If this is true, as one minister suggests, then every single one of these 500,000 people need to get going. Or move abroad so we don't have to deal with them sitting around and cheating everyone else out of what they could be doing.
I'd like to turn to a recent piece I wrote to be published in my college magazine, The Bowland Lady. If you're ever in the North West of England, seek it out. The piece was entitled
Grit your teeth and get on with it- that ridiculous sense of entitlement in the job market
and I think it's a bit relevent here. It reads as follows:
Fine, we’re going through a recession. The chirpiest optimist with the sunniest outlook on life can’t really pretend they’ve not noticed that. And yes, with a recession comes redundancies and poor job prospects overall. But it’s not the end of the world. In my third year now I’m starting to look at the fact that the job market for graduates looks bleak. Gone are the days when, twenty years ago, there weren’t many people with the all-hallowed Degree and it was basically an access all areas pass into whatever career you chose, because, hey, you'd earned it big guy.
Now it’s more like a scene from Braveheart, where degrees are about as common as woad was on their faces in this battlefield. It’s not longer a piece of paper that entitles you to do whatever you want instantly. And everyone is getting all upset about it.
Really, though, is this not an opportunity for people to see the world as it really is? Unfair.
Ball-breakingly unfair, and hard, and difficult. If you believe that you are supposed to be able to just drift into a cushty job just on the merits of three years that the whole world is going to forget about then god help you. Personally, I believe that if you work your arse off for something for long enough then you’ll end up getting it, but even that’s a bit shaky. And it’s this sense of entitlement, this sense that the world owes you, that forces people to bitch and moan about how they can’t get any work at all.
Bull. Shit. There is always work. When people say there’s no work going, you might start to picture men heaving against the gates down at the New York docks in the twenties, begging to be allowed to lift really heavy things for fifteen hours a day. Instead, the picture you should be thinking of is thousands of people behind laptops looking at jobs and finding a reason not to apply for any. “Too far” is one such complaint, practical, often legitimate. “Not what I want to do” is another, and coupled with “not good enough” it’s the root of the problem.
A job is a job. If you’re working, you’re earning. Regardless of whether you think that factory work will be beneath you, at some point you have to get off your arse and start working. There is a common misconception that working a shit job after you graduate and looking for work are mutually exclusive. Guess what, genius. You can do both, if you want to. The other misconception is the idea that graduate job shortages are the worst thing in the world and every graduate is doomed. Not so. I came to university to get a degree, but I’ve learned a lot more. I’ve acquired the dreaded s-word of skillset. You can apply yourself to anything, and do anything.
So grit your teeth, grin almost, and get on with it. Just because your dream was to be organising fashion shoots for Grazia and now you’re sat behind a desk as a receptionist for a doctors’ surgery, or looking increasingly likely to end up somewhere similar, doesn’t mean that one day you can get to Grazia. University isn’t a pass into dreamworld. With or without a degree, in the real world, you have to work. And you, and I, have to realise we can’t afford to sit on our Laurels and wait for something to come along, because it won’t.
Now, I'm aware that it was tailored for university graduates, or at least people who have recently escaped their studies, but it still applies. If you are one of these people who is sat around pretending to be ill it's probably down to the same reasons- laziness, or the fact that you have been crushed out of hope by the dissilusionment at not getting the jobs you dreamed of, and so you stopped trying. And that is no reason to fraud the hell out of everyone else who actually works and pays taxes; it should be punishable by death, in my humble opinion. Or they should be forced into military careers where they may, finally, do something worthwhile.
Either that, or realistically, we should stop bankrolling people to sit on their arses. People complain about the fact they have to bankroll the students who are studying to get better careers, but seriously, get a grip. The idle fat chavs and "geniuses" who'll never get caught with their fake limp or other cunning ailment are the ones you should worry about. The state bursaries and benefits should be halved. You can live on so much less than they get, and that would give them an incentive. If they don't get work, or don't want work, they don't deserve luxuries. Simple as.
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