Not quite living up to your hero

It's probably not entirely normal to say this, but Samuel Pepys is my hero.

I have a deep and abiding fascination with Restoration London, perhaps in no small part to his descriptions... but then, perhaps I have the interest in Pepys because he happened to be there are a fascinating time in history. I have yet to work this part out. Either way, when I moved to London I was delighted to find out my workplace was within easy wandering distance of a lot of the places he lived and worked, and I have spent quite a few happy lunch hours wandering around, looking at St Brides and Seething Lane and St Pauls. It has, if anything, possibly heightened my interest in Pepys.

I would like to be like Pepys, except perhaps without the copious extra-marital affairs or that time he was locked in the Tower. I identify with him, too – he came from a humble background, got a leg up due to cleverness honed with education, and was a skilled and talented administrator. I'd like to be like that, ideally with some of the massive success that is due at about this age, actually.

One of reasons Pepys and I differ, however, is that Pepys was an amazing diarist. We all know this. The plaque on the site of his birth saddens me, as I don't think that's now he would want to be remembered, but his skills of observation are unsurpassed. I'm managing to blog about twice a month, although my excuse is that Pepys didn't have interesting stuff to watch on the telly to distract him.

Anyway, Pepys would often go and have a nosey at interesting sights on London streets. Imagine my opportunity when they announced the route for Thatcher's funeral going more or less past my work? I could blog about that!

In the end, though,I didn't watch the funeral. There are two reasons for that: firstly, I had no desire to actually get involved in the thing, as I dislike the woman thoroughly and didn't want to be seen praising her, but I also had no desire to get involved in the protesting as I do think it was a little distasteful. Also, it was my turn to look after the switchboard.

Instead, on my walk to work from the Tube, I took a detour along some of the route. I lost count of police at 52, and to my secret gratification I saw Jon Snow, although not in a jolly tie for obvious reasons. More confusing was the large amount of quite jolly people out, taking the day as another cheery day in London, posing for foreign reporters. It all contrasted a little with the scary signs of the state -all of the Boris bikes were gone, no traffic on normally busy roads, police everywhere, and vehicle blocking equipment down every side street. It was quite good to get into work, in the end.

Where I sit in work I have no view of the main streets, but I could hear the noise in the backgrounds. Military bands played, and more ominously the helicopters roared over constantly for a good few hours. BBC News 24 was on the office TV and it was weird to see the streets we worked on full of all the fanfare. (A waste of public money, might I add.)

On my lunch, after the funeral was over, I had a wander up to St Pauls. The streets were still very busy, and I was mystified by the amount of people with sandwiches and little folding chairs. This was the funeral of someone who was – at the end of the day and indeed her life – a public citizen. It shouldn't have been a national event, and I'm a little bemused that it was. Still, at St Pauls I was pleased to see someone giving a lecture that sounded a lot like one of the lectures from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist. More alarming was all of the police going off duty in the direction of Old Bailey – I have literally never seen so many in one place.

It was, basically, a weird day. In the end I went out for a drink after work – and why not? It was remarkably quiet, given the amount of office workers who had the day off. That's a fair indictment of Thatcher right there – given I work in one of the few areas she wasn't having a good go at crushing, it's ironic a lot of us got some time off, therefore reducing productivity.

This write up has mostly convinced me that I am no Pepys – so now to bedd, for my head is aking.

Milk snatcher

Margaret Thatcher died today.

Let's get a few things out of the way: I feel sorry for her family's loss, and also a lingering set of twilight years with dementia followed by a stroke is an unpleasant way to go. And yes, she was the first female Prime Minister.

Right. Now we have said that, let's say some other things.

I will not mourn the end of a woman who is responsible for some fucking awful things in our country, and is still responsible now. I don't have a full set of all the awful things she did, but during her time as Prime Minister the working classes of this country were ground down into worklessness, entire communities made into poverty-ridden ghost towns. Those cities haven't recovered yey. Those cities in the north, in Scotland, in Wales, may never recover because the poisonous politics that started with her still tell them that they're wastrels, that they're not worth anything. The problems we have now still continue, and her political descendents are destroying what is left in some of those communities.

I will not mourn Section 28, a legacy I was still dealing with when I was in comprehensive education, a time when queer kids and adults were given no support by public funds. By 'no support' this meant no protection of homophobic bullying, amongst a raft of other things. This still continues.

I will not mourn someone who supported apartheid in South Africa.

I will not mourn someone who sank the Belgrano when it was retreating.

I will not mourn privatisation of vital services. I will not mourn the idea that it's somehow okay for people to make profit off the back of heating, light and clean water.

I will not mourn someone who kickstarted the excesses of our financial markets.

I am the daughter of working class parents. I grew up on the edge of one of those decimated communities. So you'll forgive me, right now, if I am having a drink. I'm not doing it to celebrate her death, but I am doing it to remember all of the tragedy and horror she caused, and her legacy is still causing.

Over dramatic? Yeah, probably. Depending on when the funeral is, though, it may well block my ability to get into work as the cortege will be going very near my offices. I have a long weekend coming up, but unless the funeral is on Friday or Monday it will directly affect my ability to get into work. Whether I want to or not, it's being put directly in my way.

Those are my thoughts. I appreciate you may have different ones. I don't pretend to understand them, if I'm honest.

“Poundland ruling 'blows big hole' through government work schemes”

It's been a good news sort of two weeks, with Gove u-turning on his bloody stupid Ebacc scheme and now this.

I've said before and I've said again that everything in the world is wrong with the government work experience schemes, taking paid jobs out of the economy and forcing people to work with ridiculous penalties. Good, I say. This ruling is not on moral issues, but simply on legal ones, but if this makes this stupid scheme go away and be properly rethought then I say that this is a good day for all out of work people – in particular, graduates.

I wrote about this in rather more details about a year ago: "Flaws in government work experience" My feelings are the same nowas they were then, with a sense of cheerful contentment I have been proved right.

Police Commissioner Elections: sadly free of costumed vigilantes

As you're probably not aware, the Police Commissioner elections are taking place this Thursday. I know, I know, it's been a real hotbed of political discussion over these elections and I'm sure you're all desperate to cast your vote.

After some discussion and thought, I have decided that I will vote for one of these options:

1. Anyone by the name of 'Gordon'.

1a. I will also accept anyone campaigning under a slogan of “Tough on costumed super-villains, tough on the causes of costumed super-villainy.”

2. Anyone who promises to give all of their salary to a police widows charity and to not do any work, instead letting the police do their work without any bullshit needless political stuff.

Unfortunately, I can't find any candidates who fulfil any of the above criteria. The UKIP lady in our area, Merseyside, looks a bit like Gary Oldman but that's as close as I can get.

Not actually the UKIP candidate for Merseyside Police Commissioner. Maybe.

 So now I'm torn between voting Labour in an attempt to keep out the UKIP/English Democrat lot, or spoiling my ballot paper. I'm rather tempted to go for the latter. I'm going to note, no matter what happens, because if I think about not voting I hear my ancestors screaming at me. So like many people, I'm now mostly trying to think of the funniest way to spoil my ballot paper, mostly via trying to think of good quotes from The Thick of It.

I do genuinely disagree with these elections, because we don't need Police Commissioners. I have yet to hear a convincing reason why we should, or frankly any reasons whatsoever. I've heard nothing from any candidates, or from the government explaining this new role, or any reason why we're wasting million of pounds on an election we don't need and can't afford.

I'm thinking 'FUCKING OMNISHAMBLES' wouldn't be a bad start.

Down with the patriarchy. Please?

The news this week has made me want to weep. As allegations about Jimmy Savile – and now, some of his colleagues – have come out in a terrifyingly long list, Justin Lee Collins has been found guilty of harassment of his ex-girlfriend, a case which has also contained some bizarre and plain nasty details. In Pakistan, the Taliban have shot 14 year old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out about women's rights.

These three cases are on the outside very different. Sexual perversion, domestic violence and attempted murder are, legally speaking, three entirely different crimes. Make no mistake, though – this is the week that the patriarchy made itself thoroughly felt on the headlines. It makes me feel a bit sick, to be honest.

Before you all start protesting that these are radically different crimes, allow me to assure you that they have one thing in common. That thing is the need to have power over women, to keep them in their place, to use violence and coercion to prove that power. Jimmy Savile allegedly chose teenage girls, the kind who would be coming into the awkward stage of adulthood but still be vulnerable. Justin Lee Collins psychologically and physically abused an ex-alcoholic who by her own admission was in a vulnerable place. The Taliban shot a girl on a bus, on her way to school.

All of the women involved in this will forever bear scars, some more literal than others, and I sincerely wish for the recovery of Malala, because she is the kind of young women we need more of. All of these women have suffered because men – and frankly, ones that sound insecure, unable to deal with strong and confident women in any way other than violence – have decided that men deserve power, that women are inferior and there to be used.

The patriarchy isn't a very trendy word. Suzanne Moore has a great piece in the Guardian about it today, actually. The concept is quite tricky to explain without sounding too strident, although on a week like this one I'll sound as damned strident as I please. Basically, though, the majority of the world lives under the rule of men. There are rules, invisible rules, designed to protect the ruling men. These rules damage men too, have no doubt about it, but the patriarchy is the thing that judges women for getting old and praising men for looking 'distinguished'. The patriarchy is the glass ceiling. The patriarchy is the anti-choice movement. The patriarchy says you get raped because you were drunk, or in a short skirt, rather than because you happened to be in the path of a rapist. The patriarchy exists where we let it exist, and it leads to men like Justin Lee Collins, insecure in their control.

It has not been a great week, in short, for happy feminist thoughts. And before anyone talks about Julia Gillard's speech, just stop a moment and think about how depressing it was the leader of a country had to stand up and say any such thing in the first place. It's a great speech, and I love the passion behind it, but my God, I wish we didn't live in a world where such a speech has to be made in the first.

Stop and think about your actions this week, and think about the patriarchy too. The next time you pass something off as 'not really mattering', like a Pimps and Hoes fancy dress night, or the Daily Mail tutting about Lady Gaga's 'shocking weight gain', think of the bigger picture. Fight it, if you can, because the other side of the coin may be uglier than you ever dared imagine.

Do shut up, Jeremy Hunt

 Jeremy Hunt wants to halve abortion limit times to 12 weeks. 

In a way, it's almost comforting to know that two major players in the government have such an open disregard for women's right. The fact that they were respectively the Women's and Health Minister really says all you need to know.

A baby born at 22 weeks has a 1% chance of survival from the onset of labour. 1%. The Department of Health's own figures state that 91% of abortions happen under 13 weeks. Just stop for a moment, and look at those statistics properly. Women are not going around having abortions at 22 weeks willy-nilly. They are for reasons. One woman's reason to abort a foetus might not be yours, or mine, but I personally think that jeopardising the physical and mental health of a women who already lives outweigh other concerns.

Abortion should be safe, legal and above all rare. If Mr Hunt and Ms Miller are so concerned about the rights of unborn children, they should start looking at improving sex education in school. They should also start doing something about making sure that children aren't born into poverty, and go through life with a good education and better opportunities. As they are both members of a government that seems to be cheerfully pushing more children into poverty, they should really look at their priorities.

This isn't Nadine bloody Dorries, going around ranting about the unborn children and the evil nurses who deliberately kill them. She's a fringe player, with very little impact on what really happens. These two are from the government, with portfolios to deliberately care for women's health. That's why this is so enraging, and so frustrating to hear.

Anyone after some work?

Any graduates looking for work? I hear that G4S are getting a bit desperate...

Joking aside, I actually do think that on one level this is a graduate issue. This sort of temporary work is the kind of thing that unemployed graduates flock towards, and it's crap, let's not put too fine a point on it. Not the work itself, I hasten to point out, but the conditions. G4S waited until the last minute to hire staff because as far as it was concerned, temporary workers are disposable scum who you can always get more of. You can hire and fire at will, and not give them decent working conditions and training because who will they complain to? Put off the recruitment process – after all, you can even get them for free and make them sleep under a bridge. 

Then again, if you've been out of work for a little while and are desperate for a job, even without the prestige of the Olympics, you'll take anything, and you will put up with these conditions. That's the point. Things like this have been going on for years now, but it took a multinational event and a massive cock-up to give them a spotlight.

There will always be a need and a market for temporary workers, and there are some temporary workers and agencies that are undoubtedly treated very well. I just hope that this makes the government think twice about outsourcing to companies that don't seem to have done their homework, particularly when it makes Britain and it's industry look like complete dicks on the world stage.

Oh, and for the love of whatever it is you believe in, Nick Buckles, please prepare the next time you're hauled in for a Parliamentary enquiry hearing. And give back the management fee, because this mess-up isn't management by any definition.

Shock realisation: we are governed by morons

David Cameron says he 'may' call a referendum on the E.U.

I have come to the conclusion, spurred on by this final news story, that David Cameron just doesn't care any more and is spurting whatever daft opinion the1922 Committee has come with this time. No more benefits for anyone, particularly not those scum who are under 25! Let's leave the EU and go to war with France again for good measure! Schools abolished for poor people!

I'm being deliberately facetious there, but this week it's felt a little like that. It's that or he's deliberately winding up the left with a series of daft proposals in order to get the headlines away from Jimmy Carr and corrupt banks, possibly because he doesn't want to rock that boat too tightly. (Is Jimmy Carr finally paying his tax the reason for the freeze of fuel duty? Doubt it.)

I really dislike the right using the E.U. as catnip for the crazier fringe, trying to bring in the nastier elements and probably nark off the Lib Dems at that. Genuine worries about sovereignity always seem to be taken over by frothing xenophobes, who classify the E.U. as a sort of Gomorrah of liberal ideas/fascist removal of sovereign rights AT THE SAME TIME, despite the fact that all countries seem to send over a contingent of equally bizarre people who reckon that standing for the European parliament is totally the best way to remove themselves from it.

I feel a little fatigued with the news at the moment. When it's a graduate specific story, it's a little easier to comment on it in the spirit of the blog, but stuff like this just keeps me so utterly flabbergasted that I'm unable to rebut them. It's a bit like being asked to explain why falling in a pit of spikes is a bad idea – it's so patently a bad idea that it's hard to know where to start, as it includes stuff that you assume a rational human being would know instinctively.

Possibly assuming that we are governed by rational human beings is where I've been going wrong.

Disorientated Graduate: news edition!

I would like to have to measured, considered thoughts on the news, but mostly I am just baffled by it. Let's start with one of the major stories, according to the BBC, of the last few days:

Church of England claims that gay marriage will de-stabilise the country.

They also seem to be of the opinion that allowing two ladies or two gents to get married will ruin marriage forever. Unlike, say, divorce. It's perhaps worth pointing out at this point that whilst Jesus was quite vocal on the issue of divorce (i.e. bad) he was surprisingly quiet about homosexuality. This is odd, considering the obsession some modern Christians have with the latter rather than the former.

Look, I can't add anything to this debate that's particularly fresh. I am a lady who is married to a dude and we got married in a church which we were lucky enough to be able to do. If the church doesn't want to marry two people, that's their decision. It's got nothing to do with how the state chooses to define marriage. If anything, extending gay marriage is an inherently small-c conservative thing to do, bigging up the idea of stable relationships in an old-fashioned mould. I don't think marriage is for every relationship, or indeed every person, and that's fine by me. I also happen to think that civil partnerships are ace ideas for people that don't want to be defined as in a marriage. Let everyone get married to whomever they wish, or civil partnerships.

Government, stop pussyfooting around the issue and pandering to the bishops in the House of Lords who you should have thrown out years ago. Let straight couples get a civil partnership, and let gay couples get married. And if a religious organisation chooses to marry gay people – the Quakers and Unitarians very much wish to do this – then let them do that. Don't be dictated to be a church that was, from one perspective, set up in order to allow Henry VIII to get his end away.

Now we're done with equal rights, let us move onto the economy:

FTSE bosses' pay rose by 11% last year.

Really? Ah, good, we must be out of recession then, because surely everyone would get that pay rise, right, down to the cleaning staff and the lady that pushes the tea trolley? No, wait, that doesn't happen? And share prices are down? And the economy is still fucked? And yet, these people are getting obscenely richer whilst the masses struggle?

THIS SORT OF CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING, PEOPLE. IT IS TIME TO NOTICE THIS.

Now, to something about the alma matar!

It's a little early for the students of St Andrews at the 7am torch relay.

YES. THREE MONTHS TOO EARLY. IT IS THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS. I can't believe I've had to crack out the Sisko picture AGAIN.

I'm not even in St Andrews anymore and it makes me want to die as a statement for sheer fucking stupidity. Also, Harry Potter and Gin Society? I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, but I was president of the Doctor Who Society for two years and I drank like a fish, so if that society slipped under the radar then it must have been a little low on the whole publicity issue.

But yes. SUMMER HOLIDAYS PEOPLE.

That's enough ranting for now, I think.

Musings on patriotism

I'm not especially proud to be British. I'm pleased to be British. I'm pleased at being a small part of a historic nation. I like the Union, and would rather be British than English. I'm happy that I have the benefits of being British; I am aware of my national global privilege, but I like that I have free and fair elections in my country, that I have reasonable freedoms and all that good stuff. Proud, though? That's like being proud to have size 5 feet. I like that size 5 feet generally makes shoe shopping more straight forward, and I think they look nice and in proportion on the end of my legs, but I'm not proud of them.

I'm musing on patriotism at the moment, as the Union flag (fun fact: only the Union Jack when at sea!) has exploded everywhere, a bit like spores on moss. The Queen is having a diamond jubilee, something about which I am deeply ambivalent about. There is going to be a pageant of boats across the Thames. Last time this happened it was to welcome Catherine of Braganza to the country in 1662. I have no issue with Catherine of Braganza – seemed like a nice lady! - but she failed to have any children by Charles II, and unlike Hency VIII this probably was her fault, given that Charles had something like 35 acknowledged bastards by seventeen other women. This led to a major constitutional crisis and quite a lot of bad times for the monarchy. You know, just after Charles I had his head chopped off.

I'm just saying.

Anyway, the diamond jubilee is a thing that is happening at the moment. I am delighted to have a day off work, in much the same way I was delighted to have a day off for the last royal wedding. And I sort of respect the Queen, mostly for still being alive, even if she and her family are a set of parasitic leeches on society. So is my Aunty Phyllis and her brood, mind you, and I don't know if I want anyone to chop her head off. Then again, I'm not being encouraged to have street parties for Aunty Phyllis, either.

One thing that makes me quite skeezy, though, is the Jubilee song.

I am basically an emotional sponge and am fairly easy to start blubbing. I have been known to get a little bit weepy at adverts, and DIY SOS. To throw Gary Barlow at me (I love Take That with the passion that only someone who liked them the first time around can muster), Andrew Lloyd Webber (yes, I am an awful person) and then put in a bit of Gareth Malone is basically designed to make me weep like a child. It's a reasonably stirring song with vague lyrics.

And yet, the whole thing makes me uneasy, possibly because it reminds me what the monarchy really is. The Military Wives are defined by their relationships to men, not what they do as a living, and it says that we are a country at war, a country nearly always at war, and one that has belligerently pushed around big chunks of the world via a militaristic power, where those who are signed up and those who are left behind are made to feel Like It Really Matters. Lots of shots of angelic African children singing away are beautiful, yes, but how relevant is a tiny little British woman with a big hat to Kenyans? She was on the throne during the Mau-Mau Uprising, for goodness sake, there is not always good history there. The Commonwealth has made some good strides forwards, but there's an uncomfortable colonial history there that this song just blithely brushes under the carpet, and I don't know that's the right thing to do.

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of a crowd, to be blown away by the spectacle and pageantry, and I might find myself watching that Jubilee concert tonight. But then, the pageantry is a show designed to hide the cold steel that lies behind the history of monarchy, the sense that if the Queen is in her God-given place then so are us underlings. That's a concept I'm really not comfortable with.

I'm enjoying my long weekend, although to be honest I spent the weekend catching up with some friends and have spent today watching so much Game of Thrones I think my eyes are going to fall out. That's probably as close as I'm getting to royalty today.

The flaws in the government work experience scheme

I've strongly suspected for a long time that the work experience program being pushed upon job seekers by the government is basically evil. The first hint was when a friend who works in Argos cheerfully referred to the woman on the scheme in his store as 'slave'. (“My manager started it. It's true, really.”) I think I realised it really was evil when I saw that Tesco had withdrawn from the scheme.

A few weeks shadowing a relevant industry, certainly, is not bad thing. Unpaid internships are a lot more morally shaky. But working for Tescos? In the stores? For free?

Before we all cheerfully jump in and tell me that I am a snob/class traitor/etc, allow me to enlighten you on a few facts. I've worked in retail, and Mr Disorientated Graduate still does. A large portion of my job involves e-commerce, which is retail but at least I can put the phone down on the customer. There is nothing wrong with a retail job, or any of the other jobs available through this scheme. In fact, I think it's admirable that people volunteered. There is currently no evidence on how many of these individuals have been able to get a job out of these schemes, but work experience is valuable. I've talked about this before.

There are major problems with a steady stream of people working full time for weeks on end at these jobs. Look, these are not the best jobs in the world. They are jobs you can take pride in, but nevertheless, people don't dream of working in Tesco. That doesn't make them bad or unworthy jobs. I'm also a firm believer in the importance of work as a lifestyle issue as well. It gives you routine, pride in yourself, and independence. However, most importantly they give you a wage. That's why you put up with the bad aspects. Without the pull of a wage, all you do is get the godawful bits of it without the internal chant of 'need to pay the rent, need to pay the rent...'. Trust me, a big gas bill has kept me from swearing or throwing mop buckets at employers before now.

Aha, you might say here. People on these schemes still get benefits, right? And they're voluntary? Yes and yes. (Although the Back to Work schemes for people taken off DLA are a different kettle of fish, I can only deal with those seperately.) As such, they should stay on the scheme until it's over.

AT WHAT POINT DOES MY TAXPAYER MONEY HAVE TO PAY FOR MAJOR CORPORATIONS TO DO WORK EXPERIENCE SCHEMES?!

That might sound a little right-wing, but hell, I don't care if it is. I pay my taxes to support a welfare state I may well need one day. I have no inclination to pay the 'wages' of someone doing work experience, i.e. a job, at a major corporation. This hurts everyone. A job that Argos should pay for is being done by someone unpaid. This means that Argos, essentially, saves on the wages bill. In the meanwhile, the job market crisis grows deeper and more people end up in this scheme. You tell me that's economically viable and I will eat my hat.

Work experience shouldn't be a real job, not if its unpaid. Shadowing someone for experience is fine, and I applaud that, although an eight-week stint at work isn't realistically going to help anyone's CV.

There aren't enough jobs around, and I know that isn't all the fault of the government. I also know they need to be seen doing something, which is why they're throwing money at shady companies like A4E, and setting up work experience schemes and telling people like me not to be sniffy at the type of work offered. As someone who's employer is looking very seriously at this scheme to 'cover the busy months and keep the wage bill down' I know directly that it hurts people. A job in my office that would previously have been covered by a paid member of staff will instead go to someone desperate for office experience, and the government will fork out the bill. Meanwhile, the job market contracts by one more job.

This scheme, although well-intended, looks like it was worked out on the bag of a fag packet in the pub. Go back and think again, government.

(It should be noted that since the time of starting this piece, many employers have pulled out of the scheme or are further evaluating it. When I have more, I'll post more.)

A moment of your time, please

Today I'm telling you about Mike. He has buggar all to do with being a graduate; he and I were colleagues at my first post-graduate job, but that's about it.

Mike would like to go to America. He's been a few times, in fact, but despite constant good timekeeping in terms of return dates and an emphatic desire not to emigrate, just visit, the USA will not let Mike back in. You see, Mike is going to America to visit his boyfriend.

I'll let him tell you about it.



This blog is not my place to comment on American politics, because lots of other people do that better than me. I like America. I like the culture, I like the geography, and so help me I even like the food. I do not like the politics. I do not like the current exciting disregard that most of the lawmakers seem to have for women's health, or indeed for human rights.

I respect a country's right to maintain it's borders, but excluding someone based on their sexuality is wrong. If you also think this is wrong, there is a petition to the White House here.

I don't really know Mike. The last time I saw him we were in Reflex in Liverpool on my leavers do for that, when we danced to the Ghostbusters theme. We're facebook acquaintances, but I have no other compulsion to help him except for the fact that discrimination is wrong, and I know that Mike is a nice guy. No one deserves to be kept apart by borders. That's all I can say, really; I encourage you to sign the petition.

Thanks all.

Student loan ridiculousness (again)

Student loan early repayment penalty proposal' abandoned.

As far as I can tell, pretty much everyone is on the wrong about this one.

Student loans, from what I can tell, are created and administered by people who generally don't have a student loan to pay off themselves because they were students back in the days of things like grants. This was not financially sound as a system. Fine. This is not the argument I am here to have today.

I owe the government tens of thousands of pounds, and I pay back £13 a month at the moment. I don't think I'm ever going to eligible for any theoretical early repayment penalty, or if I am it won't be for a long time which rather takes away the 'early repayment' option. Most students are the same.

Fun story: I know people who got a student loan, put it into a high-interest savings account (this was in 2005 – remember high interest savings?) and then paid the lot back promptly upon graduation, and have used the interest on the loan to have a nest-egg to buy a house. Instinctively, I feel this is wrong and that's with a lot of love and respect to and for the people involved. However, these are the risks taken with the system, and at least they've paid back their loans. It's a lot more than most people manage to do, and at least the money is 'back in the pot', as it were, for future students.

This is a small minority of people. However, a much larger majority of graduates desperately want to pay their loans off. I hate being in debt. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I grew up in a house where Debt Was Bad, and I say this as someone currently surfing the wave of the graduate overdraft so possibly a little hypocritically. If I won the lottery, or managed to get a high-paying job, I would love to pay my loan off quicker.

There are those that will take advantage of the system, and they will end up paying less than less well-off students. The simple – and sad – fact is that richer students will find many things easier in university whilst we live in an unfair society. They just won't take the loan, if they have parents that can support them, which is of course essentially what paying off the loan early is.

Penalising early repayment discourages ambition. That's the simple end of it. “It's to protect lower-income students,” they say. This is bollocks. It says that lower-income students can just stay where they are, on low incomes. If they really wanted to help low-income students, fees would be lower or there would be no loans at all. Don't take away people's pride in being able to pay back debt sooner, and I'm talking to you, Liberal Democrats and National Union of Students.

The system is what's unfair, and faffing about with early and late repayment is just stupid. (And yes, 'faffing about' is a technical term.)

Well, duh.

Graduates without work experience face struggle to secure jobs, report says.

In other news, report proves Pope to be Catholic?

More than one-third of the graduate vacancies available are expected to be taken by people who have already worked for a firm while they were studying, a report by High Fliers Research has found.

This is, shall we say, obvious news. Employers prefer graduates who have a degree and experience within the working world. It's an absolute bastard, particularly when you realise that getting the experience is a catch-22 situation. Then again, I assumed that when I left university I had work experience. My work experience was in cleaning, retail, and care homes. I thought that having worked alongside studying since I was sixteen would show I was hard-working and knew how the working world operated.

That was a bubble that was burst quickly.

But a total of 36% of vacancies on offer are likely to be filled by applicants who worked for the company concerned while they were at university.

That's a bloody big chunk of vacancies put to one side for people who have already worked there, within vocational subjects. I don't resent those soon-to-be-graduates for their ability to know what they want to do with their lives at eighteen, or indeed their engineering/architectural/etc know-how, but I am jealous.

The main problem is that as a rule, you only work this particular issue out too late. It's difficult enough getting a job, let alone the mythical graduate job, and any job-seeking graduate could tell you that work experience is required.

So, if you're reading this, you will probably assume that I was a dim student who should have done work experience in Something Relevant, and that I deserve everything coming to me. To an extent, I suppose this is true. I should have worked harder to get work experience, or an internship. You know, the illegal ones where they don't pay you? Unfortunately, a combination of paying your own way through university (student loan pays the rent; what do you think pays the rest?) and living very far from London makes this a tricky proposition indeed.

I see the perspective of the employers. I really, really do. You'd rather have employees who have experience of the industry, and hell, you've got your pick of candidates. The perpetuation of this system means that you get free employees during the summer, too. Why not?

Well... because you're perpetuating a system wherein it's not what you know, it's who you know. Work experience involves being able work for free, and knowing someone to give you that experience. Talented graduates who are outside of the magic circle are not given a chance to prove themselves. I'm not a supporter of the idea that graduates should jump in at the top – you're young, you don't know very much, I get that. I'm happy to start at the bottom and work my way up through according to my merits.

But as my merits do not include living in the South-East, or having parents who were able to support me through university, or indeed having parents with friends who runs important firms, I'm not even getting the chance to get in at the bottom of the ladder.

However, presenting the idea that graduates need work experience as news? Yes, we had worked that on out for ourselves, thank you very much!

Unexpected free porn (not just Google bait, either)

We get a lot of free stuff in the office at this time of year. Not from my employer – chance would be a fine thing! - but from various suppliers. Nothing to alert the anti-bribery laws, of course, but little gifts. Some are genuinely just a friendly matter – there are companies we have worked with for years – and some are blatant corporate schmoozing. Whatever, bring on the free mince pies and our yearly Raffle Of The Booze.

We also get free calenders. I love free calenders. I have had Cute Baby Animals on mine all year, and I am going to be distraught if I don't get another one. That baby orangutan really brightened up August for me. So opening the post this month is a bit exciting – between the usual invoices/cheques/abuse complaint letters there are cards! and calenders! and random vouchers! Exciting. Best month of the year to be the post monkey.

A few days ago, I was opening the post. It was a smallish envelope, so I assumed it was usual paperwork. A moment later, I dropped it and squeaked.

“Disorientated Graduate?” a concerned colleague asked. “What's wrong?”

I am normally loquacious. I am the kind of person who likes clever wordplay, and saying six words when I can say two. So please understand my full horror when I tell you that the only thing I could think to say in reply was:

“BOOBS!”

That's right, we received a calender full of ladies who were tragically unable to find their clothing. As a free corporate gift that was presumably intended to be put up in the office.

There are people out there that buy soft porn calenders. There are people out there that produce soft porn calenders. I have some very conflicted views on the whole matter, but in essence I reluctantly feel that it's a part of human nature and frankly enough what you get up in to private is your own damn business. The bit that really struck me was that a company took the time and money to acquire pictures – and yes, it was all pictures of topless women- affix their branding, create a full calender, and send it all out with the Royal Mail to their paying customers. All of this was in a genuine effort to persuade companies to continue buying their products, and was sent out in the full belief this was appropriate marketing material.

Sorry, are we back in the 1970s and no one told me?!

I genuinely feel that nakedness is generally not appropriate in a work context, or at least not in the context of a workplace where high-visibility vests are necessary. So if it had been a calender with naked men, yes, I would still have been deeply offended. If it has been a mixture of men and woman, I would still be offended.

Honestly, though? It made me feel small. I wanted to shred the calender, phone the company up, and have a good shout in incandescent rage. I wanted to say that I was a woman in the workplace and that my contribution was valid, and I could do more than sit there in the corner, silently, with my boobs out. I wanted to say that receiving this calender unexpectedly was rude and upsetting. My female colleagues, who normally feel that this feminism lark is for lesbians and weirdos, were equally upset and genuinely shocked. We expressed this to our line manager.

What actually happened was this: the line manager gave it as a gift to the yard staff. I checked the companies details and it turns out that we owe them money for goods picked up this month, so I didn't shout at them as I am not bonkers enough to destroy relationships all that much.

Instead, I blogged about it. Go me. I mean, do other people thing that this is an appropriate inter-company gift? Did I over-react? Personally I think not, but perhaps that's just me.

--

Today Kim Jong-il died. I wrote the above post earlier, but I felt it needed mentioning, albeit in a very strange context.

Love, Dave, is not always around.

I have been puzzling for a while exactly why David Cameron decided to stick two fingers up to Europe. For a while I thought it might have been because he just hated the French, but then I remembered that's just my Dad. Then I thought it was because he genuinely just wasn't bright enough to work out that possibly taking down the world economy was a worse risk than annoying his hard-of-thinking Eurosceptic backbenchers.

The thing is, as you may have just guessed, I do not especially like the Conservative party. In fact, to put it into rather more stark relief, I am actually a paid-up member of the Labour party. The thing is, there are individual elements of the Tories who are fine and noble people – SERIOUSLY I'M NOT BIGOTED SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE TORY etc – but as a general rule they sort of worry me. On a more specific level, I feel that David Cameron and George Osbourne are the most worrying thing to happen to the working classes of this country since, well, Thatcher. And rickets. And the potato famine.

I honestly don't think they're stupid though. Desperately misguided and dangerous, yes, but not stupid. So I don't think that David Cameron would really, honestly take that risk through sheer stupidity.

Then I remembered it's Christmas, and that Love Actually is on telly a lot. David Cameron, secretly, is just trying to be like Hugh Grant and stand up for puny Britain to general love, acclaim, and snogs from Martine McCutcheon. Not that bit maybe.

Oh god. I mean, I adore Love Actually and am guaranteed to blub like a baby at the end of it every single time, but I wouldn't base political plans on it.

Except maybe this one:



Merry Christmas.

-

The festive season is the reason for the recent slowdown of posts despite fairly major important economic issues. I am pleased to report the Christmas party of this year went reasonably well, with no arguments, arrests or vomiting on the boss. However, my life in the evenings is currently a flurry of Christmas cards, socialising and to be quite honest TV specials. I think the problems with being a graduate-in-employment at Christmas are threefold:

1.You want to do Christmas shopping. Your employer feels you should, you know, be in work.
2.You have the money to actually buy people nice Christmas presents this year. The main problem with this is described in section 1.
3.You also have disposable income to go partying. There are lots of parties. BAD COMBO. Or good. Either way.

These are not necessarily problems, I suppose, but it does rather account for a lack of time to do, well, anything.

Stuff

My stats just jumped massively. Hello, all of you international sorts! Bet you think I'm about to put something intellectual.

To be quite honest I'm in my pajamas, eating a packet of Refreshers and watching Don't Tell The Bride. LIVING THE DREAM. And my next planned post is Surviving The Christmas Party, ready for all of you hitting the town this weekend with your colleagues. Oh yeah.

However, this is a mildly serious post in order to wish the best of luck to everyone on strike tomorrow, which includes both of my parents. I will not be on strike tomorrow, as I work in the private sector, and there is no relevant union to my industry. I completely support the strike. To everyone on the picket lines: dress up warm, and if I pass one, I will honk in support.

Lost generation

Nick Clegg: £1bn youth jobs fund to prevent lost generation

A generation lost in despair at youth unemployment soars

This new housing strategy won't save the 'lost generation'

I have heard more this month about being lost than I do from my SatNav. My whole generation, they would have you believe, is floundering about in the dark and nothing will save us from a life of bad privately rented houses, under-employment and a lack of moral fibre.

This is possibly true. I am, after all, a Disorientated Graduate. My very name indicates that I am, well, lost. I'm lost in a way that indicates I'm directionless through, rather than having been misplaced behind the sofa cushions of recession. The way I see it is that our generation is lost, some behind the sofa but mostly just lacking a clear direction.

It was easier in the past. A hundred years ago, the path would have been clear for me. If I was born into my class as a girl, I would have been expected to go into a local factory, or possibly service. After getting married, I would push out babies and raise them until I fell down through exhaustion or poor housing conditions.

Even fifty years ago, I might have done the same thing if I failed my 11+. Chances are I would have done; both my parents did, after all. I may have survived a little longer, and at least I would have had contraception, but that would have been it. The path would still be reasonably clear.

If I passed my 11+, there were suddenly more paths. Hurrah! Not that many, mind you; teacher training college, perhaps, or nursing. Then it was, yet again, work until the babies.

Thirty years ago, maybe even twenty, it all starts getting a little muddy. I could have gone to university and I would have had a wide choice of jobs. Maybe I could marry, maybe I didn't have to any more; I didn't have to have children. My choices were my own but as long as I worked hard then I would be free to make whatever choice I liked, because the freedom was there.

This was the narrative my generation and I grew up with. Work hard and you too can enter any industry you want, buy a house, have it all. So we worked hard. All of us Disorientated Graduates, and the Disorientated College-Leavers, we worked to the best of our abilities, believing the narrative that all paths were open to us if we just tried. We picked our path, and by god we flew at it.

We're getting lost because the paths have been closed, or become too crowded, or filled with our predecessors. We need a new narrative, a new story to aspire too because the one we grew up with just isn't working any more. I'm not sure what that story should be, but I do know that just telling us that we're lost and building some cheap houses to try and fill the aspiration gap won't help. And going back to the models of fixed places in society is even worse.

I don't think that my future is lost behind the sofa cushions of recession. It's a big sofa, and someone has flytipped it in the way of my path of life (this is becoming a stretched metaphor) but I truly believe that my path is still there and that I am going to find it again once I work my way around the current difficulties. That's all.

Youth unemployment

I have had the kind of fortnight that makes me fantasise very seriously about quitting my job in dramatic high fashion. It veers between telling arsey clients exactly where they can stick their increasingly high pitched demands for immediate attention or alternatively just throwing a shoe at my boss and flouncing out of the door. How exactly I will flounce with only one shoe on I'm not sure, but it's important not to over-analyse such fantasies.

Only once in my life have I quit a job without another one lined up. I was, for all of a day, working in a cleaning gang for a Pontins contract. The gangmaster was a twat is a suit who was there for all of three minutes before 'leaving us to it'. Never trust a bloke in a suit running a cleaning company,in my fairly considerable cleaning experience. We spent all day cleaning out room after room after room, with no lunch break and then we ended up working an hour longer as some of the other gangs didn't do their rooms fully. The supervisor at Pontins was the most awful person I've ever had the displeasure of working with, and as one of the few women in the gang to speak English she took out a lot of her anger at me. I finished the shift, went home, burst into tears and didn't go back. I wasn't paid for the extra two hours.

The point of all this is that I managed to get another job reasonable swiftly, this time as a carer in a nursing home, which I have relatively good memories of and still pop in occasionally to see the surviving residents. I had enough money to see me through the summer and set me up for another year in uni.

I don't think I could manage that again. I am hyper-aware of my financial responsibilities, mostly because I pay the rent and also I have a wedding looming, and that shit is expensive. My fear of poverty is higher than my loathing of the job, and poverty and unemployment is a very real fear right now.

Youth unemployment is, roughly speaking, when someone between 16-24 isn't in employment, education or training. This is charmingly referred to as being a NEET. I have never been a NEET, I say with some quiet pride, but my sister has. In less than a year I am no longer a youth in employment terms, but I still worry about the future.

Youth unemployment in Britain has now topped one million, and if you think this isn't a graduate issue then you have your head in the sand. It is equally an issue for school-leavers and college-leavers, but crucially it means a generation is being screwed. It's being screwed by short-sighted policies, by increasing unemployment across generations, by the economy. It means I worry about spiralling into the situation in Spain. I look at the protests across the Middle East, where a major factor for social change and unrest is – you guessed it – youth unemployment.

I worry that I am stuck in this job, which whilst paying tolerably well has no chances for progression or training. Worse, though, is the worry that if I quit it I will have no chances for, well, anything, and will eventually just take a worse job in order to fill up the days. I don't exactly have what you might consider a strong work ethic, but I like to have a structure to my day, and to feel that I'm doing something at least tolerably useful.

So, for now, fear of the unknown will keep the image of throwing a shoe at my boss a fantasy.

Ugh

At work, I picked up the phone. This is not unusual, as a lot of my job pertains to customer care. The chap on the other end of the phone wanted to be put through to my colleague, however.

“Okay!” I said cheerfully, finger heading towards the 'hold' button on the phone. “Bear with me!”

“I'll bear with you any time, darling,” he purred, in the most lecherous voice imaginable.

I put him on hold and died a little bit inside.

For the record: I had never met or spoken to this man before. He was simply a customer checking on some delivery details, it turned out. He probably imagined he was paying me a compliment.

I didn't feel especially complimented. When I am at work, I am at work. I am a professional, I am not an object, and to be treated as such by a complete stranger is an insult at best.

END.