I Do Not Exist

---

Two more days, and if I'm not careful the course may turn out to be useful after all.

I suppose, by the law of averages, there must be a few government sponsored schemes that aren't dismal failures or outright frauds. In the same way there must be a few lottery winners, good pop songs and honest politicians. But it's still unbelievable when it happens.

Did you know, that to get into most decent jobs, you need at least two valid identity documents, to prove you are who you say you are? Exactly why you should need to do this is a little unclear, so it's probably something to do with muslims.

These are the commonly accepted forms of ID:
* Passport (any nationality)
* Birth Certificate (full version)
* Driving Licence (not the photocard, the whole document)
* EU ID card (costs GBP350, and serves no purpose in Britain)
* Forces ID card
* Firearms Licence (hmmm)

Have you got two of these? I don't.

When it comes time to renew my passport, I will have to take a "citizenship test" in addition to the standard paperwork. This involves traveling to my nearest test centre - most likely in London - and answering three hundred questions to ascertain how well I've assimilated British culture.

Passing or failing the test has no impact on getting the passport - rather, it's for the purported future national ID card, which is supposed to prevent "terrorism" using the long discredited physiometric data system. How it might do this has yet to be worked out.

There's also the small issues that (a) there's no such thing as British culture, in the same way there's no such thing as French hairstyle and (b) the MPs who supported the legislation failed their own test. And it would be hideously expensive to implement and take decades.

Oh, and I pay GBP126 to take the test. Plus around a hundred pounds for the mandatory card if/when it eventually appears.

Tony Blair announced his resignation today. There was much discussion on TV about his "legacy" - the fucked up occupation of Iraq, the fucked up occupation of Afghanistan, the fucked up health service, the fucked up education system, the fucked up transport networks etc. But the ID cards fuckup didn't get a look in. Too much competition I suppose.

---

Today, I learned all about Key Skills. There's six of them.

* Adaptability (acquiring skills, coping with change, dealing with emergencies, but mostly doing things that aren't in your contract)
* Team Playing (co-operating with co-workers, i.e obeying the boss)
* Communication (speaking without stuttering, presenting without baffling, objecting without offending and persuading without shouting)
* Being Able to Think Outside The Box (what we used to call "creativity")
* Initiative (working as though you're being supervised when you're not)
* Punctuality (working to a timetable, specifically an ever contracting one)

It always amazes me that psychologists can spend years taking such abstract but useful concepts as "not being bloody stupid", "not behaving like a total arsehole" and "not being a blithering incompetent", breaking them down and resynthesising them into equally abstract but completely useless categories, before selling them to big business as a way to make workers work harder.

It's like taking a prepared meal and pulverising it down to its molecules, then arranging them in groups on a plate according to which ones rhyme, and calling it a new diet plan.

---

Right. I now have to compose a CV for myself. I've been given a list of thirty Power Words to shoehorn into as many sentences as possible.

I'm told it impresses people who use the term "Human Resources" without irony.

---