I have just read Suzanne Moore's piece in this morning's Guardian "The scale of youth unemployment scares me. It's like before" and could not agree more.
Much of the article discussed societies attitude to work, captured in the chilling sign above the entrance gates to Auschwitz, "Work shall make you free".
She goes on to quote the above line from the Specials classic, Ghost Town. The lyrics from that anthem of the 80's that could also be applied to Steven Morris's piece today on homelessness in my beloved Cornwall, "For some Cornwall is no holiday but a place to sleep rough in the woods" where homeless rates have soured to become second only to Westminster in London. So many young people with no jobs and no homes, with the cost of housing and the debt of education rising out of step with wages. We really must do something.
In his blog this week, Sir Stephen Bubb calls for a campaign to restore Future Jobs Fund which was doing such a great job in getting young people into jobs. I would back that call, and Social Enterprise Magazine's article on the Government looking again at the initiative seems to give a ray of hope that we might see its return, well the sooner the better, I say.
The cost of another 80's is evident in the largest Government budget which we are now paying, Welfare. If we don't get school and higher education leavers into work before they lose their confidence to work, we face another generation of people on the dole, and given many of us can remember this nonsense last time around, that simply won't do. Some fay Future Jobs Fund was too expensive, well I ask what is the cost of doing nothing?
Although I agree with much of what you say in your blogs, your posts are somewhat let down by your inability to understand basic English when it comes to plurals and apostrophises. Please sort this out as it weakens everything you say (or am I an intellectual snob?)
ReplyDeleteYou may well be an intellectual snob, but you are right in that the above piece is a little all over the place. In my view a blog should be spontaneous, and that can often mean its done on the hoof. many of my posts are done on a blackberry or as you see above in 10 minutes between dropping off various children at various Saturday morning activities. It's like a dairy really, if you edit it you are in danger of not doing it at all, and with a consuming job, three kids and a commitment to my allotment and garden my blog often feels like a real indulgence. Apologies if the result is frustrating in its punctuation, I'll give that some thought but if I keep on posting in all honesty I can't guarantee English that meets the Sister Agnes test (my school room English teacher). `in fact I can say now, it won't. Maybe I should stick to Twitter, harder to go wrong with only 140 characters to mess about with?
ReplyDeleteActually your blog is very insightful and I was being playful by deliberately misspelling the plural of apostrophe. I just see this a lot within the movement and it sometimes gets to me. I really don't know how you find the time to be honest, so please keep up the great work!
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