The week ahead.........

Hullo ma wee blog,

This week will end in a good way hopefully as the Lovely G and I fly off to Holland to spend some time with our Dutch pals Lisette and Martien before meeting up with my brother and his wife for a few days sightseeing and relaxing. Before then I will be crossing a couple of anniversary dates; the first anniversary of the blog's existence and the first anniversary of being made redundant. Hopefully you don't need to ask which of those will be the most enjoyable.

This morning I have been arranging with my ex-employer to take up a share option which I am entitled to. This needs to be fully concluded by Friday which should be no problem, but may unfortunately use up almost all of our remaining money from my dwindling redundancy payment. The upside is that by exchanging this for shares at a very preferential rate we will initially double our investment and hopefully be in a good position to benefit from growth which I feel is likely in the next however long. I have to maximise what I can take from my employers since their unfair redundancy selection process effectively killed my pension, which was key to our future plans. The downside is that it will lock the money up in shares and limit the amount we can access at any given time without taking a hit on tax liability, but I'm splitting ownership of shares with the Lovely G to use the tax advantages.


I also had yet another 'helpful interview' today with the Job Centre people. This one aimed at finding me opportunities for 'further training' to help me find work. It failed - they have nothing suitable for roles like mine, but "could have someone look at your CV" I am beginning to feel increasingly desperate/anxious even with the payment protection insurance and now, after a year out of work can see me ending up in a job at half my previous salary. There just no available jobs around and any that seem to be advertised are already ear-marked for people within the advertising organisations I suspect. I had to take with me all my evidence that I have been looking for work. I wondered if my recent sarcastic protest applications for judge and bank CEO etc would come back to bite me but despite asking for evidence to be provided they didn't look at it.

JC+ guy was in fine twitching form and looked anxious as he told me that I now had to be applying for any vacancy regardless of wage with the threat of the ultimate removal of job seekers allowance benefit if I am deemed to be not seriously looking for work. That's a laugh as I don't actually receive the £65 a week allowance any more as I was on contribution based benefit. Once again I asked him to look on the local newspapers to find anything that I could apply for. Amusingly/ depressingly he insisted on going on line to check out vacancies posted through other JC+ regional offices but embarrassingly had to admit that there was a bit of a hiatus at the moment when he couldn't offer 1 vacancy for me to chase. I refrained from explaining that the hiatus wasn't apparently matched by the application of their departmental or governmental policy. It seemed fruitless and to be honest I just wanted to get out of there. My activities, like others unemployed for a similar time, will now be monitored by monthly interviews to offer further 'support'


Deep Joy!

Jings - I need a week away.

see you later.

Listening to Leonard Cohen 'I'm your man'