webofevil: (Default)
[personal profile] webofevil
It’s one thing to be aware that Labour ministers insist on dubbing us all “clients” or “customers”—including people they want to force to carry ID cards and people arrested by the police—but it’s quite another actually to sit in the same room and hear them use this flesh-crawling anaesthetic language in person, in cold blood. Watching Lord Hunt of Kings Heath casually refer to benefit claimants as “clients and customers” was akin to seeing your first gory road accident, or your first flasher.

Date: 2005-12-20 01:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ex-cornfedpi814.livejournal.com
I still haven't seen my first flasher. I imagine that they are like buses.

Date: 2005-12-20 02:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alfaguru.livejournal.com
Q. What's the difference between buses and a flasher?

A. Buses come in threes but a flasher comes single-handed.

Date: 2005-12-20 02:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ex-cornfedpi814.livejournal.com
Can you use your Oyster card on a flasher?

Date: 2005-12-20 02:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alfaguru.livejournal.com
Don't forget to touch in and touch out!

Date: 2005-12-20 03:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] internetsdairy.livejournal.com
I saw my first flasher from a bus.

Date: 2005-12-20 02:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lowlowprices.livejournal.com
But that's so innocent: five years ago I had an argument with a woman from the job centre who'd come round to "interview the customer"—that is, communicate to me her suspicion that I had been lying about not working. She explained that "customer" was an appropriate term because I was choosing to make use of a service.
"There's no one else I can turn to," I shot back at her. "And besides, you're paying me."
"But that's so true," she conceded.
There was a pause.
"I want my income support," I breathed.

Date: 2005-12-20 04:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] webofevil.livejournal.com
> I was choosing to make use of a service.

Possibly the most scary thing about these serviceniks is that they truly look at life like this. This fits in with my rant about the palpable difference between the kind of people who, if they saw a man dying of thirst, would give him some water, and the cunts who would see an exciting opportunity to open up their refreshment market.

(Although in the case of gimlet-eyed mugwumps such as you describe, they'd be "delivering thirst solutions and survival outcomes", but only if he "chose" to "access" the "service" they were "providing".)

Date: 2005-12-20 05:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lowlowprices.livejournal.com
To be fair, I don't think she was cynical, although the Eichmann defence is scarcely better.

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