Davos - Youth Unemployment at 51.4% in Spain

Just read that in the Guardian and am flabbergasted.  How did the world come to this? It's not young peoples fault that European economies are in freefall but they are certainly one of the main groups getting the worst of things.

In the UK youth unemployment is at 22% so we still have a way to go to be in the car crash state that is Spain but we all have a duty to act now or we will face so much turmoil and unrest later on that taking no action is not an option.

The World Economic Forum, Davos

The summit of EU leaders took place last week and youth unemployment and how to address it was a hot topic.  On the one hand they are calling for restraint and austerity measures to curb the excessive spending of yesterday and on the other they want to pump money into schemes to rescue our lost generation of youth.  Both these measures are at odds with each other.  Austerity cuts ultimately lead to less jobs and  the private sector is so jittery across Europe that no one will be filling the void where public sector jobs had once existed. We are stuck in a viscous downward spiral - new thinking will be required to stop the young losing faith in life and humanity. 

What Would I Do? 

I'd stop the rot and get proper schemes in place to arm young people with the right skills:

• Work with them to get proper communication skills
• Work with them to learn how to find jobs - they are there but you must search hard
• Work with to understand how to write a captivating CV
• Work with them so that they are kept busy and maintain their spirits and motivation.  It's all too easy to get despondent and depressed when you have nothing to do most days.
• Work with them if the above isn't working to come up with ideas and set up their own businesses. 

The Emperor's New Clothes - Some People Have An Overinflated Sense of Self Worth

It has to be said that the advent of social media allows us to all to be stalkers.  We can check people, companies and facts out in an instant.  I did this recently via Linked In when I looked up someone who had kind of taken over the role that I had been made redundant from in 2009. To be honest one of the reasons that he was deemed as a success by the business was because:

• he was male and had some of the general over confident characteristics that male dominated firms seem to admire.  Who cares if he is chatting complete and utter tosh - he's one of the boys! 
• he would say what people wanted to hear regardless of if it made sense
• he was so confident in his own abilities and talent as a sophisticated schemer that he underestimated all his fellow marketers around him and would do everything in his power to bad mouth them all.

When I saw his profile for what he did for my former company it really did bring home that me being a realist and honest is probably scuppering my career trajectory.  He was blathering on about delivering significant results for a £100m business and managing a team etc.  All lies, he achieved very little and made numerous mess ups but who can question his claims.  

Employers can't give bad references or even truthful references as they could be sued.  Individuals are now free to create their own persona online - all you do is consider the things that you want to emphasise and get writing.  On Linked In and the like, you can select what you want people to know about you and build your own brand.  So what if it's not entirely true - how can anyone prove it? And more to the point who can actually be bothered to disprove what others have said!

Cait Reilly 'Forced' To Work for free

Cait Reilly who is suing the Government for 'Forced Labour'

Graduate Cait Reilly has been all over the news this week for taking the Government to court over 'forcing' her to give up a voluntary post at a museum to do a two week stint of unpaid unskilled work at Poundland. If she didn't do the unskilled work placement she would lose her job seekers allowance. Cait's story has caught the nations attention and she is being splashed across the press and being demonised for this.

Unless you have been through unemployment you really cannot understand what it is like. I have been there three times, just after I graduated in 2000, in 2009 when the recession hammered the construction sector that I work in to oblivion and in 2011 when I was no longer in the world of law. I have empathy with Cait because:

She had the get up and go to find and commit to voluntary work 
Lots of long term unemployed do not want to work and often with low level skills and no work ethic.  Cait was a graduate who found a voluntary placement in an area that interested her.  She should be commended for having the gumption to do that not vilified.  She already had retail experience so actually how would Poundland two week unpaid placement have advanced her skills?  I don't think they would have done so logically as long as she wasn't just sitting on her arse at home doing nothing she should have been allowed to continue with her voluntary week.


She would still have had to sign on and go to the job centre every fortnight
Only once you have gone through the horrible rigmarole that is attending your signing on day and that general sinking feeling that you get at that precise moment that you realise you are heading there, please don't assume that this is a walk in the park.  There are so many people who sign on who have no get up and go, do the bear minimum to receive JSA and have no educational skills often not even being able to read and write.  They do not want to work and our jobcentres are not actually geared up to deal with these people who are actually the ones who need the 'big boot' from big brother more than people like Cait.

Signing on is not a walk in the park for scroungers
As a professional person who has contributed to society through my taxes for over 10 years I have the right to claim JSA and shouldn't be made to feel bad about doing so.  For certain professions including architects and sectors such as construction, the recession has hammered them hard so saying that there are jobs out there may well be stretching the truth a tad.   If there are jobs they are often unpaid or employers have dropped salary levels so far you would end up living in abject poverty so what god would that do?

The one thing that does rile me about Cait though is:
The fact that she has chosen to take the Government to court
Is she the victim of an unscrupulous lawyer out to make a name for themselves through advising her her to sue?  It's not their reputation and future employment prospects that are being tainted as the case has evoked so much negative exposure for Cait. Or is this something that she has dreamed up herself as she is so aggrieved by something that is undoubtedly unfair?

Either way she should have raised it with the people at the Job centre. She is articulate enough to complain to the people in charge of the job centre. Believe me,  I know that many people there are plebs but there are also some who do have common sense and would have seen the merits of her argument and done the sensible thing and let her continue at the museum.

2011 closes as 2012 hammers on the door

2012 is here and who the hell knows what life will chuck at us in the months.  Just sitting here and thinking about 2011 which has certainly had it's highs and lows.

Here are some of the things that stick in my mind:

• I found  a job that I am still in and in many ways still enjoying it.  Six months of searching and I finally got one. No easy task but back in the construction sector so I was one happy bunny. Hopefully 2012 will be my year and I'll get a perm job and be able to save up for a home of my own. 
• The London riots were shocking and disturbing, I've never felt uneasy in London, the city I call home.  A sad week of chaos in August was certainly not an image that we should have been portraying to the world.
• I learnt more about me and how to cope with the dullness of having to look for work for six months. Writing this blog, being active and getting out and about helped me a lot. 
• That life is precious, you can't plan for everything and that the simple things can make me happy.