Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Positively speaking

I'm far too gloomy. Things are going to be all right, and everything's going to be OK. I know this much is true, because generally this is how these things work out. It's hard to remember, when you're in the middle of a losing streak, what it's like for things to go your way; but you have to remember that they do.

I'm trying to convince myself, but I remain sceptical, even as I type the words. Sure, I say to myself, it's all very well saying that things are going to improve, but with no evidence that they will, how can you believe they will? I suppose you can look back on times when you felt that way about other things, and situations improved, but then how can you be sure that will repeat itself now? But it will, I reply, it will. Things will get better, and this angsty nonsense will be just a memory. It's the attempt to replace fear with hope. It's the idea that things will go right, because they ought to, because they should, rather than because there are any indications that they might.

Is it better to be told nothing or to be told something? I don't know. I got an email yesterday from a supermarket, as I'd applied for a job there - 16 hours a week picking things off shelves for home shopping, from 3am to 6am - but was told the same old "However, on this occasion" niceties. The pleasant lady who wrote to me - well, I assume it was the same email copied and pasted to everyone, but still, I found the wording less brutal and somehow more comforting than usual - said that she was sure (sure!) that my hard work would pay off and I'd find something to. I imagine all the other no-mark failures like me were temporarily prevented from feeling the same rage of inadequacy. I don't know.

How the fuck do you turn something like that into a positive feeling, a pleasant sentiment, a thing that makes you feel better about yourself, rather than worse? Well, I have thought about it. You have a lot of time to think about things when you're unemployable, as I am, and you do get a chance to be philosophical, as well as to pointlessly ruminate endlessly about where you went wrong. But if you can be philosophical, rather than dwelling on where you went wrong and wondering whether it's ever going to go right for you again, you can try and salvage some positive things from the wreckage.

So I look at it like this: any sense of misguided entitlement that I may have had before all this began is gone. And that must be a good thing. I realise that I'm not entitled to a job, I don't deserve a job, I shouldn't be 'given' a job. No-one should 'give' me a job. I should get one. I should take one. I should fight for one, and win one. And when I do get one, I'll be more grateful than I used to be, when I took working for granted, when I grumbled and complained about how awful things were working where I used to work. I'll just be pleased to have some money and to be able to know where it's coming from, and not look ahead two or three months with a sense of dread and hopelessness. I'll be able to look my partner in the eye and feel I haven't let them down or failed them; I'll be able to feel better about myself, that I can work.

That's all positive, I think. It may have taken this experience to change my attitude a little, but I feel I am changed. I feel I am much more humble and much less arrogant about it all. I realise I don't deserve anything. Having qualifications and a degree don't matter, if you haven't got the right experience. Sometimes having the right experience isn't enough. Sometimes having the right experience, the qualifications, the degree and being really good at your job isn't enough. Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time and give the right impression to the right person.

So there it is. That's what I take from all this. There are a couple of ways of looking at it: I could sink into despair and think that this is a new low, a new shame, a new humiliation. Or I could think that this is just what I've needed for some time, to make me appreciate the things I do have, when I get them back. Whenever that is. I suppose it's easier to take the first approach, to be helpless and hopeless, and I don't criticise anyone who does, because I know I've done it. But I am trying as hard as I can to think the other way.

Stranger to the seasons

A great poet* once wrote "A man without a job is a stranger to the seasons." And I can see that. One day blurs into another, and one week blurs into another; if you keep the curtains closed, you don't even have to be troubled by the other human beings outside. Days and weeks pass by, without any significant change. The rejection emails stack up; it's got to the stage where I'm getting rejections for jobs I can't even remember having applied for.

Ah well. Let the phone ring: one thing you learn early on is that nothing good ever comes from phone calls during the day; it's not someone trying to give you a job or help you out - it's someone who wants your money. Everyone wants your money when you're unemployed. You're bombarded by daytime TV telling you to blow it all by playing online bingo, or try and get some more by claiming for an accident you haven't had. All the adverts merge into one, too. Soon there will be people combining online bingo and accident claims in one handy website; play bingo while you're waiting for the compo for that broken leg. And slip off into the usual trance, the usual distractions that keep you from achieving whatever it is you want.

I don't want to sound depressing, but there it is. There's no point in me pretending this is fun, because it isn't. I'm sure you could do better, if you were me. You'd have found something by now, got on your bike, off your arse, and done everything I haven't done; I can sense the disapproval, the probably not misplaced cynicism. But it's not as if I haven't been trying. Applying for jobs nowadays is a tortuously long process, as I've said before, and can't be speeded up: if you want to do a decent job on each application, which requires you to enter your name, grades, ethnic origin and membership of professional bodies (whatever that's supposed to mean) over and over again, as well as spinning your straw into gold in the personal statement section, it takes time.

It's like having a job, but without the money. Or the job.

Anyway, Christmas temping work is the latest wheeze to distract me. I've applied for as much as I can find, but I'm not entirely hopeful, I'm afraid. There are many, many people round here who've been recently made redundant in retail, who are probably better placed than me to fill those vacancies; still, I put the applications in, and should I get called to interview I'll try to display my desperation as enthusiasm. Long gone are the days when I was optimistic about applying for positions whose adverts contained words like "commensurate". Now I just want a fucking job.

I haven't been standing still. I have a plan, though it may take some time: I want to do a PGCE, to teach in a primary school. I've done some weeks of experience, and I've loved it. In four weeks of working in schools I've felt happier than in 12 years of journalism; I don't feel like I'm winging it, or somehow deceiving everyone, or that I'll be found out as a fraud at any moment - I feel like I can do this, in time. It's not easy, and I have every respect for those people who do the job, which is demanding and challenging. But it feels like the right thing to do, and something that I can be good at. I guess you either know or you don't. So we'll see. I'm doing everything I can to succeed there.

In the meantime, I'd just like a job. Any job. Anything. Anywhere. Something I can do. Get me out of the house. Give me the watercoolers or the freezing cold warehouses. Give me the office banter and the canteen. Give me people. People, and life, and the feeling of being part of something, of doing something worthwhile, something that matters. Give me back the seasons. I miss them.

* Ralph McTell

Unlucky

"Further to receiving your application form, I have to inform you that on this occasion you have been shortlisted but due to the number of applications received we have had to randomly select applications for interview. Your application has been placed on reserve, and should we not find a suitable candidate we will get in touch with you. "

I thought this kind of thing was a bit of an urban legend, but apparently not. Still, it's nice to know that after two hours plus of filling in an application form for something you really want to do, your chances of even getting an interview depend on random chance. That makes it better, but at the same time so much worse. Getting a job is just a game of bingo. I wonder how many other recruiters do this kind of thing, but don't tell you about it; I wonder how many other applications just got shoved in the bin because I just wasn't lucky enough.

I was wondering whether to reveal the name of the people who did this, but then thought, why think about things? Why not let fate decide? So as luck would have it I have a 2p coin handy. Heads, I tell you who it is. Tails, I don't.

Tails.

Bugger. Ah well.

40mg

One of those things, I suppose. I don't mean to abandon this blog to meandering about being unemployed and generally bleating about stuff - not that you haven't had fair warning over the past few months that it might turn into that - but that's how it is, so that's what I write about. I wish it could be different; you probably wish it could be different. Remember when I was funny? I think I do, just about. I'm sure there'll be a time, in the not-too-distant future, when I can just get back to blogging about funny stuff, or writing the kind of thing I used to write. But it's hard to get back on the horse, for me, at the moment. I'm still writing things for the New Statesman, by the way, and some of them are not entirely disappointing; so I'd go there and have a look if I were you.

Anyway, you reach a point, amid all the endless typing of CVs and job applications, when you start to think that you might not get another job at all. It seems likely that I will. But it's hard to convince myself of that, sitting here, right at the moment. It takes, on average, two hours to apply for a job at the moment - you have to fill those forms that want to know the exact date you started school, every subject you ever took, every job you ever worked at, and so on - so multiple applications are right out. Maybe someday someone will invent a standardised application form that you can just fill in once, that will suit every job. That might make it easier.

In the meantime, it's such a long, laborious process that you end up seeing yourself as a very specialised data entry clerk, repeating the same phrases and the same words over and over again, to meet the demands of the same kinds of job descriptions and person specifications. Yes, I am flexible, you say; yes, I can prioritise my own workload, you say. GIVE EVIDENCE. So you give evidence. And then, when you feel you've ticked every box, crossed every t and dotted every i, you send it in, hours later, having written a minor masterpiece about yourself; and you don't hear anything back at all, and you begin to think, this really isn't working out, is it?

Don't write about it, though, I can hear you saying. Don't write about it. Don't write about the fact that this is a tedious process and you're not very good at getting jobs. What if a potential employer searches you online - what will they find then? Well, what they will find is this, I suppose, and I don't have a problem with that. I don't mind admitting that applying for jobs is hard, with very little reward, and that occasionally the amount of effort required, compared to the eventual rewards you might get from the position, is pretty disproportionate. I don't mind anyone knowing that. You don't advertise for a job slightly above minimum wage (for which people nonetheless need 'substantial experience') and expect it's going to make someone's dreams come true and fulfil them as a human being; at least, I don't think you do. If you do, then god bless you.

But I will write about it. If I didn't write about it, then that would be worse. If someone can't be bothered to read a CV, if it's really too hard to pick the bones out of that, if an application form is more important, then are they really going to bother to search for me online, and find this? If you have, well done. And well done for getting down this far. I wonder how much further you might go. But I don't mind. Hello. I'm a human being. You know the bits where I said I was enthusiastic and flexible and hardworking? Well that's all true. But it's also true that I really need a job. Just give me a job. Give me a fucking job. Give me a job.

Then that is to assume that jobs are something to be given and taken; to imagine a sense of entitlement, which I don't really have. I don't deserve a job more than anyone else. I just want one. I probably want a job more than a lot of people, now that I've been without one for a long time. But maybe not as much as others. I try to imagine, sometimes, the kind of people who make it to interviews ahead of me, or who get selected in interviews ahead of me. Did they go to better schools, or universities? Are they older, or younger? More attractive? More lucky? More confident? Do they come across better? Did they lie on their applications? Are they just better for the position? I don't know, but I am curious. I wonder sometimes. I suppose I should wish them luck; many of them are going to be just like me, and the fact they end up with a job with be something precious and happy for them. I suppose I should, but I find it hard.

And in the meantime, the title of the blogpost might have given you a clue as to what else is going on. Some of you who've made it this far down - and thank you, by the way - might have read a few things in the past about me being on antidepressants. (Again, don't write about it, I can hear you say - but I must. I have to. I don't care if a potential employer knows this or not. If it meant they didn't want to employ me, then I wouldn't want to work for someone like that anyway. So it saves us both time.) Well, I have had to up the dose. The weeks of not having work have felt like a heavy load. Sometimes it's felt like disappointment, and sometimes it's felt like despair. Sometimes it has just felt OK, like nothing, like a glass of water, and that's probably the most dangerous feeling of all: the time it feels all right to be like this is the time to worry. This isn't all right. This isn't good enough. This isn't what I should be doing. I should be doing something - anything - rather than this. But mainly it has felt sad and dispiriting. I am a little broken. Not lots. Please don't panic. Not lots. Just a little. Wouldn't you be? If you wouldn't, well done. And so, I have had to do something about it.

Whether it's a placebo effect or not, I am feeling better already, and more productive - hence actually writing this, rather than days of writing nothing. Probably the main spark is that, as before, it's the admission of needing help that is the main thing. If you struggle on thinking it'll go away, there's a chance it might not go away, and it might get worse. Not always, but sometimes. So I have made a decision to do something about it, obviously in conversation with my GP, and we'll see how it goes. Locked and loaded. Maybe this will be temporary; maybe it won't. It doesn't matter either way; it just matters that it is happening.

I write about all this because I can. So I do. Looking back on the past few weeks, it's been really hard to write. Time was when I wrote three or four posts a day; now you're lucky to get two or three a week. So when I have the ability to write, I write. There will be a time, not so far away, when I won't have to worry about all this, I'm sure. Things will be better. I almost certainly don't doubt that. But in the meantime, I'm afraid it's difficult for me.

And that's that.

Classy

This recent delightful bit of fan mail

Whats the problem? During your next middle class socialist dinner party I am sure the network will look after you. Stop whining and stop trying to give the impression that you and your ilk ever suffer in the same way that real working people have to deal with real unemployment. You are a joke. We, the real working class (not the people who don't want to work) despise you and your type. Just go away we don't want you.

got me thinking. People are still terribly obsessed with class, aren't they? For the record, I don't hold socialist dinner parties. I don't know what socialist dinner parties would be. Would everyone have to collectively make the dinner, or get state-provided meals rationed out for them? Maybe. Who knows? But I think the point my correspondent was making was that I am not allowed to be unemployed, by dint of not being working class; that somehow everything's all right for me, because of class - the spectral 'network' will look after me somehow.

I see this kind of working-class hero self-flagellating bullshit all the time from people supposedly 'on the left' or who aren't. That somehow you can't really understand how things really are unless you were born in a shoebox on the M1 and lived in a fucking Hovis advert for all your life; that if you didn't live in grinding Ken Loach poverty for your entire younger years you must have been gallivanting around on a punt in a straw boater in a cream-coloured blazer like Nigel Havers or someone out of Brideshead Fucking Revisited, or something.

Maybe it's true. Maybe I have no idea what unemployment is like, because I'm not working class. But that kind of arbitrary dividing-up of people isn't spectacularly helpful, I would suspect. I've never claimed to be some kind of class warrior. I've never said I have had anything other than a very pleasant life. I didn't go to private school, but I wasn't being brutally murdered in my beds in a crack den either. You know, I was middle class. And I'm quite happy with that. I don't have to try and pretend to be something that I'm not in order to really be able to understand; I try and use something called empathy. I read things and talk to people, and try and understand things that way. Call me old fashioned. I should be sending abusive messages about other people instead, clearly.

No, I'm not a fucking champagne socialist metropolitan elite who secretly hates the working class. But the obsession with class is what makes everyone less likely to get what they want. If you're looking for authentic class struggle, you won't find it here. But I've never said that it is here. What I have said is that being unemployed is unpleasant and difficult - and it's not easy to pay a mortgage when housing benefit doesn't cover it, but of course YOU WOULDN'T KNOW THAT because you're too busy being working class about it - at least that's what I'd say if I were being as wilfully unpleasant as others are to me. But that would be to miss the point. Guess what? Unemployment is shit, whatever 'class' you think you are. I'm sorry if you feel that people like me are intruding on your monopoly of suffering. But that's just the way it is. White collar workers are being shat on from a great height nowadays, just as much as everyone else. Get used to it, because it's not going away.

I blame…

Single mothers, obviously. With a slight whiff of 'of course, that lot don't have dads around, do they?' Grand Theft Auto. Kids don't understand the difference between video games and real life nowadays! Twitter. For allowing people to communicate with each other. And because people on Twitter were nasty about this lovely newspaper when we had our slight little tiny problems a couple of weeks ago (which thankfully everyone's forgotten about now!) The Left. Everyone on the Left, especially people who might have protested about things in the past. Not just the Left, but particularly the Left. Which brings me to UKUncut. Because they use Twitter, and rioters used Twitter, therefore they're exactly the same. Am I embarrassing myself? No no, I really haven't even started. The PC Brigade of course. For letting people have PC views about things, that means we can't even beat our kids to a  meaty pulp nowadays - you just have to sit back and let them riot rather than do anything about it; there really is literally nothing you can do nowadays. We're helpless because of the namby-pamby nanny state mollycoddling these feral youths, which is why people smash up shops and set fire to things, because we weren't violent enough to them in the first place. Not having enough water cannon. Yes, water cannon. Mmm, water cannon. A great big hose to spray those nasty young boys with. That'll work. That'll make everything all right. Sure, these disturbances are over wide areas and it might appear at first that it wouldn't make any difference, but it sounds like something worth doing, doesn't it? And we might see some of these peasants getting sprayed headfirst through a shop window live on Sky News, so that'd be great to watch, while slowly masturbating, wouldn't it? Actually, shoot them. Shoot them all. Shoot them on sight. Shoot anyone. Shoot everyone. Bring in the army and shoot everyone. Shoot everyone. Shoot them now, and then it'll be all right. That will make everything better. It's not as if this all began with someone being shot, is it? Can't see any problems whatsoever if we just start shooting people on sight, and asking questions later. That'll be fine.

Secret conspiracy over baby names revealed

July 28, 1924

The Office for National Statistics has released this year's 'most popular boys' names' list - but due to a SECRET politically correct CONSPIRACY by the namby-pamby soi-disant liberal-left diversity brigade, they have SPLIT UP names so they don't appear as popular as they really are - MASKING the TRUE EXTENT of the Government's 'OPEN DOOR' policy on Freds.

At number 15 is the name FREDERICK. But look! Look at what they've done! In order to stop it being the most popular name, and revealing the MASSIVE INFLUX OF FREDS INTO THIS COUNTRY, they have decided to say that "Fred" is a SEPARATE NAME and listed it at number 68 as well! But it doesn't stop there! Alfred, WHICH CAN ALSO BE SHORTENED TO FRED, is at number 32! And WILFRED is at 60!

"Clearly," said a spokesman for the making up the same load of shit every single fucking year, "this is a secret Government plot to ensure that in eighty-odd years' time, when there are variant spellings of Mohammed, they will be counted as SEPARATE NAMES AS WELL, just to appease the PC Brigade!"

* Do you like this post? Would you like a book of posts that are a bit like this, except funnier and better, along with loads of new stuff? You would? Great, why not pop over to here and buy it! There's also a Kindle version here...

Please buy my book

Hello,

I've done a book. It's a book about stuff from here, and stuff from other blogs. It has old blogposts and new chapters, including one called "Life after newspapers" and one called "Hastily cobbled together chapter on phonehacking", to try and seem more up-to-date than it really is. It's 214 pages long, and it has a picture of the monkey on the cover. What more do you want? It's £9.93 and you can get it from Lulu. Click here.

I don't really do begging very well, but here goes: Please buy my book. It's not about the validation or the vanity; I need the money. I hope that you will love it very much, as much as I enjoyed writing it and putting it all together.

Thanks

Steve.