Brexit, Exits and the Nextsits.

Hi there. Yes, it’s me; the one looking sheepish and in distinct need of a haircut. (NB Sheepishness and haircut are not synonymous. I mean, they could be, but I’m not great at metaphors).

This is going to be a long one, in three distinct chapters, so settle down with a cuppa and I’ll begin. At the beginning, which is only correct.

Your chapters are appropriately titled Then, Now and Next. Don’t tell me I’m unimaginative.

WARNING: Contains politics with which you may not agree. I’m not asking you to agree with me, just listen, read and make your own mind up. Insert that quote about opinions being like private parts here and so on.


THEN
“I was looking for a job, then I found a job…” The Smiths, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now

The beginning stage needs some more explaining due to my profound radio silence in the last two months. Since we last met, I have been working at an education provider start-up. I did the marketing and quality assurance, and – I’m missing a huge step here. I’m sorry.

I was unemployed following a massive leap of faith and began a work experience placement in February which took 8 weeks to complete. I was taken on full time in April and did a little bit of everything. Flyers, press releases, internal comms; you name it. The people working there are fantastic and dedicated to their work. I have been able to move into a flat with my boyfriend and we can live like normal humans. There are fat pigeons that sit on our windowsills. We are well domestic.

Then last week, the UK voted to leave the EU. Just in case you’ve been living under a rock.

At work, we were understandably concerned by the outcome; after all, the company relies heavily on money that filters down from the Government through educational sources.

The first week was the worst. Everyone had an opinion; everyone had a voice desperate to be heard. We drank our tea in silence. We tagged each other in funny Facebook videos, kept our heads down and hoped for the best.

We thought we’d be okay. I thought I’d be okay. And then I was made redundant.


NOW
“Gorgeous poverty of created needs…” Manic Street Preachers, Slash N’ Burn

I cleared my desk, which took a pathetically short amount of time. It’s difficult to accumulate that much stuff in two months, and that’s coming from me; the hoarding queen. The shoes under my desk; some peppermint teabags, a few Biros and knackered notebooks later and I was on the bus home.

ENORMOUS AND HOPEFULLY OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER: I can’t state strongly enough that my former employers are excellent people. They did everything they could to try and keep me. This is not a slight on them and I would hate it to be interpreted as so. This is the fault of something greater than them; larger than any one person or small group. I hope that’s clear.

And now I have come full circle back to job hunting. Hello Darkness my old friend, etc. Except, no, actually; that’s not fair. I am now more determined than ever to succeed. This is the second time I have lost a job due to Government funding cuts, and I no longer accept it.

I had a phase of being extremely angry last week at the UK population en masse. Or at least at the 52%. Angry like I was at 14 when politics was a closed door of the 6 o’clock news and a vague idea of one group being wrong and one being left. Ahem. And while I can’t profess to know as much as I could or should, I now firmly know a few fundamental things I believe in. And while it may be tempting to blast out this on repeat, 29-year-old me knows anarchy is no longer the solution (although the movement does have the benefit of a cool logo).

Activism is a powerful statement, and one that will bring people back together to common good. No promises should be made on half-truths. People must be treated as humans with hearts and minds. We are not tin men or cowardly lions. For me, the clumsy statements on Generation Terrorists are never more relevant than they are now. The UK in the early 1990s doesn’t seem so different to the confused and suppressed era we are entering now. (Yes, I am old enough to have ‘been there’, but I was a small child oblivious to anything other than snack time and books – how little changes.)


NEXT
“If memory serves - then why am I still waiting for it to return?” The Futureheads – The Beginning of the Twist

Personally I am sick of the word Brexit. It sounds like an awful healthy cereal, or rubbish brand of biscuits, and I hate what it has come to stand for. I hate the negative things that seem to have happened under its watch and most of all, I hate feeling powerless to stop it. And as for the campaign itself - David Hare has written a beautiful opinion piece here about the snake swallowing its own tail.

Plan? What plan? A lot of things seem to have gone into overdrive, or meltdown, or have snowballed, or any other metaphor (see, told you I wasn’t good at those) and the future is extremely unclear. In the 90s we had Mystic Meg, and now all we’ve got is a race to the bottom for Twitter trolls both online and in the real, horrible, cold and damp real world. Yeah, it’s summer now. But I think this really could be the winter of our disco tent, or whatever it was that local car park attendant said, and I don't think he was talking about Glastonbury.

No one really has a clue what’s going on, and for as long as this confusion lasts, I’ll be blogging more regularly, cooking up a (culinary) storm and generally keeping my head up. 

Oh, and I’ve started going to the gym. Vive la révolution!

Thursday: benefits, squirrels and fruit bowl politics.

Today I gritted my teeth, swallowed my tea and walked two miles into town to register for unemployment benefits. This isn’t the first time I’ve signed on, and I doubt it’ll be the last dealings I have with the DWP. The last time I was officially titled 'Jobseeker' was thanks to "education, education, education". Like a lot of people my age, we were fed the ideal of education being your liberator, your passport to the world of work, so I went to university.

I graduated with my degree, followed it up with relevant work experience and then took a post-graduate diploma course to further my prospects as a modern, urban human. Education³ soon became

"employable, experienced, quite good at application forms". That excitement soon paled into nine months of unemployment, six spent on benefits. It ended well when I finally got a job. One I enjoyed, and one that led to my first career.

Writer, GSOH, WLTM new employers for meaningful employment. Contact me on Twitter for promotional posts, cute animals, and the occasional old-man-shouting-at-clouds observations.

The UK is keen to paint a picture of employment bliss. Figures from the Office of National Statistics released yesterday (17/02/16) sing the praises of the final quarter of 2015. According to the ONS, unemployment fell by 60,000 to 1.69 million in the last three months of 2015, and pay increased by 2.0%. Wowzers! It’s worth noting Christmas temporary jobs are often well underway by October, and paid hourly bonuses – let alone monstrous bankers’ bonuses – are paid out at the end of the year. Funny, that.

What I want to know is this: How many of these extra people in work are still in their jobs? I know in my old company the UK workforce would increase by roughly 2,500 to care for the extra business Christmas would bring. You only need 24 companies to recruit similar quantities of staff to quickly find the 60,000 people suddenly in temporary work.

These tiny daffodils are growing valiantly on a scrubby patch of ground beside a very busy road. Hope springs. 

This time, I’m out of work. I have several years of NI contributions on my side, but hell, do they make it complicated. Regulations are there to stop people from screwing the system, we all know that, but I just need some money. I need a haircut, for a start. There are so many options and clauses it makes your head spin.
“You can have this apple only if you don’t already have some bananas. If someone you live with has seven apples, you can’t have any. Have you been sourcing your own apples? What variety? Have you eaten them? Have you ever given one to a passing squirrel?” Incidentally, I am well up for being paid in apples. I like braeburns best.

Hopefully my adventures in unemployment will be short lived. I hope the people represented by numbers are still in work. If not, I’ll see them in the queue. But only after I’ve juggled with fruit, claim codes, and reimbursed my squirrel friends.