Things that are making you crabbit! [4]

The UK has, onthe surface, a generous benefits system, but on practise its cleverly constructed to be brutal in all its undertakings- so delays are built in- when you sing on to claim your two weeks benefit, for me this was every second Thursday morning, you dont get your money till considerably afterwards, for me that was the following Tuesday- but in certain emergency circumstances I managed to get once when a payment has not been made, they can transfer money straight onto your bank in minutes, not days. It takes days normally because the system wants it to take days, its stressful as you wait to find out if it will turn up at all.
The whole thing is designed to make you not want to be on benefits by being a stress filled experienced, where you are grilled and set up to fall as often as possible, and threaten with loss of benefits at every turn.
A good example of the latter is if they need to send you a letter to tell you you have an appointment, or a job interview set up somewhere for you, or a course to attend.
But they dont just say this is what you are to do, heres where, whats it for and when.
They say all that then threaten you with loss of cash if you dont turn up, or are a minute late ect.

I will try to find the article but I was recently reading a piece about some whisteblowers from the Work and Pensions job centres who were threatened with being fired for not sanctioning enough people, and that they wee specifically told that they were try to set up as many chances for someone to fail something so they could be sanctioned.
And a story surfaced oly a few days ago inthe Scottish press that the WP department had sent out advice to front line staff on what to do if people whose benefits had been stopped were threatening suicide or self harm- indicative of the results.

A benefits program should be basic enough to provide encouragement to find work from tedium alone. It should not be actively uncomfortable.

bring on Corbyn! unleash the hounds!

I cant see who will beat him now. There is a wonderous piece on him on the fox news site-

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/08/25/british-socialist-jeremy-corbyn-who-compared-us-troops-to-isis-on-russian-tv/

God, I hate having a cold.

Particularily I hate having a cold and being at the library. I'm probably annoying the life out of everyone here.

Don't hate libraries though. Rather like libraries.

I finally remembered the right password to get back into my facebook account- and I was browsing down my homepage, something Ive never actually bothered my arse to do before, when I got to the bit where it made 'suggestions' of things I might like, among them, books.
And oddly enough all the books on there were all the same books I have listened to the audio books of on youtube.

I don't find this feature helpful, I find it fucking creepy and disturbing.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I find it fucking creepy and disturbing.

Sums up facebook for me quite well, I hardly ever use it but why the *beep* does rubbish from The Lad Bible turn up in my feed?

I don't like Facebook.

Myspace, Twitter & Facebook are merging to make a new social media, its gonna be called "Mytwitface"

Sounds about right.

If you leave it alone, Facebook gets uppity and starts doing things without you telling it.  Right now it says I'm 'formerly' employed at the place I've been at for years.  My parents called up to ask if there was something I wasn't telling them.  I had to go look, and couldn't figure out any way to change what Facebook had decided I'm not doing.

It's really pure evil.  I hope the kids out there realize it.

Twitter is just as barking mad. its digital diarrhea

There's some twitterbot that will automatically sign you up to follow people. I think it's described in some innocuous fashion when you sign up. I got a twitter account because we were trying to get data for a research project, then checked back a couple months later to find I was following over 1000 people. Most in languages I don't even recognize. Every now and then I go in and delete another 50 accounts.

Kept following the 'asian selfies' for a while. It was adorable. Then it went non-asian and pornographic. Um...still have it.

Forumshire is my only social media thingie, other places feel weird. oddly.

I don't really do anything else either. Except go into twitter and delete people I never agreed to be following. Another month of this and I'll be done.

can anyone read bad handwriting? its on a level with an ancient Egyptian being struck with palsy. My supervisor has given me some feedback on my latest essay, its valuable information if I could read a friggin word of it.

At least you've got context. If appropriate I'd suggest going in and asking apologetically what the damn hell he wrote. Nobody's offended at somebody honestly trying to understand them.

You could also snap a picture and try your luck posting a comment or two. It would be like translating Fjordlandian.

I have trouble deciphering what people write when they fill out forms sometimes. If I'm lucky the phone number at least is legible and I can call and ask for clarification.

I think she wants me to integrate pigs.       BIG PIGS!!!!

could you give us some context?

"initial form in research[?]  team -
fascinating[?] - get[?] first at
intervals: think about the story line.
                       see next page ->"

"Integration of of Fig. into text;
slightly confusing, better to put
all [?] the names[?] at the
end, and make them bigger!"


I'm still working on it,

I gave her an essay about the use of the peacock feather design in ceramic art.

Did my translation help? I strongly disagree with putting all figures at the end of the text, by the way. Making them bigger and putting at the top or bottom of pages is good. Unless you have more than 2 per page, then you may have problems.

oh cool thanks so much! now I understand it. she really has the worst handwriting ever.

yeah I don't like pictures at the end, you have to flip pages too much and it stops the flow of reading.