Ways of looking at things.

Perceptions of things can be odd and at times amusing. Here's an example: 

"Perhaps they're Spanish." Walking back from Greenfield the other day we came across someone talking to her daughter who was about to leave in her car. The mother was in the middle of the pavement, taking up all the space. Now, I would have moved towards the car, allowing the people walking on the pavement, in this case us, to go past. This person just stood here. I don't think she even registered that we were there. This happens all the time in Spain but as a general rule the British are a bit more aware of other pavement users. Phil and I looked at each other and said, almost simultaneously, "perhaps she's Spanish". We did wait until we were out of earshot before commenting, I hasten to add. 

 And then there's my experience last night: 

I had been babysitting, putting our daughter's two youngest to bed and eventually leaving them in the care of their teenage sister, when she finally returned from a friend's house. I set off for home, taking with me Phil's guitar which the teenager had been borrowing. She had had the idea that she might teach herself to play but never had the persistence to get beyond the painful finger ends stage. I sympathise! You need to be very dedicated and she has other interests taking up her time, not to mention sixth form college work. So, as the guitar was not being used, Phil had asked me to pick it up next time I was at our daughter's house. There I was, on the last bus home with the guitar in its case over my shoulder. I got off the bus along with a neighbour from further up the road. "Been playing somewhere?" he asked me, jumping to quite the wrong conclusion. I didn't even get to the painful finger ends stage as I could never get my fingers to keep enough pressure on the strings to make the chords. I can just carry a guitar and give the wrong impression. 

In today's newspaper (it's Sunday so I have bought a proper paper) Alan Milburn, former Labour cabinet minister and now chairman of the government's Commission on Social Mobility, talks about the problems facing under 30s in the UK and the increasing divide between haves and have-nots in modern society. One thing he comments on is that the proportion of 16 and 17 year olds in full time education who also have a job has fallen from 37% to 18% in a decade. The "Saturday job", in reality the "whenever your college timetable lets you work job", is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. 

One reason, as I see it anyway, is that university students maintain those part time jobs all year round. When I was in sixth form I worked Saturdays and holidays in a shoe shop. When I went to university my employer held the job open for me for when I came home for holidays, on the understanding that there might or might not be a job, depending on demand and so on. But I went away from home to university and I received almost the full grant available at the time and I didn't have to pay fees. So I wasn't too concerned. I didn't need to work during my university term and if there was a job waiting for me during the holidays, that was a kind of bonus. Present day students, on the other hand, have no grants as a rule, pay fees and many of them live at home. So they keep the jobs they had in sixth form. If they go away to study, often they transfer their job from their home town to their university city within the same chain. 

And then, of course, there are those graduates who can't find a job commensurate with their new status and continue in the part time job. I know a number of ex-students of mine in that situation. Some of these left college when I retired ( not related events, just coincidental ) and graduated from university three or occasionally four years later, two or three years ago now. I have followed their progress on Facebook and I know that they have continued to work in shoe shops and restaurants until eventually finding a "proper" job. Only recently I came across one of them still working in Claire's Accessories in the Arndale Centre in Manchester. All of this means that there are fewer jobs available for the 16 and 17 year olds. This is why our granddaughter is finding it so hard to get a part time job! It's also why the percentage of 16 and 17 year old students in part time work has fallen. 

As regards the gap between the haves and have-nots, here are a few interesting quotations: 

"Last year , the top 1% of Americans took home 22%of the nation's income; the top 0.1% 11%. Ninety five percent of all income gains since 2009 have gone to the top 1%." 
Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University. 

"A chief executive in one of Britain's biggest businesses takes home in three days more than an average employee can earn in a year." 
Deborah Hargreaves, The High Pay Centre. 

"Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, today's CEO now makes 273 time more. The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed." 
Barack Obama. 

Why this suddenly increased divide? The newspaper analysis concludes that mid-skilled jobs have disappeared. Factories have become mechanised and fewer people are needed to keep conveyor belts or modern equivalents working. Secretarial staff need has shrunk as files are kept in computer data base and of spreadsheets, even top executives do a lot of their own typing - the word processing programmes make that possible. So mid-skill workers are squeezed out. Most of them find it hard to move UP into the top level and so they have to apply for jobs at a lower level. Consequently there are far more people applying for low-skill level jobs and employers are able to keep wages down. This is less the case at high-skill level where employers offer higher pay and bigger and more frequent bonuses to attract the "best". 

I think we need to take a good long look at our society and see if there isn't a way to put things right before it's too late.