Today I am mostly…

He may be a new addition to our house but little Ollie is already well settled. We understand his moods and wants, and he’s already squirmed his way into our hearts.

Which made leaving him at the vet this morning all the harder, doubly so as, when I bent down to say goodbye he stuck a little black paw through the railings of his carrier cage. Bless.

Ahem.

In other news, the Conservative Party plan to make people to ‘community work’ if they have been unemployed for over two years. If they don’t do it, they don’t get their benefits.

I quite like the sound of this, given that the perception is that a fair number of people who are claiming benefits are doing so with no good reason and are quite happy leeching off others and not contributing to society then I welcome this kind of scheme.

Yes, yes, of course there are people who are genuinely unable to work, and I’d hope this scheme deals with such cases, but I like the sound it! Let’s get those lazy buggers contributing to society!

But, of course, this is likely to be an infringement on their civil liberties, human rights, or somesuch. In other words, there will be some way of getting out of this scheme as well.

And finally, I am still without Wii, thanks to Amtrak courier services for not allowing me to specify a pickup time, and as they only allow you to pick it up from their depot after TWO failed attempts, I won’t get it until Wednesday at the earliest.

Still, I’ll have a poor wee cat, tottering about with a cone round his head for the next few days, so I guess I’ll have my hands full as it is.

Comments

  1. I saw a report from NY on the news last night and it struck me that what was happening there was that they were doing essential jobs, such as street cleaning.

    My view is that that is taking jobs away from other people. These are jobs that are already low-paid and the people doing them deserve at least minimum wage and employment protection. In any case, using long-termed unemployed people to do that work by coercion, rather than employed people must, statistically, increase those who are unemployed (all other things being equal).

    It doesn’t actually save anything on the welfare bill, and, at least under the UK model of public finance, if it were to save local authorities money from not having to employ street cleaners, that is money that is already earmarked in an un(der)funded service elsewhere, rather than in some magical tax reduction.

    BTW, congrats on your new arrival.

  2. We already have a similar scheme like the one you mention, in Ireland. It’s been operating for several years now. The idea is that if you give someone work, they’ll find it easier to find work.

    It seems to work too.

    Oh, and the Wii will be worth waiting for. It might be a good idea to do some arm exercises in preparation, to avoid injury. Oh, and always use the remote strap, and wear a condom.

  3. Can the Wii get a computer virus then?

    And does he really need to wear a lampshade? When my little boy had the snip he just had two neat little bits of stitching which he totally ignored. Although I was surprised that these days they leave the little furry bits, just remove the contents …

  4. You said: “The perception is that a fair number of people who are claiming benefits are doing so with no good reason and are quite happy leeching off others and not contributing to society”.

    I’m not sure if the above is your opinion, or if you are merely stating a commonly held perception. Whatever it is, it never ceases to amaze me how people think that being on the dole is a life of ease and relaxation. You get about bloody £50 per week and, even if you get housing benefit, have you any idea how difficult it is to survive on that?! It’s impossible. I was on the dole for about six weeks once and, let me tell you, it was pretty depressing because the lack of structure, or goal, robbed me of my get-up-and-go! After six weeks! And the fucking bastards didn’t even cover my full rent, so I lost about £10 off my dole money every week.

    The only benefit to this scheme would be that it will perhaps stop people from feeling so helpless and unstructured, but I find it totally offensive to say that it will help those “lazy buggers” get off their arse.

    Perhaps it would be better for all of us to try to understand somebody’s situation before we come to any sort of facile, judgemental conclusion about it. Let’s face it, a lot of those “lazy buggers” are living in areas with crap schools with poor infrastructure. If you want people to work, you need to give them some hope for future.

  5. Ahem – We have a Wii. It’s SO FUN!!! It showed up here on Monday. I am so tempted to call in sick and play, but that would be wrong.

    Hope Ollie is better after his little procedure.

    You can put this sign on his crate:

    “This cat contains no nuts.”

  6. My old cat had to have a cone on his head. He spent the first couple of days walking around backwards – trying to reverse out of it! When we finally took it off, he spent ages sitting in the middle of the room cleaning and scratching. They look so pathetic with those things on

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