I have found the person I NEVER want to become...

Whilst browsing for reviews on banks, I happened across this. It's a review of Natwest, about 3 years old. While I wasn't particularly interested initially given the age of the review, there was something else that caught my attention. There was just something about the guy that wrote this that came across to me in his writing.

The first thing this guy does, is he drops a subtle (yeah... right...) "hint" that he trades shares, by babbling on about the share price of whatever company he's reviewing, or the company who made the product. He does this a couple of times in this particular review, as well as elsewhere in his other reviews and on his many (very poorly designed) websites.

The next thing he does, is he gives us a fascinating insight into precisely the type of person he is, by making it known that not only is he on jobseeker's benefit, but also that he mostly spends his benefit on domain names, broadband, model railways and christmas presents. Seriously is that how jobseekers spend their benefits on these days? His entire complaint with his bank, centred around his own inability to keep up with his payments and manage his finances, rather than any fault of Natwest. While it sounds as though the bank may have made a few genuine mistakes, rather than going about it the right way and requesting that the situation be put right, the author of the review, who goes by the name of "John Duck", decided to just go off in a big huff down to his local branch and have a moan at one of the advisors.

"Ah, and now we come to the early months of 2005, when there's about £75 in my account and both Webhosting (£73) + ISP (£47) fees are due at the sametime..... and instead of bouncing one or both of them due to insufficient funds, they accept both at once and put me overdrawn as a result." So as you can see, instead of putting the extra £50 in his account BEFORE the payment was due, he just left it, hoping that the bank would bounce one or the other charge, when he'd already moaned at the bank to stop bouncing payments because he was fed up with having his services disconnected. They were doing what he'd asked them to do, but with this guy you're fucked if you do and you're fucked if you don't.

I love people like this, they fascinate me. It's like watching something disgusting; you don't want to look but you're too fascinated to turn away. He reeks of contradiction, self delusion and illusions of grandeur. His high flying "stock broker entreproneur" image contrasts fantastically with his jobcentre funded financial fiasco reality.

What's more delicious, is that the more I poked around and read his reviews, the more I began to realise what a perfect example of a loser this guy is. He has his own forum, which consists of one active member; himself. He owns approximately 100 domain names, and 27 websites, yet none of them do anything, nor recieve any traffic. He wants you to believe that he trades in stocks and shares and yet claims jobseekers allowance (which in case you don't know, you can't claim if you hold such investments - doh!). He ran a stock photography and website design business as part of a new deal self employment scheme, but he didn't advertise his services, nor did he have a single customer, nor did he register his business. He even wrote a review on a car that he'd never driven because he can't drive. He still lives with his parents, and he's never ever done any more than work experience.

Then I found out his age. He's 28. Twenty fucking eight.

This guy is everything I never want to be. Unemployed, bad at what he does, unable to drive, and living in a fantasy about being a share trading, stock photographer, webmaster and web designer.

But I've got to wonder about what the hell the jobcentre and social services are doing letting someone like this just sit around on his arse, playing on his computer with what he probably thinks is his internet empire of websites. After all, those are my taxes going to work there, being spent on budget domain names and hornby train sets. Didn't any of them ever stop to ask him if he actually knows anything about earning money from the internet? Did any of them ever stop to ask him if he's REALLY trading shares? Did any of them stop to ask him if he's learning to drive? Did any of them ever stop to ask him what he spends his benefits on?