Because they used the cunning jedi mind trick of having their point of view coinciding with my point of view to manipulate me into telling the Americans what was wrong with their approach to the Burmese relief effort I think it's time to discuss Britans approach to development work in more detail. This discussion can't happen on a big issue such as Burma or Zimbabwe because Britain has already proved itself so inept on those issues they actually had to rely on me to even give them a way into the conversation. No I think to be fair to their abilities we have to discuss their exploits on a much smaller, far simpler scale - my favourite subject, me and my life.
Over a year ago I signed up to do a course which would give me a practical qualification. The organisation I signed up with was a respected educational provider with a strong set up and would have provided me with a qualification that was accredited by the relevant professional body. The news that I'd actually taken a practical step to improve my own life did not go down at all well with my dad's Internet friends who started putting pressure on him to put pressure on me to cancel my contract with that company and sign up with another one. After much intelligent conversation, debate, shouting, screaming, throwing things and banging fists against tables this is what I did.
As you all know by now this second company failed to mark my work or issue a certificate on completion of this course. Basically they just stole my money and ripped me off.
After accepting his latest busy work task my dad began investigating this second company (it was either that or have him paint the grass green). During this investigation he discovered that in fact yes his Internet friends had actually gone to the extent of setting up a shell company complete with a business registration, a mailing address and telephone line. They also went to the trouble of devising a course syllabus complete with assignments and arranged for a tutor to mark some of my work. They did all this with the only intention of stealing my money and preventing me from achieving a qualification.
In a more impressive example of a human being this knowledge would have shaken the person and caused them to question whether or not those Internet friends had anybody but their own best interests at heart. My dad however, being a slightly mal-adapted personality, took this as a cue to put even more faith in his Internet friends and engaged himself on a mission to find away for me to achieve this qualification after all. The results of this search was for him to come up with two simple options I was aware of over a year ago.
Put simply the first option was to go back to the initial education provider who would offer me a carefully developed, tried and tested syllabus with lots of one on one tutorial support. This will be a correspondence course which will allow me to work at my own pace in an environment I am comfortable in. The qualification will be accredited by and come with membership of the relevant professional association.
The second option is to go to the local education centre which is attached to Croydons job centre. Here I will be studying an untried syllabus which is not accredited by any professional body. I will be studying in a dirty sweating shit hole of a class room where I will be taught at the pace of the slowest member of the class. I will also be competing for the attention of a tutor who is so poorly qualified they are forced to work for the employer of last resort. no doubt one of the people in that class will also be some poor fool who thinks their mission in life is to become my bestest, bestest friend ever.
Obviously this choice is a bit of a no brainer because would you rather have your CV say "highly motivated self starter" or "wastrel who needs to be dragged through a YTS scheme" and after all with everything else in this life the government plan is just like what you would have done anyway only a little bit worse.
The problem is though is that to sign up with the first company will require me spending one tenth of my very low yearly income. This isn't a problem because I can get the money but as certain people have demonstrated they are prepared to go a huge array of legal and extra-legal means to make sure that I will never, ever be allowed to achieve. This means that I am unwilling to take that risk. Of course if those certain people were prepared to offer their money as a guarantee that they will not engage in uncompetitive and illegal practices we would not have a problem.
Just a quick aside to my favorite Miliband - if your experts were "real" experts don't you think they would have been able to achieve something by now what with all that that spending and effort? In fact at the moment they seem so ill advised of their own postion they seem to be under the misguided impression they're at a "negotitation" stage.
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