I feel that I am in some kind of group therapy where I have to admit my addiction. I am neither in work nor looking for employment. According to government and some members of society I am a social pariah. I prefer the term socialist pariah.
The pompous accents of Radio 4's 'Today' programme inform us on the hour that the new Labour government under the tutelage of Sir Keir Starmer are going to get to grips with the bulging benefits bill.
He might as well offer courses in 'Herding Cats'
The big stick is brought out of the Prime Minister's cupboard and handed to Liz Kendall. Her minion, Alison McGovern is given the carrot to place back in the rabbit's cage. No more carrots for you, the sick, the unemployable, the heavily diagnosed and labelled, the heavily medicated, the mentally ill, the psychologically unwell, the school leaver, the home schooled, the high school dropout and the disabled. No more carrots!
It's bloody big stick all the way. You will work and you will like it and even if you actively dislike it, tough titty. This is your lot now from age 18-67 you will go to work at 9am and you will return at 5pm. You will have half an hour for bread and jam and water during the day and you will have weekends off because the Trades Union movement have already won that right for you. We don't fanny about with flexi time and appropriate allowance for bereavement and desperation and depression. We expect you at your work terminal despite the vagaries of 'normal human experience' and in return you will receive a brown envelope with just about an existing wage in return for sacrificing your life at the altar of the Protestant work ethic.
We wont be hiring though because the Government have upped the hike in National Insurance payments so we'll have to pay more for you.
The new, improved Job Centres are to be there for the employer even though currently only 1 in 6 employers use the thronging mass of humanity that enters their heavily secured doors.
If you consider yourself disabled then the mood music currently is, "we are going to bump you off because you are not productive" even though the assisted dying bill will not affect anybody bar the terminally ill with less than 6 months to live the emotive hyperbole around the subject is that it is eugenics writ small and the Department of Work and Pensions want to get rid of those who keep fingering the bulge of the bulging benefits bill.
I've had my quota of taxpayer's money over the years but not any more. In fact I am paying them back via Liz Kendall at the rate of £67.00 a month because they took me to court for the overpayment (in their eyes) of Universal Credit.
Despite the fact that I am not receiving benefit, not in work, nor looking for employment I continue to turn up to my laptop every morning for a day's You Tube & Twitter. These are my weapons of mass distraction and I have not met one person in work or socially that have given me as much pleasure as these two social media.
I shall continue to raid piggy banks and look for cash down the back of the sofa to pay my internet bill because the world of work is too peopley and with the kind of mind that I have, the combination of the wrong people, the wrong kind of work and stress will kill me or send me to prison like it did before.
So no amount of pompous voices on Radio 4 are going to drag me back out there to contribute to a treasury that supplies ammunition and bombs for Israelis to commit genocide in Palestine.
I am old but feel for the school leaver, the neatly named 'Not in Employment, Education or Training'
With the ADHD medicine, Xaggitin in short supply, the school teacher's role of herding cats has been transferred to the work coach. One size fits all did not suit anybody in my day on the Youth Opportunities Programme or the Youth Training Schemes and whatever Liz Kendall or Sir Keir decide to do with the new improved Job Centres nothing will change until work and employment are put under the forensic microscope and it be decided that people should be allowed more leisure time or a 3 or 4 day working week with an emphasis on paid community and voluntary service.
Put the big stick back in the cupboard Labour and get the carrots out!
.jfif)
