Durgz

I'm getting a little bit pissed off with the government's most favourite of excuses for justifying screwing over the poor and the young; they're all on drugs. They're all just feral junkies, there's no point giving them anything because they'll just spend it all on drugs anyway. In fact, it's better to keep them poor, because then they won't be able to afford all those drugs!  

Let me take this opportunity to tell a truth that no-one seems to be willing to say. No shit. Of course we're on drugs. We're destitute. We have nothing much to look forward to. If someone told you "Hey, miserable guy, eat this. It'll put you really happy mood for about an hour, guaranteed." could you really say no? 

They say time heals all wounds, and this is true in many cases. But when time itself is the wound, when its slow but steady passage is the problem, then it becomes unbearable, and seemingly inescapable. Take the youth of today. We know what's going on, we all have internet access. We can Google. Some greedy rich people lost all their money doing dodgy deals, and now all the poor people have to pay for their failure. We have no jobs, no prospects, and no future. And there is no reason to expect that this will ever change. So with no future, there is only this moment, only now. So why not feel good in the now, damned be the consequences? With youth idolised and age despised, why care about your health? "I hope I die before I grow old" is a very old lyric. "I don't wanna live forever" is another golden oldie. Telling someone that they will die if they do something is not a deterrent, it's often a path to a form of martyrdom. "I told you I was hardcore!"

But it's not just us. It's all of you as well. We're all on drugs. We have our reasons. What are yours?

There are those that will even protest that they're not on drugs. It's the hypocrisy more than anything else that gets me. Alcohol, which in my opinion should be at least class B (because an overdose can kill you) is completely legal and a-ok. Tobacco is fine, despite the fact that I can easily identify the addictive cancer-causing chemicals in it. I could just point out the large cyanide content. And that's all acceptable, because society says so. But we have to lock up the ravers and the stoners, it's for their own good. Don't forget to add it's for their benefit, all for their health and safety.

"I believe there is no safe drug." This, coming from alcoholic politicians! You really want to live drug free? Then stop breathing the air. There are drugs in it. Stop drinking the water. There are drugs in that too. You can even absorb drugs through your skin, so careful with what brands of washing up powder and washing up liquid you have. 

Seriously though, after watching an advert for shampoo with taurine in, it has become obvious that people really don't have a clue. Taurine is a stimulant similar to caffiene, that was originally extracted from a bull's testicles. It's bullock bollock juice. You drink it, it keeps you awake. You don't rub it on your head. There's no such thing as coffee shampoo or caffeinated shampoo, that sounds stupid. But Taurine is a turbo-charged wing-giving ultra-amazing super-miracle! So putting it in a shampoo makes sense, right? It'll make your hair go!

People are ignorant about drugs all right, they don't even know what the word "drug" means. It means "a chemical that has an effect upon the body". And the context is important to. Like the drug cabinet in the hospital? Everyone condemns the smack head for using heroin to blot out emotional pain, but as soon as they get a compound fracture somewhere you watch that same person scream for morphine to blot out the physical pain. Well sorry, it's a drug, remember? It might be dangerous. You might get addicted. So enjoy the slivers of bone slicing into your muscle and nerve. Don't you feel so pure and drug-free?

I mean even from an economic point of view it's laughable. "You, poor person! You are forbidden from setting up a lucrative business even though you have massive demand for your product!" And in truth, it's not those who are already poor who try to profit from selling drugs. They can't afford the capital to start up the enterprise. It's those who have money now but who are at risk of becoming poor. Like the policeman who just got fired, but who knows all the tricks. Or the ex-nurse that just got laid off due to the cuts to the NHS. Or the ex-soldier.

In a recession, even those who have moral qualms are finding their qualms calmed by impinging poverty. When it comes down to having to sell the family caravan, or using it as a hydroponics bay, it seems that most well-educated middle-class conservatives choose to go hydro. Ethics are nice, but money buys things! Money gets you status, makes to someone of worth. Someone that is worth something, because without money then you are someone who is worthless. At least in the eyes of this society.

And that, I believe, is the real problem here. The judgement of our society is incredibly schizophrenic when it comes to these things. As is often the case with too many parents who discover that their kids are addicted to something that they clearly can't handle, they try to hide it from their friends. There first impulse isn't towards their child's medical condition, its towards their own social status. "What will people think?" The obvious conclusion, the conclusion that you have just made. That you're a bad parent, that you don't know what your child gets up to and you can't control them. That may be true, but it's nothing to do with control. Your problem is that you cannot communicate with your child. You don't know them, and you don't want to know them because their culture scares you. It's alien to you, and you don't understand it. You tell yourself it's a phase, and that there's nothing that you, the parent needs to do to understand the child. No, it's the child that will suddenly, miraculously upon their 18th birthday "grow up" and immediately understand you. Because we all become telepathic on our 18th, right? 

Well, no, we don't. And we don't really "grow up" either. My mum still goes to the Rocky Horror Picture show. In a black corset. Honestly, I respect her more for that than her many years of being punctual at work, or having a tidy house. You want to know why the kids do what they do? Grow a pair, walk up to one of the scary hoodies, and ask them. You will probably get a polite response, even if it is using local slang. Try not to be too offended, the meaning of words do change, as does the context in which a word is used. Sometimes the word "fucking" is an adjective, not a verb.

Seriously, I dare you. Ask them the biggie, the elephant in the room. Why? Why are our children doing drugs? 

Perhaps it's because we like to escape the polluted, war-torn, ultra-materialistic hyper-corporate world that we have been dumped with. You want to be an artist? Tough, only Maths, English and Science count at school now. You want to be free from this modern world and live in a field with a tent and a cow? Well that's illegal, your trespassing. You haven't paid council tax. The Unreal Kafkaland will not let you find peace, it will squeeze you till you pop. And then charge your next of kin for the privilege of disposing of the body. 

And so we escape. We drink, we smoke, we feel good and we live in the moment. Because what else is there? If you paid attention at school, then more fool you. You're still going to end up working at McDonalds rubbing shoulders with those that didn't care and had a laugh. So why bother? The system has forgotten you, so forget about the system. Live outside the box. It's a much happier place. 

It's just a shame that serenity is illegal.

Apptivism

An idea came to me the other day, an interesting idea for these very interesting times. I believe that there is a way that all of us, the people who are ruled, who are powerless to change the world around us, can do just that. And I don't mean gradually, I mean quickly. Very quickly. New laws within a month quickly.

The reason I say these bold things is because there are two worlds now. The physical world, and the Internet. The Internet is a completely different country, with its own language, culture and even in some forms its own media and its own military in the forms of YouTube and Anonymous. The truly remarkable thing about this shiny new land upon the hill is it's government. Some people would say that's a stupid thing to say, that the Internet doesn't have a government, it can't by its very nature, a decentralised communications network. But I disagree, I think that by that same nature it's method of government becomes apparent. Because the Internet is a hive mind. It's the first true democracy, it's will generated and displayed by the millions of content-generating nodes that make up its network. By us. We ARE the Internet, as it is the sum of our thoughts and feelings that we wish to share to others. It's almost a form of telepathy, the ability to send ideas and concepts from mind to mind. After all, the Troll Face meme contains no words. Once seen, we understand it instinctively. It doesn't need translating, because its already in its own language, the first language. It's a digital cave painting, a common feeling shared by all. 

Like the feeling that David Cameron and his government are unfit to rule us. That they are corrupt, pandering for the favour of the very rich at the expense of everyone else. That they will lead this country to ruin. That there will be more riots. That those riots will probably happen during the Olympics. That the shame that will bring to Britain will tarnish its name for decades.

This would be bad. And also unproductive. Companies would see Britain as unstable. The money would move away. We would become like Greece, with no one willing to invest in us. I don't like capitalism, especially the crony corporate capitalism that we have in 2012, but we don't have a choice. We live in that world. The corporations have the power now. Lord Tesco, Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson tell the government what to do, not the other way around. 

But that, in a way, is a good thing. Because the corporations are beholden to us. They want our money, they need our money in order to survive. Remember, a business is like a bacterium. It has only one purpose; to survive. But we are the ones with the choice in this "free market". We can choose one or another. Tescos or Morrisons. E.Coli or Salmonella. If we consistently choose one, and boycott the other, starve it of resources, it will eventually die. And then the survivor will be nervous, because they just saw a rival become extinct. They will know the environment has changed, and that they will have to adapt to the new factor, or die.

The good bit is that we decide what the new factor is. Why did we boycott their rival? Was it because they had extensively used oppressed unpaid labour? Or was it that they participated in a government scheme that you disagree with? Polluted the entire Gulf of Mexico? Outsourced to Chinese factories that have working conditions that force workers to commit suicide? We have the power of choice. Just switch provider. Stop giving them your money. We tend to think of cost, of price, as having to give someone else some of your money. But if you prevent someone from making money, then that costs them too. And that's what we can do. We can take from companies their lifeblood, their obsession. We can cost them money.

Obviously this is a bit simplistic, one person never ever using a BP pump ever again isn't going to do much. BP won't notice the dint in their profits that one person can make, and they even know why your refusing to buy their oil. This is where the Internet comes in.

The parts that Facebook, Twitter and the Blackberry messaging service played in the August riots cannot be denied by anyone. The government was so scared by this unexpected use of modern technology that they considered a China-style Internet blackout in the event of another riot¹. That's how much they fear what is, for the Elite trying to stay in control, the ultimate nightmare. The informed and educated mob. If you're ruling a democracy, but are doing things that are unpopular, you want the people to know as little as possible about those policies, because you still want the people to vote for you, come the election. Come election time, there as at the whimsy of our collective judgement just as much as the companies are. But politicians tend to be infinitely more aware of this, because of the nature of elections. We are each presented with a form, and given the explicit opportunity to say "Fuck you!" and vote for the other guy. Corporations don't really have this. Why would they? Who would create such a thing? What corporation or moneyed individual in their right mind would create something that would efficiently funnel power back to the people? Surely the motivation if you are in power is in the other direction, hence why we've had voter suppression for as long as there has been voting. 

But you don't need money to start up a Facebook page. You don't need a penny to create an online petition. You can even get free hosting to build your own website. Communication is free now. And us communicating, us organising is what they fear. We can, en masse, change the minds of corporations. We can bully the wealthy until they do what we want, instead of the reverse.

Take the example of Rush Limbaugh, an extreme right-wing American talk-show host. We don't really have his sort of highly politicised preach-show in the UK (thank God), but put briefly he's a bit like the radio version of the Sun. Lowbrow stuff, mostly designed to inspire fear, racism, homophobia and other right-wing talking points. Heavily endorsed by the Republicans (the American Tories) of course. His days on the airwaves could be numbered however, because one by one his sponsors have pulled their support and more importantly their funding for Rush's show. Big names, like Ford and McDonalds. This happened in no small part because of two women, Nita Chaudhary and Shaunna Thomas, who started an online feminist movement called UltraViolet.² They got pissed off with Rush calling women who wanted to go on the pill sluts and whores. So they made a website where you can click a button and add your name to a petition. The petition for Rush's advertisers to cease their support garnered over 160,000 signatures within a few days.³

 

This sort of speed is unheard of in the world of politics. Usually change needs money, and time. Usually so much time that someone with more money has drowned you out with spin and propaganda.

Not any more, though. You don't need a soap box or a megaphone to spread your message any more. You don't need a legally accessible public space for people to protest, that could suddenly become illegal and inaccessible at the ruling of a judge, at the behest of a city's corporate doppelganger. You don't even need people to turn up. After all, its 2012. You don't need to take the day off and get on a Union-paid coach to go to London to protest. Today you can protest while at work, with your Blackberry in your 10 minute cigarette break. You can do it through the TV, when you've got the baby asleep. You can do it in the pub, and get all your mates to join in. You no longer have to stand up to be counted, you just have to click the button to sign the petition. You just have to threaten to boycott the right companies. 

Back in February, within a few days of people finding out about Tesco using unpaid slave labour, there were protests. As the online storm grew, plans for greater protests were made. Before the day of protest even arrived, Tesco buckled, and pressured the government into removing all the involuntary aspects from their Work Experience Programme. The people's oppressor had became their champion, and this epic flip-flop was caused simply by the threat from social media, of the people en masse, the big fish made up of little fish. Us

This isn't traditional activism, in the sense of the Occupy movement. This isn't online Hacktivism, of the sort demonstrated by Anonymous. This is something else, passive online activism. Activism on the Internet, through your phone, or TV, or tablet, accessed by a Facebook app. Apptivism. 

Step 1) Be annoyed by something. Decide to make a change.

Step 2) Find the companies sponsoring it. Target them. If there are no direct sponsors, then find out who is making it happen. Who is involved? Who does the authors of your discontent socialise with? Target them. 

Step 3) Make the Fuck You button. This is the most important step. Create an online petition, that people can click to sign. Or make a template e-mail, that people can click to send to whoever is in charge after adding their name. Or start a Facebook group that people can like or join. Do combinations. Make it a maximum of three clicks for anyone who sees your Fuck You button to utilise it. You want to make it as easy as physically possible for your target audience to use your button.

Step 4) Share the Love. Spread your button across the length and breadth of cyberspace. Post it everywhere. As a statistical geneticist I can tell you with a great deal of certainty that a minimum of 4% of people who randomly see your button will click it. 10,000 page views = 400 people. Think big. Get as many friends to share the button as possible. 

In the era of social media, politics is a different animal. Our information is now coming to us unfiltered and uncensored by any agenda, from dozens of sources, and we are actively encouraged to interact, to like or dislike, to shape the news and what comes next. The Murdoch ways simply don't work anymore, they're just too slow. This becomes painfully apparent whenever a politician appears on TV with a polished smile and a carefully prepared speech. People can watch the video embedded on their friend's Facebook page, Google it, fact check, and be talking and Tweeting about it themselves within minutes. We can disassemble the spin, re-parse the sentence, analyse the true meaning, and post it online so fast that the people watching the video on YouTube won't even have to scroll.

How long do you think the Government can lie to us about the unemployment figures and about the taxes of big business? How long do you think they will try to keep sabre-toothed tigers in bags too small for kittens, like privatising the police force and the NHS?

People are beginning to wake up, to lose their tolerance for deception. You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all of the time. Especially if they all have Internet access.

¹http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8862335/Cameron-told-not-to-shut-down-internet.html

²http://weareultraviolet.org/

³http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/09/ultraviolet-womens-rights_n_1335743.html

God I Love Living in the Future!

Upon re-reading some of my articles today I'm beginning to realise that this blog is beginning to take a somewhat pessimistic tone, and so I've decided that amongst my usual grumpy rantings I'm going to stick several recurring themes to show that it isn't all doom and gloom. So I give you the first of many, the totally geek-orientated; God I Love Living in the Future!

Because, in many respects, it is the future now! Or at least it is according to virtually all of the Sci-fi shows and films that I used to watch (and occasionally still do! X^D) Take Terminator, for example. We've survived Judgement Day! August 29, 1997 came and went. We even got through the revised 2003, 2004 and 2011 Judgement Days! Wooo! We should really start digging on the moon for that Black Block, because both 2001 and 2010 are now in the history books, and I'm yet to see anyone having a Space Odyssey. Although my email account does tell me good morning. Smarmy little bastard. 

And that's kinda my point. We don't have phasers and force fields quite yet, but we're getting close. So in each God I Love Living in the Future!  I'm going to list three awesome things that are real now. And I'm not even going to include the obvious stuff, like how mobiles work a lot like communicators. You can even call your mum by saying "Kirk to Enterprise" into the mouthpiece. Or how the thing that Picard got handed by various Ensigns looks a lot like an iPad. Or even how fond Picard is of Skype. I think it's a bit odd that they never put the two together. Now you can actually video-call someone on a hand-held pad. Which is a little bit awesome when you think about it.

Anyway, enough Star Trek references and onto the good stuff. I've put them in reverse order of awesomeness.

3. Graphene 

Graphene is a new nano-material that was discovered recently. It's 2-dimensional, and superconductive at room temperature. The smaller it gets the more efficient it gets, the reverse of silicon. This lets you have very small computer chips. As in atoms big. And best of all, it's not even rare. It's made of pure carbon. Graphite, the stuff that's in pencils. This, my friends, is the start of nanotechnology. Computers the size of cells. When Intel start making graphene processors, then computers are gonna get hella fast hella quick.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9491789.stm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2103673/Graphene-breakthrough-change-face-electronics.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

2.Brain-Computer Interface 

A Brain-Computer Interface is pretty self-explanatory. Its an interface between a human brain and a computer. It lets the machine read your thoughts. This has many applications, such as getting James May around in a thought-controlled wheelchair, to the exo-skeleton that let a woman paralysed from the waist down run the London Marathon this year, to the robotic arm that is plugged directly into the mind of a totally paralysed woman, allowing her to feed herself coffee for the first time. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, We are the Borg. Resistance is Futile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyrd0uOuyms

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17940201

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17988108

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/16/brain-implant-paralysed-woman-robot-thoughts

1. Synthia

This is the big one. This still gets me excited and I'm a little embarrassed to say a bit emotional when I think about it. I'm a geneticist after all. I'll try not to embellish too much, and just say it plain and simple.

We have created synthetic life. We have written a life form on a computer, and then created it in a laboratory. A species exists now that did not exist before. Not through divine will, but by our scientific knowledge, by our human innovation, by our insatiable curiosity to understand the very nature of what we are, the nature of life itself. And now we do. 

We are the Engineers from Prometheus.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10132762

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoplasma_laboratorium

Exodus, the Movement of the People

There seems to be lots of outrage at the moment about the odd exodus of people from London to random other parts of the country. There was a large chunk of Newsnight¹ the other day devoted to  asking why London councils had decided to dump children in care in towns that were rife with crime. People couldent understand why London would send their most vulnerable children, those who had been placed into care, into situations that in some cases were worse than the ones they left. How is it that there is a high concentration of privately owned children's homes in one small area known  by the police for its large quantities of drug dealers, prostitutes, probation hostiles and registered paedophiles? 

Here's what I think is going on. The government, the people in charge of allocating where the children should go? They don't care. The rent in these places was cheap, and the law said that they had to stash 'em somewhere. So like anyone forced to do tidy-up, they did it in the easiest, most half assed manner possible. Throw some money at the problem, and get the cheapest bidder to do the dirty work. Yay capitalism!  Who cares if a few hoodies get raped? They should of had the good sense not to be born poor. It's just like the parenting classes.² Poor people are just inherently a bit shit. They must be, because they don't even have any money! I mean, you must be stupid or lazy or addicted to drugs or something! After all it's so easy to make money these days, isn't it?

Well no, actually it's not. It's easy to make money if you already have money. If you can afford the police bribes, or the stakes in the giant casino that is the stock market, then yeah, good for you. But if you're working a part-time minimum wage job because that's all you can get, because all the unpaid workfare people have been allocated all the hours that you used to do, then no. Money is not easy to come by. And when the housing benefits get capped, but the landlords are still allowed to charge whatever they want, there is simply not enough money³. And so, Exodus. The movement of the people. Out with you filthy poor scum. Only pure-bred yuppies are allowed to live here. As a council officer declares: "To live in Westminster is a privilege, not a right!"⁴. Personally, I think that says it all. It's an ideological argument, not an economical argument. Economically it's a bit suicidal. I mean, if you can't afford to live in London on a bin-man's wage, then who is going to empty the bins? Who will deliver the letters if being a postman doesn't pay? Who will man the tills at Tesco? Do you all really like self-service checkouts that much?

Of course, there will be those who tell me I'm spouting bollocks, that there is no such thing as class warfare or even class any more. That this is just incompetence and people not paying attention, or being unable to do anything about it because there not enough money, debt crisis, mess Labour left us etc. I don't know, maybe there's an element of that, yes. But as this guy concludes⁵; 

"The government's own impact assessment and academic research makes clear that people will be forced to move because of the changes and central parts of London will to a certain extent become the preserve of the rich with more lower income people congregating in cheaper areas of the capital. "Social cleansing" is a strong term that some readers have objected to. But there is some evidence of a trend consistent with it. "

¹ http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jxx2d/Newsnight_13_06_2012/

²http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/may/18/parenting-lessons-roll-out-country?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

³ http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/28/families-52000-income-london-rent

⁴http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/16/housing-benefit-cap-families-central-london

⁵http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/apr/24/housing-housing-benefit

Are we at the pinnacle of our civilisation?

I wonder perhaps if this is it? This is as far as humanity can progress towards being something like Star Trek's Federation, a glorious post-war, post-money civilisation that can colonise new worlds and spread across the stars. I mean, we just can't seem to keep our shit together. Look at the Euro-zone. Too many voices clamouring for attention, all saying that it isn't their fault. Too much pride. Too much of the blame game. It seems like we can't even have an international game of football without a crap-load of racists being unable to contain their pre-programmed prejudices. 

I feel like I owe some recognition to the hate-mongers there. I mean, that's a hell of an achievement, managing to create a new generation of Neo-Nazis when World War II is still relatively well-remembered across the globe and Auschwitz is just up the road. That's some top-notch brainwashing equipment you've got there. Or did you just find some cryogenically frozen Hitler Youth in a bunker somewhere?

But I digress. Only slightly though, because the conditions that led to WW2 are in fact showing their unpleasantly apparent faces again here in 2012. The massive rich-poor divide. The uncaring wealthy governments forcing crippling austerity on poorer neighbouring countries that have just had their economies crippled. The resulting resentment and racism that occurs when those people are faced with forced austerity. It makes sense, if you think about it. They are told by their weak and out-of-touch ruling elite that while they, the wealthy few are not to blame, you the poor must make a huge change in lifestyle and essentially culture, forced on you by a foreign people and a foreign government with whom you have no control over and whom you find distinctly alien. All it takes then is one person to stand up and scream "Down with the foreign oppressors! Down with the traitor government!" and the rusty gears of the war machine start grinding again.

If any part of that sounds familiar then look in a history book, or go to Wikipedia. Check out "France after world war 1", specifically the " Treaty of Versailles¹". Now doesn't that all sound a bit familiar? If you change the word "war" to "debt crisis" then re-read the article, then it really does start to sound like a broken record. Nations with the upper hand making the nations with the lower hand pay. And accept that they should pay, that they deserve it. That they are mud, and that they deserve to be made to pay because they are in some way an inherently inferior people, as demonstrated by the fact that their nation has the lower hand. Then racism. Then war.

The biggest stinky present that we got from WW2 was nukes. Nukes are bad. Many crappy action movies have demonstrated what happens when bad or crazy people get hold of a nuclear warhead. I dread to think what would happen if Jason Statham doesn't stop the terrorists detonating the Black Hole Bomb developed during the Debt Wars.

¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles

I am tired of being lied to

I really am sick to the back teeth of it. As a British child, I was told to go for my dreams, to "Aim Higher", that I was a "Walking Talking Miracle" and that just by "Working Hard and Being Me" that I could "Be whatever I wanted to Be." Lies. A very cruel deceit, to get us all to buy into your ponzy schemes. To give the numbers that some people seem to need to validate themselves. Honestly I feel ever so slightly brainwashed, filled with ideas and ideals for a world that only actually exists inside some think-tank's conference room. I've heard it said that British young people are lazy, that we believe that life owes us a living. We do not. We were told that if you did this and that, jump through this hoop and fill in this form, that success would follow. So we worked hard. We got the quallies. We went to Uni. We got ourselves the skills that we were told we would need. Because were smart, us Brits. We pay attention. Turns out sometimes we pay attention to the wrong people, because when we walked out from under the sheltering cave of education, blinking against the light of the working world, we discovered the truth. That employers didn't seem to care about excel spreadsheets or SAT scores. That they wanted experience in work, with references and NVQs. Not stupid bits of cream wove card with things like BSc or MA on them. You see we're not lazy, we're in shock. We grew up in Great Britain, only to turn around twice and find the "Great" has been sold off for scrap. We're in the UK plc.® ™ now, were corporations are people, not stupid humans. We're cattle, a commodity, to be traded as stock. The uneducated short-term temporary worker, that's what we're supposed to be. Don't think. Work hard, then go back to sleep. Why else would there be so many jobs that specifically prohibit graduates from applying¹? Apprenticeships that forbid people that hold a degree²? What makes us so damn scary? 

Of course, this is probably not deliberate. This might look like a pre-meditated attempt to segregate those who have gone to Uni from those who haven't, but I don't think it is. I think it's incompetence, of people not really knowing what's going on or what to do. The people who posted those jobs probably thought there was some other scheme for graduates, or that we wouldn't need anything, after all, we've been through higher education, what more could an employer need as proof of employability? They've probably just outsourced that department to someone else, it's the done thing in 2012. Are you a failing government institution? Do you not have a clue what to do? Then outsource! Get a private corporation to do it for you, everyone knows that a pure profit motive is the best medicine for corruption! 

Just look at the Jobcentre's new Work Programme, as outlined helpfully in form WP01MA4¹, which you can download from http://www.whatdotheyknow.com thanks to the Freedom of Information request they sent. Otherwise this information would not be available to the public. You can see that pretty much all functionality with regards to actually finding you work has been relegated to your "provider". You must attend any meeting they make, do any activity that they bid you do. Otherwise your benefits could be sanctioned indefinitely, but a minimum of a month. And in return for all this, you get to "discuss what help you need to prepare for" with your provider. Discuss the preparation for the help? No actual help giving then, just discussion about help preparation. Seems fair. After all, as they insist, "The Work Programme provider will not make you seek, apply for, or have any medical treatment." Which is nice, although I'm not sure why their bringing that up. Is making people undergo medical procedures for their JSA something that can happen now? No wonder they want to scrap the Human Rights act.

The scary part of this is that the definitions for who gets to go on this scheme are so vague. It's deliberately done that way. Anyone who has been on the JSA "long enough". And that's the "accumulated total", the sum of all the days that you've ever been signed on. I was looked in the eye and told unequivocally by a Jobcentre Plus "Advisor" that "everyone on JSA will eventually be referred to a work programme."  

So this is the master-plan of the government; sweep us all under the rug. Fiddle the numbers. The problem with these out of touch politicians is that they haven't realised that the numbers mean things. They are for their benefit, an indicator. Breaking your speedometer so it always reads zero doesn't mean that you are no longer speeding. Closing your eyes doesn't make you invisible. We are all still here, still hurting, still angry. And for the government to add to that pile, and make life for us already at the bottom even more unbearable is either monumentally stupid or ruthlessly suicidal.

At this point I am genuinely unsure which.

¹https://www.wmjobs.co.uk/fe/tpl_wmp01.asp?s=FoQnTYvIgXJoLlXgd&jobid=43795,2357233557&key=11463622&c=788735762334&pagestamp=dbnrdprulwffqnwxot

²https://www.wmjobs.co.uk/fe/tpl_wmp01.asp?s=FoQnTYvIgXJoLlXgd&jobid=44986,5683959840&key=12413681&c=762387581521&pagestamp=dbixqnkzucyzxqnwcb

³ http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/91170/response/227348/attach/3/WP01MA4.pdf

The Jobcentre has now, by actively interfering, made it virtually impossible for me to find work

A while ago I wrote an article about how the Jobcentre only hindered my search for work. I must now update that statement: the Jobcentre has now, by actively interfering, made it virtually impossible for me to find work. And I don't mean the dewy-eyed, graduate-worthy type of work I so desperately wished for in my last article. I mean I'm trying to get work temping in a call centre and they are actively getting in the way. 

Since my last article I have abandoned all hope of ever using my degree in my career. Or even of having a career. Fate has decreed that I be born into a lost generation, and I have come to terms with this. My dreams are dead, and now I'm just trying to get by. Life can be cruel, but this I accept. After all, I'm not starving, and thanks to the few weeks I spent temping I can actually pay all my bills, which is pleasant. I wasn't even too bothered when that time ended, and I had to face the Jobcentre again. After all, I had found work. I had proven that I could get a job, and off my own back, since I had found the work myself through social networking and an agency. But I was expecting the Jobcentre that I left. Not the Jobcentre 2.0. At first it seemed normal. I was suspiciously interrogated about the numerous methods that I use to find work, and then pushed to lower the standards of my jobseekers agreement towards ever more menial jobs. But then something new, or rather a new face of an old enemy; I was referred to the Work Programme. Even though I had found work, even though this was day 1 of my claim, back to the forced volunteering. When I protested, asking why, I was told like the idiot I obviously am, that it was the accumulated total that they took into consideration. So even though this was day 1 of this claim, because I had spent more than 6 months on the JSA in my life, I was eligible for referral to the Work Programme. In disbelief I asked why this was so, and was told in no uncertain terms; 

            "Everyone on JSA will eventually be referred to a work programme." 

Everyone. Including, I imagine, all the people who have been "re-assessed" from their disability allowance. If your of an older generation, and have ever accumulated 6 months time on the dole in your whole life, then the Jobcentre now considers you incompetent and in need of "re-training." After all, you must not know how to wash your hands, or to not swear in an interview.

The icing on the cake was when my "Adviser" shoved a piece of paper under my nose and said "Sign here." When I asked what for, she said "to confirm that you've read and understood the referral letter." The same letter that she still held in her hand. The letter that she refused to give me until after I'd signed the legally binding document stating that I had already read and understood it. I know I shouldn't sign things under coercion, but I have been threatened before by my adviser with benefits sanctions of up to 13 weeks for "refusing to co-operate with Jobcentre staff." I may have had a few weeks temping, but to lose all chance of getting any JSA for 13 weeks could put me below the poverty line.

And so now I'm stuck with this stupid Work Programme. Again. My agency tells me it's very important, if you're temping, to be immediately available. They keep asking me if I am. But I'm not anymore, because the Jobcentre have put me on this Programme. I am unavailable for work because of the Jobcentre. How can an institution tasked with finding people work, after taking a substantial chunk of the taxpayer's money as their budget, actually destroy peoples chances of finding employment? Would it not be more economically stimulative simply to divvy up the Jobcentre's budget amongst all the unemployed, and give them all a list of numbers for local Job Agencies? 

At least they could afford to eat.