Luckily for those at the top nepotism is still rampant.

James; Given the medical meaning of aspiration…

Further to this it probably doesn’t help that teachers will exhort their pupils to work harder because otherwise “You don’t want to be stuck working at McDonald’s now do you?”, ironically pursuing a career with McDonald’s can actually be quite fiscally rewarding if you’re willing to put the effort and will to it.
In short our children are being inculcated with the idea that some work is a big flashing signal of failure in life. With the obvious consequences to youth unemployment that this will carry.

Highly perspicacious post.

Why, indeed, should anyone take responsibility for providing for themselves and their family by doing a job they deem is beneath them when we have a government committed to extorting the required money from their fellow citizens to feed, clothe and house them?

Only an idiot would do so………..

“Highly perspicacious post.

Why, indeed, should anyone take responsibility for providing for themselves and their family by doing a job they deem is beneath them when we have a government committed to extorting the required money from their fellow citizens to feed, clothe and house them?

Only an idiot would do so………..”

Of course, your argument is complete crap as people can’t get away with not taking jobs they don’t like. At the moment they have to take any job after 3 months and it looks like this will be cut further. Still, I think you know this.

One day you might face unemployment, pagar.

Pagar @ 4

Only an idiot would do so………..

Nonsense! 28 million people do so, every week. Some of those people work part time because they cannot get full time work. There are about three million people who earn EXACTLY the minmum wage and about another three million who earn about thirty to forty pence above it. There are millions of people who earn a pittence in the labour market, they are not ‘idiots’ but nor is that any evidence of a shortage of labour either. There are people for whom welfare State support is actualy required even if there are a few (and I personally know a few) who abuse it. We need to target the people who abuse it, not tear it down leaving millions of geniune cases in poverty.

How do the arguments in this post fit with, for example, bemoaning the decline of British manufacturing? Factory work often being repetitive and dull. Where do these ideas fit with the Labour Party, the party of workers. How much fun is working down a mine? Would the left like to see more or fewer jobs, in mining?

How are people doing jobs they don’t enjoy and paying taxes they’d rather were lower, supposed to regard this individual, taking tax payer’s money, because he doesn’t like boring work?

I’m not sure what to conclude from this post. Do we imagine the left wing government of our dreams would be able to engineer an economy without boring jobs?

I would very much like us alto be rich enough that people would only have to work if they wanted to. Anything that improves the pay and conditions of work is good news. But I don’t understand these points about aspirations.

@ Richard

people can’t get away with not taking jobs they don’t like.

You may be correct, but that was not the evidence of the anecdotes in the original post.

“When I asked some of the people I spoke with why they had not worked – for several years in many cases – they gave the impression that they were willing to do so only if the job was a relatively good one; good being defined by what they saw on television, in magazines and on the radio.”

“Why should I do that sorta work, ya’know? I don’t wanna be stood in some factory packing yogurts all my life; I wanna be doin somefin worthwhile”

I think we all know that nobody with full entitlement to UK benefits is compelled to take a job they don’t want- which is why most of such jobs are done by EU immigrants and illegals.

I did my fair share of crap jobs decades ago only crap jobs then weren’t the same as crap jobs now. Wages were pretty decent, lunch hours were an hour and usually spent in a pub, most people had a fiddle going and most importantly the jobs were so overmanned no one really had to work too hard. Result was pretty good staff morale, the job got done and firms made profits. Bit of a change now, I’ve done some contracts in call centres and I’m amazed the staff make it to the end of the day without comitting suicide and as for asking permission just to go to the toilet. MacDonalds isn’t that good either, a friend’s daughter has been told they’re trying a new payment system at her branch – wages will be based on the amount sold on each shift and will vary day by day.

If you want a future, do what my cousin did, he’s a skilled metal worker and had been unemployed for nine months. His wife is a highly qualified nurse lumbered with agency work. They’ve both moved to Australia and both have higher wages than they ever got in the UK and their jobs are much more secure.

Good opening post. At last someone who has actually some experience of what they are talking about. Even something so simple as going down to the job centre.
There are loads of crap jobs available for those who want them. How else do people from all over the world find the jobs that somehow elude locals who are unemployed for long periods? The woman who jumped from the burning building in Croydon in the riots worked in Poundland and came from Poland to work there. Many of the people who rioted couldn’t hold down a job in Poundland. Or would be stealing everything they could.

Meanwhile, the children of the rich are taking unpaid internships in China, to build up their CVs and networking.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015b92b

@8 – Well yes, and I’m sure you’ll feel much better after the MPD treatment. Maybe you’ll be able to read the law afterwards, even.

@3 – Yes, there’s a career path at McDonalds. But most of the low-end jobs? Nope, they’re day labour, at best. The worse ones – which are a few percent above minimum wage just so they can state that – will fire you for not turning up on their often-illegal work schedules and then inform the jobcenter so you lose benefits, then “kindly” offer you the job back, at minimum wage.

Seen it happen.

@10 – Because, among other things, there are just *not that many* long-term unemployed. And the number of those had been falling steadily before the financial crisis.

Pagar @ 8

I think we all know that nobody with full entitlement to UK benefits is compelled to take a job they don’t want- which is why most of such jobs are done by EU immigrants and illegals.

You must know that is simply not true, Pagar. You cannot be blind to the fact that millions of British people still work in the service industry and the lower paid end of the scale at that. Sure there immigrant labourers in the Country and they have ousted people from the labour market, but you cannot be seriously suggesting that if every Eastern European in the Country ‘went home’ on Monday, every toilet would be left uncleaned? Every pizza undelivered? Every hospital bed unmade? These jobs would be snapped up and you know it. You are not claiming that no-one ever bought coffee until those nice Poles started to offer to serve us in shops?

@12 – He’s repeating propaganda. The left are FAR too tolerant of a small number of people doing that to disrupt conversation on their sites. The facts really don’t matter to him.

The worse ones – which are a few percent above minimum wage just so they can state that – will fire you for not turning up on their often-illegal work schedules and then inform the jobcenter so you lose benefits, then “kindly” offer you the job back, at minimum wage.

Seen it happen.

Hmm. I suppose it does help if prospective employers don’t behave like exploitative shits as well, and the Tories are offering to let them get away with more for longer, doesn’t sound like a good combo.
I’d also like to vouch for the complete soul-destroying nature of tele-sales work, only clinical psychopaths can do that job without losing their will to live.

@ Jim

You cannot be blind to the fact that millions of British people still work in the service industry and the lower paid end of the scale at that.

No, of course not, but that was not the point being made in the original post. And as Luis points out above

“How are people doing jobs they don’t enjoy and paying taxes they’d rather were lower, supposed to regard this individual, taking tax payer’s money, because he doesn’t like boring work?”

@ Leon

The left are FAR too tolerant of a small number of people doing that to disrupt conversation on their sites.

Oh really?

I have been contributing to this site for several years and the reason that it has been relatively successful is that Sunny is smart enough to realise that debate is interesting and propaganda is boring.

But debate requires those commenting engage with the discussion and do not indulge in ad hominems and demand censorship of views with which they disagree.

@15 – So, you’ve been disrupting converse here for several years, and want to boast about it. I see.

There’s a distinct difference between adding to the site, and a small number individuals who simply make the debates centre around THEM, not the issues.
A left wing site engaging in actual useful discourse is something you can’t stand, and you start whining immediately about censorship the moment it’s pointed out that you’ve come here to troll. Someone a tenth as vehement for the left on a right-wing site would be and are immediately banned.

I’m willing to believe that you’re doing it on your own accord and not because you’re a shill, unlike another right-winger here who also deliberately disrupts conversation, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.

Pagar @ 15

No, of course not, but that was not the point being made in the original post. And as Luis points out above

I know that Pagar, and I agree with the general thrust of the OP and Luis’s comments. I have had similar conversations with people like the OP and I find this attitude as maddening as others.

Someone came into our company after being unemployed for some time. He admitted to me that he and his wife were not looking for work since his last bout of redundancy. Okay, it has only been a month, but he does not appear to be lazy, he is not interested in doing more than his allotted hours and I am at a complete loss to understand his attitude. Unemployment benefit is way below what we will pay him (once his tax credits make up the difference), so he is WAY better of working. Frustratingly, I have no input into the HR selection process, therefore the first time I meet these guys in when they turn up at my desk (oh that is a different thread!!!!) so I have no idea how he got on at interview stage, I cannot believe he indented to fail the interview because they are easy to fail, even at entry level. Yet I have people scrambling to get jobs with us in our new branch we are opening! We have been oversubscribed by a factor of about ten applicants per job (much of them part time). Almost everyone is British and as far as I am aware, none of our new recruits are Eastern Europeans (we are about 50% through the selection process), though I have a couple in my department, none seem willing to transfer for promotion. I have lost two guys to our new branch though.

The point is, Pagar, many of the jobs we have pay a couple pence over the minimum wage and I have no shortage of getting recruits. As far as I can see, there is nowhere near a labour shortage and no way has the welfare state dulled eagerness to work as a sackfull of CVs every time we advertise will testify.

@ Jim

People all differ in terms of their motivations but, in general, they will make choices that maximise their own economic interests. No blame whatever attaches to someone who has realised that they are better off not working than they are taking a job or that the marginal financial benefit in working is not worth the effort.

However serious blame attaches to the people who devised a system where tax is taken from someone earning minimum wage and transferred to provide someone else with an income greater than a job, at minimum wage, would allow them to earn.

We can argue about the overall employment market and I accept times are tough for many people. But the waste caused by the “poverty trap” both in terms of the overall economic welfare of the UK and in terms of the individuals whose lives are blighted by it, is shameful and unsustainable.

We need new thinking.

@17 – Generally, people with real job searches to do fill the quota from the JC+ on monday, and then get on with THAT in the rest of the week. Filling the entire week with make-work and destroying their ability to spend time networking and dealing with other real ways to get jobs…

@18 – “imcome greater than a job”

PROPAGANDA HARDER. MUST HAVE MORE PROPAGANNNNNDAA54050659011!!!

Pagar @ 18

No blame whatever attaches to someone who has realised that they are better off not working than they are taking a job or that the marginal financial benefit in working is not worth the effort.

But that is the point though, Pagar. That is the point of the OP. The guy would earn a day what his benefit amounted to a week.

Almost everyone in the Country on benefits or at the lower end of the labour market, they ARE better of working than not. The minimum wage and tax credit system ensures that everyone in work is better of than the equivalent person not working except in a few very rare cases. The major stumbling blocks in those exceptional cases, it is the exhortative hike in rent and council tax that makes it unviable to take a low paid and/or part time job. Also, things like lack of public transport that puts people off too.

But the waste caused by the “poverty trap” both in terms of the overall economic welfare of the UK and in terms of the individuals whose lives are blighted by it, is shameful and unsustainable.

At the end of the day, Pagar, we can more than cover any job that comes at entry level up with a few application forms via the job centre. W have had more than a fair share of roasters through the gates in our time, not everyone on the dole is as keen to work as others, but normally we can find a few good people without bursting a gut, so I am not sure there is too much ‘waste’. I live in an area of a huge surplus of labour therefor thousands are going to be unemployed, irrespective of the level of benefit.

That is the same anywhere else in the World. We have overseas interests and those guys can pick up entry level people no problem even where no welfare state exists. Even in a place like Cape Town, we get peeople looking for work every day looking for simple jobs paying very little.

I think many young people are appalled when they find out what the world of work at the bottom end of the scale is like. One year they’re messing about in college with their friends getting their EMA, then they go and get some work in a food processing factory where the majority of their co-workers are from overseas, and they think ”screw this – I’d rather be hanging out unemployed with my ‘crew’ on the estate.”
If you get what you can get from the social, and pick up a bit of extra money in the black economy, that will always be more attractive than getting the early morning buses down to the industrial estate to work in a warehouse.
An ideal bit of black economy work while signing on would be doing a few nights in the club business.
On the doors as security – or as a DJ. Perhaps selling some drugs to the club goers.
And then live rent free and get £65 pocket money thrown in.
Or do you want to wear overalls, wellington boots and a hair net and make sandwiches and pies in a factory with all the ”losers” and the foreign nationals?
As a delivery driver I used to go into all these places of work around London.
They are grim places to spend one’s time. One on the North Circular Road near Wembley was particularly horrendus.

Remember what they said about unemployment rates after the riots? They have good public transport in Tottenham, but there is still high unemployment there.

If by “good” you mean “unaffordable”, certainly. It’s risen more than 50% in the last few years from an already-high base.

And I see, you’re just interested in furthering the myth of all unemployed people being criminals. Throw em in prison when they lose their jobs!

Side issue,perhaps, but am I alone in finding the attempt by the author to replicate the interviewee’s words phonetically, (in order presumably to indicate his accent/manner of speech) patronising, bordering on belittling?

@23

I find the idea that I should not report conversations accurately strange. Would it be less patronising if I put my own words into their mouths and romantisised the working class (or in this case non-working class)?

@24

But are they accurate transcripts? (i.e. did you record what they said verbatim?) Or have you just “translated” your memory of the conversation into the speaker’s voice? (In which case you really *are* putting words in their mouth. But I don’t object to that at all.)

As written, it kinda draws attention to itself in a Charles Dickens / Artful Dodger way. Standard English would have been sufficient. It’s not patronising to do so, nor does it romanticise them (how would that work, exactly?).

Don’t want to make a big deal of it (so I shan’t reply after this) but I had similar thoughts to @23.

When I asked some of the people I spoke with why they had not worked – for several years in many cases – they gave the impression that they were willing to do so only if the job was a relatively good one; good being defined by what they saw on television, in magazines and on the radio.

Can anyone explain why anyone else should be forced to work hard to support people who simply don’t want a boring job? To pay taxes to avoid starvation is one thing. To be forced to do so to avoid boredom is another.

@25

This was what the guy said verbatim. I recorded it on an audio recorder used that for the blog.

21
Imo, you have just about got it right, I would go further and suggest it’s this idea that ‘we are all middle-class’ which also gives the impression to many that factory work etc is beneath them This is the double-edged sword of Thatcherism and an out-of-control financial system allowing individuals to get as much credit in order to reinforce the notion – we are not working-class so we don’ do working-class jobs.

A question people should ask themselves, is how they would like to spend a year – or five years – doing a menial job in a factory or warehouse. In a distribution center for a high street chain for example. Loading the trucks and making up the pallets and cages that get put on the trailers. It’s a 24 hour operation so you would work shifts. The work never changes and you’re always in a hurry it seems. The canteen is subsidised, so that’s one small concession that the company gives the workforce. But the toilets are a disgrace and far too small for the number of men that use them. You never want to use the sit down toilet there as there’s little privacy. The cramped locker room next to the toilets smells of BO.
A lot of the workforce is casual, supplied by agencies, and in the big canteen, people all sit in groups according to what part of the workforce they are from. The admin staff mostly all British sit up one end, the truck drivers at another table, and the casual staff often sit together according to the language they speak or country of origin.
Most of the African muslim guys bring their own food and heat it in the microwave.
When you leave the building and clock out, you have to pass the security guards and push a button that randomly buzzes for a person to be stopped and searched. Every tenth or twentieth person or something. They are obviously concerned that the staff are stealing stuff. Or would do if given the chance.

If you told any of the people at the Tory conference they had to go and do that for a couple of years, they’d feel like they were being sent to prison.
I think Sunny Hundal would absolutely hate it. What a waste of time it would be.
And all for a couple of hundred quid.

Minor quibble: writing out people’s pronunciation phonetically (“nuffin”, “somefin”) isn’t a great idea in this kind of context. It looks like you’re taking the piss. I’m sure that wasn’t your intention, but please do consider than basically nobody speaks English exactly as it’s written – but only certain groups routinely see their accents reflected in quotes.

Sorry, reading the comments more closely, I see Alisdair already pointed this out at 23. So: I agree with him!

James: it’s not that you should romanticise or “improve” working-class accents. It’s that we don’t routinely reflect people’s accents when we quote them. Next time you hear someone seen as an authority figure (politician, boss of a big company etc.) interviewed, listen for whether they rountinely miss g’s off the end of words or drop t’s at the end of syllabels – and then see if that gets reflected in the manuscript copy.

It’s suspicious that people with certain accents, and people who aren’t famous in their own right, are more likely to have their pronunciation copied verbatim. There’s a double-standard. I’m sure you weren’t taking the piss, but it looks like you are simply because you’re using the same tactic as people who do – and I doubt that’s the impression you wish to give. Advice, not criticism.

Did you ask him what job he did want to do which was so much better than ‘packing yoghurts’, and why he felt this was a more suitable position for one of his education and character?’

I mean, I’m as Left as they come, but I’ve heard more rational arguments from my six year old son.

And if he thinks that he would want to be something like a ‘computer games tester’ I refer him to the horror stories of http://www.trenchescomic.com. Other six year old ambitions such as ‘train driver’ or ‘astronaut’ actually require some education and direction – you don’t just walk in off the street and fall into your dream jobs, you have to work at them, from without or within.

they gave the impression that they were willing to do so only if the job was a relatively good one; good being defined by what they saw on television, in magazines and on the radio.

I don’t watch a lot of TV nowadays, but don’t most people on the soaps have exactly those tiresome, tedious jobs that these people are rejecting, such as minicab drivers, cafe owners, laundrette workers, publicans or knicker sewers?

Unless they’re talking about the ‘promotions’ jobs used in programmes like The Only Way is Essex or Geordie Shore, the success of which is less attributable to the looks and charm of the ‘promoters’ and more to do with the fact that there’s a dirty great camera from ITV 2 following them around and giving the club free advertising.

33
I think most soap audiences know that the mini-cab drivers and laundrette workers are actors with dirty great cameras following them around.

34 – Well played, sir. Well played.

Imo, you have just about got it right, I would go further and suggest it’s this idea that ‘we are all middle-class’ which also gives the impression to many that factory work etc is beneath them This is the double-edged sword of Thatcherism and an out-of-control financial system allowing individuals to get as much credit in order to reinforce the notion – we are not working-class so we don’ do working-class jobs.

You said it better than I could.

What I’d add is for the past decade we’ve all been bombarded with property porn and the veneration of low level celebrity, to now treat people who’ve been influenced by that with scorn is, as spiked would doubtless put it “an elitist plot by latte sipping metropolitan elites”.

@27 – I hope you told him you were recording the conversation, mind you I usually just let you scrounging doleys do whatever the hell it is to keep your small lazy minds occupied.

This documentary about young offenders in Feltham prison is well worth watching.
These young men have not been impressed with the legitimate routes to wealth and owning things. They just wanted ‘stuff’ and weren’t willing to hold down some crap job and scrimp and save to get it. Why have a job and spend weeks saving up for an i-pod when you can just go out and rob a school kid of their’s?
This isn’t to say ”unemployed young people are criminals” or anything like that. Most won’t commit the crimes that get you locked up in prison, but listen to the two guys talking at three minutes in. One of them feels kind of sorry for the victims. ”It’s not his fault he had a nice car” he says, but he wanted the man’s car so he took it.
That culture is not seen as so outside the mainstream of morality these days.
Employing them would be challenging.

The guy speaking at six minutes explains his philosophy too. He robs cars to order and sells them on to organised crime gangs who export them. He says that he will do legitimate work, but only when he’s being offered about £60,000 a year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_hF6xANo4o

So I guess he doesn’t fancy being a forklift driver in a warehouse on £7.50 an hour.
But he knows a bit about cars -so maybe Mercedes could offer him something in import/export … on about £60,000.

@24. James Bloodworth: “I find the idea that I should not report conversations accurately strange. Would it be less patronising if I put my own words into their mouths and romantisised the working class (or in this case non-working class)?”

I understand your motivation but Chaise @31 said enough. When the BBC report speech in a news report, they turn it into plain English sentences. It’s a decent rule to adopt most of the time.

Back in 1985, I shared a house with a guy who was working in Eastwood for the century celebrations of the birth of D H Lawrence. At that time, there were still a few people around who had known Lawrence as a young man. My mate told me that they didn’t care much for Lawrence owing to the way that he described people in North Notts.

@32 – Computer game testing is a marginal step up from call centre jobs. A VERY marginal step.

This is not really a recommendation….but it IS true that good testers at developers (not publishers) often get to move into better roles (in art/code/design, or even music and production)

So for THOSE jobs, there’s always demand. A career path will do that! (Testing at major publishers? Er, well…very few do it in the UK anyway now)

– Games Industry Pro (and University Tutor to games students)

@28 I totally agree with you Steve.

@30 I take the point. That’s actually an interesting topic for a blog in and of itself.

Every dam job I’ve done has been hard boring and paid shit but I did it.

sadly they tend to not want people who bum around on the ground

Aspiration is good if people get it early, when they’re at school, or young enough to spur them to work hard and achieve. But in this case there is clearly a mismatch between his aspirations and his skills or ability.

Did you ask him what his ideal job would be? – clearly he didn’t want to work at the yoghurt factory, but what sort of pay and conditions would he want to work at the factory?

What sort of skills does he have? If the answer is none – then he’s in trouble, because almost all the jobs which require no skills or training are boring and poorly paid. Which of course raises the question – why doesn’t he have any valuable skills? Failed by the education system? or perhaps he didn’t have enough aspiration when he was at school to work hard and avoid working in a factory.

Interesting article.

As someone who is also unemployed, that doesn’t sound unfamiliar to hear from someone but I find that whilst something like yoghurt packing might be crap, a lot of people would do it at least for a while whilst they look for something else.

I was recently forced onto the Work Programme, I would be on the Future Jobs Fund doing some work if Labour were in power but alas this isn’t the case anymore. Anyway I was chatting to a guy on the induction day (similarly to you, outside having a ciggie), and he wasn’t a well educated guy but his rant about employment agencies was incredibly insightful.

He told me about how his job centre advisor had made him apply for work with an employment agency and he got employed. The first week he did 5 days work….in three different workplaces. The second week, he got no hours whatsoever. So he signed back on.

He made the point, how can I plan my finances, pay my bills when I don’t know if I’ll actually be working? He said it’s like years ago, turning up at the docks and hoping that there is enough work to go around for that day.

People don’t need to be beaten into submission because of laziness. People need a nice stable 5-day a week job in one workplace.

We don’t have 2.5 million unemployed because there has been a spontaneous wave of fecklessness. It is an economic problem, so let’s talk about creating decent jobs instead of scapegoating the unemployed.

There’s an interesting and relevant to the OP article in the NYT, about how farmers trying to hire US workers cannot because they quit, saying the job is too unpleasant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/us/farmers-strain-to-hire-american-workers-in-place-of-migrant-labor.html?_r=1&hp