Sunny Hundal spots the NHS being privatised, kindly warns us (unlike BBC, papers etc)
Hello. You may not be aware that the NHS will begin being privatised from next week with the hope that nobody will notice. Please notice. Please share that around everywhere you can. We could end up with a healthcare system run for private profit, which would be infinitely worse than the current system despite its problems (to which the press have given plenty of attention).
Stuart Millard is selling himself to bits
That’s right, no more original content for you yet, you greedy sods (I’m so sorry, it’s coming, I promise, please don’t leave). But it’s writing-related, at least. A friend of mine has a book out, which you can purchase on the Kindle or the FREE KINDLE APP FOR ALL PLATFORMS SO YOU’VE GOT NO EXCUSE for a steal, in both the UK and the US.
You might wonder why I’m plugging someone else’s stuff, and I’m pleased to inform you it’s not just so he’ll rig the poster of the year poll on the forum I post on where he’s a moderator. No, it’s because he’s working his fingers to the bone plugging the damn thing, all while still giving a shit about whether said plugging might actually upset the more fickle among his fragile, hard-earned fanbase. I know this because he’s written a brilliant and terrifying blog post on that very subject, detailing exactly how much financial jeopardy he’s in and how much he’s relying on this book to make him some – any – money. This is pretty fucking vital.
He’ll probably be dreadfully embarrassed by all this, as he often is whenever anyone so much as acknowledges his existence, but I don’t care. He needs a leg up, and I figured the nine views this post will get might just help. So read his blog, then buy his book. Then buy his other books. He both needs and deserves it.
Programme quest, volume 4
Very quick tonight. Got a lot of Harlequins signatures at the match on Saturday, including England captain Chris Robshaw. Didn’t get all the ones I needed, though. As I anticipated, it’s a really fucking difficult thing to be doing. You’d think that might put me off.
*shrug*
New story: Just
Making up for far too many non-story posts in a row, here’s one I’ve been sitting on for a while that I finished and brushed up the other day. Decided against including tags related to the subject matter. I’m sure you’ll see why.
Programme quest, volume 3
I know, I know. More actual writing soon, I promise. Just a quick one to say that I’ve managed to nab a big signature in the form of Tigers captain Geordan Murphy. Photographic evidence will follow in a future post. I won’t mention the reasons I couldn’t get it in person to save the embarrassment of a large corporation who acted like dicks, but I would like to thank Kirk from the Leicester Tigers Store on Market Street, Leicester for helping me out in an hour of need. Go buy things from him and tell him how nice he is.
Volume 4 may or may not follow on Saturday – I’m off to Wembley for Tigers vs Saracens, and I’m about to try my luck at arranging some autograph-grabbing officially for a change. Hopefully I can get something sorted, because there are a lot of Saracens faces in the programme and the Wembley pitch isn’t the easiest place to reach. Especially from the middle tier.
Programme Quest, volume 2
Just a quick one. I went to the annual Matt Hampson 20/20 cricket day at Grace Road on Sunday, and got a bunch more autographs from all the Tigers players in attendance, past and present. Special mentions go to Tim Stimpson (because he was there, and I’m so glad he was, because I wouldn’t have had a clue how to get him otherwise), Toby Flood (very nice, very chatty, and reassuringly enthusiastic about the whole project), Ed Slater (also very nice) and George Chuter (for his commentary, which consisted of 3 solid hours of ripping on his teammates while they were trying to play cricket).
Also, I got a very rare chance to see the legendary Mike Gatting play, which was pretty special. On top of that, I ran into another infamous athlete whose autograph I actually needed for the programme, but she looked a bit off in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on, so I thought I’d run it by you guys first.
What d’you think?
Programme Quest, Volume 1
If you don’t know what this is about, I explained earlier. Warning: this post will contain mainly photos and may be unsuitable for those craving text. If you just want words, read all the stories I’ve put on here. All of them. Except Little Changes, that wasn’t very good.
So! Today I began my Premiership Final Programme-Signing Quest with the Leicester Tigers away kit launch, and I managed to score a fairly decent five of the approximately 125 autographs I need, plus two extras: those of Julian Salvi, Ben Woods, Niall Morris, Craig Newby, Jordan Crane, Boris Stankovich and Tigers mascot Welford. I’m fairly pleased. It’s a humble beginning, but it’s a beginning. This has started. It’s started! Oh christ, now I’ve gotta finish it.
Here’s the photographic proof (which I’ll be trying to get for almost every set of autographs I get, for the purposes of both verification and FUN~!):
Me, proving that I own both the programme and a face.
Standing in the queue, looking so much of a goon that the people in front and behind have edged away.
This guy seemed to like me, though.
Chatting to Ben Woods…
… and Jordan Crane, who was very nice despite his obvious bad mood (the sign of a true gent)…
… and Boris Stankovich. All lovely.
And now, your first glimpse inside the hallowed sheets…
Jordan Crane, who doesn’t actually appear in the programme. Call it a bonus.
Niall Morris (also not in the programme), Craig Newby, Julian Salvi, Boris Stankovich and Ben Woods.
And Welford, who can in fact hold a pen despite his giant, cumbersome, costume-like hands.
So there you have it. Genesis. My quest is begun.
EMERGENCY EDIT: Holy goodness, I forgot to credit my photographer. It was my other half, who runs a beauty blog that some of you may find very interesting and useful. She fills it with impossible amounts of content, all of which is far more practical than anything I have ever thought of, much less done.
Programme Quest, volume 0
As some of you may know, I like rugby. If you know that, you probably know that I like rugby union, specifically. And if you know that, you probably know which team I support. And if you know that, you might guess that I went to the Premiership final this year. Well, whilst I was there, I purchased a programme. Normally, I don’t shell out for programmes at big games because they’re usually extortionate. This year’s was no exception on the price front, but it came with the caveat that 50% of the proceeds would go to Sport Relief. As such, feeling all charitable, I decided to go for it. I was quite happy with myself, and I had a physical memento of my day that wasn’t as easily destroyed by transit in a backpack as my ticket would prove to be.
Of course, some of you will have now clicked on the first link in this post and noted that Harlequins won the match.
And some of you will have noted that I’m from Leicester, and support Leicester Tigers.
So after 80 minutes of admittedly very entertaining rugby, after a last-minute push from Tigers failed to save the day for the second year in a row, and after the better team (and frankly, the season’s best team) raised the trophy, you can imagine that while I wasn’t too bitter, I also wasn’t particularly fussed about hanging on to my programme.
But I did. And I’m glad I did, because a few weeks ago I had an idea. It’s so ridiculous that I can’t imagine why I decided to do it, but here it is: I’m going to get my signed by everyone in it, auction it off for the Matt Hampson Foundation.
Now, this is a big project – I count around 125 names in it, including people who work for Premiership Rugby and its various sponsors, and non-rugby celebrities like Jessica Ennis and Jamie Oliver. There are also fans, school teams and people taking part in community projects, but I’m leaving them out because tracking them down would be nigh-on impossible and probably illegal. So it’s just the celebrities. All 125 of them.
When and how will I do this? Basically, it’s going to involve a lot of hanging around: With my minimal funds, I’ll have to target Tigers home games for the right players, I’ll have to sneak round Wembley when we play Saracens, and I’ll have to hope I can get to wherever the Tigers Academy are playing the Bath Academy so I can nab the autograph of their coach Danny Grewcock. I might have to bother retired Tigers top-scorer Tim Stimpson at his office. I might have to actually give the programme to Manu Tuilagi so he can get big brother Alesana, the winger who’s just moved from Tigers to NTT Shining Arcs in Japan, to scribble his mark on it.
Today, though, I’m starting it off with an easy one: a signing with some Tigers players at John Lewis in Leicester to launch the new Tigers away kit. I’ll report back later, hopefully with pictures.
This will not be easy. It might take more than a season. It might take years. But I’m going to do it, because the Matt Hampson foundation deserves the money, and because I know I can. And who knows, it might even end up being fun.
Wish me luck.
New story: The Old Sea Captain and the Young Stowaway
As promised (on Twitter, I think), a new story (well, flashfic) to celebrate my blog redesign, despite being thematically unrelated to my blog redesign. Because who would want to read a story about a blog redesign? Not you, I hope, because this isn’t one. It’s about growing up and being terrified of not knowing how to do it properly.
Here you go, then – The Old Sea Captain and the Young Stowaway. Read on Scribd’s embeddy thing below, or view and download from Dropbox. As ever, it’s CC BY-NC-SA. You know the rules by now.
First, allow me to apologise. This post is a little rushed and disorganised, but that’s because I’ve let it pour out of me rather faster than I usually do. This technique generally works better for creative writing, but I hope it helps make my point here, in the realm of reality.
So. David Cameron wants to cut Housing Benefit for people under 25. This is a sentence you will be familiar with by now. This is a sentence that has made everyone whose physical or digital company I care to keep incredibly angry. Now it’s my turn, and I have a particular sentence with which I wish to familiarise you, and particularly David Cameron. It’ll pop up a few times later on. I’m sure you’ll spot it.
But first: Why, David? You want to promote hard work, rather than enouraging those who would shun employment and sponge off the state. Well, 7 out of 8 Housing Benefit claimants have jobs, and just need some help to get on their feet in the working, property-renting, tax-paying world. But you don’t seem to mind that. You’re disadvantaging without a care as to whether your assumptions are accurate. Or are you? Probably it’s more a case of “you were going to do it whatever the evidence says”. Damn the evidence. As usual.
So for the people Cameron puts out of their modest first homes, what advice does he have? “Move back in with your parents”.
Great.
Great! Your parents are rich. Moving in with them would probably be ace, even for a man with a wife and children. There’s probably room (EDIT: since posting, I have been informed that David Cameron’s dad has passed away. I’m sure the £300,000 of tax-free inheritance softened the blow, but seriously, my sincerest condolences. Furthermore, I’d like to point out that this negates precisely none of my points, and in fact possibly strengthens the sentence which this edit follows). You could sell all four of the houses you have. But, David, here’s the thing. Not everybody is this lucky. You want people to move back in with their parents? Well, as it happens, I have some experience in that area. Let me explain how it feels to move back in with your parents if you’re a normal person.
I went to university. I was lucky enough to have that funded privately by my grandmother, who’s fairly well-off. Not everybody is this lucky.
I struggled a lot in my first year at university. My lecturers saw I was struggling, and helped me understand exactly what was expected of university work, and how to produce it. Not everybody is this lucky.
I worked hard in my second and third years, and once I’d clicked on what academic writing was all about, I found I actually had quite a knack for it. Not everybody is this lucky.
I graduated university with a First. This was a close call. A few circumstantial factors could have gone a different way, causing a few borderline marks to slip a bit lower, and I might not have managed that final result. But fate was kind and I got my First. Not everybody is this lucky.
Straight out of university, I had no job prospects despite spending my spare time during dissertation season trying to plan what I could do. As such, after about a month, I began claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance. Because of the shares I own in a company passed down through various branches of my extended family, the Department of Work and Pensions determined that I was entitled to £25 a week. I’d moved back in with my parents, and felt guilty about it, but they refused to accept any financial contribution until I had a stable job and only until I could afford a place of my own. £25 a week was, as such, just about sufficient for me to travel across town to see my then-girlfriend, now-fiancée. £25 a week was workable. Not everybody is this lucky.
I attended every single Jobcentre meeting I was required to. I couldn’t find work. I didn’t find work for 10 months. My first job was with a charity, but paid for by the state – under the Future Jobs Fund, most recently famous for being cut by David Cameron. Without it, I might not have had a job to this day. I came through the system at a time when the system was kinder. Not everybody is this lucky.
I worked hard. I was commended for the commitment I brought to the role, as well as the skill (helped by natural writing ability which underwent crucial refinement thanks to the hard work I put in at uni). The post was funded for six months. I wasn’t informed that I wouldn’t be kept on by the company until a few days before I left. I am not upset by this, as it was because they were trying extremely hard to find enough money to keep me on under their own steam. I couldn’t go back on JSA as I now had too much money in savings and wouldn’t be eligible. Apparently I could sustain myself. This would mean selling my shares, which would give me a yearly income that would be less than what would make me eligible to pay back my student loan (maintenance, gran payed for tuition). It would give me that yearly income for a grand total of one year. Right now, in the entire world, I have about £12,000. Not everyone is this lucky.
I still live with my parents. I have applied for hundreds of jobs, both in the private & public sectors, and I have rarely got so much as an acknowledgement that my application has been received. Jobs that need my degree aren’t there. Jobs that are plentiful need experience that I don’t have, and as such can’t get because I don’t have experience to qualify for the opportunity to get it (the Coalition Conundrum, as I like to call it). I’m waiting to hear back from one job about which I’m fairly optimistic, but even that will not pay me enough to move out from my parents’ house and into a studio flat sharing rent with my fianceé. I have a kind family and a kind partner. I have lots of love to cushion my lack of forward momentum. Not everyone is this lucky.
Here’s the worst part, for me: I feel like a burden. I know I could be so much worse off, and so could my parents, but I still feel like a burden. Between them, they make enough money to keep me and live a relatively comfortable life. However, one of them works in a public sector job that is currently in a great deal of danger, regardless of their hard work and specialist training. I’m told it’s likely to fall prey to the apparently common tactic of avoiding redundancy payments by changing the role so drastically and to something the employee will probably dislike, to coerce them into taking voluntary redundancy. If my parent ends up in this situation, they might have to do a job they hate for over a decade to retire with the entirety of whatever will be left of the pension they’ve amassed over almost their entire working life. And I might still be here, relying on them to stay alive, because there are almost no jobs for me and no hope of any significant state assistance to get me going. I’m 23 years old, have a First-class degree, and have found the person I wish to spend my life with. Unemployed, living with my parents and being ruled over by a government that doesn’t seem to think I’m worth investing in for a later return is not the situation I’d guess at for someone like that. I should be out on my own (with the missus, obviously) starting a proper life, because I have some core building blocks of a good one. Furthermore, not everyone is this lucky.
My entire family, myself included, has worked hard, but we’ve also been fortunate that we’ve had, by national standards, a relatively privileged base from which to work. Yet still, we could end up squeezed. Imagine how those who haven’t had the modest privileges we have will fare. Cameron says “move back in with your parents” as if it’s an infallible idea. Some under-25s have well-off parents that will gladly welcome them back. Some under-25s have parents with a backup plan who could just about stretch to having their kid back under the family roof for a while, until junior gets on their feet proper. Some under-25s have good, healthy relationship with their parents and can stand to be around them. Not everyone is this lucky.
David Cameron’s mother got him a £90,000-a-year job, but it’s mind-boggling to think that he’s so wrapped up in the bubble that has protected him his entire life that he can’t comprehend that others might not be so lucky. Yet that is what the evidence suggests. That the fate of so many lies in this man’s hands is terrifying to me. We are in a situation where we could conceivably end up with homeless university graduates under the age of 25, and the man in charge of this country either A) considers that less perverse than young people asking for some state assistance to help them to become reliable taxpayers, or B) just hasn’t thought about it.
Cameron slashes, cuts, dismantles, pulls apart and decimates, and believes he will be left with something other than wreckage. Cameron, beyond all logic, seems unable to comprehend that people don’t have the fall-backs he was blessed with. In the opinion of this smart, hard-working and responsible British citizen who just wants a chance to use this qualities to become a decent tax-paying bona-fide adult, David Cameron would do well to remember five words. Can you guess what they are?
Charles Writes Things 