Thursday, June 18, 2009

Different class

The concept of 'hardship' as seen by a respected UK broadsheet.

"Youth hit hard as jobless total rises to 2.3m", says today's Independent, confirmation that the crisis is far from over for most common mortals. However, the article is a poignant reminder of how far remote the media is from vast chunks of today's Britain.

Scroll down to the bottom. Sean O'Grady, Economics editor, is focusing on a hand-picked selection of poor, deprived and destitute graduates who may have to delay their access to the job market. What will they do instead, those badly off, studious kids?

Well, hear hear. It almost breaks your heart. Two of them will "do a tour of Europe and the Middle East", another "voluntary work with youth clubs", one will "work for nothing on a publication in Zambia" and the fourth one "will be jetting off to Barcelona to learn Spanish after finishing her university course". Oh and don't forget to ask daddy if he can also get you a new laptop before the plane takes off.

For just look how industrious those kids are. Why can't your average graduate, not to mention your standard council estate lad, do the same and jet off somewhere instead of relying on state handouts?

Welcome to the world of deprived, jobless kids according to the Independent.

1 comment:

asquith said...

Another thing for which the Independent should be slagged off is their middle-class bias when it comes to reporting house prices. They actually explicitly say that falling prices are "bad", rising prices are "good".

That is obviously not the point of view of some poor fucker who is trying to buy a terraced house without any inheritance, & actually quite likes it when prices drop to a vaguely sane level.

It's just their automatic assumption, & none of them notice, but I do.