Unite and Stand Tall Again

Seven months ago, my job was suspended due to this pandemic. No-one could foresee what was ahead but as the days wore on, more and more of my friends and colleagues joined me as one more unemployed oil worker.

The first two months went quickly as I got into something I was wanting to do for a while and wrote my own best practice manual and exercise books. I then put together a weeks long course presentations that covers the work in the books.

That done, and no job in site, I signed up for a LinkedIn for Leaders course and learned how that social media worked in more detail. As an exercise for that and to try and help the many colleagues who were now in the same position and all the others affected by us being out of work, I set up the persona of The Unemployed Man.

The first thing I did as the Unemployed Man was start a government petition to try and help the industry that I have spent 40 years in and loved so much. I thought getting 100,000 signatures and having the petition debated in Westminster would be a dawdle - how wrong I was.

Four months into promoting the cause every day and helping as many people as I can on LI by sharing all the potential jobs I hear about, I can say that I am deeply disappointed to only have 3400 signatures. 

I am delighted with the 3400 people who have signed the petition up to now and I would like to personally thank each and every one of them.

To all of you, I say Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

As for everyone else, there appears to be such an apathy within the ranks of those affected that they take it for granted that signing such a petition is a waste of time - the government don't listen. They never have and as for getting help from them, just look at what they have done to our other great industries of the past like coal, shipbuilding, steelwork etc

We need to rise above the apathy and push on. Without the ability to speak up for ourselves, we are nothing. Stand up, shout and sign this petition. We need to be heard.

The Unemployed Man can be found at 

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/the-unemployed-man-3a309b1b5/ 

and 

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/tommacrae59/adventures-of-unemployed-man/ 

and the petition at 

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/320865

Please help.

aka The Unemployed Man