Give Us A Job

I am currently unemployed. It is rubbish being unemployed. I have been unemployed since the start of the year, and having applied to around 30 jobs, have heard back from just three of them.
This is annoying - not so much the fact that after a month I still don't have a job - but that very few of the employers I've contacted have even bothered to reply. Surely any response is a courtesy, even if it were to say, "I'm very sorry, but you're not what we're looking for"?

Almost three million people in the UK are unemployed - and in this respect I feel a mere stray pube in an overgrown bikini zone, that David Cameron and his government have the unenviable task of trimming back. This means that lots of people are applying for most jobs, but in an age of email and cutting and pasting, employers could at least send out a basic generic reply to people who may have spent hours applying for a job.  

Meanwhile it seems the Daily Mail is peeved that UK bosses are recruiting thousands from Romania, tattling that 2,400 vacancies are being advertised in Bucharest, vacancies that, crucially, are being advertised, not filled. And presumably by "UK bosses" the paper means it is "British bosses" who are searching for cheap labour from overseas? It's always those bloody British.

Today I telephoned Jobcentre Plus to apply for Jobseeker's Allowance and spent 25 minutes being interrogated by a man who had all the charm of an SS guard. He had a real twisted indignation - he was in work and good, and so I, being out of work, was bad. By the end of the call I felt like I'd been questioned in the Nuremburg Trials.

So off to the Jobcentre I went - an appointment was organised with real efficiency for myself to attend an hour after the phone call - and upon arriving I felt a strange sense of excitement. I'd never been in the Jobcentre before. There was a burly security guard, who wouldn't have looked out of place outside Yate's or guarding a prison, which, I suppose, it a bit what being a bouncer at Yate's is like. But why does the Jobcentre need to employ a burly security guard? There must be people fighting over jobs!

The Jobcentre was full of people who were busy doing nothing, but my interviews went well and the two ladies I spoke to were actually very nice. Given my journalism background, and that I would be happy to work in the retail sector or behind a bar, I was recommended one job: a film extra in a production of Les Misérables. I think I'll give this a miss.

I will finish with a plea: does anyone have a job for me? Are there any jobs out there? Is there anyone out there?!