The Enviroment (sic) Centre

Amazing as this may sound Media was not my first job. I worked in a library, I worked in a bank and I even worked with trainee criminals. However the most interesting job I had before advertising was working at Edinburgh's Environment centre.

In the 1980's the Conservative Government created a scheme called the Community Programme to "massage" the long term unemployment statistics. If you were a part time student you could collect unemployment benefit. And if you had been unemployed for more than 6 months you could apply for a part time job on this wonderful scheme. This was a magical recipe for mayhem.

I applied for a job as an "Information Officer." Which was my first encounter with title inflation. I arrived on my first day overdressed, as I was wearing normal clothes. The part time wheeze meant that instead of employing 10 professionals the goverment could remove 30+ people from the long term unemployment figures. We were a motley crew of PhDs, burn outs, has beens, and the never going to be. We even had our own poet-in-residence, though his title was Press Officer.

I was sitting doing nothing the whole morning, which was going to be good practice for the future. Then Alexander walked in. Sandy looked & sounded like Chewbacca from Star Wars. I later found out that beneath the hair & beard was a handsome man but at first sight Sandy was truly intimidating. I asked him a question which had been troubling me all morning "Sandy, what do we do...?"

"Well Gareth" Sandy said in his gravelly tones "we are conducting a wildlife survey of Edinburgh. You see this map of the city" Sandy continued pointing at a large map of the capital divided into squares and a pile of paperwork. "This form has all the potential flora & fauna that could be found. The University wants an audit of how much variety of wildlife exists in the city. So we take the form, go the area the square represents.....find a pub & sit in it making up the numbers."

And that is another reason why I don't trust research.