h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't think it is possible to speculate in that depth about people one doesn't know.

The double-binds the system puts one into astonish me.

My friend who is the artist is on various benefits which get stopped, (not just reduced), when her income goes up. Fair enough in theory, but art sales are by nature lumpy, so she can have feast one month and (literally) famine the next.

Likewise another friend who is raising three children by herself would have to earn such major bucks in order to have more than her benefits that she simply cannot do it until the last of her children flees the maternal nest. What is so stupid about this is that so many women find it hard to get back to work at the best of times after having children, that part-time work is the most practical way back in to the job market and out of the benefits trap.

And I cannot claim benefits when I am not working because as a contractor I work through my own business. I don't get the tax-breaks you get if you are self-employed and I don't get the sick pay, holiday and pension benefits of being fully employed, so I lose at both ends of the deal. Another reason for looking for permanent work.

The exchange rate is about $1.80 to the £1.00 at the moment, which is bad news for everyone. However, a dollar seems to go roughly as far in the US as a pound does here.

Ben

Oh, this is interesting! There's nothing quite like discovering you're being talked about to spur you into using a website you subscribed to over a year ago for the first time.

Right, setting the record straight. Commuting across the south of England from High Wycombe to Worthing (as Z said) is not possible, not unless I wanted to spend about a third of every twenty four hours on trains.

Second, I have no desire to carry on living the student life. It was a disappointment while it was happening from start to finish. I cannot wait to spend life living on four times as much money as I have been for the last four years.

Finally, I am not looking for excuses. I am trying to balance the options and work out if the extra money I would spend on moving to Worthing is a good investment.

What's all this about dollars? I guess I should read the rest of the posts.

Oh hi everyone btw.

Hi Aeschlepius, You must be the infamous A of song and story!

Welcome to the Atelier!

Hi A,

Good to see you here, what a shame it was something like this that brought you in.

The Atelier is the perfect example of discontinuous conversations, it really is like a party where you get soundbites of half a dozen conversations at once. At the moment we seem to be discussing housework, UK slang, inflamable busses, UKian geography, and white-water rafting.

It is always surreal and ususally civilised. However Mercury has been retrograde for the last few weeks, and we all seem to be twitchy and trigger happy at the moment.

Roll on tomorrow, when it starts behaving like a sensible little astrological planet again!

Ben

My, am I infamous? I hope these songs are good, might get some royalties out of them!! A warm hello to you too though Marv!

Is the Atelier's ying out of line with its yang or something then Ben?

Aesch

Who you callin' twitchy?

::puts her trigger finger behind her back::

Definitely! Or else we are all up the yingyang without a gnu. Or something.



B

Btw, hullo A! We've heard about you for so long and I must say, you look just like Z described you!

Sounds painful... or at the least disturbing!

Aesch

*hides in the toilet from FG*

My, all these new people hello FG! I must say I would agree that my dashing good looks translate well onto the net.

::lobs a plunger in the loo after Ben::

Off topic a bit: has anyone else listened or read the coverage of Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial? The coverage yesterday quoted him as claiming his trial was being financed by Saudi Arabian interests, and that 9/11 was the work of the Kosovo Liberation Army. What a character.

*Slings loo roll right back at FG. It unravels gracefully through the air trailing a tail of paper behind it like a lavatorial comet.*

Welcome Aeschlepius!

Hello A

It's nice to meet you at last . Do you really have a decision to make? If you don't turn up for this job will you be in breach of contract? Take some proper advice on this - ie not the advice of friends. 'My parents aren't rich enough to help me out^' - the excuse offered by your friend Z - isn't going to be enough legally speaking if your prospective employer has a reasonable expectation that you're going to turn up this month, even if it isn't in writing.

^Not that 'my parents aren't rich enough' is an excuse for anything, of course.

The solution may be to lodge with another employee during the week and go to stay with your parents at the weekend. That's where having parents in the South comes in. It would be a different matter if they lived in, say, Aberdeen.

If your job is a teaching job - I don't know why I think that, but I do for some reason - the lodging arrangement is quite usual for young members of staff for their first few months.

Good luck anyway.

*monitor flickers on in the library, and after a moment of aimless snow Lil's face is seen in a strange room*

I regret that I can't stop to read the backlog and perform my normal hostess duties at this time.

I am at my neighbr's house, using her computer, because my ISP's left hand cut my connection early yesterday evening and put me on DSL without the right hand having informed me that I was on DSL and giving me some lead time to get properly configured and now, of course, all sorts of things are not working right.

When the young techie comes back from lunch (assuming he hasn't run away to North Dakota), we will address the question of why my computer thinks I have 4 ethernet connections (3 of them null), and if we succeed, I might yet get online for when Mercury goes direct.

*cue Twilight Zone theme*

*Lil fades to black*

Amy, honey, he's a bloke. If he want's our advice, he'll ask for it.

B

*hides back in bathroom - doesn't want to be discovered by Lil to have been throwing things around the Atelier while she was away*

Ben, sweetie, how kind of you to remind me .

Amy dearest, I really thought this might have been laid to rest.

Yes there is a decision to be made (there nearly always is, I would hate to be in the position of having no choices), and in all honesty I don't think any advice given on this thread is going to have a major impact on the way I decide to go.

I can either stay in my job in Birmingham or move to Worthing, it's a fairly straightforward decision and yes it's my decision. However, I don't think you can discount the advice of friends and family, advice which you imply to be not proper, as any decision I make will have an impact on them. Z will have to live on his own and cover the share of the bills if I decide to leave. My parents (if I take your 'proper' advice) will have to put up with me living with them and burdening them should I decide to commute on a weekly basis. So this isn't just about me, much as it might seem so.

There is no simple solution, both sides have pluses and minuses which I'm considering. Can we leave this now and think about more important things like Milosovic's ideas about 9/11?

Aesch