Vocal Voices

I am just reading that there are nearly 1 million unemployed teens and that the number is rising.

Back in my day those sorts of figures would have had us out on the streets demanding work. The unions, especially the Students' union, would have been organising marches, protests and sit-ins. It would have been top of the agenda day after day after day with the people not the media setting that agenda. Government would have had to act.

Now? Nothing, not a peep.

What has changed?

They can't afford time away from their PS3 or Xbox 360.....

Suff wrote:They can't afford time away from their PS3 or Xbox 360.....

Probably very true.

The figures do not include those who were conned into going to "university" to get a "degree". Many of those universities are little more than colleges and their degrees are almost worthless. They were told that a degree would get them into jobs paying higher than the average rate. Riches awaited.

We now see stats that show nearly 200 applicants for every graduate job. That means the majority of graduates are in jobs that do not need a degree. One day they might wake up and realise that their loans paid to keep them off the unemployment numbers.

Workingman wrote:We now see stats that show nearly 200 applicants for every graduate job. That means the majority of graduates are in jobs that do not need a degree. One day they might wake up and realise that their loans paid to keep them off the unemployment numbers.

Perhaps. Also their loans degraded a generation of degrees for the high flyers. How do businesses detect one from the other??

When polytech's suddenly all became Uni's it was a foregone conclusion as to what would happen.

More Blair Brown idiocy in action.

my DIL got a degree a few years ago
drove me mad going on and on about how much she would earn
at the end of it
well she couldent get a job in social services becauseof job cuts
and now she works as a counter assistant in boots the chemist
is convinced she got the job because of her degree

I think I'm right in saying that the school leaving age has just gone up to 17?
I've heard all this "we have to keep them at school so they will get good grades / good degrees / so we can compete with China" and it is all rubbish as far as I can see.
Children are being kept at school because there are precious few jobs for them; so they are being kept off the unemployment figures as far as possible.
Back in the day (70's) kids could leave at 15 - and they did, and they got jobs, because the jobs were there for them. By the time I came out of Uni at 21 some of the ones who had left school at 15 were married with children and a mortgage; they had been earning for six years.
If you let all the jobs be exported and the rest of the world into the country to compete for jobs, youth unemployment is what you get.

cromwell wrote:I think I'm right in saying that the school leaving age has just gone up to 17?

Cromwell, it may yet rise to 18 to combat rising youth unemployment. This was the thinking of Don Blanchflower?, formerly of the Bank of England..... about a year ago.

cromwell wrote:I've heard all this "we have to keep them at school so they will get good grades / good degrees / so we can compete with China" and it is all rubbish as far as I can see.

Yes, it is absolute rubbish. China isn't turning out millions of History of Art, Media or Leisure studies graduates, she is turning out physicists, mathematicians, chemists, technologists and engineers. Degrees with meaning.

ETA. Found it. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012 ... anchflower David Blanchflower.

This is a manifestation of the Dutch "Third Way" which was loudly touted as being better than the Anglo Saxon Capitalism.

In reality it means that up to 50% of the population is either on long term sick or in full time education.

Fine if you can get it. But when you bankroll it with borrowing on the "cheap Euro Bonds" supposedly backed by Germany, there comes an "Ooops" moment. When it comes time to pay the bill.

Then we go back to two ways. One which works and one which looks like something which could possibly work if you paper the cracks over fast enough. But in reality is a stinking pile....

Workingman wrote:Cromwell, it may yet rise to 18 to combat rising youth unemployment. This was the thinking of Don Blanchflower?, formerly of the Bank of England..... about a year ago.

ETA. Found it. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012 ... anchflower David Blanchflower.

Thanks for the link WM. 'Former Bank of England adviser calls for measure to help combat rising youth unemployment'.
The thought occurs that we are not combatting rising youth unemployment, we are trying to hide the scale of it.

It's all just another example of how this country is going down the drain.

And it all boils down to the catastrophic incompetence of recent Governments.