stella41b
Posts: 4258
Joined: 10/16/2007
From: SW London (UK)
Status: offline
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If in our next General Election a supermarket chain like Tesco's entered as a political party I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if they won either.
I've personally witnessed the Tesco Effect in the south of Poland, where you can tell what items of clothing are on promotion because everybody's wearing them and walking round like clones.
Make as much money as you can, pay as little as possible, and before you know it you will be working, shopping, boozing, fucking and not much else.
And you'll be so busy you won't really notice that the milkman doesn't come any more, that the pub closed down not long before the post office, and not until your life changes.
Because there will be no more work. You will have been replaced by a Moldavian electrician who came over with half his village and lives with half his street in a room no bigger than your bathroom and who is prepared to work for half your wages.
And so you look for work and you get yourself down to the Job Centre, but the only real vacancy you can find, in among the hundreds of different employment agencies who want your CV, resume, CRB check, passport, two forms of ID and proof of your last change of underwear is a trainee shit shoveller at a large sewage treatment works near Scunthorpe. You want to apply but you don't have a shovel.
And so you make a claim for Employment Support Allowance, and you walk two miles to the office (much further than you thought it was) and you wait in line to see a security guard at reception who gives you a form and tells you to go and first make a telephone call at the Benefit Processing Centre. And you turn and see the three phones attached to the wall, in use by three other people and a queue of another twenty people waiting. And so you go back to the security guard.
He asks you to wait in line, and you wait another half an hour to get back to the reception desk, and he asks you if you have made the call, and you tell him that you haven't. He asks you why and you point to the crowd of people, now around thirty, waiting by the three telephones. He writes down a freephone number on a scrap of paper and tells you that you can make the call from home.
And so you rush home, and you make the call, the call is answered by an automated message which lists options, and you choose the option for fresh claims, then another option for the benefit you think you are entitled to, and then another automated voice asks you to wait for a Customer Services Adviser..
Three days later and twenty attempts later you get to speak to an Adviser, who asks you questions to fill out a form over the phone, previous employment, are you in receipt of benefit, do you have a bank account, why did your last employment end, do you have a house, are you married, single, divorced, do you have children, how many rooms in your house, how many bathrooms, which room are you standing in whilst you are on the phone, do you have savings, shares, PEPs, equity, gold, official state secrets, and about fifty other meaningless questions. You are asked for bank details. You feel like you would win the next edition of Mastermind.
You wait for the form to come through the post to sign and send back, but meanwhile you are requested to attend a Work Focussed Interview at your local Job Centre, taking with you details of your last employment, your P45, your passport, two utility bills, your tenancy agreement or home ownership paperwork, the contents of your dustbin and a change of underwear.
You turn up for your Work Focussed Interview at the Job Centre, queuing to meet the same security guard who sends you to a room where you wait with twenty other people ten of whom have the same appointment time as you. And so you wait an hour or so and you are called over to a desk. You think this is the interview. No it isn't. You are given more forms to fill out, your availability for work, details of your skills and employment history, and a 'stencil form' to check that you have residency and citizenship.
You fill out the forms and eventually, another hour or so later, are called for your interview. A civil servant asks you questions while typing on a keyboard and looking at a screen. You are asked about your work, what work you are looking for, how little are you prepared to accept as a wage, and how much you are prepared to be exploited and shat on by a prospective employer or employment agency.
You are then asked if you are working. You tell them no, and you are asked if you are available for work. You tell them yes. They ask you to sign a form mounted on a cardboard rectangle which constitutes your file, they write out a signing on booklet, give you a desk a day and a time by which you are to sign on, pointing out that to be entitled for benefit you must be available and actively seeking work, you must apply for as many jobs as possible, including the shitty jobs they have at the Job Centre, you must keep evidence of your job search, you must look at local newspapers, you must visit the Job Centre regularly, and you must get down on your knees and grovel and pay homeage to the Great Leader Chairman Broon for giving you the chance of receiving government money.
'By the way I have a vacancy here you may be interested in,' the civil servant announces, 'Trainee shit shoveller at a sewage treatment works near Scunthorpe. It pays minimum wage. Do you have your own shovel?'
You wait weeks for your first payment.. so happy that you will again be able to continue your lifestyle of shopping, boozing, fucking at the government's expense. You even have your eye on a woolly hat at Primark on special offer so you can at last walk the streets proudly as a chav.
You get a call from the benefits people. They have processed your claim but they need to send you a Giro, and they want the details of your nearest Post Office. So you give them the address, and they tell you that that particular Post Office has been closed down. So you think of the next Post Office, and again they tell you that that Post Office has been closed down. This happens until you wonder whether there is such a thing as a Post Office. The official finds you your nearest Post Office, five miles away in the middle of a rough council estate. Then the official asks you for the post code of that post office she has suggested for you from her list. You don't know it. She regrets to inform you that this may cause a further delay in your claim being processed.
A month later, when you have signed on twice, and have been offered the job as a trainee shit shoveller twice and asked if you have a shovel, a brown envelope appears. Overjoyed at last that you have money, you tear open the envelope expecting to receive a Giro. Instead you receive a letter which is titled, 'About Your Claim' and which details how much money the government has decided you will receive. No Giro.
You are now desperate. In fact, you are so desperate that on the way to the benefit office you go by way of your nearest Argos store to check out the price of the cheapest shovel and if it gets you a Giro, you will apply for that vacancy as a trainee shit shoveller in Scunthorpe.
You wait in a queue at the same Job Centre to see the same security guard who suggests you make contact with the Benefits Office. He points to the three phones on the wall and tells you to press Button C. And so you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and you get to use the phone having waited all day, and you get through, you get the automated messages, and you get through the automated messages to received another automated message.. 'Welcome to Job Centre Plus. We regret that then offices are now closed...'
You go back the next day, to the same Job Centre, determined that the first thing you will buy when you do get your Giro will be a shovel, but you are not sure whether it will be for shovelling shit or for hitting staff at your local Job Centre, or both. You pass the time on your long walk to the Job Centre by thinking up as many uses as you can for a shovel. But this time it is easier. Much easier. You get through the queue, speak to the same security guard, who informs you that the offices are closed due to industrial action.
You wake up the next morning and find that there's another brown envelope. You tear it open frantically.. out pops a green rectangular shape of... a Giro. You are excited. You get your documents and head out for the post office on the rough council estate five miles away. You figure that you will make it by five thirty easily. You get to the post office to find it is shut. You go ballistic, you smash the door with your fists. A passer by comes over and asks you what's wrong. You show them the Giro and explain, and they point out to you that on Saturdays the post office closes at twelve thirty.
You go back on Monday, you cash your Giro, and you realise that by the time you pay your bills you have enough for a couple of 2 litre bottles of White Ace Stomach Stripper Cider on special offer at 99p at Lidl and a couple of packets of Rizla cigarette papers.
This affects your lifestyle dramatically, so that you are boozing part time, poncing cigarettes and masturbating .. oh and walking to and from the Job Centre..
Try to imagine yourself in the above scenario. What will you do then? Vote for the Tories?
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