Because Good Men Get Shafted Too

Here's a dilemma for all of you ethicists out there.

The sum total of all my worldly goods is £194. I currently have two bailiffs and three banks chasing me for the £22,000 that I owe them. Clearly, divvying up the £194 is not going to satisfy them much.

As I own no home, have no savings and no income neither as I haven't been allowed a proper job for seven years, the chances of me leaping back into solvency are somewhat dim.

I do have a car, I forgot about that. I have a VW Golf which is worth £700 tops. I suppose the bailiffs could have that, although it would be a bit of a drag if they did because although I cannot drive it [as I cannot afford to insure it, not even just third party] I was planning on using it to sleep in, in that scrunched-up sort of way that gives you backache in the morning.

Get a job, you might say, go out selling double-glazing, become a something. And ordinarily I would agree with you, but I'm 55 and the moment anyone in HR sees that age you may as well put 'child rapist' or 'Catholic priest' as your occupation for all the good it won't do you.

I suppose I could lie and claim to be 33 but  suffering from that disease that makes you age so rapidly that Channel 4 wants to make a voyeuristically-sick documentary about you, but then 'disease' is not much of a good word to use in an application form either.

I could be honest and write in the 'previous experience' box that for a very long time I used to be one of the closest and most-trusted aides to the most famous man in the world [not the Pope, bigger than that] but when I have put that in past applications, including the one I made to fill cream buns on a production line in a cakes factory, they either don't believe me or, I guess, the adjudicating HR executive was a Stones fan.

I applied to teach journalism several times. The HR bloke - whom I rang after not hearing anything - said did I have any experience? I said I had been a journalist for 30+ years, five of them in Fleet Street and 15 as head of press to the most famous man in the world. Ah, he said, but do you have any teaching experience, could you pass on what you know?

Well yes, actually, I said. And he said, do you have a certificate to prove that? And I said, well it doesn't prove anything, does it, a certificate? I have a certificate for A-level Economics but that doesn't qualify me to be a banker. Whereas 30 years experience does qualify me to lecture in journalism.

Sorry, he said, no certificate no job. So I said do you have a certificate in teaching journalism? He said no, but what did that have to do with it? I said, well then how can you be qualified to tell me that I am not qualified?

He said that was not how it worked. He then rang off which was a shame because my next question was going to be where did he get his certificates in being an asshole.

I applied to be a street-sweeper once. I figured that I had the experience for that and my own broom. The town council didn't even write back. I wrote to them three times and they still just blanked me. Last week I read in the local paper an article about the same town council kicking up merry hell about the untidy state of the streets around here.

So here's the dilemma - clearly I am £194 short of being destitute. But I do have a life insurance policy which will pay out a quarter of a million pounds in the event of me getting dead. Although I cannot see how it could have been legal, or at least moral, for them to have done so, when Barclays Bank sold me the policy it came without a suicide clause.

Or rather the policy states that the insurance is not valid if I committed suicide within the first year of its term. If I killed myself after that, then that would be fine and they'd pay out the £250,000.

Seeing as I took out the policy in 1990, I should therefore be quids in [apart from the actual being alive bit].

So, dilemma - do I do the decent thing and thereby pay off the banks and the bailiffs, with more than a little to spare to cover the Mars Bars and crisps that they'd need for the long drive from Doncaster to come and knock rudely on my door, or do I put the hosepipe away and soldier on in this blind optimism that at some point certain people might grow a conscience?


   

Suits Of Armour Heavier Than Pin Stripes Shock!

Dear Huge,
Sorry not to have written in a while but I've been having problems with baliffs and creditor banks whose posse gatherings outside the front door make it difficult to pop out and post you a letter.

The banks are foaming that I have not made payments on the credit cards which I have maxed to their finity and they are threatening to take me to court because my congealed cash-flow prevents me from contributing to their greedy bonuses.

Anyway, I bring tidings of great joy and of near-miraculous discovery from Albion's seats of learning and I thought you might benefit from this latest example of university intelligence.

As you know, I have sometimes wondered if our academics are fucking idiots in disguise. But this cruel and cynical jading is with me no more as my understanding of the bleeding obvious has been illuminated by geniuses of the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and Milan.

Brainboxes from these hallowed garrets of intellect today published a report which I am certain will rival Newton's and Einstein's theories of the universe. The Eureka report was summarised on the BBC News thus:

'Medieval suits of armour were so exhausting to wear that they could have have affected the outcomes of famous battles, a study suggests.'

I know what you're thinking - 'fuck me, I'd never have worked that out; thank God for science' - and I am sure that many millions share your astonishment.

Get this, it will blow your mind also. Led by chief researcher Dr. Graham Askew of the University of Leeds, the study group used high-end technology to work out that a soldier weighed down by so much armour [50 kilos] he could barely move faster than a pensioner in a post officer was not half as nimble in battle as an enemy who didn't come dressed like a shoplifter at a Le Creuset closing down sale.

Pay attention, you are spending £9,000 a year for your kids to study at these places and you might want to pull them out of their second year and send them to learn more by talking to ants instead.

So, armed with this brilliant insight that it is more difficult to move if you're weighed down, the wise minds of Leeds/Oxford/Milan [I expect they chose the last one for the good shopping between seminars] 'worked out' that the French lost the Battle of Azincourt because their armoured curs got bogged down in the mud whilst the cheeseclothed English were dancing around them hewing like Pan on a bad ears day.

A few incidental points here. One; the learned minds and the BBC both spell 'Agincourt' wrongly, thus activating some suspicion of their actual learning. Two; they could have saved themselves a lot of time and their universities a lot of money by buying Bernard Fowler's book [Azincourt] which said all of this three years ago. Three; the famed BBC could not possibly be expected to have known this before compiling their gushing gosh report as Fowler's book was only an international best-seller. 

But the best bit comes in a comment from an armoury expert in the tail of the BBC's report:

'It is interesting to use scientific methods to answer these questions and confirms what we have always suspected, heavy armour would reduce your ability to run around.'

'Always suspected'? Stroll on.

Must go; it's cloudy here, I've got the washing out and I've always suspected that clouds mean it might rain.