I saw this: LINK. And thought you might need this: LINK

Related: By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons. LINK

In 1992 Dulwich borough council initiated a performance based scheme for occupational therapists. The number of job seekers advised that went on to find work in the sector recommended to by the councillors directly influenced the size of the department’s budget. The idea of the scheme was to provide an incentive to the therapists to be more pragmatic. The truth of it was that not everyone could be an astronaut. Back then no one from Peckham could be an astronaut, no matter how Spaced they got themselves.

For a long time the department operated as normal right up until one of the therapists became disillusioned with guiding others into jobs and instead decided to guide him self into a role in the circus making the candy floss. A couple of days later a young man walked through the door with an interesting profile, good listener, box ticking acumen, well presented, excellent knowledge of the job seeking bureaucracy. “This man should be an occupational therapist” the occupational therapist thought. “Can you start next week?” And start he did. This was the first time the department had managed to successfully place a client in a role as recommended by their trained councillors ever. Buoyed by their success they decided at their next departmental meeting to use their newly inflated budget to create a new role for an occupational therapist. This department was expanding, this department was a success.

That week they were able to recruit another occupational therapist. Once again from a client who ticked all the boxes, another success. Not content to stop there they expanded again, and again, and again, until the occupational therapist department was one of the biggest departments in the whole council and their department head was the biggest cheese in the whole place. At the next meeting of department heads the top occupational therapist started to throw his weight around “I’ve got the biggest budget in this whole place” he declared. “I have single handedly created full employment in the borough of Dulwich for the first time since the war, If you chumps don’t double my departments employment success incentive I’m taking my staff out on strike, how do you expect this council to operate with 70% of it’s staff out on strike?”.

The council saw sense and doubled the department heads incentives. They had to put up tax up to pay for it, but the borough of Dulwich had become one of the most prosperous boroughs in London and it’s ultra low unemployment was the envy of every other London borough. The council’s occupational therapist department ballooned in size exponentially. Soon it was the country’s fifth biggest employer and had money pouring out of its windows. It offered the best package in the whole of the civil service and all the top people wanted to work there, but the department head wasn’t happy. He’d achieved allot in little Dulwich, but you know what; all he ever really wanted to be was an astronaut. Luckily he had quite allot of cash spare in the budget so he started a space programme.

And that’s the story of how the kids from Peckham fulfilled their dream of becoming astronauts, all thanks to the good work of the occupational therapists, ticking boxes on the moon since 1992.