Working Again

I have been working again, interviewing students at an Open Day to help out; Universities have been inundated with applications. I thought the candidates today were really good. What a lot of interesting and intelligent young people there are! They are the greatest resource we have as a nation. We need to keep them hopeful and interested and stop criticising the young generation.
And, for that matter, the working population.
I could hardly believe it, but I heard the other day that my former colleagues at the University of the West are being asked to write pleading pieces to explain why they should keep their jobs! I do hope this is a rumour. I can not imagine that any employer should think that this was an honourable or respectful way to treat a group of people who between them have written and produced chart hits, written symphonies, developed fantastic reputations as innovative musicians, run record labels, taught and nurtured hundreds of promising students and helped to get them jobs, let alone their potential for getting the country out of its recessionary rut by generally being creative and optimistic!
Without the arts and crafts, without ideas, we would live in a stodgy grey and navy blue world.
One Alan Sugar is enough, folks; this clever island has invented myriad scientific, design and artistic solutions to all sorts of situations and putting the business ideal before the invention is exactly... putting the cart before the horse. We can't make money out of anything if we haven't got the space to have the ideas in the first place; all I ever seem to hear when I listen to the TV or the radio is "Business, business, business".
Have the grey men with clipboards and stopwatches won?
Let us live our lives in colour, with creativity in our hearts!