So Parliament has no more laws to invent and has decided to just bugger off and relax. I wish I could do that. “This place is clean, everything works, so I am off for 20 days and cannot be recalled even if someone shits in a fridge. I expect to be paid all the same”.
I think I can confidently predict the response I’d get. It would start and end with an ‘F’ and would have ‘uckof’ in between them.
Wasn’t it just a few days ago that this mob of shysters told the unemployed they had to accept zero-hours contracts or lose their benefits? The same shysters who, a few weeks earlier, were railing at the lunacy of zero-hours contracts?
For those who don’t know about zero-hours contracts, here’s a quick summary.
My contract is for 30 houirs a week. I can do extra, but that’s my contracted hours. Which means that every week, I turn up for at least 30 hours and they pay me for at least 30 hours. Since we are always short of staff, it’s often more. I know I will get at least 30 hours a week so can put some stability into the monthly bills.
A zero-hours contract means that you are under contract to work for someone but they do not guarantee that you will do any work (or get paid) in any week. In theory you can join up to as many of these as you like. In practice, if they phone you in the morning to go to work in the afternoon and you’ve already agreed to work for someone else that afternoon, they won’t phone you again.
They do not need to sack you. If you get no hours they don’t have to pay, so they just don’t bother again. And yet… you are not an unemployment statistic even if you never get any work, are never paid, and are still on benefits, because you have a contract.
So let’s see. If the government think zero-hour contracts are such a good thing then that should be every MP’s contract. When they turn up for work, they get paid. When they decide to bunk off for 20 days, they don’t. Sounds fair to me. ‘We are all in it together’, eh, Davey? Why don’t you get in here too and see what it’s really like? Scared? Oh, I’m sure you’re scared, you and your band of feeble idiots have no more spine between you than a washed-up jellyfish.
As for the government having nothing to do…
How about dealing with the schools run on radical Islamic principles? How about the soldiers still dying in Afghanistan? How about the imminent Crimean war or the explosion in Turkey? How about the NHS sending patient data to an Indian call centre? How about Oily Al’s attempt to sever Scotland from the UK and wreck it in the process because he really has no idea what he’s doing and is only in it for the kudos?
That’s just a sample. But no, the government don’t care about any of that. All of that is the EU’s problem, they make the real laws.
The government of the UK can’t think of any more ways to make our lives more miserable at the moment so they are taking time off to go away and think of new ways to torment us.
And we are paying them to do it.
Thyese are the people who tell us UKIP is a party of cranks. Pot and kettle time. Except this time the pot is far pottier than the kettle.
underdogs bite upwards 
XX A zero-hours contract means that you are under contract to work for someone but they do not guarantee that you will do any work (or get paid) in any week.XX
And, the differnce between that and “agency” work is….WHAT exactly?
Motorcycle dispatch firms run this way. You can sit in the office, and MUST sit in the office, all day. But unless you are putting miles on the clock, you do not get a penny.
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Hm. I could be writing a novel in the time I’d be waiting around… but then I can’t ride a bicycle, never mind a motorcycle.
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Zero hours contracts, the sales equivalent of which is ‘self-employment’, in actuality commission-only employment with no benefits or security. It was reported yesterday that there’s been a huge rise in ‘self-employment’. So, while the b*stards are congratulating themselves on the positive employment figures, many people don’t know how much money they’ll bring home next week.
At least they’re doing less damage by not sitting in Parliament and we won’t be subsidising their restaurant quality food and drink while we eat and drink the budget pizzas and cheap lager they despise so much.
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That huge rise in ‘self-employment’ is mostly Big Issue sellers. They have to buy the comics and then sell them on, so they count as self-employed. Not unemployed.
I buy one if the seller isn’t pushy or grumpy about it. Hell, they are just trying to scrape a living like the rest of us. Some, however, have a lot to learn about customer relations.
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The problem is that most MPs seem to do a lot of work, so they’d still be earning loads. Their workload includes things like visiting the last remaining factory in their constituency and saying, “Jolly good chaps; keep it up” while getting their visit recorded for the local news; visiting fetes and fairs for free nosh and to get their picture in the paper; spending hours at their desks dreaming up the next witticism to unleash in Parliament; reading and re-reading “The Communist Manifesto” and most importantly, looking through catalogues for new stuff for their ‘second homes’. Most of all, they are employed as highly-paid and under-qualified social workers.
I asked that pompous twerp Tom Harris on his blog how many people visit him about matters of national importance versus complications in their own lives and he said precious few for the former category and he wishes it was more, although I don’t know why as they never listen to us.
That’s why, when it comes to actual politics, they just do what they’re told. We don’t actually need them at all any longer. They should take 52 week holidays, unpaid.
P.S. I wonder what the House of Commons toilets are like. In a better state than the Lords’ one, I imagine, unless Eric Joyce MP has just spent a penny.
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Is that THE Tom (Captain Kirk lookalike) Harris? If so, I remember playing on his blog from time to time. No point trying to be serious with any of them, they are just drones in better suits whose minds are closed to anything that might disturb their internal utopia.
You are a swine. I just had an image of the House of Commons gents after Eric Joyce’s Vindaloo Evacuation Event.
The horror…
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Yes, the same know-all Harris. Every alternative viewpoint that’s not government approved is a ‘conspiracy theory’ to him. So it would be a conspiracy theory to suggest that they have it in for people who enjoy smoking, drinking, salty/sugary/fatty foodstuffs, freedom, a job, a say…
Gambling, though, that’s just great. That’s one vice that’s so spot on even the government gets in on the action and we’re all encouraged to bet online. Only because they love poor people so much.
Eric Joyce said to police on being caught allegedly drink driving (I think I still have to say ‘allegedly’ as I think he still denies it, having refused a breath test. Not sure what it was that made him crash into a roundabout and stagger around afterwards slurring his speech); anyway, he said, “Do you know who I am?”.
At which point, the officer in question replied, “You’re Eric Joyce. Have you eaten a vindaloo tonight by any chance?” Then spoke to him from 50 yards away through a megaphone just to be on the safe side.
Police Officer: “We need you to take a breath test.”
Joyce: “There’s no need. I’ve not been drinking. *Hic* By the way, you’re my best mate…”
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I thought refusal to take a breath test was an automatic disqualification from driving? Or does that only apply to the proles?
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I don’t know. If memory serves, he spent the rest of the night in a cell, like where the majority of them should be permanently.
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The Apple store which should open soon in Edinburgh advertised for staff recently. Yes, you guessed it – zero hours even including some managers. We’ve let this happen. It’s our own continuing fault. Good grief.
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Well, there is a silver lining. Apple hate smokers and declared their warranties were void for smokers in case their repair staff encoutered a stray nicotine molecule. So I will never enter their shops for any reason and will certainly never apply to work there.
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The problem is that most MPs seem to do a lot of work, so they’d still be earning loads. Their workload includes things like visiting the last remaining factory in their constituency and saying, “Jolly good chaps; keep it up” while getting their visit recorded for the local news; visiting fetes and fairs for free nosh and to get their picture in the paper; reading and re-reading “The Communist Manifesto”; spending hours at their desks dreaming up the next witticism to unleash in Parliament and most importantly, looking through catalogues for new stuff for their ‘second homes’. Most of all, they are employed as highly-paid and under-qualified social workers.
I asked that pompous twerp Tom Harris on his blog how many people visit him about matters of national importance versus complications in their own lives and he said precious few for the former category and he wishes it was more, although I don’t know why as they never listen to us.
That’s why, when it comes to actual politics, they just do what they’re told. We don’t actually need them at all any longer. They should take 52 week holidays, unpaid.
P.S. I wonder what the House of Commons toilets are like. In a better state than the Lords’ one, I imagine, unless Eric Joyce MP has just spent a penny.
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Oops. The trouble I had getting the thing posted once, “You are posting too quickly”. What? I’m posting at my normal speed.
Then one of the earlier ones appears eventually, despite checking on two different browsers.
‘Tis the Twilight Zone round these parts, I tell ye.
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The Spaminator caught you. I have no idea why. Sometimes it seems to just get bored and pick random comments.
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Apple recognise my warranties and in the past few years I’ve insisted they put ‘smoker’ on them. Never had a problem but then I seldom have problems with Apple products. (touching wood here). 😀
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I think they backed down, probably fairly quickly. Too late for me. I can hold a grudge forever.
There are much cheaper versions of their gadgets out there anyway, and the Linux operating system is free!
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