There are some good jokes about work.
Some jokes take a fair amount of effort to work.
Some work is a joke.
I have over the years undertaken some work which was a joke.
Told some jokes which were work and worked at improving some of my jokes.
I once took a job selling potatoes in tower blocks. It was a great idea, who wants to carry 14lbs of potatoes up eight flights of stairs? Especially if you are a 60 year old widow.
The job was a selling job, knocking on doors and offering to deliver the potatoes for a small charge above the cost they were selling for in the stores.
The guy whose business it was paid a small fee for every introduction but only after the first delivery had been made and accepted.
Another job came about when I cold called a company during the vacation to ask if they had any work. I was told that they had no vacancies and then the director came out from his office and called me over. He asked if I could paint but I had to admit that I was not an artist, no he said I want you to paint my house.
I said that I could certainly use a paint brush.
He then invited me to join him in his MGB and drove me out to his house in Prestbury outside Manchester.
The house was empty apart from rollers, brushes and cans of white and magnolia paint.
I agreed to start the next day and he when I reported to his company office, threw me the keys to the MGB and off I drove to Prestbury.
I received £9 00 a week and managed to ensure that the job took the whole of the six vacation weeks I had available.
Even training to be a clergyman in the Church of England it was important to undertake some form of work experience / parish placement and quite a few of my fellow students found their first parishes that way.
I ended up finding my first job through the old boy network via the college principal introducing me to a friend of his.
But work experience is key to finding work.
It boosts confidence, can offer valuable contacts and helps build a CV.
The problem often is no experience no job, but without experience how do you get the job offer?
The government feels that its various work experience schemes actively encourage people into work, their are targets set and various private, charitable and public agencies are involved.
There is also criticism as people argue that some bigger companies are taking advantage of, especially young, people and some people with professional qualifications, quite reasonably it seems to me, argue that stacking shelves will not help them find work in their chosen professional field.
Mr Duncan Smith finds himself beleaguered, and has turned on the commentariat describing their interventions as snobbish.
One project that I had an involvement with in Manchester in the mid-seventies, funded by the Manpower Services Commission, employed young people to garden, decorate and clean for older people in the community, one of our initiatives was to offer these young people to local employers, whilst we continued to pay their wages.
They were both on the books and off the books.
Unsurprisingly most of the young people rapidly proved their worth and were offered full time permanent employment, so our graduation rate was extremely positive.
But nevertheless we were the biggest employers in our part of Salford and that was not a firm basis for rebuilding the local economy or creating permanent employment opportunities.
Whatever Tesco's meant to achieve by their involvement in the current work experience scheme and however well intentioned they were, their involvement has back fired.
But at the end of the piece it is no use Mr Duncan Smith or Mr Cameron complaining.
If the economy is not producing jobs that is their failure, not the young people's, you can't take a job that is not there.
So it is time to stop blaming the victims of failed economic policies and start investing in programmes that will enable the economy to start growing.
The con-dems protestations that it is everybody's fault but their's is beginning to wear a bit thin as unemployment continues to rise, especially for young people.
Unemployment is no joke although jokes are told.
It feels that the old order is giving way to a new order, Europe is entering a fin de siecle, with Greece still likely to be the first victim, if that happens delivering potatoes in Tower Blocks or painting houses for
£9 00 a week and a borrowed MGB might seem like a way forward.
As Waldo asks in the New Yorker next Monday, 'Where's my job?'
Some jokes take a fair amount of effort to work.
Some work is a joke.
I have over the years undertaken some work which was a joke.
Told some jokes which were work and worked at improving some of my jokes.
I once took a job selling potatoes in tower blocks. It was a great idea, who wants to carry 14lbs of potatoes up eight flights of stairs? Especially if you are a 60 year old widow.
The job was a selling job, knocking on doors and offering to deliver the potatoes for a small charge above the cost they were selling for in the stores.
The guy whose business it was paid a small fee for every introduction but only after the first delivery had been made and accepted.
Another job came about when I cold called a company during the vacation to ask if they had any work. I was told that they had no vacancies and then the director came out from his office and called me over. He asked if I could paint but I had to admit that I was not an artist, no he said I want you to paint my house.
I said that I could certainly use a paint brush.
He then invited me to join him in his MGB and drove me out to his house in Prestbury outside Manchester.
The house was empty apart from rollers, brushes and cans of white and magnolia paint.
I agreed to start the next day and he when I reported to his company office, threw me the keys to the MGB and off I drove to Prestbury.
I received £9 00 a week and managed to ensure that the job took the whole of the six vacation weeks I had available.
Even training to be a clergyman in the Church of England it was important to undertake some form of work experience / parish placement and quite a few of my fellow students found their first parishes that way.
I ended up finding my first job through the old boy network via the college principal introducing me to a friend of his.
But work experience is key to finding work.
It boosts confidence, can offer valuable contacts and helps build a CV.
The problem often is no experience no job, but without experience how do you get the job offer?
The government feels that its various work experience schemes actively encourage people into work, their are targets set and various private, charitable and public agencies are involved.
There is also criticism as people argue that some bigger companies are taking advantage of, especially young, people and some people with professional qualifications, quite reasonably it seems to me, argue that stacking shelves will not help them find work in their chosen professional field.
Mr Duncan Smith finds himself beleaguered, and has turned on the commentariat describing their interventions as snobbish.
One project that I had an involvement with in Manchester in the mid-seventies, funded by the Manpower Services Commission, employed young people to garden, decorate and clean for older people in the community, one of our initiatives was to offer these young people to local employers, whilst we continued to pay their wages.
They were both on the books and off the books.
Unsurprisingly most of the young people rapidly proved their worth and were offered full time permanent employment, so our graduation rate was extremely positive.
But nevertheless we were the biggest employers in our part of Salford and that was not a firm basis for rebuilding the local economy or creating permanent employment opportunities.
Whatever Tesco's meant to achieve by their involvement in the current work experience scheme and however well intentioned they were, their involvement has back fired.
But at the end of the piece it is no use Mr Duncan Smith or Mr Cameron complaining.
If the economy is not producing jobs that is their failure, not the young people's, you can't take a job that is not there.
So it is time to stop blaming the victims of failed economic policies and start investing in programmes that will enable the economy to start growing.
The con-dems protestations that it is everybody's fault but their's is beginning to wear a bit thin as unemployment continues to rise, especially for young people.
Unemployment is no joke although jokes are told.
It feels that the old order is giving way to a new order, Europe is entering a fin de siecle, with Greece still likely to be the first victim, if that happens delivering potatoes in Tower Blocks or painting houses for
£9 00 a week and a borrowed MGB might seem like a way forward.
As Waldo asks in the New Yorker next Monday, 'Where's my job?'
No comments:
Post a Comment