| Dr. Dolescum
You know, as I write this, I am kinda on benefits in two different countries and have also dodged tax in two different countries in the last few weeks. There are no things to be proud of nor are they anything to be ashamed of. The money that "scum" like me costs the government is the equivalent to having a pish in Loch Lomond. In fact it's worse than that because I go swimming in Loch Lomond sometimes and, deep down, I'm a very selfish man and don't want to swim in your pish.
So while we spend £1billion a year on the illegal war in Iraq, the "energy industry" goes out of it's way to take turns raising prices while you lot fork out for their over priced black oil AND the war which was started so we can get more of it. We have billionaires, millionaires and "British" companies that have so many offshore accounts and accountants scouring the world for loopholes in tax law so that even someone who's spent most their adult life watching Jeremy Kyle has paid more taxes than them but you can choose, if you wish, to hate me over them. I refuse to give a fuck. Compare the close to £10billion lost on these fuckers to the £800 million fucks like me took last year and we really are nowhere near the main culprit in fucking this country over. I'd put the government, the upper class, the rich, the captains of industry, the police, The Sun, and people who buy out of season fruit and vegetables as far higher up the list of people who deserve to be lined up against the wall than guys and girls like me getting a £50 p/w more than we're "entitled" to. And, seriously, next time you buy dodgy booze or fags, next time you download an album or a film or go to the pub to watch the football on that mad Arab satellite channel ask yourself if the taxes lost on these criminal endeavours cost as much over a year. They do. You're just too pig ignorant to know or too much of a pussy to admit you're being an ignorant prick as well.
It wasn't meant to be like this. I was gonna be a teacher I think. I've honestly forgotten what I wanted to do when I was in school. I knew I was gonna go to university to do something quite tedious. I almost believed in that "work hard and get a good job" nonsense other people with their head in the sand like to believe. (Oh I know your uncle's mate Stevie got a job making tea at a building site in 1983 and now makes £5,000 p/w teaching Nigerians how to milk their nation of it's own resources while a fat cat in Essex makes millions - To be frank I'm a better person than him as well because I don't work for a system that pays ignorant natives pennies to put their life on the line so my bosses can order the finest brandy at the Groucho.)
I got kicked outta school (like the A-Team for a crime I didn't commit) and, thus, did not go to university. I decided to go to college so I could continue on my unstoppable march to the higher echelons of education so I could make my mum proud. This is where it all started; my life of "crime". While at college I realised I didn't fancy it. I was 17, I didn't wanna do much apart from drink, play music, play football and fuck. Nothing much has changed really apart from a growing love of cricket and baseball. While at college during a break I spent a week wearing a dressing grown, drinking and fucking. I was a jakie Hugh Hefner but my face didn't look like a shorn scrotum. I didn't want to go back. But I'd need to go back to get my loan and bursary that fueled the cider drinking debauchery. I enjoyed the work I just didn't enjoy being told when and where to do it. Would much rather have chilled out and written essays when I wanted. The world doesn't work like this sadly. It was what I learned in college that turned me into a Marx-reading pansy-assed liberal tho' so I'm blaming them. Even if my own course of action is not the most "collectivist".
What surprised me was how easy it was to forge a signature; I'm amazed I never learned how to do this years ago. Regardless I only did that for a year, to get my college money, before I decided to go and find a job and I had a great wee routine for a while. Which involved working in a factory for a month, until my contract was up, do every single minute of overtime available and then you didn't need to work for a couple of months. Was like working on the rigs without the need to go anywhere near Aberdeen.
While here I found myself more and more disgusted by temp agencies, big companies and the idea of "employment" in general. For a scamp like me working for a month then being told to leg it until they got another order in from China in three months time was perfect. For the guys with mouths to feed back home, or the guys who had been there for years, getting sent packing with no redundancy or notice was as sickening as it is now, thankfully, illegal.
So fuck it. I decided. There were a lot of people in Greenock who far deserved these jobs more than me. Deserved is the wrong term. No-one deserves a job where you break your back all day half in fear of losing it at the end of the month or where you work eight hour shifts four days a week, followed by four hours overtime, and twelve hours overtime on your days off just incase you do get let go. There were men and women who needed it more than me. Men doing this for their kids never got a chance to see them. You could see your kids or go to the factory: Family or work. No other options allowed apart from the dole. You can't feed your kids on the dole no matter what the government tell you (unless you cheat it) and no matter how much right wing scaremongering you hear about girls getting pregnant just to collect the benefits no-one is actually that stupid. Girls get pregnant because they fuck guys who don't know when to pull out. I'm telling you now showing 14 year old guys nothing but "facial" porn for a week will see the amount of teen pregnancies drop significantly than any other form of sexual education.
So I took myself out of that job market. I knocked back temp agencies left, right and centre. I refused to accept interviews for factories and call centres any more. Being an upstart wee socialist I didn't want to spend my life working for the man. So, misguided or not, my initial reasons for refusing to work were political and moral ones. Perhaps I felt if I could persuade more to do the same we'd have some kind of general strike on our hands and the companies would be forced to pay us our true labour value. In hindsight all that would happen is they'd leave us in the lurch and underpay Vietnamese and Cambodian children instead.
Since that I have been able to find work that never bothered my ever increasing social consciousness. I worked as a barman, and loved it, for two years as well as finding other stuff here and there (albeit mostly voluntary). I did go back on my word and worked for Scottish Power and then, again, for a temp agency for IBM to fund a trip to Australia so anyone deluded enough to think that my continuing violation of the wonderful welfare state Lloyd George and Atlee helped build up continued on these grounds will be dismayed to find out it only took the promise of surf and Sheilas to make me sell out. That's not to say, however, I enjoyed doing that and I did feel ashamed during it. More so than I ever did screwing the government. Getting more money out of a government than you put in can't be all bad if that government is New Labour. Two wrongs never make a right tho' and it would be easy for me to boast that I paid nothing towards the war in Iraq or Afghanistan but that also means I paid nothing towards hospitals, schools, social services and all the good things governments do.
I was offered jobs but made more money not working, even when I wasn't cheating the system, so didn't see the point. I don't suppose it's of any difference to anyone here but I usually did charity work a couple of times a week when I was doing this and had up to four or five direct debits coming out of my account to various organisations. What's more, to this day, I don't see the point in working in a job I wont enjoy. I can't fathom those who do unless under dire circumstances. But I digress. That was a back story. Here's how you do it if you so wish. It's simple, straightforward, sometimes risky and, mostly, fairly obvious.
If you really wanna make money from the buroo you need a job. This is to build up a bit of money. You need money to fuck them over royally.
Get a job, any job, do it for a month. Try not to drink, smoke, enjoy yourself, anything. Save up as much as you can. Buy TESCO Value food and get used to it. You need to save up money. As soon as you have enough money for a deposit and one months rent you can get into the scamming process but I'd recommend having enough money for four months if you can manage it as it can take time for these things to go through. Fucking paperwork.
OK. While working get a flat. As many bedrooms as possible. Once that's all sorted leave your job and sign on. The buroo, in my experience, very rarely checks up your past employer as you aren't really allowed to sign on if you quit. An idea is to figure something out so it's a mutual decision and then they'll "let you go".
When you sign on apply for housing benefit. It's a piece of piss. If your big ass West End flat is costing a bomb they probably wont pay for all of it but they will pay for a big ass chunk of it. But you're getting a shite amount of JSA which wont cover the rest.
Some places say "No DSS" and such. Well you can ask for the housing benefit to be sent to you, via check, so they need not know and, truth be told, they wont care if they still get the rent and you had a job when you took over the flat. But what to do with these spare rooms?
Flats are expensive. Rent them to your pals at about half the usual going rent. They'll snap it up and you'll be up a few hundred quid a month which will cover your extra rent costs and give you some spending money. You could make them pay the bills too but I'll come back to that later.
So there it is. You and your mates have a shit hot flat and you're loving it. Your friends get cheap rent. You don't pay any of it (the council and your mates see to that) and you got nothing to worry about. Apart from a few things obviously. Here's how to get round them.
1 - Council Tax: DO NOT REGISTER TO VOTE. Most councils check names against this for council tax and, even without registering, you will get caught eventually (albeit a bit later) and this is where you get fucked up because, legally, your friends don't live there and only you are responsible for that flat. Never register anything with your flat. Get your bank statements and granny porn subscriptions sent to your mum's. Not having a "paper" trail buys you plenty of time and, if you do this well, you'll be gone before they get you. IF they do get you just say you're skint and you'll pay it back £5 p/w: They need to accept this and they can't ask for more. In fact you can cancel that direct debit a few weeks later and it'll still take them a couple of months to notice.
2 - Licence Fee: Don't pay this until they come to your door. It's often an idea to have a form all filled out waiting for this to happen. Firstly it might not happen and if it does, you can hand them it at the door and ask if they can send it off for you. They do. Also if you have cable or Sky just put on your best Paisley accent, act stupid, and say you thought the license fee was covered in what you were paying. They'll pity you and leave you alone. As with most people these guys aren't bad and just doing a job. Even if they know you're pulling their wang they can't be arsed with the hassle that goes along with doing anything about it.
3 - Energy Bills: Don't pay them. I've never paid one. Never let a meter man in your house (pretend you're out). I've never been chased up and I've never had my power go out. Maybe I'm lucky. Not everything I say in this will be gospel to be fair. So don't blame me when you're arrested.
4 - Inspections: The worst part. Your landlord WILL want to inspect your flat. You WILL need to hide any evidence of your friends having been there. This is a hassle but not impossible.
5 - 13 week review: This is a piece of piss. Do not worry about the 13 week review. After signing on 13 weeks they will "re-evaluate" your JSA. All you need to say is "I've perhaps been naive in my job search", "I was being too narrow at first but now circumstances dictate I should expand my job search", "I'm going to say whatever you want to hear and you don't care because it's only a 13 week review and no-one gives a fuck".
6 - 6 month review: DO NOT get to this stage. After 5 months you will do EVERYTHING in your power to get a job. There are benefits about the 6 month review. First of all you can get put on New Deal that gives you a wee nest egg to "help" you find work. You can get new clothes, top up cards, driving lessons, a bike, a haircut, razors, make up, whatever you can convince them will help you find work. I managed to get a baseball bat for fuck sake. You also get a "back to work bonus" if you find a job after 6 months but it's not worth the hassle because of New Deal. For New Deal read: slave labour. You get an extra £15 p/w for basically working for a company when, if they were willing to hire people in the first place rather than wait for government handouts, there would be no fucking need for New Deal. If you wanna get these New Deal benefits take them and find a job quickly. They will be really pissed off, and will look to stop your claim, if knock back New Deal "opportunities".
7 - Move: Don't stay in the one place too long. Six months to a year before getting a new flat to do it all in. Try not to use the same letting agent.
So that's it. Skive like a bastard for a few months, work for a few months. It only fucks up when you get greedy. For the love of god don't do any "work" while doing this either. The amount of money you might end up scamming could lead to heavy handed slaps on the wrist.. like going to prison. Not worth the extra money.
But, alas, not for me anymore. I just felt, like Obi-Wan, it's time to pass this information on to some padwan waiting out there. Since Fordism came along the division of labour killed off any pride in most people's work. I helped build the biggest computer ever created but it means nothing to me. All I did was test a few motherboards that ended up going into some of the servers. I'm insignificant. Of course a computer that size would be impossible for one person to build but when you work for a faceless company and your part in a finished product is so minute then why care for such a job? If you get disenfranchised with one job that can fall into a struggle for motivation for any work but that struggle for motivation to find work, however soul destroying, pales into the comparison of doing nothing.
The apathy of sitting around with no reason to wake up or get dressed can strangle and smother you and you ended up spending a week in a sleeping bag hopping between bed, the toilet and Pro Evolution 3. Listless strolls, just to get outside, would inevitably lead to the off license or a dealer when I should have been writing a song or painting a picture or going for a swim. If you think a comedown or hangover at work is bad you're an idiot. On those occasions you have something to aim for and if you can survive the misery and pain until clocking off time you can get through it. With nothing to aim for these moments can last days and the only way out seems to be more of the same. I spent years delaying the inevitable whether it be a hangover, come down, work, being skint again, etc. and that really, really fucking got to me eventually. So much so I knew I was trapped in that rut and would need to fuck right off to get over it. Sadly that ended up taking me to Jersey: An island so void of excitement their big day out is basically a bunch of cars covered in flowers slowly meandering down a street. Tasty birds tho'.
The one thing that never got to me, that never will, was people calling me lazy or workshy. As they trudged off into the rain to sit at a desk talking to idiots I got used to drinking cider and playing guitar. When it was sweltering outside and they were stuffed into a shirt and tie I was on the beach eating badly cooked sausages and drinking cider. It's not a perfect way to live your life. It's not for everyone. It's not for me anymore either but it was for a while and I'll look back on my misspent youth with no regrets and plenty of good memories. It's not the worst thing you can do in the world and it's not as morally repugnant as bending over and getting fucked in the arse by billionaires and, in turn, fucking those worse off than you. It's not as bad as that but it might, just might, destroy your soul just as much.
Any jobs goin' back home?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/03/09 - edit to add:
I've had a few people ask about the 13 week interview in the last few weeks. I guess this credit crunch piss means a few more will be signing on more often and for longer. The 13 week interview is not designed to be something that accuses you of doing fuck all. It's there to help you. To look at your job search and re-analyze it. Just go in and don't worry about it. Here a few phrases to help you on your thirteen week interview
"No-one seems to be hiring just now"
"I'm looking to expand what I'm looking for"
"I've even started looking at bar work or something to tide me over"
"Do you have any information on any training courses I could apply for?"
Also, just found this one out, if you're over 25 go to the relevant website and find out if you're due tax credits. Just googling tax credits will take you to the page. Always worth a swatch. |
