This arguing is useless. You are not finding the ways to solve unemployment. OANST, Wings of Fire, you have never been in each other's bodies. Please, stop shitting each other. No one shall be a victor.


I am afraid, that this question may start a new senseless controversy, but why not free-lance and self-employ? Of course, I do not live in the UK and can not judge a book by its cover.

The UK is also a much smaller country than the US, has a much smaller economy and has also been through the same economic recession that the rest of the world has these past few years. Plus they currently have an economically conservative government which is more concerned about cutting as much welfare and support as possible for the working class.

And again, much of the unemployment figures (at least in the UK) is made up of young people. People just joining the workforce but have little or no real experience are exactly the kind of people who will get passed over by employers in favor of older, more experienced candidates. Two years of unemployment doesn’t sound absurd for someone who employers simply don’t want to touch.

e: And as the gap in your employment history widens, less and less employers are going to even consider you. The longer you’re out of work the harder it becomes to get back in.


This isn’t aimed specifically at you, but a lot of vitriol is aimed at unemployed people by the general public, the media and the government – and a lot of that vitriol uses the same arguments that you’ve been espousing in this thread. That’s probably a big reason why so many people are disagreeing with you here, because we’ve heard it all before from people who want to make life worse.


You know how expensive it is to become self-employed? It’s simply not an option for the majority of unemployed people.

Hi I'm essentially freelancing and I've made a total of $600 since the start of the year

That's why not free-lance and self-employ

Depends what work you're freelancing, and it does require the same experience and connections, maybe moreso in freelance than employed work. Expenses vary depending on how you go about doing it, and what you're doing. If you've been really stitched up, but have good reputation in your work area, freelance is always a good ticket.

You said yourself: it's not the fact that people are coasting through life that offends you, it's the fact that you have to pay for it - to the point that you and your family have to go without. This isn't about who's the bigger problem, it's the same problem: People taking money they're not entitled to from the taxpayer. You can draw dividing lines all day, but any functional solution to the problem will focus on the largest contributing factors.

I have an opinion on this thread too: The opinion that pursuing benefit scroungers to the point of drawing government pressure away from bigger drains on society is detrimental to 99% of the population.

I don't deny that this is an argument worth having, the conclusions I draw just make it a very short argument on my part (hence why I've kept out of it).

you're just being a hard-nosed prick for the sake of being a hard-nosed prick.

i get it.

That comment was directed entirely at my neighbor who would ask us for rides to the liquor store and then come over the next day asking if they could have my shampoo.

Can I have your shampoo?

Only if you've washed your hair within the last year. Otherwise you have to pull your finger out and find your own shampoo (regardless of whether there's actually any shampoo in your area).

Can you take me for a ride to the liquor store?

Can you take me to the liquor store once you've dropped Varrok off at the liquor store and gone back home?

Can you buy us some alcohol since we're at the liquor store?

And then some shampoo?

Currently on jobseekers. Trying to get a job in Film & TV here in Northern Ireland. Worked on a movie from July - November 2013 so I don't feel too unjustified taking the allowance tbh.

I applied for a series of jobs there and I've got a month of waiting for callbacks before I need to move on to some temporary work through my old work agency (IKEA or the likes) until I can try out for some other opportunity later on in the year or next year.

Although, I do say, I don't feel comfortable on jobseekers at all. It's like this perpetual state of limbo.

I only give out shampoo and rides in return for sexual favors these days.

So what you're saying is; we get infinite shampoo and rides?

Yeah OANST, like that is supposed to stop me?

In which OANST forgets how insanely gay this forum is

Or that he's not. I've done it before.

I think he's after an argument with his woman and feels lonely.

As an update to my last post:

• The interview with the company in Seattle went reasonably. They said they'd get back to me by the end of last week. When I hadn't heard back by Saturday, I emailed them and got a reply telling me that bureaucracy was happening. Turns out they weren't meant to even offer me an interview within 12 months of a rejection without first checking with the lead interviewer who had rejected me. Now they're trying to get in touch with him to retroactively get permission to interview me. Which I'm hoping is a good sign, as I don't think they'd bother if they were going to reject me anyway.
• I leave for Amsterdam tomorrow!
• I got rejected from the coding exercise. I wrote my code with efficiency in mind, using types supported by the Python language that aren't in other languages. They wanted me to prove that I could write Object-Oriented code, even if it's less efficient in this mini problem.
• Haven't bothered touching that coding exercise. Too much effort and too much on and I don't think I'd get the job anyway.
• Had two interviews and a coding exercise with company #5. They seemed pretty happy with me and are planning another interview soon.

This was on BBC's tech section, and it made me think about this thread: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27125728

http://www.oddworldforums.net/attach...1&d=1399390916

Food for thought. IMO, red tape, bureaucracy and corporate greed are much bigger threats to employment than automation, but it is (and has been) yet another factor.

Of course if those in power prioritised the welfare of the general population over extortionate profits, that'd solve a lot of problems, but we can only dream.

(and on a personal note, the thread topic scares me, especially knowing that most people in power have OANST's attitude.)

I'm the devil.

So you're the guy that Shaman worshipped.

You know automation actually was one of the things that scared some of the people in the warehouse I worked at. Like, it can't be hard for Bosch to automate the processes we were doing, the only manpower they'd need would be the mechanics.

I've decided I just wanna say fuck it and buy a big arse field, some hives and set up an apiary. MA you can beekeep with me too if you like. Farmers in kind and shit.

I still want apiaries to be places where monkeys are farmed.

We could train the monkeys to run the apiary. Which would then put the recently self-employed STM and MA out of work.

Sounds about right.

I was going to suggest designing a swarm of robot super-bees to do the job and put you out of business, but I've been scooped.

Bloody monkeys, taking all our jobs. They should fuck off back to the jungle.

yeah and take their abundance of half-eaten banana peels all over the fucking place with them. spinal/leg injury rates have gone up six billion trillion percent.

I was fucking terrified when I watched the first 40 seconds of that that those things were real. Can you imagine if we were that complacent...

I heard it was eleventy quadrillion per cent but then that's the Daily Mail for you, always blowing things out of proportion.

the Daily Mail is a very good source of information. everyone should read the Daily Mail. the Daily Mail does not lie or advocate angry mobs. the Daily Mail is truth is law. all hail the Daily Mail.

Make sure that you're not quoted out of context with that one. People may not realise that you're actually talking about monkeys.

Please elaborate on your views.

Well, 'fuck saving the honey bees, we'll just call it a lost cause and make some little robot ones instead.'

We'd be losing a part of our biological history that comes from the Cretaceous.

They'd be in very good company.

You can't honestly tell me as a man of science you wouldn't care if they died out? It's our fault they're dropping like flies (ha), we're seeing now that preventative actions such as the banning of dangerous insecticides in the EU, is slowing CCD.

Considering the advert is by Greenpeace, I think the point was to inspire a mild sense of disgust.

Yeah I assumed as much once I'd pieced together what I was looking at.

I think New Bees would be a pretty good supplement to Old Bees in areas where they have trouble surviving.

I think they'd be a good idea in China, where rapid industrialisation has made the air too toxic for bees to survive (and orchards employ hordes of people to hand-pollinate the trees). More competition for the bees we have left though, would be disastrous.