being out of work - C or D

you might get lucky, i temped in the same company for about a year, then they moved me to somewhere else - i'm still here after 11 years

having said that, we're all being made redundant next year lol

if i were to sign on, how much unemployment benefit would a single 30-something bloke be likely to get living in the north of england?

£59.15 a week, though if you get lots and lot of redundancy money you might not get the full amount (can't remember the savings threshold off the top of my head, having never been anywhere near it).

anyway, answer = dud unless you have enough spare cash to make it classic.

If you're living in a council house, however, the amount probably wouldn't matter since hip feisty chick Caroline Flint will throw you out on the street unless you agree the workhouse/oakum picking/whip deal.

C: for the first two weeks

D: thereafter

Reverend OTM.

are you renting or paying off a mortgage?

Reverend OTM, but I'd up the C to a month, as I am quite good at doing nothing.

Dud Dud Dud - especially the Kafka-esque Job Centres.

I got made redundant in May 2002 and didn't get another job til Sep 2003. Classic, apart from the being skint all the time. The redundancy money paid for a trip to USA/Canada the summer after I lost my job, and kept me afloat until I'd got signed on (I stupidly didn't sign on until after I got back from the US, thinking I'd probably get another job pretty quickly. I didn't).

Luckily I know all the people in my local jobcentre through my old work, so they don't hassle me at all, mostly going "lol, you're unemployed when you spent the last three years helping unemployed people get jobs, hahaha, the ironing" at me.

Job hunting is shit. I hate the whole interviewing/bigging yourself up process.

cheer up, dickinson's real deal is on in a couple of minutes

<hangs self from rafters>

I have three interviews this week. I am hoping just to put myself in a bigging-up frame of mind and then sustain it long enough to get through them all in one burst of own-trumpet-blowing.

I'm quite over being unemployed at this point (its been about 2 months now). Ive tried to get into some new kinds of work, but breaking past the "oh you dont quite have the experience for this" is not easy. So today I'm interviewing for a job much like Ive done the past 8 years or so. Hopefully I'll get it. Sick of being broke.

I just got laid off 2 weeks ago. Collecting unemployment. It's like going from 60 to 0 in one second ... there's nothing to do during the winter except write and post stupid shit on messageboards.

Fuck being out of work. You're constantly worrying about when the cashflow will start up again, and for all your free time you know in actuality that it is only once you have to get up and be somewhere in the morning that you'll have good ideas for songs (which, of course, will have to wait and in most likelyhood be forgotten while you're doing work shit) when you're drinking your coffee and starting on the first work poroject of the day.

Or maye I only get inspired when I can't do a fucking thing about it because someone needs a document formatted and I can't bring my sampler, sequencer, and guitar to work.

YMMV.

Helltime OTMFM about the songs :(

how anyone could contemplate missing the alan titchmarsh show is beyond me