Gripes, Technology

Outsourcing to India

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A few years back, I had a dream. That dream was web design.
Sadly I can hardly put two colours together without them looking hideous, and I have no sense of visible style whatsoever. Combined with my lack of knowing any programming languages, I was on to a bad start.

This is where I roped in my best mate, who was very good at coding, made some nice looking websites in his spare time, etc.
It was a plan which couldn’t fail.
Except that I couldn’t sell any web design, we had no budget to start up, and my mate went to university and had no time to work on this.
It was then, we dropped the idea.

Not a great deal of money was ever spent, but we had bought a web domain name.
I still have it now, wondering if I might have a use for it one day, for some other purpose.

Every now and then, I get an email from a company asking me if they can help with my outsourcing needs. At a guess, I’d say we’re still listed somewhere on a web designer online directory or something.
Today I received an email which said (names changed):

“Hi..

I am Reginald, Marketing Manager. Somebullshitcompany.

I have been through your site and can see that you are offering Web Development services to your clients. In these tough times, where it is hard to maintain the topline, we can help share the bottom line for you.

We have a large team for both Web Design and Development in INDIA which can execute the campaigns at a much lower cost than what you have in house.

Do let me know if you are interested and I would be happy to send in more details.

I look forward to your mail.

Kind Regards”

Normally I delete these things, but I was slightly amazed by this one.
He says he’s been through my website?
Actually taken the time to look through all the pages?
But all it says on my website is “This domain name is for sale. Email for details”, with an email address that is only used for this potential domain sale.

The lying swine! He’s not looked through my website at all.

To add insult to injury, at the bottom of the email was a grammatically poor signature about how they don’t send unsolicited mail.

I decided to break the habit, and reply.

“Hi Reginald,

Thank you for contacting me.
I’m glad you have looked through my website at www.old-unused-domain.co.uk, and have seen all about my organisation, what kind of work I have offered in the past, etc.

As you have been so completely honest with me, I feel I should be honest with you.
I have read through your email carefully, and have seen that you can outsource my sexual needs to India. This would seem like a lot of work on my part, but as I find the ‘look’ of Indian women attractive, this might work to my advantage.

I would be definitely interested in these services (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and wonder if you could send me some form of catalogue, so that I might look through and pick my favourite to be my wife.

Thanks a lot.

Dave”

I await their reply eagerly.

Daily Life, Gripes

Teeth

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As a younger geekier person, I played a computer game called Beneath a Steel Sky. A lot.
Near the end of the game, you (the main character) insert a circuit board into a rubbery lifeless thing in a laboratory, and complete its transformation from silicon, to android.
Upon awakening, it near-instantly asks ‘when do I get my accessories? Nails, hair, teeth? etc’ to which you reply something like ‘forget it – they’re more trouble than they’re worth’.

It was this morning that this seemed most true, as I sat in the Orthodontics section of Bristol Dental Hospital, waiting to be seen.
There’s apparently no shame in adult dental work, and there’s a lot more adults having braces than ever before.
That said, they have no ‘adults’ orthodontics section, and I was directed by the receptionist into a room where I was the oldest person there by around 15 years.

I sat there, surrounded by the coloured sofas, random toys, and collections of parents temporarily bereft of their offspring, trying to steady my nerves by browsing the net on my iPhone and checking out what Ariane Sherine was up to on Twitter.

But then, I don’t know if it’s my lack of sleep, or if I’m really that paranoid – but I started to worry that this looked quite bad.
Me, a single childless man, 20-something, in a room full of children holding effectively a camera.
I started waving it around so there’s no way I could focus for a photo if I wanted to, but then it could have been the new 3GS model with the video camera.
I covered the screen but then it seemed like I had something to hide, so I angled it down towards my crotch so there’s no way I could be taking photos of young children. There – THATs fine. Oh no, wait!

My social angst was disturbed by a nurse calling me into a different room, and I’ve never been so glad to go in to a room full of dentist chairs and drills in my life.

I was ushered into an office-type square, and the orthodontist introduced himself while the nurse offered to take my coat. Thinking she wanted to take it away somewhere, I spent an age trying to remove my car keys from the pocket, joking “not that I think anyone’s going to steal them, but it’s the most expensive thing I own”. She then took it and hung it on a hook 2ft from where I was standing.
I reintroduced myself to the orthodontist so I could actually catch his name.

And then we had a bit of a chat. Me not knowing what notes he had, he immediately told me braces were an option.
I thought he was some kind of genius for being able to diagnose me without even looking at my teeth properly. Or maybe he had really good eyesight. I for some reason tried to talk without opening my mouth as far, as if testing his ability.

He got out the tiny mirror on the stick and had a proper look at my teeth, and told me it looked like I had at some point had a tooth removed. I motioned the symbol for “two” with my fingers, inadvertently flipping him the V-sign. I don’t think he noticed/minded.

First, the news I liked hearing. My teeth are fine from a hygiene perspective. A sticker and a lollipop for me (if I were in fact a child).
More good news followed.
If I don’t want braces, that’s fine. He doesn’t think my teeth will all fall out, or realign themselves vertically while I’m asleep.
The tooth fairy will have to look elsewhere to mine their raw materials. (What the hell do they do with all the teeth anyway? They can’t ALL be rounded off and made into Tic Tacs, surely?)

That’s where the good news ended.
I mentioned I had seen a woman in the paper (some wife of..some..celebrity. I don’t follow celebrity news much) who had near-invisible gumshield-type braces (known as “Invisalign“), nobody knew she had them, and now she had lovely teeth.
Sadly, such braces would be no good for me.
They could possibly straighten the top teeth a bit, but they would then be even more out of place with the bottom ones, and more noticeable.

I then commented that you could have them on the inside of teeth, so people couldn’t see them. (Oh yeah – I’ve done my research.)
Sadly, they’re complicated, require a lot more work, and quite commonly have to stay on longer.

So how much work would be involved in the horrible metal, front-hanger-on ones then?
Monthly checkups, rubber band adjustments, and I’d need to keep them on for two and a half years “at least”.
I’d likely need another two teeth extracted, and worse still – that would only straighten them.
It would require x-rays to be sure, but to fix my overbite may involve an operation to realign my jaw. That sounds painful to me.

On the upside, having braces (of the non-“Invisalign” variety) makes no difference to vocals, so it wouldn’t stop me cocking about on radio.
Or harm my successful singing career or 27-octave range.

The real kicker is that it has no health/medical benefit to me whatsoever.
My teeth are perfectly healthy, and if I choose to just keep on brushing, they’ll remain able to chew my food, bite people on full moons, etc.
No. IF I do it – I’ll be doing it entirely for cosmetic purposes.
I commented to him that I had no intention of being a soap star or a male model, as if either would be possible even with slightly straighter teeth.

Essentially we’re back to where I was when I saw other people with braces at 13-14 – worrying a lot.
Who will take a 27-29 year old man seriously, if he has braces?
When I launch my business soon, given I already look younger than I am and I think people like to buy from people who appear experienced/knowledgable, would having braces make me look even younger, and/or scare them off altogether?
Do women prefer a man with teeth that aren’t straight, or a man with a mouth full of scaffolding? I might never have sex again.
If I lived in America, I’m sure I’d have been forced by law to have them done years ago, but in Britain, does anyone really care that much?
Can I really bring myself to go through all of this just for straighter teeth?

The only time I really worry about my teeth is when I visit the dentist, or when I’m really tired or upset about something unrelated.
And even then it’s the last thing down a very long list of moans.
“…and I’ve got no money, no hope, I’m fed up with life, my car needs a service, I’m boring, “My Name is Earl” has been cancelled, I did a shit radio show three weeks ago………. and I’ve got bloody horrible teeth”.
Years ago, I mentioned to someone I was attracted to about my teeth, and they quite openly told me they’d never even noticed.

Bad teeth do run in my family. My dad has terrible teeth.
And my siblings have teeth-related issues, though luckily none of us have any real plans to have children, so I guess the buck stops here. Well, not right this minute – in 50 years or so.

I guess it’s something to ponder on, and likely do nothing about.

The orthodontist gave me some leaflets before I went. I don’t know if it was deliberate or an unconscious act, but THIS one was on the top.

Random Silliness, Technology

You have been invited to: Windows 7 Launch Party

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I’m probably a bit late to the party (pun intended) on this one, but I couldn’t help but watch this video earlier, advertising launch parties for Microsoft Windows 7.
If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ&hl=en&fs=1&]
(Originally posted at Cabel)

So is it a fake?
According to this website, Microsoft are indeed having launch parties, and have partnered with another company to organise this.
They show a still of the original horrible video on that page.

Also, if you were making a fake commercial for something, that’s fair enough. Plenty of people have. That’s not too difficult with enough people and some half decent equipment.
But the Launch Parties channel on YouTube has loads and loads of videos, subtitled for different languages.
Much as I’d love to believe it’s some Apple fanatics that have deliberately made some fake Microsoft videos, the idea of them making over ONE HUNDRED seems a little absurd.

So that must mean that this IS a real video. Not just that one either.
THIS other video really does have a man utter the line “let me show them to you, then give you a chance to fool around with them yourself”. Begging for a porno re-edit, I’m sure you’ll agree.

So these videos, in all their shabby, badly-acted, really-tedious, long-winded glory, really are all made by Microsoft – the biggest, most profitable software company in the world? I’m still trying to take that all in. It can’t be, surely?

Gripes

Why are we so hung up on ages?

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While that might sound like the legal defence of a secondary school teacher caught with one of his pupils, it’s actually a wondering about the media I’ve had for a while.

Apparently, BBC Radio 2 is no longer serving it’s older listeners properly.
Although reported here by The Guardian, this has been discovered by a not-at-all biased organisation called “The Radio Centre”, the trade body of the commercial radio industry, which doesn’t seem to like something the publicly-funded BBC has done. Surprise, surprise.

The Radio Centre is bickering about what it considers proper “news”. As far as I’m concerned, while “newspaper reviews, a discussion about snoring, a Monopoly championship and discussions about teleshopping” definitely sway towards the “Sun spot” edge of news, they ARE still news. If you want high brow continuing debate about Afghanistan, you can tune into a higher-brow station such as Radio 4.

Traditionally, presenters that remain at Radio 1 for a very long time, then shift to Radio 2. It has been described more than once as a kind of retirement home for Radio 1 presenters.
Keeping that in mind, is it any wonder that Chris Evans, and Mark Radcliffe have ended up working there? They’re both fine broadcasters who were successful on Radio 1, so why not move to Radio 2 afterwards?
This isn’t a new idea. It’s what happened with Steve Wright years ago, and nobody is harking on about him bringing younger listeners to Radio 2 along with a dose of the factoids.

The Guardian article both agrees that the BBC isn’t filling it’s remit for different types of music, while berating them for hiring Mark Lamarr. This is the same Mark Lamarr, who was hired to present specialist music shows on Reggae, and alternative sixties music.
Ignoring his age, and the fact he was once on Shooting Stars (which was presumably only popular with young people?), he’s a well-known broadcaster hired to talk about a specialist subject. Why has his age got anything to do with it?

This is where the real problem lies. The obsession with age.
This isn’t the BBC’s fault, or the Radio Centre’s fault. It’s a bigger problem than that. Every media organisation is obsessed with the ages of viewers, readers or listeners.

At what point did someone decide that 16yr olds like one thing, and 46yr olds like another?
I’m 27, and according to Ofcom, Original 106.5 (an FM station in Bristol) is aimed at “35-59year olds”. My music taste hasn’t changed dramatically in the last few years, and I can tell you that it is much more to my taste, than say, Kiss 101 which is specifically targeted at the “under 30s”.
I occasionally even listen to Radio 4. It’s got some comedy on it, I’ve recently discovered.

Maybe it’s just me? Just me flouting the predetermined age-based entertainment formats?
Well no.
My girlfriend has been listening to Absolute Radio (and previous incarnation as Virgin) for years. Her gran is in her 80s but still reads The Guardian, with all it’s swear words and young writers.

Adam Fawcett (@fawcett94), somebody I follow on Twitter due to our shared interest in radio broadcasting, regularly tweets about his tv viewing habits. He’s 15 years old.
So what should a 15yr old be watching? MTV? BBC Three? E4 perhaps?
The majority of the time it appears to be Gold. Classic comedies from yesteryear.
Mad!

Clearly ages don’t link well to formats. TV critic Charlie Brooker, proved this during an episode of Screenwipe, about “Yoof Tv”, where he put together a young focus group. Here it is:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hR-A_ppO5o&hl=en&fs=1&]
Young people hate what they’re meant to like. Weird!
This is because, as Charlie puts it, “they’re not weird and they’re not young people – they’re just people”, and “they just want decent programmes”.

This is why Radio 2 is successful. It’s got presenters people like, it spends money where it’s needed (undoubtedly a lot on the popular presenters), and it’s got a big pot of gold to spend. It can tweak and alter program types, and styles and doesn’t seem to get told off.
If it wants to play latino music at breakfast, and soul music in drivetime, it seems to be able to.

Meanwhile, commercial radio stations continue complaining about the BBC’s more varied content.
Heart Bristol (previously GWR) were given a good telling off by Ofcom recently, for straying outside their agreed format. That is, they described themselves on the official station paperwork as being a “contemporary and chart music” station, and over the course of several days, played around 50% of songs “over 2 years old”. I can’t help thinking that seems ridiculous.
Ofcom are silly for holding them to it, and GWR/Heart are silly for going along with it in the first place.
While I’m sure the last 24 months have been the high-point of music history to-date, surely even people obsessed with the charts might like to hear Beyonce’s and Shakira’s songs from previous albums.
This might go some way to explain why some stations seem to play the same 20 songs all day, every day, in a different order.

If you ask me, they all need to look to the BBC’s example for inspiration, and maybe lobby Ofcom for less fixed rules, rather than berating them for attracting more listeners, while plugging on with the same 30mins-non-stop r’n’b with adverts in between, long after anyone cares who is number one in the top 40 this week.

Gripes, Technology

Powerpoint celebrates 25 years

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This week, Powerpoint reached a quarter of a century old. I bet that the celebrations for it went down like for my recent birthday – quiet, nobody told, and with all the phones switched off, as they try to forget all about it, lest anyone realise they’ve been flogging the same product for about 20 of those years.

I’m an Apple fan. I’ll get that out of the way right now.
I own an iPhone, and I love using a Mac. They seem somehow simpler, less trouble, and yes – they’re incredibly stylish.
I don’t hate all Windows-based PCs, but being generic combinations of components can cause problems. (Although I’m biased as I worked in IT support almost exclusively for Windows machines, until last year)

Initially Powerpoint was a Mac-only product. If this had remained the case, it would have been axed by now, or substantially rewritten/redesigned.
The software is old, boring, and it’s also misused.
People feel the need to put in random animated effects (they’re all terrible), that haven’t been used in the mainstream media since probably the early 80s.
Anything that gives people cause to use Microsoft Office’s dreadfully-weakly-drawn clip-art is a bad thing, and swooshing sound effects are a mistake in any office situation.

Surely it’s not all bad?

I’ve sat through one enjoyable Powerpoint presentation in my entire life.
It was the first day of a training course, and it was enjoyable because they had used a copyrighted piece of music illegally. It’s the first and only presentation I’ve seen that has used a Fatboy Slim track in the background.
That also gives you some idea how long the presentation was – it was all finished in under 5minutes to give a basic overview of the corporation, before moving onto something else.
The rest of the course only used Powerpoint to show photographs of screenshots. Everything that wasn’t visual, wasn’t included.
Well done.

The last Powerpoint presentation I sat through, had a lot going wrong for it. Aside from the earlier mentioned bad clipart (is it some kind of legal requirement?), here’s the three main reasons it failed in my opinion:

1. The person doing the presentation wasn’t the person who created it.
For that reason, there were sections where she actually said “I’m supposed to do X now, but I think it’s silly so I’m not going to bother”.
That seems bad for a presentation, but it was made worse by the explaining of everything that we would have done, had she not decided we wouldn’t.
As it happened, I agreed with her – it was a stupid idea.
But surely the correct thing to do there is either do the activity, or don’t do it and hide/delete the slide.

2. It was ridiculously generic.
I was being shown the presentation in one office of a multi-site business.
At one point, there was a slide that explained about the Y system, which featured in some sites.
The speaker announced that this wasn’t relevant at the site we were in, but then continued to explain what it was anyway.
On the one hand, you could say they were being helpful – but on the other hand, it’s completely pointless for me to know this information. It will be of no future use to me whatsoever.

3. It wasn’t really needed.
There were maybe two things in the entire presentation that had associating photographs. During some of the health and safety section, there were photographs of what can go wrong. Not gory, but interesting.
Aside from that, every other slide was used to show bullet points that (mostly) linked to what the speaker was saying.
Some of them weren’t obvious as to what they were though, so if you only remember what you see visually, you’ll still be none the wiser.

I should add that it wasn’t entirely the speaker’s fault. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that I hadn’t slept well, and so had a lot to drink to keep me awake.
This meant when she said “there’s only 10 slides left”, I was mentally calculating whether I could last until the end of the presentation (based on how long it had been since the last slide-count update), or whether I’d have to excuse myself to go to the toilet for the second time so far.

What other option is there?

10 years ago, when I was in college, a module required I do a presentation. Me and the rest of the students worked together, and collectively presented it to department heads and other non-teaching staff.
Part of this was done in Powerpoint, but with a lot of diagrams and things that couldn’t be easily explained verbally.
There were also written handouts (which were NOT just print outs of the entire Powerpoint presentation) given to audience members.

Not to blow my own trumpet, but far and away the thing that stood out as being different was my part.
Essentially we’d been struggling to find me a task for the project, with a lot of bases covered.
For the first two weeks I’d done very little, but a few days before we were due to make the presentation, I’d discovered and downloaded this relatively new piece of software, called Macromedia Flash (now known as Adobe Flash).
I’d learnt some of it, including motion blur animation, and worked out how to let the user move things around on screen, and so this became my section.
Where we had otherwise used photographs, I made a section that was interactive, and invited the audience to have a go with it.
Instead of showing them photographs or bullet points about the internal components, I could actually let them drag off covers, remove screws (it was an engineering course) and unwrap it themselves, albeit it in a basic manner compared to what Flash is used for (and capable of) nowadays.
Despite my fear of public speaking and performance, that was the best module of the entire course.

Powerpoint have any competition?

Sorta.
You can make basic presentations in Google Presentation (part of Google Docs – http://docs.google.com) for free.
Because it’s based online, you can share it with people all over the world too, if you should need to, and they can view it in any browser without installing additional software.

For something portable that doesn’t require an Internet connection, check out Apple Keynotes (http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote).
It works very similar to Powerpoint, but it’s got considerably better transition effects, basic 3d animation, and fancy mirror reflections.
Just look at this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Advv481lk&hl=en&fs=1&]

There’s different tools for different jobs, but I think if you don’t have anything visual to show (bullet points AREN’T essential), don’t use Powerpoint.
That said, photographs, pie charts, and other visual information needs to be displayed in some way, and Powerpoint is easy for that. Powerpoint can embed audio and video though, and run external software, so you don’t need to limit yourself to crappy Microsoft clip art and 1980’s transition effects, even if you stick with it.

Daily Life, Gripes

OTT on security? Bad management?

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I’ve just been to the Job Centre to sign on, as it’s that time of the fortnight.
There was two queues of people waiting at reception (two members of staff working on it), and I suddenly had a wondering: Why do I have to queue at reception?

I queued regardless, because everyone else was doing it.
When I got to the front, they asked who I was, I said I was there to sign on at my appointment time, and they asked me to take a seat.
This is what they did last time.
They don’t write it down, or make a note of who I was, so what was the point of asking?

I pondered this point some more while I was sat down in reception waiting to be seen.
As I was doing so, a black guy wandered in and had the sheer audacity not to join the queue, and attempted to just walk into reception, where he’d presumably have taken a seat and waited to be seen for his signing-on time.
He was immediately approached by a running security guard complete with uniform, walkie talkie and everything, to ask who he was.
He explained calmly he was there to sign on – and was that alright?
The security guard glanced him up and down, and then checked for invisible backup behind him, before negating to actually tell him whether this was OK or not, and wandering off.

Several questions crossed my mind really.
– Why do they need security (there is 3-4 of them)?
I’m assuming they have some money somewhere in order to pay people in emergencies, but I doubt it’s in reception.

and perhaps more importantly:
– Why do we all have to announce who we are, if we know the prior procedure already, and they don’t do anything with that information anyway?
Not only that, there’s two people at reception. It would be only one if they were just using it for actual general queries, which would free up an additional person to carry out the signing, reducing the wait (and workload of other staff) further.

Business, Gripes

Pringles! Once you pop, you can’t stop..paying VAT

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I’ve been intrigued by this case for a while.

For anyone not following the story, basically the facts are these:
– In the UK, you don’t pay vat on most food, but you do on salted peanuts, crisps, and other “potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch” (VAT Act 1994 (from Sky News’ article)

– For that reason, last year, the makers of Pringles attempted to get them reclassified to pretty much anything else, so they could get out of paying VAT.
They succeeded legally in proving that Pringles weren’t a crisp, because they have such little potato content (around 42%). They also argued that they had 33% fat and didn’t taste like potato.
That’s just been overturned, so they will now have to pay VAT.

More details from Sky News here.

Now I’ve got several problems with this.
I’m amazed from a PR perspective, that in this day and age where people want to know what’s in their food, with the rise in natural/green products and organic food, that they’ve run a huge legal campaign marketing how little actual natural ingredient is in their own product.
Can you imagine Renault attempting to say their latest car isn’t a car, because it goes half as fast as the competition? Because it’s half as comfortable? Because it got less than half in the NCAP safety tests?

Whether Pringles want to admit it or not, they ARE marketed as crisps.
They’re in the crisps aisle with the crisps, and the biggest single ingredient in them is potato.
They’ve been plasto-moulded and duplicated to look like a crisp would look like if you attempted to draw one.
Nobody has Pringles AND also crisps, at a party.

That is unless they’re planning a party for me, as I hate the things.
I’m no gourmet chef, but they do sum up everything that gives processed food a bad name. They’re high-fat, low-content, overpackaged, uniformly-identical products and almost completely tasteless.
For me, they fall into the same category as Sunny Delight and Cheese Strings. It’s food made to look a certain way, then heavily advertised in attempt to make it cool.
What it tastes like or is made of, is a long way down the list of concerns. The difference between these three products though, is that Pringles’ is still considered somewhat cool.

Maybe that was their plan all along.
As a crisp, a Pringle looks horrible from all angles on paper – it’s high in fat, and low in potato. It’s a very poor man’s crisp.
Essentially it’s a well-marketed Tesco Value crisp. It’s got no potato in it and it doesn’t taste of anything.
Nobody would want sausages with 42% pork, or teabags with 58% “other ingredients”.
However, if you can convince people they’re really not a disgustingly-poor imitation of a REAL crisp, but they’re actually *anything else*, it’s suddenly less of a concern.
Maybe they’ll add 1% oats into the packet lining next and attempt to classify them as flapjacks.

If you want cheap crisps, buy own brand. If you want more expensive crisps, buy Walkers. If you want posher crisps, there’s Kettle Chips/Burts.
If you want something with 33% fat and 42% potato plus a whole load of other crap, Pringles are definitely the way forward.

Daily Life, Gripes

Phoning the benefit helplines

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Oddly enough, when you claim benefits because you’re not working, they don’t instantly assume you might also want to claim for housing/council tax.
Jobseeker’s Allowance is dealt with by Jobcentre Plus.
Housing benefits/Council Tax benefits are dealt with by your local council office.

Currently I’m not receiving either.
When I switched from “Employment and Support Allowance” to “Jobseeker’s Allowance”, I got a letter from the council saying that due to a change, they weren’t paying me anything anymore, until I gave them various forms of proof of earnings again.
I took them down on the 21st April, and I’ve heard nothing since.

As today is over 3 weeks later and I’ve heard nothing, I thought I’d give them a call to check how it’s progressing.
There’s a nice recorded message saying any new claims or changes to claims are taking 35 days to be processed. Nice.
It tells me to press 9 for an operator, which I did. At which point the line went completely airy. Not quite dead, but nothing happening either.
I hung up.

At least the council offices are Bristol-based numbers though. I can call them from my mobile using my free minutes.
Jobcentre Plus’ phone number is an 0845. I don’t get it free from my mobile, and even the shared landline in my house will charge me to call it.
I do find it slightly ironic that a helpline for unemployed people, isn’t free to call.
I’ve had a look on www.saynoto0870.com and it’s not listed on there, sadly.

What makes it worse though, is the hold music.
When the call is first answered and you’re put on hold because they have high call volumes (absolutely all the time), you’re treated to 40 seconds (I got a stopwatch out) of the first movement of Vivaldi’s baroque classic ‘The Four Seasons’.
At which point the on-hold woman interrupts to tell you how they’re still busy, and to call back another time.
But then, instead of dropping you back into Vivaldi where she left you, the tune restarts.
The first 40 seconds again, and she’s back to give you the opening hours again. Back to the start again, and so on.

I don’t know why, but this drives me mad.
I’m not a huge fan of classical music really, but the first 40 seconds of a tune over and over is incredibly annoying.
I’ve found myself on more than one occasion going “OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE PLAY THE REST!”

I left the phone on the table in the end, went and got my iPhone and recorded it via audioboo. Apologies for the quiet nature of it, but come on – how annoying is this, on loop?
Listen!
(Direct link to it, here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/19710-jobseeker-s-boo )

Daily Life, Gripes

Signing-on

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Just had my first real, legitimate, on-the-right-day signing on session at the job centre.

Upon arrival, I was given a questionnaire, which unfortunately for them had questions with multiple choice answers.
The answer options were “highly satisfied”, “satisfied”, “unsatisfied” and “highly unsatisfied”.
Really I wanted an option in the middle called “meh”. As they didn’t give me one, there were several unsatisfieds in there.
The last question asked if I’d be happy to take part in a focus group to give my opinion of the job centre. Fuck it. Why not?

I filled it out, and then I got a little confused.
The woman who gave me the questionnaire said to fill it out and return it to her. She promptly disappeared. When I asked another member of staff where she’d gone so that I might return it, I was told they didn’t know who she was, and she didn’t work for the job centre anyway.
Have I just had my identity stolen or something?

At the actual signing on session, I was told off for not opening and presenting my details in the correct manner, as they apparently only have 3mins for each person.
As she entered some of my details into the computer, she said she needed to see my jobsearch book, so I found it, opened it on the right page and put it in front of her.
She then asked for the jobsearch book, in a surprisingly moody manner. I pointed to where it was on the table, open.
She closed it, read the number off the front, then told me it would speed things up had I opened it on the right page in front of her.
Frankly that’s an argument I can’t be fucked with before noon.

Then I got a little bit of a further bollocking really.
Here’s part of my actual jobseeker’s agreement:

They seem to enforce some parts but not others.

I mean “phone 2 employers”? Who does that? Email/letter perhaps, but I’m not going to waste people’s time asking “you got any jobs going?” when I can just look on their website and see for myself.
Ask “people I have worked with before”? The ones who fired me?
They don’t enforce those bits, and at the moment, they don’t enforce the “apply for 2 jobs per week” bit, as in some areas, there aren’t that many jobs.

What I got the most of a bollocking for was the section that says “I will take 3 active steps each week to look for work”.
I’m not being creative enough with my answers, because I was told today that this would mean they look for at least 6 rows of things.
Yet, they count contacting Jobseeker Direct (Job Centre’s own jobs website/phone line) as one thing.
In which case, where I’ve put “updated CV on Monster, Reed and Jobsite”, presumably that should be 3 things in 3 rows? I’m a fool, clearly.

If I get invited to partake in this focus group, I’ll be sure to tell them just how silly I think some of their rigid rules are.

Daily Life, Gripes

Living in a shared house while claiming benefits

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Yesterday, I was very proud of myself.
I’ve tidied my room, I know where everything is, and I’ve closed an A4 ringbinder as it was full, and started an A4 lever arch file on my shiny new life of employment. Well I’m unemployed at the moment, but more optimistic about actually finding someone who wants to employ me in a job that doesn’t make me want to kill myself.

Today, desperate to piss all over that dream, I get a letter from Jobcentre Plus.
Here it is.

Obviously I’ve removed any of my secret details, lest anyone should steal my incredibly boring identity.
They want it back within 7 days of the date of their letter, yet their letter is dated Tuesday. As it’s now Thursday, that’s 3 days gone already, if I fill it out and send it back today.
I can’t help thinking that seems slightly unfair, but I’ll attempt to let it go.
Clearly I’ve not done very well at that, as I’ve written this blog post about it.

They sent me a lovely form with it to fill out. Wanna look? Well, alright then.

Click to enlarge.
If you still can’t read my writing at the bottom (and I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t), it says:

“I have detailed the answers to your question on a separate sheet, which I have also signed.”

Frankly, I’m a little fed up of answering this question.
During my initial call about claiming benefits back in November-December, I told them over the phone I lived in a shared house. I was told by the second-nicest person I’ve spoken to so far, that unless we were related, a family, or I was married to one of them or something, it didn’t matter.
Even if they pay me for electricity and I pay the electricity bill from my bank account – nobody cares.
It’s only a shared house, after all. Pretty common in modern city life really.

I’ve had varying answers to this since. Claiming both housing benefit and Jobseekers Allowance results in them collating different information, and they treat things in different ways.
At a jobseekers interview, on the 16th April, I was told I had to list all the people living with me, and if they gave me any money.
I’m sure I’ve done this before. I remember writing some figures into boxes, and listing that one housemate owed me money for back electricity.

So this, is what I wrote in my separate letter (recreating their form partially in the process), and sent this morning in answer to their questions (names and some places changed to protect the innocent. Amounts of money removed):

My answer to your question (which I have already notified both you and the benefits office of several times), is too complicated to fit into the small boxes you have provided me with.
As such, I’ve decided to write you this separate document instead.
I hope this satisfies you.

My name: Ben Park
My National Insurance number: xxxxxxxx

1. Who makes the voluntary payment?

– Derek, for his son Jim.
– Edna
– Reginald (not as regularly as I’d like)
and
– after 1st May – Betty (prior to 1st May, this was Arthur)

2. What is their relationship to you? (if only you knew how many times I’d answered this fucking question)

None of these people are any relationship to me. I am not related to any of them. They are people who live within the same 4 walls. We don’t share food or bodily fluids. I don’t have children with any of them, nor intend to have children with them.

3. (and 4, 5, and 6 combined)

Every month, I receive around £xx from a man in Columbia called Derek, via Western Union money transfer.
He is the dad of one of my housemates – Jim.
This money covers Jim’s electricity/gas (which I pay on behalf of the house), and his council tax. I DON’T pay his council tax. The council tax is paid by my housemate Edna. I pay around £xx per month to her, on Jim’s behalf. She then pays this.
This was originally set up because Jim’s dad has to pay a fee for every payment transferred, so doesn’t want to pay everyone in the house separately.
Frankly with the hassle it’s caused me, I wish I’d never agreed to it.

Every month, I receive around £xx from Edna. This is to cover her electricity/gas for the month.

Every month, I was receiving around £xx from Arthur to cover his electricity/gas for the month. He moved out of my house on the 30th April, and has been replaced by Betty. She has not paid me anything yet, but will be paying me the same around-£xx that Arthur paid.

Every month, I should receive around £xx from Reginald. He lives in my house, and owes me for the electricity/gas. He has got behind with his payments, and currently owes me (I believe) somewhere in the region of £xx. He has no plans to move out, and is attempting to repay me in stages. I will be hassling him again about this shortly.

I pay (currently) around £xxx per month to Wankergen for providing our electricity and gas. This is on a monthly payment plan that averages over the year, but could rise or fall at any point. The occupants in my house (4 excluding me) give me 1/5th of this, each month.
All of the money I receive each month, goes to Wankergen for electricity/gas, or Edna for council tax. None of it is kept by me.

7. Are you expected to repay the money?

Edna pays for the council tax for our entire house. (Currently) around £xx, per person in the house, per month. £xx of what I receive from Jim’s dad, I give to Edna for his share. I also give her £xx for my own share.

So, just to clarify again:

– This money comes to me, and goes to either Wankergen or Edna for my/Jim’s share of the council tax bill she pays.

– NONE of these people are related to me. If I got in debt, they wouldn’t help me out. They live under the same roof because none of us can afford the £1000+ per month rent on our own. We don’t eat together. None of them help with my current situation.
If I’m unable to pay my rent, buy food, or do anything else because the DWP/Jobcentre keep asking me to fill out more forms about things I’ve already told them, thus delaying my payments, they won’t help me in the slightest.

I will repeat your own declaration here, for your own procedures.

– I understand
That if I give information that is incorrect or incomplete, action may be taken against me.

– I declare
That the information I have given here is correct and complete.

And signed and dated, as per their original form.

I think purely on a style basis, they’d give me some good points for my sarcastic rant at the end of question 7.
The anticipation of what pure joy they will send me next, is killing me.