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.

News Just In !

"New Work Programme Inititiatives Announced"....."People with mental illness to be helped into work"....."Lunatics to be in charge of the asylum".

 

The UK Government's new Work Programme will be designed to help morbidly obese people, alcoholics and drug addicts get back to work. 

Great idea. 

Which jobs are they gonna get then? 

Can I have one of those jobs first?

Oh, and if they don't take these jobs they'll have their benefits taken away.

Great idea.

Addicts with no money. 

They'll wake up in the morning and say: "Oh dear, Clarence. I have no money for drugs/booze/cream cakes. I think I'll give them up and get a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken instead."

Hang on they might steal stuff from you to get drugs/booze/cream cakes. 

Like they already do. Except more often.

You may have already noticed, if you've been here before, that I was made redundant from my job in January.

My role was helping people who had returned to work after an illness to keep their jobs and stay in work.

Her Majesty's Government had decided that it was time for an overhaul of the benefits system and the associated agencies who serviced it.

Fair enough. I'll go with that.

For a start we have a prison system with a lot of drug addicts in it. People who are often in there because they kept nicking stuff to buy drugs.

Let's get them off drugs!

Instead of just managing their dependency with methadone let's go for getting them off drugs properly and turning them into non-addicts.

Oh no- we can't do that.

The medical establishment won't wear it. 

Or the multinational pharaceutical comapanies who sell "safe" alternatives to smack.

Did you know that heroin was created by Heinrich Dreser when he thought it would make a really neat cough medicine. 

He tried it on his workforce. They said they felt "heroic"

Hero-ic became "hero-in"

Sold as an ingredient in patent medicines it was advertised thus: 

"Heroin: the Sedative for Coughs . . . order a supply from your jobber." 

It's usefulness (and therefore financial viability) was explored. It was advertised as a "non-addictive replacement for morphine".

Ooops!

How similarly retarded will we seem a hundred years from now in our treatment of drug addicts?

Give 'em methadone. Hell, why not put in in cough sweets!

Anyway....

Overhauling the system...

One of the first bits of "overhauling of the system" is that agencies will be paid by results. 

Sounds like a good idea.

Except....my old firm crashed and burned as it couldn't afford to deliver that way.

The only firms that CAN afford to deliver a service that way  are huge organisations that can afford it. 

In fact they need about £20,000,000 working capital. 

That aint no small potatoes.

But HMG will pay them, potentially lots and lots of wonga for their results:

"The highest payments will be up to £14,000 for someone who had been on incapacity benefit for a number of years, then secured a job and was still in employment two years later." 

Two years. 

A company will have to wait two years to get paid?

I'll try that with Asda next time I get my week's shopping.

The money aspect creates an interesting situation. Some of the firms that have moved into this sector seem like odd guests at the table.

Group Four Security (Now re-badged as G4) are one of them. More often seen in the past driving convicted offenders to prison they will now be in charge of keeping them out of prison. if they fail to do that, at least they'll have a van handy.

It's pretty apparent that firms who are cash-rich are moving into offender management and the Work Programme, regardless of their track record.

Due to the gap in time between the Old Provision ending and the New Provision commencing a lot of experienced firms have now wound down and thrown their workers into a deep freeze.

I worked with some first class people with lots of experience. Now many of them, like me, are unemployed. (I'm not a drug addict yet, but give me a few more weeks and who knows?).

In short: The "old system" that tolerated  and self-perpetuated people to be dependant and weak needed a radical overhaul. I had a client who had found a job and really wanted to come off the booze but he had waited five months and still hadn't got a place on a detox course.

So yes, the system and it's misleading "targets" badly needed overhauling.

But absolutely and utterly not the overhauling it's about to get.

Oh, I had another thought: Morbidly obese people not being able to work.

How about subsidising the cost of salads, fruit and vegetables and doubling the VAT rate on sugary, fatty foods?
Nope?

Didn't think so.

Products where VAT is payable
Wholly or partly chocolate coated biscuits
Gingerbread man decorated with chocolate (unless this amounts to no more than two chocolate eyes!)
Arctic Rolls
Sorbet
Chocolate bar
Nuts or fruits covered in chocolate or yogurt
Flavourings for milk shake
Potato crisps
Roasted or salted nuts without shells

...and the VAT-exempt alternatives
Chocolate chip biscuits
Jaffa cakes
Cream Gateaux
Mousse
Chocolate spread
Toffee apples
Milkshake
Tortilla or corn chips
Roasted or salted nuts supplied in shells e.g. monkey nuts, pistachios 

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bargains-and-rip-offs/money-saving-ideas/article.html?in_article_id=506772&in_page_id=512
.....and that makes a whole heap of sense......

Dragon's Legs

I Wish I was an expert at something.
Well  possibly I am, but it's not as marketable as those lovely people at Dragon's Den.
They say such clever stuff.
Here's some advice from the very lovely Deborah Meaden on the BBC News website:

"I would rather get out there and be working, even if it is not in the best job in the world, than be sitting at home doing nothing."

well....yesssss.....

"Even if what you are doing isn't the perfect job it can still be a very good thing. Because not working for a long period can be dangerous."

It is Debbie, it really is. Especially since I may be tempted to saw the legs off people who patronise the recently redundant during a world-wide recession.

"It is very, very easy to get out of the habit of working, and if you have long breaks between jobs on your CV it sends a bad message to prospective employers."

This is correct.

I'm thinking of contacting my ex-employer and asking them to say in writing how very, very sorry they are for going catastrophically tits-up and thereby causing a long break in my CV.  

Alternatively I could get arrested for sawing the legs off a TV pundit.

Not only would my subsequent jail term explain the" break in my CV", but I wouldn't have to worry about paying for the TV licence.

Ghost Job

Yesterday upon the stair

I met a job that wasn’t there

It wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish it'd go away

When I came home last night at three

This job was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall

I couldn’t see it there at all!

Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!

Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door

Last night I saw upon the stair

The little job just wasn’t there

It wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish it'd  go away  

     

(Apologies to: William Hughes Mearns (1875-1965)

Wheeeeee...... I run an agency I do!

Some job specifications arrived in my email today-:
A Support Worker in the "United Kingdom".
They didn't narrow it down.
Well, after all the UK is pretty small....
Naturally the advert specified the "Person Specification":

• "It is essential that you have an NVQ level 2 or 3 " (low level qualifications)

• "Please note that this is a qualified position so you will need a social work degree/masters or equivalent" (high level qualifications)

It was the same job.
Two totally different sets of qualifications for the same job.
Total gibberish.
This gibberish was brought to you by  "4Social Work" via Community Care.
I did write to "4Social Work" to query the above, but I don't expect a reply.

What's happening out there?
Well the dust still hasn't settled and nobody knows who is going to get employed by whom.
Usually it comes down to assortative mating: that is:
She looks like me and thinks like me so I'll give her the job.
Ever wonder why we live in such a wonderful world?
The system perpetuates itself, until it's all the same homogeneous system run by the same set of retards with a call centre in India.
Half the jobs in my old sector are now being done by Big Society volunteers, so why would a company pay for a single costly worker when they can get a dozen happy smiling faces for free?
No reason.
So they won't.

Flogging a Dead Horse, or: "Did you ever feel like you had become the citizen of a third world country and nobody had let you know?"

In which the immense ineptitude and insidious incompetence of inbred institutions inevitably leads to increasing incapacity and irrelevance.

I spotted a sick horse two weeks ago.
It was wandering about the forest next to my home. Looking for a suitable spot to die.
It seems that the local "travellers" abandon sick horses here fairly regularly.
I have found four dead horses in the couple of years I've lived here.
This latest poorly horse wouldn't let me get near him.
He just had a look about him that said:
"I've had quite enough of this world, thankyou very much. I want a refund."
He wouldn't take any food from me.
The next day he was dead .
He'd collapsed near a public footpath five minutes from a built -up area.
My first contact, as a Concerned Citizen Wanting To Shift a Dead Horse was the RSPCA.
I love contacting the RSPCA.
I watched all these TV programmes and they looked great.
They should make a graphic novel and a movie about these guys. They all have super powers and everything:
"There's a dead horse here"
"How do you know it's dead"
"It's not moving"
"It might be asleep"
"It hasn't moved for a week"
"....how tall is it?"
"How tall?"
"Yes. How tall. How many hands?"
"Difficult to say. It's lying down. It's dead"
"Are you sure it's dead?"
"Yes, it's been there a week and seventeen minutes"
"So....how did it die?"
" I don't really know. It's obviously been sick"
"Sick?"
"Yes, you know-vomit"
"Oh no, sir. Horses can't vomit"
The conversation went on like this for about another week.
The horse was dead. I didn't know how tall it was. And around it's head was a pile of raspberry coloured puke.
Yes. The RSPCA superhero was right. Live horses cannot vomit.
But dead horses can. Just before they die. They can puke.
And this one was....
Dead.
So when we asked the RSPCA about this latest corpse they told us to ring the local council office and DEFRA.
We rang the local council office (Animal Welfare) from the number of the council website.
However this turned out to be the telephone number for ...Trading Standards...who eventually gave us the number of Animal Welfare..who promised to ring back, but... didn't.
I then emailed Anilmal Welfare, who then rang back and passed us onto...
Recycling and Refuse.
After a while I rang  Recycling and Refuse as I hadn't heard anything.
The lady on the 'phone said "it was being dealt with but the  man with the knacker's van had been on holiday but he would ring me when he got back".
By this time the horse had been there for two weeks.
It was spring by this time. The weather was lovely and sunny. And warm. Not the best conditions for keeping a dead horse fresh.
The man with the Knacker's Van did ring me back, and arranged to call out the following day which he did, accompanied by a Council Official (both nice guys, by the way).
They told us that the council had sent someone out seven times to locate the body and hadn't found it.
I asked him why they hadn't rung me and I'd have shown them where it was.
He didn't know.
Nightfall. The body is still in the trees.
 It's in the middle of a forest with no access roads.
 The nice men from the council haven't a clue how they are ever going to move it.
They inspected it and said
"hmmmnnnnn......this isn't good. It would have been better if we'd been here two weeks ago......oooh what's that? ......oh there are rats inside it....when we try to pick this up now it's going to come apart like a cooked chicken"
Footnote
One of the guys told me that last night a Land Rover had collided with a stray horse on a road over the local viaduct. The driver was badly hurt.
That was a Land Rover.
A Land Rover is not a small car.
If it has been a small car, the driver would possibly have been dead.
Oh, and the men From The Council also told me that, whilst pulling a cart through the main street of our local town a horse had gone crazy and demolished half-a-dozen vehicles.
The cart driver bugged out and wasn't seen again.
Horse lovers.
Doncha love 'em?