Catch up with Part 3 of Ray's Story: London Calling

Ray's Story: 

“Having spent the last fifteen years denying my past, and suffering repeated rejection, the issue had psychologically drained me. I was finding it increasingly difficult and I was scared to confront my criminal record. The question of identity was becoming apparent. Who was I, and who had I become?”

After the disastrous turn of events in Cornwall, in the third installment of his blog, ex-offender Ray reflects here on the turn his life has taken since trying to find his place in society. Unfortunately for Ray, this already harrowing tale of trying to find a job takes a desperate turn for the worse when his job search took him to London:

“Having spent a full week living on the street, I was weak, and at the point of giving up the will to have ambition or care for myself. I felt damned at this point. I thought a lot about being an ex-offender, in particular whether I should have given up crime; there seemed no natural reason why life had become more difficult because I had chosen to do the right thing.”

Change the Record. Now.

The discrimination people experience trying to find employment when they have a criminal record can be crazy, even incredibly minor misdemeanours from years in the past can hold you back. In fact, the CRB check regime has become so over zealous that merely being investigated for something can be enough to stop you getting a job.

This needs to change. It does the economy no good at all to stop ex-offenders reintegrating into society - no job means no taxes being paid into the economy and some turn to benefits after years of trying to find employment which drains even more money from the economy.

Exclusion is not just from jobs either - take the examples of Olivia and Martha, young women who were threatened with exclusion from their college courses due to a past caution for shoplifting. Should your career be permanently blighted for this foolish act, or should te fact that both were immediately remorseful and shaken up by the experience not be punishment enough?

Yes there are some offenders who remain dangerous to whom this will not be applicable, but there are many thousands more that want nothing more than to be a part of society again and make their contribution.

Have a look at this video and hopefully you might understand where I am coming from. If you like it, share it around and be part of the push for a long overdue change in the law...

Raymond's story - ‘Going straight, finding a job’

If you have a chance, you should take a look at Ray's story below - it's fascinating stuff and he's a powerful writer. His determination to turn his life around after such a tough start in life is admirable, makes my moaning about not being able to find a job seem a bit insignificant!

New blog: Ray's story - ‘Going straight, finding a job’ - News - Change the Record - Nacro, the crime reduction charity

Much ado about trying to find a job - graduate (un)employment and internships

(c) Kennington Fox

To say that for anyone finding a job is somewhat of a stuggle at the moment could be the understatement of the century. I am in the same boat, and where's a job fairy when you need one?

Statistics released for the 3rd quarter of 2010 show 20% of new graduates (those graduating within the last 2 years, which includes me) are presently
unemployed. This interns anonymous article suggests that the figure does not include those completing unpaid internships, otherwise the figures would look even more dire. In any case, Alice Reeves of the Vibe points out that full time positions under law cannot be unpaid internships, they should be paid National Minimum Wage at least.

The apparent proliferation of unpaid internships does irk me a lot - take my (formerly) favourite website w4mp.org - the pages of jobs are dominated by unpaid positions, some of which now do not even cover all of your expenses, referring instead to 'reasonable expenses' or £10 a day limit. Juxtaposing this against the management jobs on the same page paying £50-70k a year, I feel ripped off and foolishly wish they'd spare me £10k of that money to help me get by.

The funny thing is, inspite of my lamentations I'm presently doing an internship myself, it happens to be really enjoyable. Working at Nacro the role is varied and interesting and they have taught me a great deal and let me get involved in a range of things. To tell you the truth, I'd stay there for good if I could find a full time, paid role to hold on to... Fingers crossed!

Really I should be thankful for having any position to speak of at all - I couldn't do an intership at all without my parents and grandparents helping hand when I fall on hard time, along with that is my indispensable 9 hour weekend job at the business library in Henley Business School. So, on more than one score I certainly cannot call myself unemployed or even that hard done by compared to some.

Management Today says interns should stop moaning and 'enjoy what they have'. But what about others not so fortunate as me? This New Statesman piece illustrates that the effect of internships is in reality to stymie social mobility, because only those with wealthy relatives and a nice sum behind them can afford to stay on for months at a time working for zilch.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development has introduced a proposal that any employment with the word 'internship' in the title should trigger a legal obligation to pay a £2.50 'Training Wage' to try and strike a balance between being fair to the intern, without dissuading businesses from running them altogther. Assuming that this wage comes on top of lunch and travel expenses (which may be hasty as this hasn't been explicitly mentioned to be the case), this would leave on average an additional 7.5 hours x £2.50 = 18.75 per day, £93.75 per week

and a total income for an intern of £375 per month. Not a fortune, but not something to be sniffed at if you're travel and lunch are already covered.

The problem with this state of affairs is that while I might be accumulating ever more job experience with Nacro throwing me plenty of challenges at me, it is not good for your confidence when it seems like to many like you're not worth paying. My present boss noticed my evaporating self-confidence in my interview for Nacro and pointed out that I spent half the interview putting myself down. So if I feel like this, with my frankly cushy position in comparison with those graduates who sit at home or in agency offices every day for a seemingly interminable length of time - what can that be doing for their confidence and self-respect?

I seriously worry for my so-called 'lost generation' - so what can we offer this country when a great chunk of the older generation are struggling themselves to find steady employ?

Will hiking tuition fees up bring the house down?

I have tried so hard to get on board with the Coalition Government as a committed Lib Dem, but I cannot stomach Lord Browne's proposed changes.

It is simply wrong that the younger generation should be picking up the tab for the economic mistakes made by their elders.

Having just finished my Masters and still searching for a full time job, I haven't begun to pay back my student loan as yet, but the thought of it scares me regardless of my mother's insistence that I should just think of it as another job to tax. In my Uni days (2006-2009) I was faced with £3000 tuition fees in the final two years and about £3500-4000 on living costs. Now imagine your a student faced with £6000 or £12000 to pay each year and I defy you to honestly say that it wouldn't put you off going in the first place.

The idea, Lord Browne says, is to truly create a market in tuition fees in which fees are driven down by the need to compete. This ignores two facts:

1) Universities will believe that charging higher fees portrays them as more prestigious, fighting to keep up with Oxford and Cambridge, so they won't necessarily put fees at a lower level.

2) There is a vast over-subscription to University places in these tough economic times, and all the fee hike will succeed in is to scare off those whose parents have a lower income because they fear being burdened with such a heavy debt further down the debt.

3) Those who were not dissuaded from going would likely feel it necessary to take on lengthy hours in part time jobs to try and keep the use of their loan to a minimum, in the process likely damaging the final outcome of their degree.

When I applied to University, money was not a factor in my decision, having it any other way would be wrong.

Mike Baker (BBC) quotes Tony Blair who points out that USA frequently top international league tables because they are able to charge whatever price they like, but that doesn't make the approach right. Their education system, along with their health system and many others, merely results in massive inequality between those who have the means and those who don't.

Claims in Browne's report that Universities over £6000 will be 'scrutinised' is frankly laughable and is not comforting, perhaps the only positive thing in the report is the fact you don't have to pay back until you are owning over £21,000 a year. However, I still don't think this will prevent the less well off from being dissuaded, fearing starting their working life with £30000 in debt, climbing all the time as interest accrues.

True, education was singled out by the Economist as the one area in which New Labour definitely had not made a positive impact, but surely unlimited tuition fees could be a massive setback for social mobility?

I don't envy Lib Dems being whipped to within an inch of their lives on the measure, but if the final Bill remains in this form, I hope MPs have the courage to go against it (not just abstain), regardless of the risk to the coalition's future.

I've worked for Vince Cable and I am sure he will stand up against the report, time will tell where the fee ceiling will be set, but early reports are suggesting £7000 which is just too high, fingers crossed he will use his political nouse to reach a more acceptable compromise.

Apologies if that was a lot of ranting and not full of facts, I have a tendency of using this blog as a place to vent my political frustrations, I will try not to in future!

Climate Crazy

Being naturally inclined to optimisim, I am loath to write anything today since three stories which have left me feeling gloomy.... But here is an attempt anyway.

There was a time climate change was becoming something I was feeling rather sick of hearing about frankly - in my mind there was no question that we must act now to preserve not only our future but the future of those in other parts of the world who are already suffering from things like the effects of desertification.

Then something changed; a couple of actually unconnected emails from Climate Scientists at the University of East Anglia became all the amunition climate sceptics needed to excuse the human race of acting responsibly towards the environment. Given proper context these emails were nowhere near as damning as newspapers wanted to suggest, but the media ignored this and public opinion has been set back years.

Perhaps as a result, a series of disheartening stories keeps appearing:

1) Professor Lovelock - famed for his 'Gaia theories', said on the Today programme (31st March) that we cannot do anything to save our planet and so we might as well enjoy life whilst we can. He might not consider it like this, but regardless of climate change, this is fundamentally a rally call for continued reliance on oil ignoring the environmental impacts of draining our earth dry, causing animals to become extinct.

2) Jon Holmes - This was not even a story, it was part of a throwaway speech on BBC Radio Four's Now Show. His totally unbalanced and cynical account of climate change and his declaration that we should do nothing about it riled me to the point of activism. OK, so it is perhaps a rather pathetic form of activism in that it involves boycotting the Now Show as well as Holmes's 6 Music programme (which actually until this point I had become rather fond of), and also writing into the show to point out the fundamental lack of balance in what Holmes said.

3) Barack Obama - this last story was the announcement that drilling of oil will be permitted off the U.S. coast, apart from the protected area in Alaska. This was an apparent capitulation to lobbyists in return for their cooperation on a climate deal in Congress, at the cost of many miles of coastline and probably many animal species too.

Before I bore you please take this shocking stat into account before you decide not to act too: a Select Committee report has received evidence showing that up to 50,000 people die prematurely in Britain because of the effects of air pollution, that includes 8,000 in London alone. Besides the huge increase in asthma cases, such pollution has links to chronic bronchitis, heart disease and even cancer.

So, I am not asking you to subscribe to the impending doom scenario to want to act - it remains a fact however that we are using up our resources, destroying our rainforests, causing our children to die early as they inhale fumes, making life even more difficult for poor communities, killing off animal species that can never be brought back to life.
If these are not reasons to act, then I do not know what is.

David Cameron: Losing the Plot Over Gay Rights

Flustered, red faced, even confused, David Cameron in his interview with the Gay Times, intended to show the Tories have move forward on the issue on the homosexuality, but the leader made such a hash of the questions he came close to stopping the interview altogether.

David Cameron stated that he would like free votes for MEPs and MPs on matters of human rights where possible, but then stumbled when interviewer Martin Popplewell pointed out that this did not with square up with his declared commitment to homosexuality as a fundamental human right. Realising that he should have said MPs would be required to vote according to the party line, Mr. Cameron looked down at the floor and conceded:

"Do you know... can we stop for a second, I really want to answerthese questions... either can we do a TV interview or a press interview. I would almost like to start from scratch."

In the end, after a short break to compose himself, Mr. Cameron was able to carry on, however Ben Bradshaw, Labour Minister for Culture, Media and Sport wasted no time in labelling the mistake as a "gaffe".

The whole debacle started when the interviewer probed the Conservative leader on a vote in the European Parliament, in which his Conservative MEPs voted against a resolution condemning a Lithuanian law, which is widely seen as deeply homophobic.

Not only is this cited as pointing to a flawed party modernisation process, some speculate that that MEPs' vote could have been influenced by the Conservative's partners in the 'European Conservatives and Reformists' group' in the EU Parliament, a group which includes ultra-conservative parties. David Cameron received much flak for joining up with parties, like the Latvian party 'For Fatherland and Freedom' seen by most of Europe as extreme. It appears his decision to align with them will repeatedly come back to bite him.