I vividly remember the first time I ever visited a soup kitchen. I had not long been laid off from a job I really liked - company restructuring or somesuch meant they couldn't keep me on. So, a low point and no job and for whatever reason (I can't remember now), temporarily no benefit. I knew, more or less, where this church was that was giving out this handout but I truly didn't know what to expect.
I remember walking along the main road nervous, with so many questions. Did I look the part? Would I have to prove I was homeless? I wasn't. How did these things work? Was I going to have to queue up and then be given some food? What were the other people going to be like? My experience of homelessness was forlorn individuals sat in the underpass that leads to the tube with cardboard signs asking for money, written on the sign in marker pen.
Then there was the embarrassment - I couldn't for the life of me think of a time I'd asked for charity. Here I was, a middle-aged man begging - almost - for a meal. I was ashamed of myself.
As it was, it was fine: busy and welcoming, friendly even, everyone seemed relaxed. It was a little bit like a restaurant. Tables laid, you sat down and a meal was brought to you, course by course. The thing that struck me most was that all the punters - for want of a better term - were treated with the utmost courtesy and respect.
Inevitably there is a social side to such places. People who go are perhaps understandably cagey but personal stuff trickles through. Due to the fact that I liked this place I continued to go even though I couldn't claim to be in desperate need.
I've got to know (to varying degrees) many people who use this soup kitchen. People share stories about themselves, the day-to-day bits and pieces. I've made friends with some folk, even found real mates.
The place I'm talking about is used by a surprisingly large number of people from all manner of backgrounds and age groups. Each person who goes along has their own reasons.
There are dozens of stories I could tell you about his place, there's all manner of weird and wonderful people who go there.
There are two ladies of mature years who turn up without fail. Then they complain about it incessantly; the food, the other people who use it, non-stop moaning - they are always there nonetheless.
The place also has its own resident photographer: there's this one chap who comes along, an avid photographer and a charming fellow who always has a camera round his neck. He snaps everyone; volunteers and the other users of the soup kitchen. A selection of his photos cover a noticeboard in the hall and the place always uses his photos in their publicity and newsletters.
A tacit support network can develop. One example that springs to mind is an elderly disabled woman who uses one of those walking frames with wheels - anyway she took a fall and was hospitalized. When she came out she'd broken her wrist, couldn't use the rollator and the NHS couldn't provide a wheelchair although they did send a nurse every morning (that she didn't really want). It was people from the soup kitchen who managed to get her a wheelchair and helped her around North London for the next few weeks so she could carry on with her life.
But the most poignant example of the care that people show for one another concerns one of the users who passed away. A chap who was in his sixties and of poor health. He'd lived outside for more years than any of us could remember. At his memorial service there were a lot of people from the soup kitchen, staff and volunteers past and present and many of the users. The soup kitchen made up more than fifty per cent of the people paying their respects.
OK, I'm certain that not every soup kitchen up and down the land is like this but I'm sure that most have some of these elements. A welcome, good food, togetherness and support. These surely are some of the ingredients that make up what makes a community, which is an oft overused phrase.
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
The patron saint of the unemployed
A funny thing happened to me down the dole office the other day. The person I was seeing listened to, and heard, every word I said and was clearly engaged in our short meeting. She was unfailingly polite the whole time, didn't chat to any of her colleagues about her children, what she was doing that evening or where she was going on holiday. Didn't even mention her lunch.
When she asked me questions, they were pertinent to the scant information they hold on the screen about me. As opposed to the usual, "Well why won't you consider being a traffic warden Mr So-andSo?" (Do you mean why don't I want to walk 20-plus miles a day getting verbally abused throughout the course of my shift with the very real risk of assault?) Her suggestions were helpful "have you thought about..." and polite.
Now, I know these people don't have the most enviable job and they have to put up with a fair amount of crap from a bunch of unco-operative and surly people. However there are large numbers of us who push through the doors of the local job centre who, although we feel degraded by the whole experience, are polite, punctual and struggle to remain motivated in spite of our joblessness.
You see, I've always thought there's a special part of the training that the dole office provides that's called Three Days Intensive Training in the Art of Downright Rudeness including two extra modules in how to ignore members of the public and coming across as aloof.
When she asked me questions, they were pertinent to the scant information they hold on the screen about me. As opposed to the usual, "Well why won't you consider being a traffic warden Mr So-andSo?" (Do you mean why don't I want to walk 20-plus miles a day getting verbally abused throughout the course of my shift with the very real risk of assault?) Her suggestions were helpful "have you thought about..." and polite.
Now, I know these people don't have the most enviable job and they have to put up with a fair amount of crap from a bunch of unco-operative and surly people. However there are large numbers of us who push through the doors of the local job centre who, although we feel degraded by the whole experience, are polite, punctual and struggle to remain motivated in spite of our joblessness.
You see, I've always thought there's a special part of the training that the dole office provides that's called Three Days Intensive Training in the Art of Downright Rudeness including two extra modules in how to ignore members of the public and coming across as aloof.
Anyway, I got myself signed on and trotted out my usual question at that point: "So is everything OK with my claim then?" This woman didn't even sigh, she just tapped away at her keyboard. "Sorry to ask," I said.
On hearing her reply I nearly fell off the chair."Look," she said. "If I had to live on £65 a week I'd want to know if it was darn well going to turn up!"
This woman should be made the patron saint of the unemployed.
As if the experience of going into these places isn't bad enough, the convoluted system they use is specifically designed to confuse even the most clear thinking individual, chock-full of arcane and seemingly contradictory rules. I swear Dr Who would find it a test of his intellect to sign on. Obviously he's a Time-Lord so he doesn't have to, but I'm sure you see my point.
Then, then the Government has the gall to ensure that these places are staffed, almost exclusively, by some of the most wilfully obtuse people on God's Green Earth! If you feel you're being treated badly or you think they're being rude and have the temerity to query this (no swearing please, this is the dole office), invariably the response is: "Sorry, not my fault. It's the rules."
The recent incident I've recounted tells me it doesn't have to be like that. At my recent appointment the woman concerned was able to tick her boxes, meet her targets and treat me like a fellow human being - all at the same time.
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
MPs and Expenses
I sat bolt upright in bed the other morning when I heard on Radio 4 that the new intake of Westminster MPs were complaining they were being "treated like benefit claimants " under the new expenses regime.
This complaint is wrong on so many counts. The first thing this implies is that it is fine to treat the poorest in our society, ie benefit claimants, like benefit claimants.
Perhaps I'm being naive, but I'd assumed that the unemployed, the elderly, the sick and the disabled are entitled to the benefits that they claim. I tend to be of the opinion that how a society looks after its poor and its disadvantaged is some kind of barometer of how civilized it is. Surely it's a measure of its national attitude, of how much it cares about its own.
So why then is it deemed fine to treat people who are in need of support from the state so poorly? To understand this I suppose we have to fall back on the vernacular of Radio 5 or the tabloids.
I'm certain we've all read those stories of Mr So-and-So, the scrounging benefit cheat. The man who runs his son's football team two or three times a week whilst claiming untold thousands from the state. He is able to claim this money due to his crippling arthritis which patently renders him unable to work. Now I'm not for a moment suggesting these people don't exist, but I feel they are very few and far between.
They run these adverts on the telly to phone this number and grass up your neighbour as a benefit cheat. I've yet to see an ad where you can ring up the taxman and tell him you suspect your neighbour of fiddling his tax returns.
Don't get me wrong, fiddling the social is wrong. It's shabby, cheap behaviour and the state should do what it reasonably can to prevent it. But that shouldn't give the state carte blanche to treat ALL benefit claimants as badly as it does. We do hatred so well in this country and benefit scroungers are up there in our national consciousness with illegal immigrants (if you listen to Radio 5, that is).
We should be glad of our Welfare State and we should have a drastically different attitude to paying taxes. I want to live in a society that looks after its citizens. Does my attitude sound too simplistic?
Another thing I learnt this week, courtesy of Miranda Sawyer in the Mirror, is that 18 out of 23 members of the cabinet are millionaires (23 people doesn't strike me as many people to be responsible for running the country but there you go). I just hope that none of those millionaires were whingeing about being treated like benefit claimants!
Rather than MPs complaining about expenses, somebody should be complaining about the abysmal way benefit claimants are treated.
This complaint is wrong on so many counts. The first thing this implies is that it is fine to treat the poorest in our society, ie benefit claimants, like benefit claimants.
Perhaps I'm being naive, but I'd assumed that the unemployed, the elderly, the sick and the disabled are entitled to the benefits that they claim. I tend to be of the opinion that how a society looks after its poor and its disadvantaged is some kind of barometer of how civilized it is. Surely it's a measure of its national attitude, of how much it cares about its own.
So why then is it deemed fine to treat people who are in need of support from the state so poorly? To understand this I suppose we have to fall back on the vernacular of Radio 5 or the tabloids.
I'm certain we've all read those stories of Mr So-and-So, the scrounging benefit cheat. The man who runs his son's football team two or three times a week whilst claiming untold thousands from the state. He is able to claim this money due to his crippling arthritis which patently renders him unable to work. Now I'm not for a moment suggesting these people don't exist, but I feel they are very few and far between.
They run these adverts on the telly to phone this number and grass up your neighbour as a benefit cheat. I've yet to see an ad where you can ring up the taxman and tell him you suspect your neighbour of fiddling his tax returns.
Don't get me wrong, fiddling the social is wrong. It's shabby, cheap behaviour and the state should do what it reasonably can to prevent it. But that shouldn't give the state carte blanche to treat ALL benefit claimants as badly as it does. We do hatred so well in this country and benefit scroungers are up there in our national consciousness with illegal immigrants (if you listen to Radio 5, that is).
We should be glad of our Welfare State and we should have a drastically different attitude to paying taxes. I want to live in a society that looks after its citizens. Does my attitude sound too simplistic?
Another thing I learnt this week, courtesy of Miranda Sawyer in the Mirror, is that 18 out of 23 members of the cabinet are millionaires (23 people doesn't strike me as many people to be responsible for running the country but there you go). I just hope that none of those millionaires were whingeing about being treated like benefit claimants!
Rather than MPs complaining about expenses, somebody should be complaining about the abysmal way benefit claimants are treated.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Hamster on a wheel
I'd forgotten what it was like to be in the dole office. You see, for the last 13 weeks I've been doing something which is laughably called training (from time to time, the government sends the unemployed on training to improve their work skills).
One thing this involves is not signing on every two weeks, which is a good thing. Signing on is the ritual humiliation of queuing up and handing over a little pamphlet that has a record of one's efforts to find work. The state seems to take the view that we are all a bunch of freeloaders who are living the life of Riley and making no effort to gain employment because the state keeps us in such a luxurious lifestyle that there is no incentive to work.
I would take the view that the vast majority of us are happier people when we are working. Not doing any old job, but doing something where we feel we are useful, something that we might be quite good at and that would enable us to pay our way in the world. This would make us feel that we are part of wider society where we can buy our weekly shop, buy our children things they want or pop down the pub once or twice a week to bitch on to our friends about how crap the world is.
When you're unemployed the money that the state gives you means that doing the things I've mentioned is much harder to achieve. In fact, some of the things are out of reach. Your horizons shrink; when you are working you've always got petrol in your car or you've always got a travel pass. This means you can go places besides work. When you are on benefit you are constantly fussing about money. You don't always have a travel pass or petrol in the car so you can't just go places, see your friends, pop to the cinema, check out a shop or visit a gallery on the other side of town. Like I said your horizons shrink.
I was reminded the other day of what it's like to be in the dole office. Because of my "training" I had to do a rapid reclaim. My 15 minute appointment started 20 minutes late and took 25 minutes. No matter, well I say no matter, that's if the money comes through OK. The unemployment people have an unlimited number of ways to stuff up paying you your money.
Even when everything is in order, you've kept all your appointments, you've done all your paperwork and kept up your end of the bargain, things can always go wrong. And because you exist on so little money in the first place, when your money goes wrong it really does scupper your plans in a big way. You live your life to this two-week cycle. Things like keeping the electricity key charged, having food in the cupboard, the basics. At the end of the cycle these things run low.
In short, life for people claiming can seem like the hamster on a wheel. Run, run, running on that wheel and going nowhere, or at least where you've been before.
One thing this involves is not signing on every two weeks, which is a good thing. Signing on is the ritual humiliation of queuing up and handing over a little pamphlet that has a record of one's efforts to find work. The state seems to take the view that we are all a bunch of freeloaders who are living the life of Riley and making no effort to gain employment because the state keeps us in such a luxurious lifestyle that there is no incentive to work.
I would take the view that the vast majority of us are happier people when we are working. Not doing any old job, but doing something where we feel we are useful, something that we might be quite good at and that would enable us to pay our way in the world. This would make us feel that we are part of wider society where we can buy our weekly shop, buy our children things they want or pop down the pub once or twice a week to bitch on to our friends about how crap the world is.
When you're unemployed the money that the state gives you means that doing the things I've mentioned is much harder to achieve. In fact, some of the things are out of reach. Your horizons shrink; when you are working you've always got petrol in your car or you've always got a travel pass. This means you can go places besides work. When you are on benefit you are constantly fussing about money. You don't always have a travel pass or petrol in the car so you can't just go places, see your friends, pop to the cinema, check out a shop or visit a gallery on the other side of town. Like I said your horizons shrink.
I was reminded the other day of what it's like to be in the dole office. Because of my "training" I had to do a rapid reclaim. My 15 minute appointment started 20 minutes late and took 25 minutes. No matter, well I say no matter, that's if the money comes through OK. The unemployment people have an unlimited number of ways to stuff up paying you your money.
Even when everything is in order, you've kept all your appointments, you've done all your paperwork and kept up your end of the bargain, things can always go wrong. And because you exist on so little money in the first place, when your money goes wrong it really does scupper your plans in a big way. You live your life to this two-week cycle. Things like keeping the electricity key charged, having food in the cupboard, the basics. At the end of the cycle these things run low.
In short, life for people claiming can seem like the hamster on a wheel. Run, run, running on that wheel and going nowhere, or at least where you've been before.
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
Post-election musings
This is my take on the last six days, it's not definitive, just my impressions.
Election night
They shouldn't start these election programmes so early. They should put a couple of films on and start at 2am. Instead we get the problem of political journos queuing up to flounder about on the telly trying to make some kind of informed comment. They have such little information, that whatever phrases they manage to utter sound merely fatuous.
Waste of live TV. So-called heavyweight political journalists, all over-excited and twitchy, words tumbling from their mouths, desperately searching for something pertinent to say. They are entirely missing the point that most folk watching at home don't share their anticipation and are thinking: sod this I've got to get up in the morning.
Friday
Posturing on two sides, each making tempting proposals of what appears, to my eye, some kind of phony union. Being loved-up only seemed to last half the day. By the evening, as far as I could tell political pundits were thinking it too problematic to bring off. Financial pundits were talking of political fantasies with dire, ie more dire than widely held already, consequences. So what is to be done?
For Joe Public as an uninformed outsider looking on, witnessing these protracted negotiations unfold before our eyes is tortuous and tiresome. The political class seems to be as distanced from its electorate as ever.
Let's face it, we've been hearing for three weeks or more how this election was going to be so important, perhaps even change the face of British politics, yet 24 hours later who can safely suggest who's to be our next PM?
Saturday night update
70 minutes of one-to-one talks between two of the protagonists. So that must be alright then, sounds like the makings of a new government to me!
Then you've got all these other folk, who most of us have never heard of, sticking their oar in and it's startlingly obvious they're nobodies with an axe to grind who see their chance to get their face on the evening news for 20 seconds.
And every single one of them, from Cameron, Clegg and Brown downwards, without exception, fall over themselves to tell you that they're doing ALL of this for the good of the country. The thing that leaves a nasty taste in my mouth is that they, all of them, are just nowhere near being entirely honest with the British public, their electorate. We all realise it's a delicate situation but this disingenousness is repellent. It brings to mind the phrase "economical with the truth", most recently heard during the Thatcher years.
Three and a half days in
After we've had the numbers and we seem no nearer having a new government and I'm wondering what the rest of the world must think? They and we are used to rapid change after an election. In fact they probably aren't that concerned. To me it smacks of indecision and lack of leadership. The only noises I've heard today are bear with us and we'll get there. This is hardly sufficient given the pickle we're in. Perhaps we're so unfamiliar with it we don't know how to do coalition politics.
Gordon Brown speaks
I've been waiting four days for something to actually happen. Clearly I am not aware of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to it, but then a dignified, honourable, principled and rather awkward man made a short statement outside number 10. To my mind, Gordon Brown ignited this whole election business, thank heavens.
For someone who has been around public life for so long he just never quite got the hang of it. For that he seems to be reviled by so many. Gordon Brown strikes me as a tragic figure. Somehow I can't see him greedily hoovering up the cash on the lecture circuit - don't get me wrong' I'm sure he won't go short. A man out of his time perhaps?
I realise none of this has much to do with unemployment but I feel you would all agree events since last Thursday have been on such a grand scale so I'm hoping you'll forgive me such a digression.
Now there seems a faint air of panic. Goodness knows why anyone would want to run this country, we're mired in debt, swingeing cuts are on the cards, this year or next. So any government is guaranteed to be as popular as a national outbreak of the pox.
As soon as the dust settles on this saga I assure you I shall return to the plight of the unemployed, I like to think there's plenty I've not even touched on.
As regards the election there has been plenty to make me chuckle. Too much to mention here but I'll make a special mention of Lord Mandleson popping up all over the place dispensing his brand of wisdom to all and sundry like some sinister pantomime dame - priceless.
Wednesday morning, another country
So here we are, New Politics so we are told. That clearly remains to be seen.
It's new in as much as all three parties need to seriously re-evaluate where they are now and how they are going to put themselves across to their voters and the folk whose votes they didn't get. Boy do they need to reassess!
Everyone has adjustments to make, us as well, and how it all pans out has no doubt got to be worth watching.
Election night
They shouldn't start these election programmes so early. They should put a couple of films on and start at 2am. Instead we get the problem of political journos queuing up to flounder about on the telly trying to make some kind of informed comment. They have such little information, that whatever phrases they manage to utter sound merely fatuous.
Waste of live TV. So-called heavyweight political journalists, all over-excited and twitchy, words tumbling from their mouths, desperately searching for something pertinent to say. They are entirely missing the point that most folk watching at home don't share their anticipation and are thinking: sod this I've got to get up in the morning.
Friday
Posturing on two sides, each making tempting proposals of what appears, to my eye, some kind of phony union. Being loved-up only seemed to last half the day. By the evening, as far as I could tell political pundits were thinking it too problematic to bring off. Financial pundits were talking of political fantasies with dire, ie more dire than widely held already, consequences. So what is to be done?
For Joe Public as an uninformed outsider looking on, witnessing these protracted negotiations unfold before our eyes is tortuous and tiresome. The political class seems to be as distanced from its electorate as ever.
Let's face it, we've been hearing for three weeks or more how this election was going to be so important, perhaps even change the face of British politics, yet 24 hours later who can safely suggest who's to be our next PM?
Saturday night update
70 minutes of one-to-one talks between two of the protagonists. So that must be alright then, sounds like the makings of a new government to me!
Then you've got all these other folk, who most of us have never heard of, sticking their oar in and it's startlingly obvious they're nobodies with an axe to grind who see their chance to get their face on the evening news for 20 seconds.
And every single one of them, from Cameron, Clegg and Brown downwards, without exception, fall over themselves to tell you that they're doing ALL of this for the good of the country. The thing that leaves a nasty taste in my mouth is that they, all of them, are just nowhere near being entirely honest with the British public, their electorate. We all realise it's a delicate situation but this disingenousness is repellent. It brings to mind the phrase "economical with the truth", most recently heard during the Thatcher years.
Three and a half days in
After we've had the numbers and we seem no nearer having a new government and I'm wondering what the rest of the world must think? They and we are used to rapid change after an election. In fact they probably aren't that concerned. To me it smacks of indecision and lack of leadership. The only noises I've heard today are bear with us and we'll get there. This is hardly sufficient given the pickle we're in. Perhaps we're so unfamiliar with it we don't know how to do coalition politics.
Gordon Brown speaks
I've been waiting four days for something to actually happen. Clearly I am not aware of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to it, but then a dignified, honourable, principled and rather awkward man made a short statement outside number 10. To my mind, Gordon Brown ignited this whole election business, thank heavens.
For someone who has been around public life for so long he just never quite got the hang of it. For that he seems to be reviled by so many. Gordon Brown strikes me as a tragic figure. Somehow I can't see him greedily hoovering up the cash on the lecture circuit - don't get me wrong' I'm sure he won't go short. A man out of his time perhaps?
I realise none of this has much to do with unemployment but I feel you would all agree events since last Thursday have been on such a grand scale so I'm hoping you'll forgive me such a digression.
Now there seems a faint air of panic. Goodness knows why anyone would want to run this country, we're mired in debt, swingeing cuts are on the cards, this year or next. So any government is guaranteed to be as popular as a national outbreak of the pox.
As soon as the dust settles on this saga I assure you I shall return to the plight of the unemployed, I like to think there's plenty I've not even touched on.
As regards the election there has been plenty to make me chuckle. Too much to mention here but I'll make a special mention of Lord Mandleson popping up all over the place dispensing his brand of wisdom to all and sundry like some sinister pantomime dame - priceless.
Wednesday morning, another country
So here we are, New Politics so we are told. That clearly remains to be seen.
It's new in as much as all three parties need to seriously re-evaluate where they are now and how they are going to put themselves across to their voters and the folk whose votes they didn't get. Boy do they need to reassess!
Everyone has adjustments to make, us as well, and how it all pans out has no doubt got to be worth watching.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
The election and the unemployed
I have a simplistic, prosaic attitude to politics. Some things are right and just and sensible, some things are unfair and wrong - or just plain wrong. Most of what's suggested is muddled and fudged.
The reason my outlook is simple is I believe in things. You so rarely hear a politician telling you what they believe in.
So is any of this going to make very much difference to me? Quite probably not. Other than in general; in difficult times it's the poor and the old and the young and those who are unwell who tend to suffer the most. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.
You hear things said over and over again, the same topics, the same sentiments. Maybe it's my age, I've been hearing the same platitudes and soundbites for thirty years.
I don't think any of us like politicians. In part it's their hubris, the suspicion that they are all freeloaders and don't do a proper job. My local MP is hardly hard up and keeps the extra-curricular earnings well topped up. Quangos and TV, as far as I know. Always ready for a quote.
It's the snide, moralistic tone of voice that grates the most and they all do it; look at me: I'm the big I am.
It's a broken society, so we're told. This is cleary tosh, it's no more broken than it was thirty years ago. It's stating the bleeding obvious to tell us that shitty things happen and people do bad things. Let's face it, we're all struggling to be good people, but boy oh boy do we try? I believe that mostly we all do.
So you end up with this huge contradiction: I believe in voting, I don't like politicians. My local MP is a hypocrite and nailed on to get in, yet belongs to a party I historically believe in. It will stick in my craw but I will take up a pencil and mark my cross.
I like local politics even less.
I don't expect it'll make a huge difference to my situation whichever of the three parties get in, if indeed it is a three horse race. At times I do get excited at the prospect of a change in the way this country does politics, other times I'm filled with the faint feeling of dread.
The reason my outlook is simple is I believe in things. You so rarely hear a politician telling you what they believe in.
So is any of this going to make very much difference to me? Quite probably not. Other than in general; in difficult times it's the poor and the old and the young and those who are unwell who tend to suffer the most. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.
You hear things said over and over again, the same topics, the same sentiments. Maybe it's my age, I've been hearing the same platitudes and soundbites for thirty years.
I don't think any of us like politicians. In part it's their hubris, the suspicion that they are all freeloaders and don't do a proper job. My local MP is hardly hard up and keeps the extra-curricular earnings well topped up. Quangos and TV, as far as I know. Always ready for a quote.
It's the snide, moralistic tone of voice that grates the most and they all do it; look at me: I'm the big I am.
It's a broken society, so we're told. This is cleary tosh, it's no more broken than it was thirty years ago. It's stating the bleeding obvious to tell us that shitty things happen and people do bad things. Let's face it, we're all struggling to be good people, but boy oh boy do we try? I believe that mostly we all do.
So you end up with this huge contradiction: I believe in voting, I don't like politicians. My local MP is a hypocrite and nailed on to get in, yet belongs to a party I historically believe in. It will stick in my craw but I will take up a pencil and mark my cross.
I like local politics even less.
I don't expect it'll make a huge difference to my situation whichever of the three parties get in, if indeed it is a three horse race. At times I do get excited at the prospect of a change in the way this country does politics, other times I'm filled with the faint feeling of dread.
Early experiences of being on the dole
I'd become disenchanted, but after over ten years of solid work in the social care field I naively thought I'd have no problem finding work. I signed on in the meantime.
When the first money came through it took a full five minutes for me to realize the money was supposed to last TWO weeks, not one, as I had first assumed when I saw the giro. I did find work, although what followed was five years of sporadic employment, hardly any of which I liked especially. This was interspersed with periods of enforced idleness and being constantly broke.
I was a cycle courier, I ran a second hand shop, I worked for the local bus company. What was really happening was a gradual slide into full-time continuous unemployment, and when you're unemployed people just don't want to know.
You can bang in as many applications as you like, however the minute the prospective employer sees THAT gap on your CV that runs up to the present day you go onto the "not interested" pile. Maybe folk just assume you're sat at home watching daytime TV?
Then there's the rigmarole of signing on: endless form filling repeating information the system already has and blank-faced job centre staff who are trained to suspect you of trying to defraud the state. As if one would go to such extraordinary lengths, given the amount of time one has to spend in the job centre and the housing benefit office in order to obtain benefit. Benefit one is entitled to, benefit that will only cover your most basic spends, only if you are fastidious in your budgeting; writing detailed lists of all your necessities.
You give all the pertinent information to the first member of staff, you repeat it all to the person they pass you on to, they send you away so you can write all this information down on the relevant forms, you go back to the office a few days later and repeat it all over again and a member of the job centre staff will enter certain pieces of information into the computer. If all goes well you will get your money.
What this process does is, it takes up an inordinate amount of time to achieve a very simple outcome and is multiplied many hundreds of times all over the land. This generally leaves the customer - we're all customers now - feeling rubbish; left out, skint and on their own. The whole business is demoralising and dispiriting. It's not all bad, there are places out there: church groups, unemployed workers groups, places for the homeless, that very much give you the feeling that you're not on your own. I must say, there are not that many, but it's got to be worth looking.
When the first money came through it took a full five minutes for me to realize the money was supposed to last TWO weeks, not one, as I had first assumed when I saw the giro. I did find work, although what followed was five years of sporadic employment, hardly any of which I liked especially. This was interspersed with periods of enforced idleness and being constantly broke.
I was a cycle courier, I ran a second hand shop, I worked for the local bus company. What was really happening was a gradual slide into full-time continuous unemployment, and when you're unemployed people just don't want to know.
You can bang in as many applications as you like, however the minute the prospective employer sees THAT gap on your CV that runs up to the present day you go onto the "not interested" pile. Maybe folk just assume you're sat at home watching daytime TV?
Then there's the rigmarole of signing on: endless form filling repeating information the system already has and blank-faced job centre staff who are trained to suspect you of trying to defraud the state. As if one would go to such extraordinary lengths, given the amount of time one has to spend in the job centre and the housing benefit office in order to obtain benefit. Benefit one is entitled to, benefit that will only cover your most basic spends, only if you are fastidious in your budgeting; writing detailed lists of all your necessities.
You give all the pertinent information to the first member of staff, you repeat it all to the person they pass you on to, they send you away so you can write all this information down on the relevant forms, you go back to the office a few days later and repeat it all over again and a member of the job centre staff will enter certain pieces of information into the computer. If all goes well you will get your money.
What this process does is, it takes up an inordinate amount of time to achieve a very simple outcome and is multiplied many hundreds of times all over the land. This generally leaves the customer - we're all customers now - feeling rubbish; left out, skint and on their own. The whole business is demoralising and dispiriting. It's not all bad, there are places out there: church groups, unemployed workers groups, places for the homeless, that very much give you the feeling that you're not on your own. I must say, there are not that many, but it's got to be worth looking.
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