Benefit Busters

Have you been watching this?? I'm hooked!


What are they like at A4E?? That poor guy last week who got the job and then was 'let go' after a couple of weeks! The way that old guy spoke to him when he walked out to save himself from death by boredom! The tutor sitting in front of a room full of desperate people without jobs, completing his paperwork!


Where were the basic skills classes? Where was the ICT training? Where was anything except humiliation?


It all makes me so mad. And sad. And outraged. There are people out there milking the system, there's no doubt. There are also lots of people who want jobs, and who are made to sit in a boring room all day looking through the few same job adverts over and over, demotivated and patronised. How does that help them?

Is all publicity good publicity for A4E or will the govt look at the programme and think: hmmm, not such a good system after all. Let's actually give them something to do...

Passive aggression anyone?

Being passive and being aggressive...hmmm, aren't they mutually exclusive?

Don't you hate it when someone makes up a technical name for something when they could just say sulking or obstructive or obnoxious or just bone idle? For that very reason I've made great use of passive aggressive recently as a term of light-hearted abuse for Barney. Neither of us knows what it means, but it sounds impressively 21st century.

Try this fun quiz to determine whether or not you're affected by any of several personality disorders. Well, I thought it was fun anyway...

Diggin' an 'ole

We have a hole - well, holes - in the road outside the house, courtesy of the electricity board, or whatever they're called these days. There are many orange barriers which many men come and lean on at various times, gazing into the depths of the holes, looking for...what might they be looking for? There are also road cutters which are revved into action outside Sweetie's bedroom window about 9am and which do not please her one little bit...don't they know it's the school holidays? is the gist of her complaint.

Meanwhile the Guardian reported that in Scotland, 'Louise Brown' (you'd think at 91, she'd merit a 'Miss' or a 'Mrs' before her name) is on the brink of borrowing her 25,000th book from Stranraer library and is running out of large print items to borrow. I'm sure some would direct her to the talking books collection but, while I'm a big fan of talking books, it's not the same, is it? There are times you want reading matter piped directly into your head and times you want to curl up with an actual book. Go on, Stranraer, buy her some more.