sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com: Abersignon

Tuesday, 4 September 2018

Abersignon

There's a place called Abercynon but this is a story about Abersignon where everybody is unemployed.
Now a Universal Basic Income would eradicate the ignominious process of proving that you are entitled to benefits.
Everybody in Abersignon had to sign on exactly the same day so there were huge queues and all knew each other but they never talked, they just looked straight ahead.
Instead of a guaranteed basic income these folk had to use the Universal Job Search.
One fellow had a cracking idea, he said let's open a mine.
They called it the butty mine and people started talking again because they had work to go to, a common goal and a sense of camaraderie.
Now the only people out of work were those who worked in the Job Centre. They looked on jealously as the men marched to work in their moleskin trousers and shiny boots. There was equality of opportunity and women worked down the mine as well. The people of Abersignon couldn't believe their luck and the job centre was nicknamed the joke shop. Television crews were sent to cover this success story. This was Socialism in action they reported. Abersignon had become the first socialist collective enterprise under a Corbyn led government.
One day in the cage coming up out of the ground, a man pointed at another and called him an anti-seamite. That man had refused to work a designated seam and was therefore referred to as an anti-seamite. Well fear and disillusionment spread like a wildfire underground throughout the workforce. Others started calling each other anti-seamites without a shred of evidence. It became a witchunt underground and the winding machinery and the cage finally ground to a halt. A woman called Hodgepodge had been putting it about the canteen that there were more anti-seamites at the mine than you could shake a stick at. It turned out that she was related to the manager of the job centre who had become desperate after losing all his clients to the butty mine. They weren't butties any more. The collective dream had died all because of vicious rumours. It only took one person to refuse to work a seam and then everybody was tarred with the same brush. The works closed and everybody went back to queuing up at the Job Centre and life went on as it always had done in Abersignon.