03 September 2020
Situations Vacant
Post-lockdown opportunities.
By Neil Tidmarsh
“Get on your bike!” Norman Tebbit famously told the UK’s three million job seekers (your columnist was one of them but he rather over-did it, ditching his bike and travelling by train, ferry and bus on an epic thousand-mile Great Escape from unemployment) way back in 1981. So this week, as another million or so emerge from the wreckage of lockdown and begin to scan the ruins from here to the horizon with their job-hunters’ binoculars, we revisit the Chingford Skinhead’s advice and take a look around today’s world for far-flung employment opportunities.
First of all, Belarus. Plenty of vacancies in the state media there, apparently. Reporters, cameramen, presenters and other staff have reportedly been resigning in droves over the last month, in protest over the results of the recent presidential election. But you’ll have to pedal your bike pretty furiously if you’re going to get to Minsk in time to grab those vacancies; the Russians are likely to get in there before you. There are rumours that RT (Rossiya Segodniya – Russia Today – RT – the Kremlin’s international media outlet) is rushing into the breach; it’s allegedly offering top Russian TV personnel as much as €8000 a month to take up jobs in the official Belarus media machine.
But perhaps your assets are more physical, shall we say, than intellectual? No problem – the same country seems to have plenty of vacancies for security personnel. As stories of the brutal treatment of arrested protesters began to emerge from Minsk’s prisons and police stations, so too did pictures of police officers and other security officials resigning and dumping their uniforms in rubbish bins in protest at the heavy-handed tactics of their less civilised colleagues. An employment opportunity here perhaps for all those police officers in the USA sacked for assaulting or gunning down unarmed suspects? But again, they’ll have to move fast if the Russians aren’t to beat them to it; a few days ago, President Putin announced that he’s set up a security force at the request of President “80%” Lukashenko; this reserve of Russian law enforcement officers is apparently ready to enter Belarus to support of Mr Lukashenko if the protests “get out of control”. Mr Lukashenko also said that he and Mr Putin would unite their two countries’ armies if necessary, and has already put half his own army on alert.
Meanwhile, in China, there’ll soon be a big demand for Mandarin teachers. Coals to Newcastle, surely? Not quite. Beijing has ordered schools in Mongolia to drop the Mongolian language and to teach in Chinese instead, according to the New York based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre. At the moment, pupils are taught in their own language and start learning Mandarin at the age of eight; but this week the Centre reported that a new policy insists that Mandarin must be taught from the very first year and that politics and history lessons will be taught in that language as will all other subjects later on. Protests in defence of the native language and culture have already erupted in Inner Mongolia.
But hang on, you say, those vacancies will be long gone by the time you’ve taught yourself enough Mandarin for the job, let alone cycled all the way to Mongolia. Well, ok, never mind, because it’s possible that Beijing may have a more stay-at-home opportunity for you. China may well be recruiting more spies in Europe soon to make up for their losses after the recent uncovering of a spy-ring inside France’s equivalent to M16, the General Directorate for External Security. Following a trial in Paris last month, a DGSE officer was sentenced to eight years in prison for selling secrets to the Chinese. A civilian employed by the DGSE was given a twelve-year sentence and his wife was given a two year sentence. Another investigation in France suggests that Moscow might be offering similar opportunities, too. They appear to be a spy down in Europe following the arrest of a lieutenant-colonel in the French army; France’s armed forces minister announced that “a senior officer is facing legal proceedings for a security breach”. Europe 1, the radio station which broadcast the minister’s statement, suggested that the arrested officer had been in contact with the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service.
Sadly, there is no longer a vacancy for the prime minister of Lebanon (in spite of widespread calls for a clean sweep of the country’s political elite, this week the traditional and competing elements of the establishment have managed to get one of their own into the seat recently vacated by another of their own). And there is no longer a vacancy for Germany’s ambassador to Poland (Polish approval of his appointment was delayed for three months while Warsaw wondered whether or not he was responsible for his father’s Nazi sins). But there is a vacancy for the prime minister of Japan, following Shinzo Abe’s resignation last week.
And, just to show that Shaw Sheet isn’t specist or homo-sapiens-centric (we live in woke times after all), there is good news from Australia for small sheep looking for work this week; sheep farming down under is in danger of collapse, believe it or not, because the sheep there are getting too big. A typical Australian ewe can weigh in at 90kg – that’s twice the size of its ancestors from forty years ago, and twice the size of the ewes you might see scrambling about on the Cumbrian fells. So big, in fact, that sheep shearing is now as dangerous as cage-fighting and shepherds are deserting the profession by the score. So, if there are any runty pommie ewes out there in England’s green and pleasant land who think the grass might be greener down under, get on your bikes now and start pedalling south (the same goes for any giant pommie shepherds).
And the Land of Opportunity isn’t to be outdone on this score; there are job vacancies galore for rhesus macaque monkeys in the fight against Covid-19 in the USA. This week American researchers announced that a shortage of monkeys over there could cripple their attempts to develop a coronavirus vaccine; there simply aren’t enough to go round for all the trials and tests underway. So, if you’re tired of monkeying around over here and wouldn’t mind being injected with novel serums to make sure that they’re ok for trials on actual humans – or even being vaccinated and then infected with the coronavirus to see if it works – then go west, young macaque.
So there you are. The world’s your oyster. Ok, that oyster is likely to be a bit toxic at the moment. But that’s hardly surprising given the state of the oceans these days, is it?
