Beating the employment blues in the recession is about having options and inspiration when the cheques bounce.
Paula Bennett, bless her and her enthusiasm for accessing information, can take the credit for opening up new career possibilities for me without a whiff of a Training Incentive Allowance.
Further, I believe the righteousness of any taxpayer should remain unharmed in the making of my new life.
Before I start, however, I must tell you that while this column has not been officially Government-sponsored, taxpayers might quite rightly feel they have contributed to it.
I don't want to bore you, but it started back in 1954, while I was still in utero.
I expect my mother was under the care of a government-funded doctor.
The following year, I was born at a little cottage public hospital.
Later, I received publicly funded vaccinations, dental treatment and education.
I was able to broaden my view of the world by travelling beyond my small town on roads paid for by the taxpayer.
I am grateful to be physically able to write, having badly smashed my right elbow twice, once as a 4-year-old and again a couple of years ago, both injuries caused by my own stupidity.
Thank you fellow taxpayers for not being judgemental or reluctant to fund the good doctors and nurses who gave me excellent care.
Anyone interested is welcome to seek a fuller account of how I have benefited from taxpayers' largesse, including previous employment, but I sense your restlessness and eagerness to hear about my new employment possibilities.
This summer, I will hold a school for fee-paying fellow journalists which will train them in new interrogation methods I have dubbed the Bennett System (BS for short).
Every person they interview who may have a beef about any government policy can expect to have their life dissected.
Criticise funding for dental clinics, for instance, and one of my trainees may discover that in 1972 you destroyed a large filling by eating a chewy lolly.
Can you seriously question the system now when you know your wanton behaviour meant taxpayers had to fund something that was avoidable?Complain about anything to do with ACC and we will insist on publicising your complete record of claims, including the time you sprained your ankle on a drunken student outing 10 years ago.
Talk of tax and you will be required to confess whether you have benefited from such things as Working for Families.
Expect that to be most revealing.
You may be surprised to know, for instance, that a family with an income of $80,000 a year with three children under 12 can receive $100 a week if it meets the requirements for the number of hours' paid work weekly.
Similarly, a family with an income of $100,000 a year with three dependent teenagers, between 16 and 18, could receive $92.
Of course, it's OK to support families with adults in paid work.
It is the idea of supporting those who do nothing which is abhorrent.
Those of us who are parents know that looking after kids is doing nothing, and more so if you are doing it alone on a benefit.
There is absolutely no economic argument for allowing single beneficiaries to put any of their ill-gotten energy into trying to be good parents.
Heck, where might that end? We might not be able to fill up the jails.
My trainees' research will take up so much time, and people will be so reluctant to speak out, that journalists will never actually write any stories, the demise of traditional media will be hastened and public opinion will be formed around the wisdom of twitters, blogs, text messages and that bastion of the brain-dead, talkback radio.
Politicians will rejoice at this, but since it is still some time away, in the meantime I am happy to help them, for a large tax-deductible fee.
I will sell out to public relations and work for the government.
I will redeem Bill "Double Dipton" English in a series of poignant yet pointless YouTube offerings worthy of Vladimir Putin - Bill, bare-chested on a dusty tractor in his real home town (hopefully with Putin-like man boobs), falling off a horse while rounding up stock, and with the family looking cold and miserable wearing inadequate clothing in a wet tent somewhere in the wilds of Fiordland.
When my work is done, you will be clamouring for the English clan to be the recipients of the next Telethon.
Promoting Paula might not be quite so easy.
Call me old-fashioned, but she could do worse than follow the late prime minister Keith Holyoake's famous advice for new MPs (presumably so they could avoid intemperate outbursts) - to breathe through the nose.
It may take a bit of training, but with my help she should master it eventually.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
