Unemployed Watercooler Fridge Buzz Commiseration, Alienation and Mental Anti-Stagnation Society (DNRIYHM)

Damn! My suggestion for your compliance visit is try to have someone there with you to observe the DWP person? So many spurious sanction stories, I can't help but think it's better to have an extra pair of eyes on the situation.

Thanks people. I don't it will be an ordeal, they are obliged to respond when somebody gets reported and like I said I have nothing to hide.

― xelab, Monday, 28 April 2014 20:57 (1 hour ago)

don't let it be an ordeal, fraud as a proportion of welfare expenditure is very small and subtracting the cost of this sort of GDR level minatory 'enforcement' its net cost is probably almost nothing, the function is more to delegitimize the concept of social insurance and these 'visits' are 95% of the time essentially abusive, you shouldn't have anything to fear from them

xelab (do i know you under a dif nick?) It says more about his states laws more than anything. But im not sure i should really say anymore about someones private stuff. I prob overstepped the mark as it is.It wont affect you tho so dont worry.

Given what the US tends to get draconian about, I'm guessing it was some kind of lyrical drug reference?

Anyway, I need to find out if the Overground is running today.

Yes it is - TFL reports good service

Thanks! OK, I guess I need to get out of bed and go find some ancient woodlands.

*shakes fist at bluebells*

RIGHT! I have walked the entire length of the Great North Woods! Starting at the Honor Oak, through Horniman Park, Sydenham Woods, Dulwich Woods, Kingswood, Norwood, Gypsy Hill (had to skip Convent Wood for being "apparently inaccessible" though after talking to a local at length, she suggested where I could hop a fence and gain access), Biggin Wood, Norwood Grove, Streatham Wood, Unigate Wood and home. It only took me 7 hours, but then I did do a lot of stopping to sketch things.

The oldest tree I saw was reckoned to be about 400 years old. LOADS of bluebells. (Dulwich Wood, in particular, gets honours for bluebells.) All kinds of wildflowers that I have forgotten the names of and will have to look up. CHEQUER TREES. Hornbeams. (God, I love hornbeams.) A completely Cthuthonic tree right at the tippy top of London (reckon it might be a laurel? It's bloody huge and ancient whatever it is.)

And I now reckon that the best view of London to be had anywhere is actually from Norwood Park. (Though, granted, that bit of Norwood is so rough that even the logs on the nature trail are chained down to stop people from nicking them. Not even kidding.)

Such a great walk. Will totally do it again to hoover up the remainder of Great North Fragments that I didn't hit on this jaunt. (Mayow Park, Grangewood Park, Sydemham Wells, others)

Well that was very unexpectedly painless and brief. All I had to do was flash some i.d, dig out my tenancy agreement and sign a statement confirming I don't have greater than £6k in savings. The compliance officer couldn't get out fast enough saying he had another 6 to do. Phew!

Well, I'm glad that was painless, even if it was a hassle!

Happy Beltaine / May Day / whatever!

Phone ringing off the hook today. Approached by 3 different companies... for the same role. :-/

Guess that means I'm qualified, though, if I turn up trumps in everyone's search criteria for it.

The Great North Woods walk sounds brilliant - I'd like to do that myself! Maybe accompany you next time? I'm sure Mrs GG would like to as well.

Fingers crossed for this new role.

I didn't do May Day by the way - no jumping off Magdalen Bridge for me.

Take in Maryon Park for a quick Nick Drake tribute moment?

I have totally been inside Convent Woods! I am drenched to the bone, but I was in there. It's not completely abandoned, as someone has been in there since the bluebells bloomed, so, within the past month. But OH. MY. GOD. I have seen bluebells like you would not BELIEVE. It is old growth forest with just carpets of bluebells. And brambles, oh good lord I am cut to ribbons on brambles.

I don't know that I'm going to be able to get in there again, because I took advantage of some construction which will very soon be finished and the hole I slipped in through patched up. But my god I am glad that I got in there while I got the chance. There really is a feeling and a smell and that wonderful sense of deep cooling dampness that you get from really old forests, I think because of the amount of ground cover.

I am just a gibbering mess of bluebell appreciation right now.

:D :D :D :D That's wonderful! Also I saw this yesterday and I want to give it to you:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/heritage-apples-john-bunker-maine

"In the mid-1800s, there were thousands of unique varieties of apples in the United States, some of the most astounding diversity ever developed in a food crop. Then industrial agriculture crushed that world. The apple industry settled on a handful of varieties to promote worldwide, and the rest were forgotten. They became commercially extinct—but not quite biologically extinct."

Read it!!! Now I want heritage apple trees!

Phone ringing off the hook today. Approached by 3 different companies... for the same role. :-/

Guess that means I'm qualified, though, if I turn up trumps in everyone's search criteria for it.

― Branwell Bluebell (Branwell Bell), Thursday, May 1, 2014 9:02 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jeez louise, I've been out of work for a year and a half and not one recruiter or employer has searched me out for ANY job. Celebrate yourself for a sec that you're in professional demand! Even if you don't want them.

Oh, what a great article! Thank you! (Though I'm somewhat worried I might be an "Apple Hipster" as described in there. Oh dear.)

But yeah, a lot of that stuff is what we were taught on our apple warden course, about how apples don't breed true, and you have to graft a cutting onto rootstock in order to propagate any variety you like. (And that's what's so amazing, when you think about it. That they are basically grafts and clones of a single tree. One living organism, that in some cases, has been living through cuttings for hundreds of years - we have an apple variety that dates to the 1700s! That is a living being that is 300 years old, just growing there in our orchard!)

I can't imagine how amazing that man's job is, being an APPLE DETECTIVE and going around hunting down rare breeds.

(And the headhunter thing, I don't know if this is a peculiar quirk of UK culture, or if it's just specifically IT professionals that get headhunted like this, but it is just the nature of the beast, and not necessarily indicative of my desirability. And I kinda do want this role, it sounds like it might be interesting.)

Every time I see a job described as a 'role' (something that's come to fruition over the past decade, I guess) my internal monologue can't help but riff on I'D LIKE TO THANK THE ACADEMY...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oEOrZB_STPc/T6-JPw6N0uI/AAAAAAAAFz4/bKrbJubG-r4/s640/drakecolour.jpg

The late Nick Drake bluebell hunting in the Old Great North Wood in 1970

I just got a spam email with the title "CORNISH BLUEBELLS" and I'm just like... "stop, stop... this google bubble of the tailored internet has GONE TOO FAR this time!"

yeah it's a particularly egregious piece of management speak

xxp

You know, when I use the term "I prefer this role to the other" as opposed to "I prefer this job to the other" I am actually talking about a specific sense of the job, rather than just some meaningless "management speak" term.

This may be specific to IT recruitment, I don't know. Job titles and descriptions in IT are often either meaningless guff to satisfy HR ("Application Support Analyst" is a job title I've been hired to do) or else refer to a group of tasks which get bunched - something like "Data Analyst" or "MI Analyst" or "Data Manager" can all be referring to the same tasks and same technology - or they might not. One *job* can entail many roles. In jobs I've had in the past, I've spent part of my job in the Role of "Database Manager", adding new users and deleting locked threads, part of my job sitting in the Role of SQL programmer, in front of a compiler writing SQL queries, part of my job in the Role of Report Developer, writing a report in Crystal or just exporting chunks of data to Excel, part of my job talking to department managers and trying to tease out what report they *really* want, as opposed to what they keep telling me they want because they read a buzzword in the FT that morning and they now think they want some ~analytics~, part of my job sitting in a board meeting telling the CEO the percentage increase of new customers, and then part of my job sitting in the call centre working out why the data entry operators hate the new system so much and what can we do to the graphic user interface to make them stop making so many stupid mistakes that gum up the system and render our data meaningless.

So: one job, many roles. "Job" is the desk at which you sit. "Role" is the hat you are wearing at that moment of the day.

When I say "I would prefer Role 1 to Role 2" what I mean is that I am being recruited for two jobs, two positions which both have a job title of "MI Analyst" or whatever, but the *role* of one involves doing a wide variety of the things discussed above (which is challenging and therefore interesting) and the other *role* involves sitting in front of a SQL query writer for 8 hours a day, slinging data into spreadsheets and emailing them out (which is boring as fuck and please dear god kill me now).

Learning to discuss the *role* as opposed to the *job* is something I've had to learn how to do when dealing with IT headhunters. It's a specific sense for a specific thing, though I recognise it's not something you'd know if you weren't familiar with that world.

(Also, I'm not sure anyone has a right to complain about florid or meaningless prose stylings when dishing out phrases like "come to fruition" but that's just me!)

yeah the prevalence of "role" in the workplace is weird

*sigh*

I dunno, Suzy. We could zing one another some more because it's fun and that's how we show affection? Or we could discuss the changing meaning of words in modern contexts coz that's also kinda fun?

But I suspect you're surfing a deadline! And I'm fractious from dealing with idiots on the phone all day long. And also should really be working on something I don't even have a deadline for, but it's a new publisher (for me) so I don't want to take forever. But I'm procrasturbating because what if it's not perfect, and also, what if they don't like it and so on. Blah. I should get back to work.

I see "role" being used as synonymous with "job" all the time in vacancy announcements. "This is a varied role", "Please explain how you are suited to the role", etc

"in this role you will be require to act convincing as though you know what you're doing"

See, I don't believe I was zinging a friend here, or in any way being ~personal~, rather I was offering a general WTF at the rigama of 'role'. I'm pretty jaundiced when it comes to HR-speak but 'role' makes me tetchy in a lie-that-speaks-the-truth sorta way.

(Not deadline-surfing BTW, was on a tea break in the office where I'm doing a few weeks' copywriting)

You know what, I've explained why I used the term in the way I did; I'm not interested in scrapping with you, so I'm just going to discontinue this conversation now.

Right now, I'm more pissed off by the general prevalence of yet more all-male panels and all male events and all male speakers.

Got an email about something I might actually be really interested in:

Faber Social teams up with The Quietus in May to present a night of music, words and film exploring the British uncanny and modern occult in relation to our history, culture, landscape and society.

Then I flick my eyes down through the list of writers, speakers, poets, DJs. All blokes. Every single one. I categorically no longer go to all male events. I just don't have time for this. So it's disappointing when I see something I would otherwise be very interested in the topic of, but it's just a giant sausage party. Fuck that shit.

rigama of 'role'

otm

Imagine having a British occult spesh without, y'know, *witches*.

Faber are pretty notorious for making a weenie roast of Social events/panels and you can blame the relevant editor, L33 B1ack$t0n3, who has even alienated a close friend/male muse of one of his most successful authors on the basis that everything there is (direct quote) "hetty-Betty boy-bonding". I was 'girled' at one featuring another good friend and I'm not ever planning on going to another.

just realized A Field in England is all dudes but beyond that can't think of a single film/musical group in this genre without strong female input, really quite a weird reading

weird like they'd have to go out of their way to be so monogender

I don't know what to think. The main speaker also happens to be the BFF of a certain ex of mine - I've gone to some of his events before, which were fine; don't remember if they were sausage parties, suspect not, because he's good friends with several women from that kind of ~wyrdness~ scene.

There is a certain strand of that subculture which is very boys-only, but it did tend to be overtly homosexual rather than just homosocial. Said BFF used to regularly go along to "all man" weekends with well known musical artists (my ex was invited but didn't go because it made him uncomfortable that partners weren't allowed) and it was kind of occult gay wyrdness, which is like, OK, I could see in that situation, all male being a *thing*.

But this isn't at all like that, it's just yet another boring fucking all male panel and I'm just so done with that. It's 2014, I just don't do sausage parties.

Mostly, at this point, I just kind of wonder... with so many people organisation's names on this thing, did no one at The Quietus or Strange Attractor, or *any* of the guests just kind of look up and go "Hmmm, can't put my finger on it, but something is *missing* here..." I just have trouble believing how common it is that no men involved with these all male panels and all male bills ever look up and go "something's ... not right here?" Like they don't even fucking *notice*?

my boss just called me into his office to discuss a new "role"!

Like they don't even fucking *notice*?

I really think they don't!

You bet they would notice an all female line-up, though!

was gonna say.

Have a sneaking suspicious this is why so many male events organisers are resistant to even "token women" on panels or events or gigs. Seeing one woman up there disrupts the illusion that all-male is normal or even acceptable. I get this shit all the time. My presence is "disruptive" or whatever in an all male environment that "never thought about gender before" because the mere presence of a single visible woman makes visible the massive gender elephant in the room.

Dear men: NOTICE THIS SHIT, PLEASE. I get tired of having to notice it for you.

Hi, shit has been duly noted and passed on to Faber…

In my defence:

1. This is the first time I've sat down and looked at the line up - Yeah, shit is lame. Sorry. I'm going to ask to have me replaced on the bill if they can do it at the last minute. HOWEVER. I've done one of Lee's events before (which I never looked into the line up before either) and two of the four readers were female. I work an 80 hour week and am a hands on dad to a three year old. I have literally no social life or downtime. This is all I do. Perhaps I should have checked the gender balance of the line up before agreeing to do it but I didn't because I was in a mad rush. I'll be more vigilant next time.
2. I really, really, really resent the implication this is just par for the course for us. Take a look at the front page of the Quietus today right now and you'll see a feature on Hole's Live Through This. An interview with Courtney Love. A reissue review of Bikini Kill. A review of the Iggy Azaelia album. A news feature on Daphne Oram. A news feature on Imogen Heap. I'm in the process of setting up (it's going to be run and steered 100% by women) a national initiative to encourage and support more women to write about the arts - announcement due on the quietus before the end of the summer. The problem runs pretty deep. I had a meeting recently with the person in charge of issues regarding female performers at PRS and she said that only 14% of their massive database are female. So things are pretty fucking bleak on both sides of the fence. But genuinely we're interested in helping make things better in whatever way we can.
3. I went on Radio 6 for an hour earlier this year and picked nothing but female artists to play on the show. I didn't make a song and dance about it, it was just that they were the right artists to play that week. We don't go round patting ourselves on the back when we do stuff like this - so no, the "I bet they'd notice" comment is wrong. If we always had 100% men on the site and always worked on 100% male line ups your concerns about us being actively misogynist would be understandable. But I think it would be fairer if you looked at our record on the whole.
4. I was asked to be a part of this year's Louder Than Words festival in Manchester and literally the first thing I said in negotiations was that our involvement depended 100% on them doing something about the gender, age and race imbalance. When it's up to me and its me doing the curating, it's something paramount in my mind. But then I didn't curate this line up or have a hand in it other than agreeing to do a reading.
5. As always Branwell you have my email address: j✧✧✧@thequie✧✧✧.c✧✧ - I only saw this because someone emailed me about it. I wouldn't have read it otherwise. If you're genuinely worried about stuff on the site and not just venting steam, the best way to get us to change stuff is to email us (as well as posting stuff on forums). That way we'll get to see it.

I have asked a thousand times for people not to use government names on ILX. Could you maybe remember that?

Why is it *MY* job to email people about gender imbalance in panel discussions? This is precisely my point.

You are now making this all about The Quietus and all about ~you~ (quelle surprise there) because that's what you do. But can you, for once, separate yourself from this, and instead of taking it as a personal insult, accept that this is a problem that goes way, way deeper than "OMG, someone's talking shit about me and my ~thing~ on the internet?" This is the 8 billionth all male panel I've seen advertised in my inbox this year, and it's only May.

I do accept that it's a deep problem. As I said above, it's something we're actually interested in helping combat in several different ways. I actually thought you might want to get involved in helping us given that it's something you care about but obviously not. You made several accusations about the Quietus above. I run the site and am the only person involved with it who posts on ILX… so I replied in a polite, explanatory and conciliatory way offering to try and make amends. And as always this ends up being your cue to get even more irate with me.

I'm running a site with the help of four people. It gets five times the amount of readers that NME got at its height - when it had a staff of over 40. There is a limit to what I can do on my own. I'll say again that genuinely the offer is always there if you want to get involved in the Quietus in terms of addressing the gender balance of the stuff we do. You have my email j✧✧✧@thequie✧✧✧.c✧✧. You probably still have it from the last two times you asked if you could write for us but then never bothered getting in touch but if not here it is again.

As for the other stuff. Yeah, I agree with you but I'm not really in a position to comment on the other 8 billion panels other than to say it's genuinely lame.

You are deluded. I have not asked to write for The Quietus.

You approached me once back in 2008, when I was still at Plan B, about using my illustrations, and it was *you* who did not follow up.

And as yet another Cis dude who thinks that they get to toss around a name I've asked people repeatedly not to call me (this is your idea of "polite"? This is actually my idea of showing intense disrespect) I have no interest in talking to you further. Good day to you, sir.

You asked if you could write for me on the Quietus thread over on ILM. Go back and check it yourself if you like. I had literally no idea that it was so offensive calling you by your name it's genuinely the first time it's come up with me but I won't do it again.

I'm pretty mystified as to what it is exactly I've done wrong here. Genuinely: take it easy, there was no offence meant.

And as I've broached this particular rubicon again today - to anyone else who is reading and interested in helping us broaden out the Quietus in any particular respect; please email me: john at the quietus dot com - I'll get back to you immediately.

What is a "government name"? And how is he supposed to know what to call you if he may not have read the threads in which you told people what to call you?

If you're bothered by people getting your name wrong then maybe you should choose a different username again.

Doran, I emailed you/your colleague a while back regarding writing for The Quietus, he asked for some samples of my writing which I sent him but he never got back to me. I guess he didn't like the way I write which is a pity.

In other news

'Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom' on CBBC, ope episode is on Delia Derbyshire

a govt name is anyone's common first name