and take photographs more often than I used to.

The last time I was driving through Teesside I couldn't help but notice the post-industrial post-apocalyptic wasteland and think....hmmmmnnnnn. This would make a great photographic essay!

So today we happened to be driving through Haverton Hill, in Cleveland when we passed all these cooling towers and interestingly-shaped...stuff.

So I said "ok stop the car".

Now I know the phrase "ok stop the car" sometimes happens in these big Hollywood movies starring Denzel Washington, but they're usually outside a bank in Chicago with a carful of people carrying Glocks and wearing hosiery on their heads and not me carrying a crappy digital camera in Teesside.

Anyway...I'm walking along a public footpath beside a public highway breathing public air and I hear this voice that says

"Excuse me, can I ask why you're taking photographs?"

I turned to find a middle-aged bloke in a navy sweater standing outside a compact car.

No badges.

No ID .

No anything.

"Erm. I like taking photographs...industrial landscapes-you know?"

By the blank look on his face he didn't.

"Would you mind if I asked you for your name and address?"

I looked at him like I would look at something I find stuck to the bottom of my boot on  hot summer's day.

"No"

"No, you wouldn't mind?" he attempted, speculatively

"No. I have no intention of giving you my name and address" I replied

"Oh" he said, dischuffed "Why is that then?"

I breathed in...."Well for a few reasons...one because this isn't East Germany before the wall came down, and you aren't the Stasi"

"Stasi?" he asked. "Ah" he thought. "A foreign word. he MUST be a terrorist."

"The Stasi" I explained, in a loftily condescending tone" were the East German secret police."

If I'd said the same thing to my goldfish I'd have had the same expression.

And No. I don't own a goldfish.

The goldfish was fighting for breath "Its just that we have to be on alert for terrorists"

I looked at him, probably with the look one gives a disobedient goldfish.

" I see.

Do you think if I was Taliban I would be walking around Cleveland with a camera in broad daylight?"

"...for security reasons I have to ask you....."

I looked at him.

"You know something? For generations our father's fought and died to keep this country free from this. From you"

He got in his car and drove off.

I defiantly took some more pictures (I think the lens cap was on, but hell-it's the principle) then I got back into my car.

Evening came.

I had just taken a bath and the doorbell rang.

From the voices I gathered it was an official call.

It was a police officer.

In a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE van.

Here to investigate a report of possible terrorist activity.

He was okay.

They usually are.

Individually.

I explained the situation to him, and he seemed mildly amused.

I felt offended by the "mildly" amused bit as I thought the whole thing was totally hysterical by this stage.

The PC explained: "It's just that some areas are part of the Infrastructure Hub and may be vulnerable to terrorist activity"

""and is this Haverton Hill  part of the Infrastructure Hub?" I asked

He looked briefly up at me from his notes, sighed and replied: "I really couldn't say"

"..but it's a part of the infrastructure?"

"Exactly"

"But isn't there rather a lot of this "infrastructure" in the country? I mean. Isn't everywhere part of this "infrastructure?"

He shrugged in a way that only a man who wanted to get back to the station for a coffee could shrug.

He left in a polite and faintly embarrassed way.

You know the real worry to me is that this really does represent our way of locating and dealing with terrorist threats.

Citizen with a camera, broad daylight.

Let's send a cretin with no ID to ask "Terrorist" to explain himself, then divert a copper and a van from a real crime scene to investigate when he tells him to sod off.

If the Bad Guys really wanted to blow up Billingham they would find the system this stupid.

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On Your Bike

I got an email today from Community Care.
One of the advertised jobs was a Mental Health Support Worker in London.
The salary started at £15,000 a year.
I wonder what sort of place could you rent in London for that kind of money?

Job Advertising: things go better with coke

What are these people on?
This is from a current "Home Group" advert:
"A leading provider of care and support, we aim to give outrageously brilliant service to all our 70,000 customers and clients."
How about "absolutely the dog's bollocks of a service" next time?
Don't hold back.
Trust me guys, achieving an acceptably good standard ( irrespective of arbitrary non-client focussed targets) would get my attention.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

I don't want to seem eternally grumpy but.......I was just visited by The Agency Ghost of Christmas Past:
A Ranstad Care rep called me to see how things were going.
 I told her:
"The last time you guys called me, the first bloke said that I was just what they were looking for.
Ten minutes passed and the next woman said she wasn't sure whether I was just what they were looking for and ten minutes after that the same woman rang me back and told me that they wouldn't ever have anything for me in this lifetime.So I'm fine thankyou. How are you?"
She said something like "umm...er....well....sorry...."
And that was it.
They've gone again.
No doubt I'll hear from them in another twelve months and have to remind them what they said to me again....about the time someone new in the office needs to meet their targets...
Then I applied for a vacancy advertised on the internet, using my CV.
It didn't look like an agency was involved at all, but the Badenoch and Clark "Recruitment Consultancy"rang me about my application so I guess one must have been lurking in the woods somewhere.
I listened to the usual spiel and tried to remain awake.
Then I said: "Look, I have four recent CRB Enhanced Disclosure checks.
Totally clear.
No issues.
I really am NOT going to pay for another one simply so that I can sign up with you guys"
There was a short pause at the other end of the phone , then he said:
"No, no. As long as you have one from withing the last ten months that will be fine"
I was puzzled.
"Are you sure? All the other agencies told me I need to get another one done if I sign up with them, as "It's the Law""
He was sure. A recent one would be fine.
Well isn't that odd.
Do I smell something fishy?
Exactly what IS the legal position here.
I mean either the law is:
A) or it is:
B)
It really can't be both*
Having said that, he did say he'd be contacting me by email to get me signed up and I've heard absolutely nothing.
And that was a week ago....

*The government have not banned portability (the use of a disclosure obtained by another organisation) but they don’t advocate it and encourage businesses to make their own checks to ensure they are up to standard and nothing has been missed.
http://www.moneymagpie.com/article/767/de-mystifying-the-crb-check-your-questions-answered/

The above is all well and good when applied to full-time contracts, but when a person is enrolling with several different agencies at about the same time it appears to make no sense whatsoever.
Unless one has shares in one of the many private companies offering to carry out " CRB Personnel Checks".

Royal Weeding Blues

I have nothing against the Royals.
In fact Mrs Queen I quite like.
She hated Thatcher, apparently.
Couldn't stand the woman.
In my book that makes her okay.
The rest I'm not really sure about.
So the Royal Weeding left me somewhat meh
I mean, on the one hand you've got this dude who is probably a Lovely Person (degree in geography, so naturally gets to be a helicopter pilot) and this Kate person who runs her own business:
 "Party Pieces ‘to inspire other mothers to create magical parties at home’ (don't ask for any Dragon's Den wonga for that one Katie, my girl)
At times like this I'm a bit envious of the Yanks who disposed of their (our) Royals in the eighteenth century.
Then again as president Obama has just described the assasination of Bin Laden as ; "One of the greatest ..... military operations in our nation's history," one has to doubt whether swapping a bunch of Royal Twerps for a Home Grown American Twerp is such a good deal.
I mean, the killing of the deranged Bin Laden by a bunch of well-armed special forces troops who fly in gunships over a friendly county, do the job and fly home for dinner is perhaps a Good Thing, but I doubt it was "one of the greatest ..... military operations in our nation's history"
How about D-Day.
In comparison to D-Day?
In fact in comparison to every single fucking military theatre the yanks have been involved in and shed their blood in ever how does it stand up?
I think what he meant was "one of the greatest ..... military operations in our nation's history, since yesterday".
Muppet.
I expected more of this guy. Instead we end up with a black George Bush.
The triumph of mediocrity.