Monday, February 01, 2010

They're Taking Our Jobs

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I am appalled that even some of my students, who should be more enlightened, come out with this rubbish.
I remember quite clearly that in the late 1970s it was us females that were supposedly taking all the jobs.
We were part of the cause of mass unemployment. We were supposed to stay at home and look after the working males, not go out to work ourselves (what were we supposed to do until we were married?).
Don't believe what the silly chattering papers tell you!
I used to feel incredibly sorry for the doctors, accountants and other professionals at my daughters school who were forced to take menial jobs because they were refugees. I felt that their skills must surely be useful in Britain.
In a world recession, there is bound to be unemployment. It's horrible not having a job: my former partner and myself spent half of the 1980s and half of the 1990s constantly being made redundant, over and over again. You'd start a job, work for a few weeks and then the boss would come in with a grave face and break the bad news.
 t was utterly dispiriting. I worked as a cleaner of retirement homes for mentally handicapped people; he worked as a cleaner at Earl's Court. We had an empty fridge almost all the time and a sweet kind milkman who gave use free milk until he got arrested for being Robin Hood. We wore our clothes out and went to the Post Office with so many letters of application that we wore a hole in the pavement.
How dreary that it is all happening again!
We mustn't scapegoat other people for imaginary reasons.
Artists, craftspeople and musicians, we need to share our skills so that people without jobs don't feel ashamed and useless.
If we are in work, we must not resent supporting people who are waiting to work again, and we must understand the depression of those who are long-term unemployed.
There is such a thing as society, and unfortunately it appears to have little control over its destiny, but to sway from one extreme to the other at the mercy of corporate financiers.

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