Now that I've been unemployed for a year, I must face the Inquisition. It's a ritual designed to help me get back to work, though to be honest, it rarely makes any difference. They change a few conditions on my jobseekers contract and send me to a special unit where I can learn how to be a jobseeker again.

There were a few us waiting for interviews. A woman walked up and asked if we were in the right place. The guy opposite me looked puzzled. "In the right place..." He mumbled, staring emptily into space. The woman walked away again muttering something about that being all right then.

My scheduled inquisitor was a man called Brian. Is that a good or bad omen?. In the first floor office where I sat there was a complete absence of Brianoids and eventually he turned out to be a pleasant young asian woman. Some women just talk and talk don't they? Brian didn't draw breath once from start to finish. She was in such a rush to sort out my complacency. So after nodding agreement in between her bursts of non-stop chatter and fumbled keyboard presses, I signed up for a course in self-motivation. I'm going to have to start getting up in the mornings again. No, let's be positive. With a bit of luck, I'll manage to get a job before the lucky company goes bust in the economic downturn. Speaking of which...

Budget of the Week

We have a tradition in England called the Budget. It's that time of the year when the Chancellor rells us how much more expensive life is going to be. This years Budget is simply so entertaining that it makes The Charge Of The Light Brigade look like the most brilliant decision in military history. I won't bore you with the details - it's been on the tv news for two days now already - but you can't help feeling that the government have given up trying to solve Britains escalating debt, and decided instead to see how bad they can make it before they finally lose power.