By Isle of Wight Observer
“They should be working, and they will be,” says tough-talking Chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
More than a million young people are no longer in education, work or training; Rachel believes they’re malingering.
Since the pandemic, the amount the DWP doles out on sickness benefit grew by 25 per cent. The claimants can’t all be ‘long Covid’ sufferers, can they? The cost of this wasteful nonsense has reached an astonishing £65 billion a year and is still growing. PM Keir ominously warns it’s “indefensible and unsustainable”. Labour needn’t take the blame; those witless Tories let it get out of hand on their watch.
If people don’t want to work, you can’t force them, but why fund obvious indolence?
These days many young people continue living with parents, often indefinitely, and without making much if any contribution. This generation must be the most indulged in history, and modern parents are to blame for that. Dads bear some responsibility, but mums have become pushovers. When their 9-year-old demands the latest iPhone, mummy says, “Yes darling”. After that, almost anything that’s demanded is gifted – clothes, trainers, PS2. Eventually, that becomes truancy, a car, insurance, petrol and maintenance. When their idle darling becomes stressed by excessive TikTok or Instagram, and reaches for a fag or weed, mum fixes that too.
The requirement for the young to do anything, in return for this corrupting generosity, no longer seems to occur to either party.
How many kids do chores for pocket money nowadays? My generation were given chores at home; every mother insisted on it. I had as many as 30 paying jobs after I left school; staying in bed during the working week wasn’t permitted. There are no gaps in my employment history because, when I quit a job, I immediately started another elsewhere. Like everyone else, I knew that if you don’t have a job, your job is to find one, and that’s a full- time 9-5 occupation.
Like most mums, mine took a third of my weekly pay as my contribution to running the household. Generously, she’d often loan me a fiver until pay day – to keep me working – and it was always repaid.
Tough love set us on the right course; your parents were not your friends – as they seem to be now. Money came your way when you worked for it. No work – no money. That seems a lost life lesson.
In recent weeks I’ve enjoyed being assisted with a few tasks by an 80-year-old man and a 22-year-old graduate. The old man talked of being a 15-year-old apprentice, getting up at 6am each day, six days a week. For several years, he endured twice-weekly college
day-release. Thanks to poor timetabling, that meant a 90 minute bus journey – each way. Naturally, he hated it, particularly when they added another year on to his often-cold bus torture routine. The apprenticeship ended at 21, at which point his employer paid
him properly.
The young graduate helping us is a lovely young man, apparently with zero chance of finding employment in his chosen field. He’s reliable and works hard – but ideally just two days a week.
Without embarrassment, he told me his weekly mobile screen time is “around 50 hours”. He also told me that hasn’t seen his mainland-based girlfriend for 10 days, because he’s been too busy playing ‘Monster Hunter.’ That’s an exciting new PlayStation
game apparently. I shouldn’t have been shocked when he said, in the first week of release, several of his pals had spent up to 70 hours playing it. These workshy mates are finished with uni, mostly jobless, and back living at home again. If Rachel and Keir are serious about getting the young to work, they’re going to have to tackle their mothers first!