Well that's it. I have now been unemployed for three years. I suppose some people might regard that as an achievement but what a long time to go without throwing paper aeroplanes in an office when the boss isn't around.

Of course the government is well aware of claimants like myself. Recently there's been news stories about the problem and interviews with politicians promising crackdowns and work placements. A part of rolls my eyes and shrugs. It's all been said and done before. Initiatives look good in the headlines for a few months but our government behaviour has shown for many years a trend toward fobbing the public off with slogans and good intentions.

There is something a bit surreal about this though. With thousands upon thousands of armed services personnel about to be turned into fully trained job seekers like me, you might wonder where the financial gain was in putting them out of work. At least they had an international crisis or two to keep them busy. Now the government have to pay them to do nothing.

But it gets worse...How about this? As a result of government plans to get people back into the workplace, contracts with employment service providers are being revised, and as a result of changes, there will be redundancies.

So basically they're getting rid of the people helping to put people into jobs. Oh, but they are planning to help people find work, you know...

Weather Update

No, don't get excited, it's still sunny.

Big Spiders

There's a spider living under my bed. I hate it. The little monster always knows when to scarper and where to escape the vacuum cleaner. As it happens, it's not too big, so it's more like a nuisance.

Thankfully british spiders don't get all that big. I was told by an expert that they never make webs bigger than six feet across here in Blighty. Nonsense. I've stumbled into bigger webs than that in Savernake Forest. You see, you should always be a little careful of people calling themselves experts. Here's why....

A couple of days ago it was announced that a fossil spider was found dating back 165 million years. That's the Jurassic period, the heyday of the big dinosaur. At around four or five inches across, I was a little underwhelmed. Didn't a BBC series feature a much bigger one?

So with my employment trainer at the programme centre we occupied our time usefully by trying to find the answer on that source of all wisdom, the internet. Sigh... How did mankind survive without it?...

It turns out that the spider the BBC were recreating was in fact a mistake. Mesothelae, supposedly an early poisonous spider the size of a cat, turns out to be a giant sea scorpion.

Oh well, you can't be right all of the time. But in case you think I have absolute faith in the World Wide Web, fear not, because the internet has more experts than anywhere else.