Zero Hour

Seems a good metaphor for the current, post riot, state of our nation, though that's not what I'm going to discuss. I have made various comments on the Guardian comments pages over the past week. I even considered a diatribe on here, but the whole thing has made me very depressed. In fact this last week has exacerbated my anxiety to new levels. I had two episodes of hypoglycaemic stress last week (where I feel like I'm going to faint and have to eat, it's made worse by anxiety - or perhaps vice versa). How the hell I'd function in a strict workplace environemtn I don't know. I'm not sure I really want to either. Post riot, Britain seems to have forgotten the rule of law overnight and entered a whole era of fascism where liberal=scum (even more so). I don't condone violence at all. I condone political opportunism and ignorance even less.
Zero hour contracts are something I've heard about a lot. Benefit Busters focused on some kids at the A4E gulag forced to apply for such positions in a cake factory. Recently I've seen a few of these jobs on the DWP jobsearch website over the last week. What's the point of even bothering?
There are now routinely a few jobs, usually 'customer service' which the DWP categorise under retail even though the jobs are almost always call centre work, which I abhor. I hate them. End of. They are all advertised by what appears to be a meta site: a job website that seems to exist by collating (or perhaps stealing) adverts from other sites, usually agencies. There are plenty of sites like this, and they are all very unhelpful or poorly organised. The problem here is that the advert gives no information and is clearly a cut and paste job. The point of contact is an automated email that provides no answer at all. You are meant to just email off your CV and that's it, which is ridiculous. What about information? All that happens is the DWP office that uploads these ads just trawls the web and copies from these ads and posts them as proper jobs, the same as if an actual living breathing employer had done the same, on their site. This isn't right. There's no accountability and if you complain you are just regarded as lazy.
Not only that but most of these jobs probably don't exist. There I said it. They are also largely temporary offering a minimum number of hours, usually far too low. You therefore end up employed by the agency - assuming you can get through to them. I got through to an agency last week about a job packaging pet food (which I would NOT have done, I don't care what anyone says I'm better than that - we all are ffs - but it doesn't hurt to enquire). End result was just that: minimum hours = zero and you are working for the agency. The job was temporary but they couldn't tell me how long for. So it's just casual work. What a waste of anyone's time. Why are the jobcentre focusing on gigs like these and not helping people into proper career based employment?
I have just finished browsing the DWP site for today (I do it daily) and another such job was listed. They named the agency concerned, even though the ad says ring such and such a person to apply. I never apply without first gathering ALL the information, and why shouldn't I? I googled the agency to find a place in Cheshire (the job's in Bristol) and a search of their online database comes up with no vacancies at all.
I then googled the phone number and find it registered to a hairdresser in Wrexham!