Intermission: We now take another step forward.

Hey folks,

This will be one of my briefest blogs.

I do not wish to run through my entire year as I said that this would be brief.
For Christmas I received an old model of the starship Enterprise. This brightened up my day exponentially.  It was the first Christmas in two years that I was present in the U.K. The first one in many years that I have spent with my family in Kings Sutton!

There is a lot on my mind at the moment but I know one piece of advice from Captain Picard that ought to guide us all into this new year.


http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/55988766.jpg <- Had to remove the original image.

Update: Sir Patrick Stewart did this for New Years: http://i.imgur.com/pg5mpma.jpg

I told you that this blog would be quick.

Make sure to put your best foot forward and carpe diem.

Take care and have a Happy New Year.

Thank you for reading.

This was The Common Sense Eccentric and that was 2013 0_o

WAIT...my hair...growing it back and taking care of it properly!
Saving up for driving, becoming a teacher...those are pieces of my plan.

Chapter 9: Graduates & Jobs. Positive Notes.

Edit: After much thought I will stick to the U.K for now and look into becoming a teacher here. I have family that I care about in the U.K and I want to stay close to home.

This blog relates to a story that I saw in The Independent and has been influenced by my experiences as a graduate living in the U.K.

If you want to see the news story please follow this link:
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/dec/27/graduating-debt-no-job-lost-generation
---

Graduates & Jobs. (A Positive Note.)


I work for a nice company that sells a lot of furniture and educational resources to schools/universities/the military/individual customers and any institution that may be looking into purchasing what we sell.

I work as an assistant at the moment and I find the job to be quite enjoyable. It is challenging at times as I am part of a team that handle phone calls  for placing orders. I was on the phone for over 30 minutes because a customer was placing a lengthy order. To an outsider this may seem boring but the people I work with are pretty great. I have also found myself learning a lot about the structure of academies. The biggest thing that blew my mind however was that when I was paid for my first month's worth of work I received 5x what I was receiving on JSA.

With that money I am able to help support my family in ways that the JSA does not allow. I am also able to consider making a savings account :D I want to save up a lot of money for a few big ideas that I have been having. A few of the folks  at work like my attitude because I'll take up any task and I don't see anything as "beneath me". (Albeit when I failed to get into Tesco. I was quite bitter and said the opposite as I read the letter...because I am a sore loser. I had grown very weary of applying for a dozen jobs each week from roles in janitorial work all the way up to publicising for events.)

The last few months have not all been grand though. A few people that I have spoken to are shocked with the work that I am doing. Those in academia are not surprised as they understand how difficult it is to get work after graduating.

I know a lot of people give graduates a hard time for doing jobs that do not really relate to their degree but we take what we can because life is precious. We seize any opportunity that comes our way because it will help us towards bigger & better things. I am happy to report that this is not naive idealism talking.

A man in my village was a road layer when he graduated from Aberystwyth University. Whilst we were walking back from the train station he told me that he has worked on an oil rig, in the army and has also taken up factory work. He now runs a successful building/construction firm. Also he studied the same degree...as me 0___o This man told me that things get better. He is worried about our generation though as there is a substantial pay gap between what the older generation currently earns and what we will earn at his age.

Some say that we are a lost generation. Doing jobs that make no sense and wasting our lives.
I remind those people that the same critics probably spoke of the Wright Brothers that way so please refrain from practising such pessimistic perspectives.

I think of our generation as more of a lost opportunity.
The older generations pushed us to go for university life but refused point blank to invest in the infrastructure that would require such a high amount of graduates.
Our Govt. keep raising the age of the pension too.
With living standards slipping and opportunities being scarce it can be daunting for us all.

There is no 100% guarantee that things will work out.
However by owning a degree we have access to more doors than those without.
I am in the process of saving up to do an IPGCE & another QTS qualification.
Any advice would be appreciated as an IPGCE does not confer QTS status but I would like both so I can teach both abroad and in the U.K.

Effectively this means I aim to gain a qualification that would enable me to teach internationally as a qualified teacher. I enjoyed teaching but I have no desire to apply for grants and live off of crumbs whilst aiming to become a professional teacher. When I acquire this qualification I could then take flight and recieve a salary that would help both myself and my family. I left my first year of China with £2,000! Imagine what I could have saved if I was working as a fully qualified teacher as opposed to the basic TEFL training.

I do understand why others may be confused by graduates working for furniture companies, multinational stores, Starbucks and so on. However we choose to work there because we have plans, we remain working there as we enjoy the work. We do have dreams and it was not to have some 3 year state funded holiday! We went to university to learn as much as we can about the things we love most and to help us create plans for getting there.

Such there have been hiccups along the way and we might not find ourselves in places we imagined but we have a dream. I am lucky that my family fully support my dream.

My mother aims to work in a museum after she graduates but the current cuts mean that in places like the Banbury Museum you may sometimes only find 1 member of staff present for a single day of the week! Our infrastructure is buggered to high heaven. Having a go at graduates however will not help as we will be the ones that will be expected to save it.

Therefore things will improve for graduates as our society needs us for we are the ones that dare to dream and strive to make those dreams come true. My dream is to raise everything up a notch. I see no sense in standing proud if the rest of our society crumbles. I want people to see that they have the power to change the world around them by simply realising that they have the power to change the world around them.

I did a few bits around the community whilst unemployed and the locals helped me see things clearer. Also those I was volunteering with fully understood the very things that I mentioned here. We differed on some points but they did not point the blame at us for choosing jobs outside of our degrees.

In short things will get better because we will make them better.

Have a great week,

and I hope that you all have a happy new year :)

Thanks for reading.

The Third Intermission: About Voting.

Voting is the bare minimum we can do in order to create change. Talking to our peers, organising ourselves into effective groups that can lobby our leaders/protesting in general is a more public/powerful way to push for change. I understand that we are angry about so many things but throwing away one's right to vote is to spit in the face of history and the people that fought for universal suffrage.


Voting is the bare minimum that we can do to bring about the change.
If so many of our generation are refusing to tick a simple box, how can we ever bring about a great political movement that would shake the foundations of our country?

We need to push for more accountability and protest when a great injustice takes place.
Throwing away one's vote however is like throwing a tantrum.
Sitting in a park holding a drum circle is an equally wasteful action as it only causes a nuisance for dog walkers and not the establishment. Occupy Parliament if you want to make a difference. Occupying public places only disturbs the public peace...not the politicians. We need to disturb our leaders and not our neighbours. We need to drive our leaders mad, not each other.

I disagreed with someone once about AV. They went one way and I choose another but in the end I respected their wishes and understood that democracy is not about getting what YOU want. It was a heated argument and we did not speak for a while but I failed to appreciate that democracy is about other views besides my own. (Any comment section on any newspaper will give you an idea of what the mistake I made) Voting is about ensuring that the majority of the electorate get what they voted for.

Naturally the existence of a coalition represents a power grab and undermines the legitimacy of everything I have just said but that is where protesting comes in. Other countries fight until they bleed. We just moan until our jaws ache and refuse to raise our backsides off the chair in order to tick a simple box. :(

You must become the change that you wish to see the world.
Together we have the power to save ourselves from the tyranny of democracy.
Refusing to vote empowers those that will get elected, regardless of whether or not you choose to vote I know that a dozen other people will and so those that lead us will represent a smaller and forever shrinking group of people.

Workers rights are being eradicated because we are failing to act upon our most basic right.
I know politics is emotional and hits upon our most personal thoughts about the world we all live in.
I ran in an election and lost. A few close supporters helped me pick myself back up again and now I write again.

If you disagree I understand but I refuse to cast away a basic right that others have fought so hard for.

Thank you for reading.
This was The Common Sense Eccentric.

Intermission: Voting is the bare minimum we can do to affect change.

None of the evidence given in my previous blog was meant to give the impression that the current level of voting of works. 

When people refuse to engage with the world around them citizens will find themselves as serfs beneath the status quo. When the rights that previous generations fought for are seen by the current generation to be a complete waste of time then we have failed to realise how much we have lost by refusing to remain as engaged with our times as our ancestors were.

Should 90% of the population actively do something as simple as voting then perhaps we would be able to formulate an actual revolution. If you can not even get people out to vote how can we get people together for a revolution? How can we hope to gauge what the nation thinks when most of it has decided to partake in the "silent treatment"?

I ran in an election and according to the sheet I saw, less than 20% of the student population voted in the election! I received messages from concerned residents/students about the way in which things were going and how a Starbucks was now in the Guild. If so many people disliked their President and the actions of the Guild though they could have voted en masse for someone else. Or created a movement of some kind that would attempt to dispose of the people they dislike...but that goes back to my previous point and how so many refuse to use their vote in the first place.

Getting people to vote is difficult because the only ones knocking on people doors are those working or believing in a political party already. One of the reasons why I lost an election is because I refused to do that. I felt that such an invasive approach is partly why people turn away from politics however the system we have rewards people for invading the lives of others. So we find ourselves in a broken system. Politicians like to get right into our comfort zones and then they will proceed to sell us the salt of Earth in order to gain our vote...

A few years later we find that the salt they sold was us was some cheap kind from Poundland and our vote has been used to bash everything we hold dear. My nan said that she is never voting Lib Dem again after siding with them for over 50 years. I did not ask whether that meant she would ever vote again because betrayal is a sore point and that is what our political leaders have done. That betrayal has been felt across all generations. We can not cast away a right that was fought for because we feel it has lost it's shine. The vote works but the way in which politicians attempt to gain our vote has been damaging the system for years.

Instead of speaking to us honestly, they fall into hyperboles and the greatest example I have at the moment was when David Cameron referred to Ed Miliband as a "con man" in the last PMQs. 

Paxman's argument was pretty solid but the way in which he argued against Brand was like some old man belittling a child for daring to dream. When attempting to teach another human something important, Paxman's referral to Russells' ideas as "trivial" was an unsupportive act. 

If that interview was a PMQ, Paxman would have found himself being told off by the Speaker for using unparliamentary language.  Criticise the point & the policies but never attack the person's person.

The legitimate body that gets to lead our Parliament is primarily decided by the vote. If we throw that all away, there will still be people voting and the main three parties will have fewer people to see in order to gain the reins of power. As the attempt to get AV in place failed this means that in order to get people we need to lead our country away from the three party system we need nothing short of a revolution in order to get such people into power. 

However by throwing away our vote we would be declaring to those in power at the moment that we are so happy with them, we will not vote for the other guy either. We just let things stay as they are and that the MPs can keep their jobs that currently pay over £100k a year!

We would be tacitly enabling tyranny by casting away our vote because our leaders would still gain votes from a select few that would still bother too. The MPs would then have no reason to care about the masses when the masses feel they have no reason to care about voting. 

Thank you for reading.

Feel free to share this blog.

I doubt it would be shared though as the majority of people feel dirty when discussing politics but that is something we need to shake off if we have any desire to change things.

Intermission: My Personal View about Brand's View.

I would like to begin by stating that I feel that Jeremy Paxman beame the embodiment of all that is wrong with the status quo in the U.K. Paxman attempted to belittle Russell Brand and Brand ended up becoming an erratic messianic figure that expressed our contempt towards the system with such emotion, watching that interview felt empowering in parts. UPDATE: Paxman recently admitted that he chose not to vote in the last election! (7) However he also said;

""Whether you bother to vote or not, someone is going to sit on those benches and tell you what to do."

It is hard to disagree with the idea that we need change/revolution when the UN Development Report of 2013 observed that Britain is now one of the most unequal countries in the world. (1) Our political establishment have done the opposite to relieve the costs and pressures of housing . 

Abolishing the spare room subsidy, otherwise known as "The Bedroom Tax" has been one of the numerous tyrannical things our Government has done to the citizens of our country to date because suitable housing does not actually exist. House building was reported to be at it's lowest level since the 1920s.(2) 

Combine these together and throw in a UN observer and you find out that our human rights have actually been threatened by this policy as it has directly impacted our right to (3) Michelle Rolnik was referring to Article 25:

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

I think that Brand has tapped into the public's outrage incredibly well and that journalists will never be able to pin him down because the current political establishment has become so strong because of journalism's failure to expose the tyranny of our Government. The current cuts we have been witnessing is an entirely ideological endeavour that has only been possible because of Labour's costly endeavors, the bank bail out and the general misinformation we have about the welfare system. 

The current move by the coalition to eradicate the welfare net that exists should be a cause of concern for everyone. With companies such as Remploy having the plug pulled from them (for 67 years they gave disabled people a safe & secure working environment). Now those same people that were in a safe working environment have found themselves unemployed, in one of the harshest political/employment climates ever for an unemployed person and no doubt many of those unemployed workers will be subject to an ATOS assessment within the near future.

I was put on a series of group sessions by the Job Centre whilst unemployed and each day we would be shown potential leads for employment. One lead was the Army. One of the people in the room suffers from disabilities to such an extent that even the Recruitment officer wondered why the lady had been sent to him. Any disabled worker that has been recently made redundant is going to be dealing with a lot of frustrating scenarios ¬___¬. This makes me unhappy.

I fear greatly about the direction that our leaders are taking us in and I can appreciate the reasons as to why someone might not wish to vote when our political leaders are incapable of standing against the rising inequalities that are becoming more and more apparent. 

However Brand's own point that to vote is to support a broken system is a broken idea in itself.

To throw away one's vote though is an act of silence. A refusal to let your voice be known to those that would represent you.
To throw away one's vote is to declare that universal suffrage was a waste of time.
To throw away one's vote is to take away the chances of lesser known candidates outside the main 3 parties that could potentially help us all as they are not part of big party agenda.

Instead of throwing away your vote, assemble into groups and create a political movement!
The Monster Raving Loony Party was originally called the "‘Sod em All Party" As the founder believed that the political parties of his day did not give a damn about the people of this country. Also they exist to point out the fallacies of our establishment.

There are pressure groups that exist. These groups tend to be made up of concerned citizens that are aware of the failures that our system has and they have ideas on how to to change things for the better. A friend recently suggested that I look up the Campaign for Democracy. I have attached a web link to this blog but as I am still in the process of reading it I can not really give any feedback at the moment.

What I can say however is that every generation in this country had  and will continue to have people that seek change and people that feel apathy towards the establishment. This is not new. What is new is that so many are able to express their disdain and dystopian visions of our world become common place. 

My two main major faults with Brand relate to his use of the word "revolution". I could write blogs about other ideas that have come and gone and some that still stick around thanks to the support of groups that remain engaged with the world around them but that would probably be for another day. Simply put there are many thinkers out there with some revolutionary ideas and Jaques Fresco's Venus Project will probably make you smile as it is a nice idea.

The second fault relates specifically to his view on voting and that by voting you "tacitly support" the broken system. By paying our taxes are tacitly supporting the broken system, by abiding by the law, by refusing to support workers that dare to strike and by screaming at the unemployed the citizens of UK support the broken system. Democracy was seen as one of the worst models of Government by the ancient Greeks for a reason.

Your vote is not a waste of time. Universal suffrage was not freely given but fought for us by people that understood the importance of being able to choose who represents us in our Government.

Do not let Brand's message turn you away from voting. There are many important issues happening at once and we can not afford to be silent. Talking is all well and good but your vote forces politicians to listen because they have a lot to lose if they are defeated in an election.

Instead throwing away your vote, get behind the politicians that are outside the 3 main parties and make an actual movement that could threaten everything they hold dear.
I would gladly join such a movement.

My deepest apologies for the length of this blog.

Thank you for reading and feel free to drop me a message or comment.

(1) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mps-criticise-george-osbornes-12bn-help-to-buy-plan-for-risking-housing-bubble-and-distorting-recovery-8865130.html

(2) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24643093


(3) http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/regulation/un-housing-expert-tells-government-to-axe-the-bedroom-tax/6528494.article
(4) http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#atop

(5) http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/30/remploy-factories-close-disabled-workers

(6) http://campaignfordemocracy.org.uk

(7) http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/05/jeremy-paxman-russell-brand_n_4216696.html

* Safe seats. Colour coded maps showing you when seats last changed. http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/safe-seats/#1830-2010

Chapter 8: Cost of Living and my thoughts in brief.

The Cost of Living and my thoughts in brief. ( 1 A4 page).

"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men." - John F. Kennedy

I stumbled across a report recently saying that those in their 80s had it easier around our age and we have a slim chance of experiencing our late age in the same way as the elderly currently walking amongst us do.

See more about that here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21302065

The majority of young people do not seem to vote which gives politicians a slim incentive to do anything. As long we think that we are our powerless then we will find ourselves unempowered. 
Getting anything out of politicians is a lot like trying to get anything out of life, you have to believe in yourself and in your cause...(your cause could be anything from seeing that your Nan is properly taken care of, to the RISING cost of energy bills, the shoddy state of the roads...perhaps you do not like how expensive houses will become? ) Whatever you cause may be I assure you that there will be others out there with similar concerns...and you need to talk with one another.

There has been a rising concern that a lot of young adults are experiencing loneliness:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24522691

This could be to do with the work hours a lot of young people face and the stress that customer services can place on people. It could be to do with the financial pressures that mount upon individuals when they leave the home (rent, energy bills, taxes, cost of owning a car/trying to get one, dealing with debts, if someone is managing their own business that could definitely place more pressure upon a young person and so on). I rarely go out because I am attempting to budget my money. This week I will be paid for my second month of employment (:D) and I need to investigate how to reclaim a chunk of the £400 tax that was taken from me the first time and even then I doubt that I will go out much because I despise the drinking culture. Plus I want to help my Mum change gas provider and that might have a cost but the long term savings would help. 

I feel that moving out and gaining my own "independence" is a joke at the moment because social housing is like gold-dust, my mum would get hit with the bedroom tax the second I leave therefore my "independence" would result in my family getting punished on account of their failing to live in a smaller house which does not exist ¬___¬. Considering that my mum's health is far from fantastic I do not see how my moving away from home and effectively dumping a tonne of unwanted stress on her could be of any use to anyone. What with raising 5 kids single handedly and each one being successful thus far on account of the monumental support and love that my mother has given us I think that offering to help her is the least I can  do.(Richard is training to be a teacher, Bill is training to be a builder, Evie is in Sixth Form and Natasha is 10 but she can draw really well and is interested in becoming an Art Teacher :D )

Plus after getting my own place all sorted out I would effectively have no money and my rent would be probably going to a landlord that is attempting to pay off the mortgage on the property that I would be living in. (That is why rent is so high in some parts of the country as 2nd homes are let out to other people...which is all well and good but how can you hope to save up and get your own mortgage if you are effectively paying off someone elses? Don't live there too long I guess but then where are you going to move to? There is little social housing because when it was sold off that money WAS NOT ALLOWED to be invested in the creation of more social housing!) I would also be lonely as hell because everyone else that I know living on their own (near where I live) has next to no money to really go out and enjoy things as it is swallowed up by rent, utilities and probably the cost of medication/alcohol for some but I prefer tea.

 Are you beginning to see just how fucked our generation is?

I have not even discussed the NHS, public service wage freezes, the erosion of the welfare state, and the eradication of the justice system as we know it. Strong sentiments to write down on paper but I assure you that these will be covered when I have the time to write about them.

The JFK quote however helps me reflect upon all this and say: We can change this, WE must be the ones that change this for WE for the world has only ever given to those that help themselves and by Job have some folks been helping themselves. Let's deal with this =D

Thank you for reading, have a great week.

This was The Common Sense Eccentric...or do I just go by name on these blogs?

P.S I have been employed for over 2 months and I am enjoying my job.
I continue to write this blog however as I think think there are a lot of issues that we face and they need to be discussed and addressed. 

I now have a job :D But the hunt was long 0_____0

Hey folks,

Yesterday I was speaking to Merlyn and he reminded me about a few important things. So I decided to act on his advice and write this blog. This blog focuses on the amount of jobs I applied for, I give a list of the sites that exist and then I quickly move onto what helped me stay focused whilst looking for work.

I applied for over 14 jobs during my first month back in the UK. Of which I received 1 interview but that was for a telephone debt collection company. The people were nice enough but the nature of their work is something I did not feel comfortable with. Obviously that discomfort would have come across during the interview because I am not a great actor.

I applied for 19 jobs via the DWP operated Universal Job Match site. This site is alright but the problem when applying for jobs on this site is that more and more jobs offers were being placed by agencies. Therefore you would be asking to write a covering letter for a company you do not even know the name of and ultimately you would no doubt fail to get an interview because; would you put forward a candidate that fails to know the name of your company?

I attended 3 graduate recruitment events, each one was pretty damn depressing as they were for telephone jobs.  (You do not need to be a graduate of any kind in order to sell things over the telephone. Do not let anyone convince you that you need a degree to do telemarketing) These events could be relatively long and each one involved men that wished they were Sir Alan Sugar but are not and so graduates find themselves in a cramped room with an obnoxious windbag that thinks he runs the only graduate recruitment program out there.

During my seven month long job hunt I literally lost count of the amount of applications I sent to employers via the numerous other sites that are run by other companies. You can effectively send out 20 applications a day/week if you can handle filling in the same tedious forms over and over again. A good tip my advisor gave me at the Job Centre was to create a document where you can just copy and paste the information such applications require. It was a useful tip as I could blowtorch my way through the job offer forms that you can find on the numerous websites that exist.

For example of how many there are here is a quick list of some of those sites:

www.careerplayer.com           www.insidecareers.co.uk        www.milkround.com   www.prospects.ac.uk www.targetjobs.co.ukwww.ratemyplacement.co.uk www.efinancialcareers.com    www.wikijob.co.uk      www.thestudentroom.co.uk   www.gradireland.com www.gumtree.com     www.graduate-jobs.com        www.econ-job.co.uk   www.ratemyplacement.co.uk www.E4S.co.uk (Employment4Students)        I have included this list as there are many more sites out there and therefore my own list could help others.
I could write about the psychological effects of job hunting and how much that took a toll on my mind but I will save that for another day.

The thing that kept me going and feeling happy was having a good friend across the road that is also hunting for a job. We would meet every day or every other day, drink coffee and hunt for jobs together via the internet/looking in Banbury/newspapers/talking to friends/calling up companies. Speaking regularly with other friends also helped but I did not go to great lengths to talk to people as I predominantly felt quite crappy during the hunt.

My family was incredibly understanding. My mum is aware of the amount of people currently looking for work. There was a new Morrisons store opening up somewhere and they received over 10,000 telephone applicants in under an hour. Their telephone room was only operated by two a mum did not charge me rent as I was trying to pay off my overdraft.  I am so happy as I can finally afford to buy things for the people I love and now I can finally help my family cover the costs of things like food/energy/bus passes for siblings.

1 MONTH IN EMPLOYMENT HAS ERADICATED THE DEBT THAT I OWED MY BANK!!! (I owed about a grand to the Bank…now I owe them nothing :D.)
ONE MONTH.

Also I feel remarkably better on the inside as I am doing a job that I enjoy and I also get paid for doing it. The JSA does not work like that...it was never designed to bring satisfaction to people but to enable them to survive whilst job hunting.

The JSA is not a free ride. It is an allowance.
It is known as “The Job Seeker’s Allowance”.

If anyone accuses you of being a scrounger whilst on the JSA invite them to trade places with you.

Cheers for reading,
Have a great week.
Michael.

p.s I copied this blog across from a word document and so I spent a while fixing the paragraphing. Let me know if this all looks like a damn mess by emailing the usual address.

Chapter 6: Catch Up

Hey folks,

I have not written a blog in a while because there was nothing much to write about. I was waiting on some documents that arrived a tad too late but at least they've arrived.

Brief Run Down:

• I had another unpleasant experience in London relating to finding work. 
• The cold calling job I applied for never got back to me and then I was told that their company shut down.
• Helped out with the Community Speed Watch programme. Learned some things. 
• Had a hard time explaining to some people that sexism, like racism (there are other races out there people besides white and black. I'm talking Asian, Indian, all the countries that make up South America & Eastern Europe. Heck we're talking about 7 billion people but I'm too pretentious to just link to wikipedia.). Basically those -isms can go both ways. Gave up in the end and continued job hunting. 
• Sleeping pattern became wrecked because I keep experiencing extreme tiredness at random moments even after sleeping properly. I often go to bed at 9pm, wake up at 7am and feel extremely tired by 5pm.

Today I'm heading off to Bicester as it has been described as a "hub of activity" by the Job Centre in Banbury. I was told that many position are opening up in the town and one good place to look is a Sainsburys that has opened up. Also I was given a few phone numbers for specific agencies. (There are over two dozen agencies, numerous websites. It's like looking for a needle in a wheat field.)

• Another thing that I've been doing is reading from a lot of news reports and rarely do I find something nice to share.

The BBC recently reported that our nation has 5 million managers. 5 million. This same report also said that these managers acquired their jobs through being "maybe men". Interesting that they used the word men as that would suggest that the managerial position is dominated by males and so we've not seen that much of a move from the generation where the military dominated the managing profession for a few decades back that line of work was solely a role for men.

Another frustrating point was that these men are "maybe men". Another way of saying "maybe men" is  "no god damn integrity". No wonder there are numerous reports of office bullying and weirdness, like what we witnessed in that BBC3 bile that was The Call Centre. For a profession that is dominated by males I am astonished to find a complete lack of balls (We never see reports about good managers). Both amongst managers and by co-workers that fail to put them down. The society we live in only became possible after centuries of  fighting against bullies. Give the history of women's rights & LGBT movements a quick glance and you'll learn a lot about fighting the good fight. Heck that is what most of human history is, an oppressed group fighting against a powerful one.

Usually the powerful group holds access to financial credit, production or food. Today that powerful group have access to mass media, legal mechanisms and all the previously mentioned pros. What I am saying is that is we only have one life and if we don't fight to make our own future brighter then what hope do future generations have? 

Cheers for reading, 

Have a great week,

Share if you think I said anything worth while, message me if you know of any job opportunities.

The report that mentioned the managers:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23462290

Edit: I gather that there are good managers out there otherwise such a profession would not exist.

Chapter 5: The Bus.

Hey folks,

I live in a small village in the middle of somewhere. Not much happens here on a daily basis but sometimes we think something might be happening at that becomes the talk of the place for a nice solid few days.

One of the local concerns is about the local bus service. People that are employed but lack their own cars are left relying on a service that is barely functioning. When we account for the fact that a lot of employers now take people on what are known as temporary contracts with alternating shifts, the current state of public transport can create an unwelcome level of frustration.

Here is a web address that contains a copy of the time table:
http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/en/councilservices/Transport/pubtrans/Documents/Bus%20Timetables/HEY-499-Sep2011.pdf

The buses come that can not be denied but with such a gap in time it forces people that work on temporary contracts to sit around in Banbury with nothing much to do except wait.  The bus costs £2.70 for a single ticket or £4.40 return. A taxi to Banbury can cost £10. Get two people taxis become the best choice  you find yourself basically spending 60 pence on comfort and convenience.

I applied for a job in Brackley however the way the busses run mean that in order to get into Brackley early I would either have to catch 2 busses or a train and then a bus. The overall cost would have been £8.60 a day. I asked my prospective employer about transport and other people working there however they mentioned how different people have different shifts. A point I have raised at the start of this blog.

While looking for work I've had to use the public transport of South Northants/Oxfordshire/London and just seeing how the level of service differs so dramatically is kind of tragic. When the private sector falters it should be the role of the state to intervene and reassume services that are unprofitable.

Instead of token gestures, a real way to help people into work would be to help cultivate a transport system that helps people get to work. The fact that half an hour's wage is devoured by a bus ticket is insane.

In other news I am now looking into volunteering work. I spent a few months fixing myself up but now is the time to get outside. I might find myself walking into town though, despite being five miles, I lack the funds to blow that much cash on a return ticket.

Still, thanks for reading,
Hope everyone is doing alright and take care :D

Chapter 4: April. Second Impressions.

Hey folks,

This is the second blog about my interaction with the world of sales. The first one involved a recruitment agency that spoke out about I.T sales and then submerged it's candidates in the world of Red Letter Events. As if being an unemployed graduate wasn't a pain in the butt already without recruitment firms pulling stunts like that. Still one should never allow a single bad encounter as a means to judge an entire profession. Also I'll never name names while writing these. This blog focuses upon one of my trial days.

I was lucky to get an interview in February for a firm that do B2B sales. That means: Business to Business sales. Sounded better than cold calling and I would selling something...to a BUSINESS. I would be selling advertisement spaces to prospective clients on behalf of a newspaper. Sounds brilliant...sounded all official. I was on board for giving it a go. My trial day was in April and I went down...got quite lost in a town I've really been to but thankfully made it there. The staff were welcoming and helpful, they gave me some tips and I listened to them on the phone for a bit.

After a while the main man asked if we wanted some leads. The man got up, walked on over to a big pile of newspapers, he tore out the advertisements and instructed us to choose some numbers and just start calling. He said that it would be rare for us to make any sales. They did not expect that, they only wanted to hear how we sounded over the phone. I asked if anyone had made sales before, he said in another firm one new candidate did but you could tell they were a pro. I read through the paper looking at the advertisements. They all seemed to be small firms, probably ran from people's homes. A few places that I phoned confirmed this idea.  Naturally the responses I received was the sort you'd expect to be given when dialling a business line selling a product they've already bought and they're waiting for some actual income...not another sales person. Apparently the firm I was trialling for phone them every week. Poor sods, as if the economy wasn't putting enough strain on people . About an hour or so later the office manager came up and gave me a sheet of paper and some advice. It was mixture of useful and unhelpful tidbits.  What would have really helped are three key things:

1) Information about the newspaper I was working for.

They gave me nothing. I had the name but all in all I saw most of the other regional newspapers that day but not a single copy of the one they wanted me to sell. I felt like a prospector panning through a muddy river for a single nugget of gold.

One thing was all I needed and with that information I can believe in the product I am selling.
In sales belief is important (Or at least the projection of belief across the medium you're using to sell). When you believe in something you must then use that knowledge to convert your client. You must make them believe in your product too, they must see that you are selling a rainbow road. You must convince them that you're looking at the greatest opportunity known to man and you're offering them a way to get on board.

If you don't believe in what you're doing then you'll mutter "A job is a job is a job" which it is however I've seen folks in many different professions approaching their work half heartedly for they lost that faith in what they were doing.  If you've gone through the British education system then you've no doubt met a few teachers during a moment of no faith and those lessons. I say "moment" because let's not judge others who are doing a job, especially as I am discussing a sensitive matter and have experienced these moments myself.

The main point is some calls went rough when they really didn't need to on account of questions being asked that I didn't have the answers too. I looked on-line for this newspaper and the closest result I found was a newspaper that shut down a few decades ago. I stayed for the entirety of the trial day. Phoning up prospective clients from golden leads. Needless to say though I felt incredibly unclean for I felt like my leads were made from Pyrite.

We are a nation of service providers and sales people. I felt disturbed that a company gathers it's leads from the work of another sales person. I've been informed that this is common place and such information is nothing short of disheartening.

Still third time is the charm. This time I'll make sure to see the product I am selling before I pick up the phone...and pray that the leads come from sources that haven't been borrowed from source.

Overall I'm awaiting for another trial day. This blog won't be publicised across any social networks for reasons I feel are obvious without mentioning. (FEAR, TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF FEAR)

I'm looking forward for all trials and I do consider visiting this firm again as they were all really kind and welcoming. I occasionally felt like I was about to nail  a lead...and I came close but then handed the phone to manager as I didn't know the process of acquiring the details and he did. I probably won't go back though as I'm seeking other trials with firms I can acquire information on. As opposed to newspapers that don't seem to exist.

 Cheers for reading. The next blog will be up on the 6th May 2013. This gives me two weeks to get up to something and hopefully nail that something to the wall.

P.S MAJOR HIGHLIGHT:

The kettle broke. I asked a friend to pick one up. The kettle that Argos gave him and that he gave to me...contained no plug! I'm going to hand in a CV when I also hand over the kettle. I could totally work there, I've got like two eyes, 8 fingers and two thumbs! I could be a really amazing Quality Assurance person. No plug-less kettles on my watch.

Chapter 3: February. Sales person?

Hey folks,

I've explained why I returned to the U.K despite knowing that unemployment is more rampant here than sand in a sand storm. (Info here) The previous blog covered January and how to handle rejection. Before you get the wrong impression I'm going to preach a bit of Confucian philosophy.

There is a famous Chinese working in Beijing  called Yu Dan. She created the book "Confucius from the heart". It sold over 10 million copies and Yu Dan is famous in China for a series of lectures she gave on television about the subject. In her book she recalls the story "On Staying Behind" as told by an old writer & statesman Su Shi.  The main point of his story is that in order to overcome any bitterness or the tediousness that may occur every day, we must hold lofty or aspirational goals in our heart. If we have no greater ideals or values then we will get bogged down in the materialism (or lack thereof) that occur around us. The less we hold dear in our hearts, the more we frustrated we get with trivial trifles. The second idea is that every time we retell a story of great hardship we in turn get ourself stuck in our own trifle and open up old wounds.

The point of these blogs is not to burn myself a second time, nor it is to act like a victim for as my advisor said: "If it's unproductive, don't think about it".

Unproductive doesn't just mean: "Oh no...I didn't land a job." Unproductive means: Wallowing, ranting, creating lists of things to do but not carrying out with any of the things listed . I am retelling this story for the purpose of keeping a log, informing others what it is I am doing and also to provide an insight for those interested into what it is that job seekers do. As there are 2.56 million people that are currently unemployed I think that is important that we talk about what we are doing while the media puts forward the notion that we do nothing. There are a vast amount of vacancies out there...I have the phone number for the team that write the statistics so I will phone them later on and write a blog about that. Right now this blog is focused on what I did in February.

So what did I do in February?

1. Did the usual trawl through multiple job sites and applying for jobs online.
2. I attended a day run by a recruitment firm down south.

That day cost an entire week's worth of JSA.  As I have no desire to use these firms ever again I feel fine blogging about it as a way of giving insight for people considering this type of agency/middle-man. The firm in question I phoned myself seeking a few answers regarding the general queries we might have when seeing a graduate recruitment firm.

1) What do you do? 2) What can you do for me? 3) When/where do you do these things?

The man on the other end explained everything, he said they run a few tests and one of their regular hiring clients are there THIS Wednesday. I read through the documents emailed to me, it all sounded good. There would be an introduction sessions in which candidates introduce themselves, there would be some tests and then everyone would be divided into groups. We would do two group related activities, one set around numerical/verbal communication and another around selling. The name of their client also checked out and so I decided it was best to give it a go.

The main reason I went down was because the man on the phone said: If you don't get hired by this client, we can keep you on record for other opportunities. He also said that the field my degree itself wasn't crucial!   I went down because I didn't think it was a waste of time. First off the layout of the room was a damn travesty. The client in question was hidden around a corner and the room itself was set in such a way that the client could see only half of the candidates.

One of the activities was to sell a Red Letter Day event. You know that company?
The one that went under, was bought by two of  the Dragons while they were drunk?
That's it! That failed business venture set up to just flog roller coaster rides to people that have more important things to do. YES! That's the one.

I was there on a day relating to recruitment into sales for a computer firm. I was all ready with amazing facts regarding the greatest threats out there for those that use computers & the internet as a part of their business operation. Informations relating to how the U.S have tracked billions of dollars worth of intellectual property theft to a few locations in China and why security is more important than ever before.

As I left the revamped living room another candidate outside told me that the reason why they say your degree is not relevant is because the firm gets commission for every head in the room. A few candidates told me that they had been to many other days and also warned me that this day was better than others they had attended.

While I understand the importance of acting professional, we must also understand the importance of a safe working environment and not being scared into silence by the threat of being blacklisted. A smart man will pursue more than 1 career path and I am pursuing about three right now. I found the day incredibly enlightening in terms of how they expect a salesperson to act in a "blue chip" London based firm but what I saw made me realise that while our media calls out against acting like a bull in a China shop...it is that attitude still being sought after and I don't feel comfortable belittling my co-workers..colleagues...other human beings.

We must remember that while a job is a job is a job, no salary can truly cover a loss of integrity and no sales pitch can truly convince our conscience that a line of work we feel is not right for ourselves is something we should strive to get involved in. I learned that one line of work was not for me and so I decided to invest my time into looking into other career paths. That was what I have been doing in April and so that will be the topic of my next blog on the 22/04/2013.

Main message here:
Try something new and if you find out that it is not for you...you tried and can now look into other lines of work. There is never any harm in trying. There is always something new to learn. We can always build upon our past experiences thereby refining ourselves for future possibilities.

Cheers for reading,
Have a great week,
Feel free to share this or comment with suggestions.

P.S There is a book called "What Colour is Your Parachute". The author is Richard N. Bolles. He updates it every year and I'm only 20 pages in. He offers a really productive perspective on how to approach job hunting and he has a few figures to reinforce an optimistic outlook. A friend suggested it to me and now I'm reading it. It is a good read. 

Chapter 2: Dealing with Rejection. (January)

Update: The next blog will be released on Wednesday 17/4/2013. It'll be coming out later because I'm off to visit my girlfriend for a few days. Chapter Four will be coming out on the 22/4/2013. 

My first month back in England was odd.

I spent the time swamped by thoughts about what had just happened and trying create a new plan as I arrived nine months earlier than I initially planned. The Civil Service Fast Stream application for the Diplomatic Service doesn't open until September and so I had to look into some other alternatives.

I signed up to over a dozen job sites and graduate job sites. There will probably be even more sites cropping up when this year's graduates hit the road. When you start applying for jobs there are even more sites that appear before you. Those ones demand you sign up before you can even apply for the job you were looking at. It can get frustrating but thankfully Merlyn gave me an idea of just having a notepad file open where I can copy and paste the info these sites continually ask for. Saves on time lost by potential typo screw ups. *

My first month back was spent trawling for jobs via Graduate schemes & having phone interviews. So my time was spent recovering from the just the general hurt of a burned out dream (China) and finding myself in a country that I had no substantial desire to return to. (Apart from that most pressing desire we all experience when trying to escape from a psychopath.)

Considering that I had burned out the entirety of money surviving & escaping from China I also chose to seek out the JSA. Naturally prior to applying I was warned by friends and family that the people in the centre are battle-axes. That they care little for stories and even less for time wasters. I'm no battleaxe, I'm fond of stories but I hate having my time wasted. I told them a shorter and more succinct version of my first blog. They seemed impressed that Rachel and I had stuck it out for six months and the person told me to create an account on their website and to come back on a Wednesday for another appointment with my advisor. Also I was to receive a call regarding what I had done in China.

The next day I received a call, the person on the other end was succinct but not cold as I expected the great welfare battle-axes to be. During my first appointment I was told to record all my applications and general job hunting details down on their website or keep a log that I could bring. This information would be used to prove that I was keeping up my end of the agreement and I would receive payment. It took one full month to receive payment and during that time I was stuck in a tiny village sponging off of my family.

My first month and the encounters I had with the JSA staff during my appointments has given me the impression that as long as you're looking for work, as long as you can prove with some kind of documentation that you are applying for jobs...then they are ok and will sign the slip. If you haven't done that then they will tell you. I know this because other JSA applicants were often grilled in front of me. The excuses I heard at first seemed implausible but then you don't know how long they've been searching. I had already applied for a fair few jobs through a dozen websites and those leads were turning up with nothing.

I applied for work at Tesco. They phoned me and asked if I could get in for 6 am, I said on my form that I was reliant on public transport and lived in a village. Cycling from Sutton at 5 am or 4:30 is something I've never done. I have walked those roads enough times during broad daylight to know that there are plenty of blind corners and I wouldn't feel safe cycling around them near them. I also wouldn't feel safe cycling back at night because I remember spending most of my youth running from violent people that lived locally. Recently after taking my brother from A&E, a bunch of damn chavs drove by and blew a bloody air-horn at me. If I was cycling and that happened I'd damn well fallen into a ditch wearing a ruddy high-vis jacket while looking like some great big glittering drunk.  (The country side is just a load of windy roads, drinkers and ditches. During spring, you're not missing much here unless you like walking through muddy fields.)

I also failed to pass an on-line application to be a stockroom assistant, that was pretty gutting as I've put hundreds of things on coat hangers over the years so I thought I had a shoe in there. A lot of the on-line tests involved maths, reading and psychometric evaluations so it's hard to know where exactly you've gone wrong. Naturally I thought maybe my maths skills were lacking as Maths was never my strongest area at school. Without a clear indication though I just felt like I was fumbling in the dark after those tests.

If companies could give some insight then it would help the candidate with their own personal job hunt. By sending an apologetic email of rejection with a refusal to give any information why...the apology comes across as insincere. I wouldn't instantly reapply if I knew where I went wrong and these forms usually ask if you've applied before so I fail to see why they'd withhold the information. January involved a few rejections, a fair amount of silences and a few phone calls that were not too helpful.

I did visit an agency and a man in a suit was talking to someone about how their clients needs don't match their candidates skills. It sounded like there are a lot of jobs out there but our society pushed getting a degree more than it pushed getting specific degrees.

To develop this point I can simply give the example that degrees are marketed to children from a young age. We push our children to get the best grades, to get into the best schools, into the best universities and what degree someone chooses to study is often down to an individual's choice. I knew many students that chose their academic path because of they saw it as something they loved, whether or not it was the best economical choice is another matter entirely.  My current short term experience of unemployment does not make me regret my decision to study International Relations for I know that I can get a job and I did learn things that I wouldn't have learned on other degree schemes. It's a matter of persistence, resilience and keeping my mind active.

The short term rejections fall straight into the past and rejections from one line of work mean that my options are still open. I remember being told that each time you fail you increase your chances for success. While this is arguably a fallacy, hope is better than despair. Planning is better than sitting idle wallowing in self pity.

Hope and planning are the keys for making a better future.
Jobs don't fall from the sky but if we carefully tailor our CVs and fire them up...one might come falling down into our garden/inbox.

Next week I'll be discussing what I did in February  we're drawing closer to what I am doing now in regards to finding employment. These blogs will basically contain the genuinely negative experiences I've encountered and a conclusion as to why they've not got me down.

Here I recounted the emotional responses I had in regards to some rejections and no human being rejoices at rejection. By understanding how our life is not set in stone, that we do have a high level of control in regards to making decisions that could enhance our prospects exponentially, I hope to demonstrate that job hunting is only as crushing as we allow to be. We can choose what we do with ourselves.  Right now I'm choosing to look into something awesome but I need to wait for a few hours before I can make the phone call.

Cheers for reading,
Have a great week,

This was Diary of a Job Seeker.


P.S For those interested in the money: I didn't receive any money from the JSA until some time in February. I was able to live through whatever food my family had bought and the fact that my mother is kind enough to not charge rent as she knows the money given from the JSA is a pittance and she expects me to use it to keep myself presentable, get to interviews and land a damn fine job. ^__^

*Naturally I don't save my bank details into notepad files...or sensitive data. If there were any psychopaths out there I doubt they'd be targeting me in the first place. Unless they wanted my giant blue penguin 0___0

Chapter 1: The Uneven Path. (Origin Story)

Hey folks,

As I look for work and survive due to the JSA, I figured it would probably be grand to tell the world the life I currently live. In this blog I'll first explain how I ended up on the JSA as my story is not a common one. Most of my friends know about it but I doubt they understand nor know the terror we felt out there. I have made the spacing in this blog a bit bigger in between paragraphs for when I previewed it the whole "wall of text" just seemed a bit too much.
Anyway on with the story:

My girlfriend and I were working in China. Sadly we were not sent directly to a school as were the rest of the group members. Our employer held legal documents, was registered with the local bureaucrats as a school but for the last 3 years he had no students, staff or a fully functioning building that one would call a school. After being outsourced to six different schools spaced over a 30 mile area and teaching over 2000 students aged between 2 and 17 years old with only an hours notice that we would be teaching....Rachel and I endured six months of unending manipulation and misinformation.  

For the last six months we had held meetings with our boss in an attempt to re-negotiate the contract, we had met other employees that escaped his clutches and they filled our minds with horror stories. We witnessed these stories come true. 

We did have another job set up, we did have a placement in another province. Neither of us wanted to return to the U.K in a hurry because we know how bad things were here. We also wanted to have an ideal year together abroad...not a "placements from hell" year working for a psychopath. Unfortunately we were given no choice in the end. The boss sought to extort money from us upon our resignations. He requested a sum that was never mentioned in either contracts. The British Embassy is not allowed to enter disputes that relate to contracts. (This is mentioned on their website.) Our contacts in Beijing had proven to be useless too. We requested our mediator  to negotiate and persuade our boss to act in more professional manner. 

There were many evenings when we would be working on lesson plans for the school that the boss sent us to the most and then the phone would ring. It was the boss. He would tell us that tomorrow classes are cancelled and we are going to teach someone else. The lesson would be at 9am. The boss phoned us to tell us this at 9pm. The minute we argued about how unprofessional this was he would suddenly lose all English speaking abilities.

I struggled to get up most mornings because of this but Rachel has a "can do" approach which empowered at times to try my best as well. Whilst I would be stuck in a mental rut, Rachel sought to make the best of a bad situation. We both had a "dream" and hers was for a beautiful year abroad. We spent our time together visiting the local shopping malls, eating pumpkin soup and cuddling up watching Father Ted, Poirot and looking for solutions.  

We had a meeting where both parties agreed that more communication would be beneficial. The boss agreed to put the ages and location of our students on our time table. The next week the boss gave us no time table. Our time table was now delivered by text message. Our contacts in Beijing did not believe us, they assumed we were simply some middle class kids failing to understand some cultural differences: The school is registered with the local bureaucracy they would reply, the previous teacher did not complain. There was nothing we could do that would persuade them. Thankfully our contact in the U.K fought for us and he was a great pillar of support in what was truly a terrible time for the two of us.

There is nothing quite so terrifying than being over 5000 miles away from home working for a human being that humiliates you on a daily basis. He would suggest that we recruit students for his "school" from the ones he currently sent us to, his daughter suggested we teach lessons at McDonald's birthday parties and they wanted us to make videos to recruit more English-speakers their school! Apparently we would receive more money but how does one reconcile the thought that after receiving £50 another human being has been condemned to live in a flea infested apartment  working for a mad man that wants to hire them out as a McDonald's clown?

In our penultimate meeting in which he threatened us, his threats came with a lot of documentation that showed all of our communication with Beijing. He had this giant grin on his face,  our mediator had sent him everything. His intention was to make us feel powerless and his daughter ignored our demands, instead she spoke about the next week's lesson schedule. Rachel look into other stories and similar situations, unfortunately they ones closest to our own advised the people to get there a.s.a.p! The person we were working for was aware that my girlfriend was a trained singer and suddenly her lessons were to become singing lessons. 

In the final meeting we were calm, polite and I even acted upbeat (as Rachel persuaded me to control myself. I thought as we were hatching an escape plan that I should probably follow the lead actress on this one)

With heavy hearts we left China and returned to the relative safety of the U.K. Plane tickets cost a fortune and fortunes are something that graduates tend to lack. I was financially ruined from the venture and my girlfriend was pretty saddened by the entire ordeal as her dream year abroad was nothing but a nightmare. I ran back to home as I borrowed a lot of the banks money (overdraft) and she returned to her home with her family as we had divided our costs whilst working out there and so Rachel was in the same boat as I was. Ideally we would have spent more time together but I think we both felt quite shocked by our ordeal. We lacked the funds to go somewhere nice and our heads were rolling over everything we had just witnessed. I did not know what to say nor what to do, in retrospect there was little we could do except be thankful we made it back to the U.K. Broken both spiritually and financially it was a miracle that we made it back in one piece.

As I was severely out of pocket upon returning to Blighty I applied for the JSA. The first stage of the process was done online and the people in the Banbury branch were incredibly open minded as I doubt they receive many people who have fled from corrupt Chinese businessmen. My story shocked them and they were surprised we had even attempted to seek another employer while out there. Really the only thing I wanted to do was to see Rachel and hold her close as I needed someone to hold me close too and the last few years had been tough on her. Our stress in China helped neither of us and now we're back we're attempting to rebuild ourselves.

. For the first month I set up accounts, acquired a new phone/glasses thanks to Mum, received CV advice from one of my dearest friends (Merlyn) and tried to just come to terms with what had happened. My heart and mind feel fried from what's happened. Rachel and I speak quite often. She has plans for a masters :) Everyone talks to me and goes "China though, surely that was an experience". There were many good times but those happened outside a central nexus of terror, intimidation and manipulation that was run by our Mad Hatter employer.

If you experienced any notions of terror while reading this then I was successful in helping you understand why we had chosen to leave. I will probably try to re-learn Mandarin in the coming months as it is something I enjoy and learning such a language opens many doors. However we have reached the end of this blog as I have nothing else to write on this matter.

Except... that Rachel kept me sane whilst out there and I am glad that we made we back in one piece.

If it was not for Rachel I fear that I would still be out there. She is one of the toughest and most caring people I know.

Thank you for reading,

The next blog will be Chapter 2: My First Month.

It will be published on the 8/3/2013.