Caitt Reilly is the job snob geology graduate who said that being forced to work at Poundland rather than just sit on the dole until she found a job that suited her was illegal. Needless to say some crackpot judge found in her favour. Incidentally that work experience did her some good as she now has a job at Morrison’s with one suspecting that the supermarket thought the stint at Poundland was a more impressive part of her CV than a degree in geology.
Caitt seems like a sour faced deluded lefty with a point to prove but she is utterly typical of British youth today in believing that she can sit on her fat arse collecting benefits paid for with taxes paid by those of us who do work (often in jobs we don’t relish) until something she likes comes along. That process can take years. And the more we churn graduates out with 2:1 degrees from useless Universities in pointless subjects the more you will get young people saying that a menial job is “beneath them.” The only way to address this is by root and branch reform of the welfare system.
I contrast this with the attitude of young Europeans mainly from Spain and Italy who are flocking to London. Back home there are simply no jobs – youth unemployment is 50% plus and rising thanks to the joys of being in the Euro. And so the more enterprising ones come to London in search of a better life. On an average day I see two or three of them pop into The Real Man Pizza Company. in Clerkenwell with a typed up CV (showing a willingness to work) asking if I have a job as a waiter/waitress/cook. They are not demanding great money – the minimum wage is fine. They just want to work. In a City with more than 100,000 young unemployed Britons I have had just one native born youngster come in with such an approach. And she was a student looking for a bit extra. Not one single Briton on the dole has come in looking for work.
We have all made jokes about how idle the Southern Europeans are. No doubt we have the more enterprising and driven ones coming to London for work. But they impress me. Caitt and British youth simply fill me with despair.