Financial & Travel Musings

At the moment I’m technically between jobs but it was only when Wendy pointed out that this means that I’m unemployed that I started thinking that perhaps I should be claiming unemployment benefit.

Of course, it’s not “unemployment benefit” anymore as we have job seekers in the UK rather than unemployed people and that’s an interesting change in categorisation when you think about it. To be labelled a “job seeker” is definitely more positive than to be labelled simply as “unemployed”, isn’t it?

That relabelling brought with it a lot of other changes. For instance, in the “unemployment office” you now find two separate groups of people that deal with you. First, there’s the people who handle the benefit payments who are basically the same group as have always been there and who are interested in seeing that you’ve made the appropriate social security payments to entitle you to the benefit. Separately from them are the employment people who are there to do what they can to help you back into work and who will prod you into getting up and looking for work if needbe. Formerlly the two were quite separate and in buildings separated by several miles so there wasn’t the sense that there is now of the payment being there just to help you along whilst you’re off looking for work.

One side-effect for me is that there’s what’s almost a trick question on the form: are you currently studying? I am in that I’m doing a child development course but seeing as it’s not a full-time one that means that I’m actually available for work which is what the question is really asking.

Full marks though for that relabelling and the reorganisation that happened almost behind the scenes. Although, in theory, I have a job waiting (sort-of), it has prompted me to have a look around anyway.

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Oh, you thought that you had some personal privacy? Sorry, it seems that you’re wrong and that you ARE being watched.

For example, if you’ve found this post by searching with google then they’ll have recorded that search against your name if you were logged in with your google account. If you’ve found it via StumbleUpon then they’ll have recorded that too. Both are “to enhance your browsing experience” or words to that effect but they certainly remove any privacy that you thought you might have in your Internet browsing.

If you’ve you’ve been using the Internet for a while no doubt you’ve commented on some forums or blogs by now. All those comments are available to everyone. Oh, you used a false name, did you? No good because the software will have recorded the IP address from which you made the comment and that can be linked to you. Ah, but your ISP allocates random IP addresses every time you login so you’re OK. Well, no, because the ISP records who gets what IP address so, yes, that comment could be linked to you.

Still, at least your e-mails are private. Not really. The Internet is structured as a network of linked computers so every e-mail you send will have gone through a series of computers to reach its destination and every one of those computers could easily record the contents and who sent it.

It seems like we’ve finally got the surveillance of 1984 and all we’re missing (in most of the world) is the totalitarian regime. Still, perhaps if we wait a few years we’ll have the complete set.

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That’s a good question and one to which there’s no answer that’s clearly the right one.

Firstly, it’s very obvious that China is very far from the ideals of a free society that we take for granted in the western world.

To ensure that the games will go off well, the authorities are rounding up any dissidents that might cause even the slightest bit of trouble. The latest, Hu Jia, will be spending the next three and a half years in jail for “inciting subversion of state power”. What did he do to deserve that? Well, he posted five blog entries and was interviewed by two journalists. Isn’t it scary to think that you could be jailed just for writing a blog that criticised the government? That’s something that hundreds if not thousands of blogs do every day.

Should we be doing anything then that will surely be portrayed by the Chinese government as supporting their regime? Make no mistake about it, in the Chinese media it will be put over that foreign governments are supporting the regime even if it does take a lot of editing to prove it.

On the other hand, consider the amount of publicity that the regime in China is getting, pretty much all of it bad. Many people wouldn’t be aware of the issues in China today had it not been for the publicity that the games have generated.

In practical terms, I’m sure that it’ll all be ignored by the Chinese authorities. Well, perhaps not ignored: one wonders how many times they have tried to have the overseas protestors rounded up too. However, it’s unlikely to make any difference to what they do because in reality they just don’t care what the rest of the world thinks.

But they’re wrong. How many trips to China have already been cancelled? How many business details not made with the country? That’s what does make a difference.

Short term, I’m sure that we shouldn’t be supporting the regime yet long term the publicity that the event is generating can only be to the good. It’s a shame that little of that negative publicity will reach into the country (this will be yet another blog that they’ll be getting google.cn to ban, of course).

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