I really am sick to the back
teeth of it. As a British child, I was told to go for my dreams, to "Aim
Higher", that I was a "Walking Talking Miracle" and that just by
"Working Hard and Being Me" that I could "Be whatever I wanted
to Be." Lies. A very cruel deceit, to get us all to buy into your ponzy
schemes. To give the numbers that some people seem to need to validate
themselves. Honestly I feel ever so slightly brainwashed, filled with
ideas and ideals for a world that only actually exists inside some think-tank's
conference room. I've heard it said that British young people are lazy, that we
believe that life owes us a living. We do not. We were told that if you did
this and that, jump through this hoop and fill in this form, that success would
follow. So we worked hard. We got the quallies. We went to Uni. We got
ourselves the skills that we were told we would need. Because were smart, us
Brits. We pay attention. Turns out sometimes we pay attention to the wrong people,
because when we walked out from under the sheltering cave of education,
blinking against the light of the working world, we discovered the truth. That
employers didn't seem to care about excel spreadsheets or SAT scores. That they
wanted experience in work, with references and NVQs. Not stupid bits of cream
wove card with things like BSc or MA on them. You see we're not lazy, we're in
shock. We grew up in Great Britain, only to turn around twice and find the
"Great" has been sold off for scrap. We're in the UK plc.® ™
now, were corporations are people, not stupid humans. We're cattle, a
commodity, to be traded as stock. The uneducated short-term temporary worker,
that's what we're supposed to be. Don't think. Work hard, then go back to
sleep. Why else would there be so many jobs that specifically prohibit graduates from applying1?
Apprenticeships that forbid people that hold a degree2? What makes
us so damn scary?
Of course, this is probably not deliberate. This might look
like a pre-meditated attempt to segregate those who have gone to Uni from those
who haven't, but I don't think it is. I think it's incompetence, of people not
really knowing what's going on or what to do. The people who posted those jobs
probably thought there was some other scheme for graduates, or that we wouldn't
need anything, after all, we've been through higher education, what more could
an employer need as proof of employability? They've probably just outsourced
that department to someone else, it's the done thing in 2012. Are you a failing
government institution? Do you not have a clue what to do? Then outsource! Get
a private corporation to do it for you, everyone knows that a pure profit
motive is the best medicine for corruption!
Just look at the Jobcentre's new
Work Programme, as outlined helpfully in form WP01MA41, which you
can download from http://www.whatdotheyknow.com thanks to the Freedom of
Information request they sent. Otherwise this information would not be
available to the public. You can see that pretty much all functionality with
regards to actually finding you work has been relegated to your
"provider". You must attend any meeting they make, do any activity
that they bid you do. Otherwise your benefits could be sanctioned indefinitely,
but a minimum of a month. And in return for all this, you get to "discuss
what help you need to prepare for" with your provider. Discuss the preparation
for the help? No actual help giving then, just discussion about help
preparation. Seems fair. After all, as they insist, "The Work Programme
provider will not make you seek, apply for, or have any medical
treatment." Which is nice, although I'm not sure why their bringing that
up. Is making people undergo medical procedures for their JSA something that
can happen now? No wonder they want to scrap the Human Rights act.
The scary part of this is that the definitions for who gets
to go on this scheme are so vague. It's deliberately done that way. Anyone who
has been on the JSA "long enough". And that's the "accumulated
total", the sum of all the days that you've ever been signed on. I was
looked in the eye and told unequivocally by a Jobcentre Plus
"Advisor" that "everyone on JSA will eventually be referred to a
work programme."
So this is the master-plan of the government; sweep us all
under the rug. Fiddle the numbers. The problem with these out of touch
politicians is that they haven't realised that the numbers mean things. They
are for their benefit, an indicator. Breaking your speedometer so it always
reads zero doesn't mean that you are no longer speeding. Closing your eyes doesn't
make you invisible. We are all still here, still hurting, still angry. And for
the government to add to that pile, and make life for us already at the bottom
even more unbearable is either monumentally stupid or ruthlessly suicidal.
At this point I am genuinely unsure which.
"Because were smart, us Brits. We pay attention. "
ReplyDeleteSorry, Joe. Couldn't help it.
Like the blog.
Oh ffs... You know it actually took me staring at that sentence for 5 mins before I saw the lack of apostrophe... Ok fine. We're smart, but we don't pay attention. Probably how things got so bad, if you think about it.
DeleteHeh.
DeleteHave you seen this?