Devious Diggers Demand ISIS Bounty

Members of The Association of Reluctant Groundworkers (ARG!) have staked a claim to a UK government reward for information on terror activity.

The sharp-eyed shovellers say they have unearthed a dedicated ISIS fibre optic line whilst excavating outside a suburban house in provincial Milton Keynes.

An ARG! spokesman said, “we know it is a ISIS cable because it is red, which is the colour for danger. Also, the people in the house denied everything when we questioned them at spade-point, which is what you’d expect from terrorists.”

But bods from the Electricity Board say the “ISIS terror feed” is actually a standard 16mm Basec-approved armoured mains cable with "millions of homes having them."

And angry Health & Safety officials have slammed “dangerous working conditions” at the ARG! site: 

"We asked one lackey what he thought of ‘Safety First’– and he replied that he’d never heard them, but maybe his daughter had them 'on her MP5 thing'."

"And as for the ruptured gas main pictured – it was described to us as a 'fucked nuclear power socket' which was acceptable, we were assured, because ‘everybody knows nuclear is safe energy, even if it does come from France’.”

In response to the criticism, ARG! has announced an indefinite national strike to run concurrently with its other indefinite national strike announced on Monday (in response to it being “a bit cold”).

Leaked ARG! email to Front! ad agency

to: ian.edwards@frontadvertising.co.uk
from: theboyz@arg.co.uk

Dear ian from Front! Advertising,

uve got some front that's for sure u thieving c**ts.

How in fuck's name did it cost 20 grand CASH for you to change a singel word of our name?

wel uve probly forgotten all about us with all the posh skirt you're pounding, so let us remind you:

We were the Association of Reluctant Groundworkers.

some of the lads were a bit uncomfortable with the prison reference there.  Association may be a hilite when you're on the In, but when you're on the Out, fair play, you don't want to be reminded, do you?   (not that you'd know, you've got to be paying the governmant to stay out of jail with those fees its daylite fucking robbery

So, thanks to ur speical London magic, we are now the Academy of Reluctant Groundworkers.

We could have come up with that in teabreak.

The lads have come up with a lot of things in teabreak actualy, and one of ther ideas was to pitch up at your offices with a grab lorry and drop ten ton of hardcore from a shitty soakaway in ur fancy reception.

We will definitely do this if you do not either pay us back OR swap jobs with all of us for a month (skirt and salary included).

You need some time on the mixer, son, 2 get ur priorities straiht.

DO NOT EMAIL I AM SICK OF COMPUTERS ALREDY FONE PLS.

All best wishes, the ARG! lads.

Have You Got What It Takes To Join ARG!?

The Academy of Reluctant Groundworkers (ARG!) has introduced a tough selection questionnaire for potential new members.

Have you got what it takes to join our merry band of idle navvies? 

Take the multiple-choice test below and find out, choosing only one answer to each question.

1) What is the most important piece of kit onsite?

a) The client’s 18yr old daughter.

b) The radio.

c) The accident book.

d) The digging tools.

e) The broom.

2) What is “The Academy”?

a) Where I was thrown out of on Saturday night for exposing my bollocks on the dancefloor.

b) Who cares?  It's breakfast in ten minutes.

c) There are many academies – I do not understand the question.

d) The “Academy of Reluctant Groundworkers” – of course!

e) Sorry mate, pass us that shovel, will you?  

3) Digging holes is …

a) For the new lad.

b) Better than stopping indoors all day looking at the patio I haven't finished.

c) Time-intensive, though entirely necessary and – on a manual basis - very rewarding.

d) Fun!

e) All about technique.

4) Me knowing the difference between a mains gas pipe and a mains water pipe …

a)  Is not why your wife fucks me every Wednesday night.

b)  Doesn’t matter when you stick a spade through either of them.

c) Is critical in the event of an emergency.

d) A matter of what colour it is.

e) Is not what I’m paid for.

5) “Lets get stoned up and then fuck off for breakfast.”
     What is wrong with this sentence?

a) Nothing. And, by the way lads, who else can skin up a T-joint?

b) It means get "this" stoned up - ie. lay and whack a stone bed ready for concreting.

c) Nothing – if you are looking to get fired immediately.  

d) I don’t know but it sounds cool.

e) Can you ask me again at lunch? I'm a bit busy, mate.

6) You get your work done …
a) If, by some chance, every pub within 20 miles is shut. 

b) Whilst talking about something else.

c) Because you’re paid to.  

d) And then have the craic with the lads!

e) In the morning.

7) Health & Safety is …
a) A load of bollocks, mate.

b) Sorry, I’ve done my ears in earlier on the breaker – got to go and sweep up now, bye.

c) Expensive to account for and difficult to enforce.

d) Yeah, really annoying with loads of notices up everywhere.

e) Not the end of the world.

8) If I wasn’t doing groundworks, I’d be …
a) Doing your wife, like I said.

b) Out of a job.

c) Looking to diversify my skills base.

d) Totally devastated.

e) Doing something else.

9) My personal goal at work is …
a) To see if I can beat my previous record of drinking 12 pints of Stella and then cutting a straight              line with the steel saw into the roof of the gaffer’s Navara.

b) To "bring about the circumstances necessary to trigger a indefinite, paid strike."

c) More of a vision I have to admit – to reflect the acceptable face of the British building industry.

d) To get stuck in but joke around too.

e) To have a single day when I never have to move anything big twice.

10) What is “loose”?
a) Ha, ha – back to your wife, eh?

b) The handle on the Kango, now you mention it.

c) Yet another thing I can name but never actually go near - Type 1, shingle etc or excavated material.

d) Loads of things, right?

e) Stuff that needs moving usually.

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HAVE YOU GOT WHAT IT TAKES TO JOIN ARG!?

Mostly As:    You would fit in quite well, but you sound a bit gobby.  We already have a few gobby ones, so you would threaten the cosy – yet delicate - group dynamic that is our most cherished consolation in an otherwise brutal occupation.  Perhaps they’ll be more impressed by your attempts to be funny at a crap youth club somewhere - possibly abroad, where they won't understand what you're saying.

Mostly Bs:    Congratulations!  If you are not one of us already (who has learnt to read) – then you are now.  Critically, you've shown that you recognise the need to get on, but would generally rather not. Welcome to the Academy of Reluctant Groundworkers!

Mostly Cs:    You sound like Head Office. Are you the one we found wanking in the car on a site visit that time?  Whatever, kindly remember that ARG! was founded by the lads for the lads.  Go back to dying slowly in front of a computer writing things that nobody reads.

Mostly Ds:    You were the one at school who we used to give wedgies to.  You are a nice bloke, but must learn that offering enthusiastic conformity in many social groups (including ours) decidedly secures exclusion rather than acceptance; you are still, in other words, too much of a bitch-pissing Try-Hard. The answer is still no – you can’t join our gang.

Mostly Es:    You have excellent labouring instincts. So what do you want with us?

Who else is digging holes and telling tales?

Good luck to the Association of Reluctant Groundworkers (ARG!) and their plucky ploy to rinse a few quid out of the government with a story they made up in tea-break.

But let's remember one thing:

Its not the fatuous fraudsters from ARG! that are the problem here.  
And nor is it the terrorists for whose prosecution the government are prepared to "do cash", no questions asked.

The problem we have in this country isn't ISIS.

It's how we see ISIS.

And thanks to the government, we're scared of ISIS. We're scared of Syrian refugees.  We're scared of anybody we're told to be scared of.

Its old.

There's "no skool like the old-skool" when it comes to a lot of things - but geo-political strategy isn't one of these things.

Fear is, like, so Twentieth Century.

And if there's a weapon-crazed pack of reactionaries we should be scared of, it is - of course - our own government.

They're digging a hole for us we can do without.

And (unlike our friends from ARG!), they won't stop for anything.

Right now, British bombers are flying half-way round the world to bomb the shit out of people on the off-chance that they might turn up here and bomb us.

We've got the cart before the horse.  If there's one thing likely to make foreign folk take up arms against us, its raining death on their loved ones from the skies.

So let's all chill for a moment.

Let's stop worrying about things that haven't happened yet. 

Let's start accepting that there will always be a bogeyman the politicians can conjure up to camouflage their own failings.

And let's see ARG!'s attempt to secure the ISIS "terror pot" on the basis of palpably false evidence as a work of political art; of elegant, yet unconscious, protest; of dynamic, salt-earth satire - as, above all, a vital repudiation of a fear-mongering foreign policy that should long ago have been dead and buried.

Its the work-shy wits from ARG! who are up to the job.  Well done lads.  You've spoken for us all - whether you know it or not.

May your trenches be forever straight; may your taxes be forever bent; and may your strikes be forever ... well, forever.