Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Jesus, I know exactly what you're taling about!

Years back, I was sent on what was pitched as 'a gateway to an IT career', or something. Sort of pre big computer take off I imagine.

I spent 4 hours a day, five days a week stuck with 18 and 19 year olds who ended up going out with each other then having arguments about it there and then and wanting the rest of us to think Tanya was a bitch etc and some woman would stick her head round the door once a day to see how our worksheets were going (one of which, I remember, was to find out all I could about Robert Kilroy Silk - I kid you not!).

I was in my mid-late 20s so it didn't bother me much, but there was one poor woman of about 50 who was just practically weeping everyday.

Jeez MC you're descritption is just so evocative!

x

I used to be exactly the kind of person you're referring to pooley.

I'm currently a productive member of society. In fact, I want to work more than I do, but I don't like doing promotional work for myself.

I did spend a long time on the dole, and then on the sick. I'm talking about maybe ten years. When I left school, I had sporadic short term shitty jobs, but the longest lasted for only 18 months. That was working as a postman. Getting up at 4 am every morning was playing havok with my drinking, and I stopped hearing the alarm clock go off. Many of the jobs I had were casual labour, for far less than minimum wage. In some cases my "Employer" didn't even pay me. Hardly the greatest incentive for me to pull out all the stops and give my best.

Things do go hand in hand. If you have a problem with substance abuse, you tend to think of your life being very chaotic. In fact it's really very structured. I structured my life around my fortnightly giro and hand-outs from my mum, and structured each day around getting drunk and/or stoned, and playing computer games.

I was bored and lonely beyond words. Much of what I was doing was because life without drink or weed was even more boring than life with it. I knew I had a problem, and didn't want to spend my whole life stuck in that rut. Yet I lacked the vision/courage/whatever to get out of the routine for a very long time.

As to forcing me to work???

You take someone with personal problems and no self confidence, and you force them to do something they don't want to do. That person has to work with people that treat them as scum (ever done agency work and worked alongside wholly employed staff?), doing a job that is meaningless and unfulfilling. What do you think will happen?

The process of climbing out of the holes we dig for ourselves has to be self-motivated. For example, there's no point sending an alcoholic for alcohol treatment if he doesn't want to stop, because he'll just relapse as soon as you put him back into the outside world. Far better to concentrate your resources on those that want to be helped.

In my case, it wasn't about money. But it was about self-worth. I started working a few days a week in a charity shop. Voluntary. For nothing. But something that meant something to me, personally. If you'd forced me to work in the charity shop, I'd have told you to fuck off, or at best I'd have turned up, and done as little as possible all day, just because.

The voluntary work led to a job as a charity shop manager. The volunteers were often a pain in the arse. If I'd had someone there because they were being forced to be there, they'd have been a far bigger pain. I think that if I were running a litter picking crew, I'd want pickers that were motivated, not pickers that I had to cajole and nag and keep an eye on all day in order to get anything done.

I don't think you are one of the people I am talking about.