Job Seekers Allowance – Part 2

A quick update on the situation

The system is still fooked.

After the plebs in the job centre had told Suzanne that she didn’t qualify for Job Seekers Allowance  because she hasn’t contributed to the National Insurance Fund in the last two years, even though she has actually contributed to the National Insurance Fund for the past twenty years, we gathered together her P60 returns and as requested posted them to the JobCentre/Benefits office in Leeds so that they could correct their fekkwit computer.

It was posted 22nd May.

Video Saturday – Steve Earle

No-one else will like this, I’m the only one around who likes this sort of thing, a songwriter who is so good that he doesn’t need a gimmick, doesn’t need to dress like he’s a shop dummy, doesn’t even need a backing band to cover up his mistakes, he’s just singing his song, you either like it or you don’t, it doesn’t matter if you don’t.

I could sit at my desk most evenings with the headphones on, one desk light illuminating a painting in front of me, and this sort of stuff playing on rotation.

Illustration Friday – Adapt

“… I’m just saying thats all George, I’m just saying, they’re getting pretty good with these traps now and it always seems to be me who gets to grab the cheese, I’m just saying, maybe we should look at a different diet…”

DoingItForChris

Like the new logo ?

Its for the t-shirts for our 147 mile bike ride across the North of England in July to raise funds for Wheatfields Hospice in memory of our close friend Chris who died from a brain tumour back in March full story here.

“But what is it ?” I hear you all scream.

So I put on my best Brian Sewell air of arty-farty superiority and I explain in the most condescending tone possible thats firstly it has three zones representing the three days that the bike ride will take, which isn’t exactly true as we’ll be lucky to fit two and a half days in, but still.

The line across the three zones represents a remarkably accurate pictogram of the hill profiles that we climb and descend as we make our weary way across the top of England, I haven’t shown this logo to the lads yet and I don’t intend to until we actually get to the start line, if I showed them that profile line now then I’d be the only one on the start line on July 17th.

The logo also cleverly serves as a route map to any who will get lost, all you have to do if you are lost on a moortop somewhere is to stop a local person and ask them what day it is and with this  information you can indicate the  relevant box and ask them to point to where on the route you are right now.

I think of everything me.

PS, on one sleeve of the t-shirt will be my very own design logo that goes on everything I do like this, its the logo of the design studio that I have built inside my wildest dreams, the design studio with the name ‘kincats, for that is what the sneering dog is saying…

I only have 27 of these t-shirts to make…

The Elephants Graveyard

It would be around 1970, in fact I’ll tell you exactly what year it was because The Stones “Brown Sugar” was in the charts and on all the music stations, wait here while I visit Wiki…

It was 1971, August 1971, the holiday in the elephants graveyard.

Our dad was nothing if not adventurous, for most people the words “summer holiday” conjured up visions of Blackpool or Scarborough or another British holiday coastal resort that was less than 70 miles from your home for 98% of the population had still never ventured out of the country at that time unless they had served their time in the war, or similar.

Die a jello ribbo roun ze oo-oakdree

In 1981 my parents discovered Benidorm.

Suzanne and I were actually with them at the time, we spent a week at The Hotel Bristol Park in Benidorms “old town”, we were young, in our twenties, my parents were old, in their sixties, Benidorm is the town of a thousand night clubs and sing-along-bars, a town of 24 hour-a-day boozing and merry-making.

Guess which pair enjoyed Benidorm and which pair thought it was the worst place for a holiday, ever ?

It used to be like this…

Now that we don’t have a ha’pennys to scratch our arse with, its fun to look back to times when we didn’t care too much about money, didn’t care because I just went to the bank and got some more if, nay, when my wife and two hungry daughters demanded it, which was at least every weekend and often throughout the week too.

I’m currently shredding a load of old paperwork having almost finished cleaning out the “official” office and moved into my “home” office now – it used to be the dining room but it sounds fancier if I call it “the home office” now, sounds like its actually a completely different room somewhere else in the house rather than a small dining room that is now dominated by my huge executive desk making other family members have to eat off their knees in front of the TV in the sitting room.

Susan Boyle – take 2

OK, lets stoke the flames again

This perfomance is what I’d expect from a woman in a pub who’s been shoved up on the kareoke machine against her will …

Whilst this is what a professional singer does – campare and contrast

Now tell me that Susan Boyle is not 100% hype by a TV Production Company who rely on fekkwits to pay a fee to ring in a telephone vote…

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I’ll be hiding over here in the coal bunker.

Joined-up thinking at the Job Centre

I’ve worked with Job Centre staff for many years in the past, still do, we sell support services to them and I could fill a whole blog with experiences of wastefulness, unproductive work practices, uncompetitive purchasing methods and downright incompetent-ness, I could but I won’t because of course I have benefited financially from such things over the past fifteen or so years and I don’t want to be thrown off the gravy train just yet.

But here is just one example of the joined-up thinking that goes on inside Her Majesty’s Civil Service, specifically HM’s Job Centre staff.

Illustration Friday – Cracked

Sometimes cracked can be a good thing, agreed George