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I am feeling quite frustrated at the moment when I try and work out what to do with my life in terms of work and employment.
As I have mentioned before I am currently out of work due to health and personal reasons, but I would like to have something to aim for, so that when I am feeling up to returning to work I have a goal. However I keep running into brick walls wherever I turn and I am finding it very disheartening.
In the past I have had various jobs, ranging from part time shop assistant through to community development, support work and local government. Of these the community development and support work roles were by far the most interesting, although very draining on the emotions and I did find it very hard to switch off at the end of the day and found myself putting in long hours of of overtime for which I was not paid. Although I didn't mind at the time because the difference I could make to peoples lives was significant it was not something I could sustain in the long term. My least favourite job was working for local government, mainly because the bureaucracy, corruption and inherent cliquey nature were enough to drive me insane within about 2 weeks.
Alongside paid work I have done a lot of voluntary work in my local community, with my local hospital radio station and with my local BBC radio station. And I write, a lot. I have my blog but I also write fiction, short stories and to date one full length novel, all unpublished.
Ideally, I would like to make my living from a mixture of writing and broadcasting, but that is pretty much like people saying "I want to be a singer". If you have the talent and the contacts then it is not impossible but even then it is highly improbable.
Last year I applied, at the urging of a senior broadcast journalist with the Beeb, to a postgraduate course in broadcast journalism down in London. I didn't think I would even get an interview, mainly because I do not have a degree yet to my surprise I was immediately offered a place. Not only that I was also awarded a scholarship. So you may be wondering why I am not down there now, doing what I would love to do. Well, it comes down to one thing - money.
Even with a scholarship to pay my fees I could not have afforded to do the course. If I were to sell my house up north I would be unlikely to gain enough to cover what I still owe on the mortgage. Not only that but I only own a 50% share of the property and I would not want to shaft the owner of the other 50% by leaving. Which would leave me in the position of needing to rent somewhere in London, whilst also paying my mortgage up north, plus travel between the two cities due to family commitments up here, two lots of utilities bills, council tax payments, and so on. As the course was full time, 37 contact hours per week plus research etc there would have been no chance for me to work to fund my studies even if my health had allowed it, there are no student loans available for post grad study and you cannot claim benefits as you are classed as being in full time education. Which meant that broadcast journalism was well out of my price range.
While it is still something I would love to do I will not be able to without a significant change in my financial situation.
So what else could I do? Well even though I don't have a degree (again health and cost were the factors here rather than ability) I do not want to be stuck in a low level low pay job for my working life. I would quite like to be a pharmacist (I had briefly considered studying medicine but the whole close-contact-with-icky-people thing put me off before I even considered the financial implications) but as I did not do science A levels I would have to do them now, or an access course. Which would be OK except for the issue of funding again - as I already have A levels I would have to pay myself, and I would not be able to claim any kind for state assistance while I was doing them. Even if I did manage that then I would still be stuck when it came to funding the actual degree, so yet another idea has had to be shelved.
Recently I have been looking into the role of pharmacy technician, which also interests me but I have come up against the same problem again. You have to do an apprenticeship or traineeship for 2 years. During that time you are awarded a grant of £6000/year. So far so good. However as you are in full time work you cannot claim anything like income support or council tax benefit to assist you. As you are simultaneously classed as being in full time education you cannot claim working tax credits. Due to the commitments of the work and the study I would not be able to take an additional part time job to help with costs. So it comes down to a situation where if you are not a teenager living at home, or wealthy enough to survive for two years on a tiny income then you cannot realistically consider these kind of jobs.
So that leaves me feeling frustrated and miserable.
If you have any ideas, please let me know.
It has been reported in the media today that teenage pregnancies have risen for the first time in several years, which has got me thinking.
Firstly, the statistics that show a rise include girls up to the age of 18. Now, I certainly do not think it is sensible or desirable to be starting a family below the age of 18 but there is nothing at all about this that is illegal. After all the age of consent is 16, and by 17 or 18 a girl could be legally married and working if we assume she left school after her GCSE's. OK, so that is unlikely to be the situation the majority of these girls are in but I do wonder why they are included in these statistics since they have done nothing wrong.
I also wonder how much these statistics are skewed according to ethnicity or religion. Yeah, it might not be PC, but many of the muslim people I have spoken to believe it is desirable for a girl to be married, and reproducing as soon as possible, and I have known of many muslim girls of 16 or 17 in my area who are married and several who become parents very soon after. I have also spoken with catholic people of various nationalities who share a similar view. So it would be interesting to see a breakdown of these teen pregnancy statistics by religion and ethnicity just to see if there is any correlation.
With regards the under 16 pregnancy rates; why are the fathers of these babies not being prosecuted for statutory rape? If the age of consent is 16 and these girls are below that age then the men they slept with have, by the legal definition, committed a rape. I realise this gets a bit stickier when the male is also underage but I would hazard a guess that some of the fathers are over 16.
I can't see teen pregnancy rates dropping off significantly any time soon. We have a strange view on sex as a society. On the one hand many people, especially the older generations still consider it to be a taboo subject, yet at the same time sex is used all the time, in films, in TV, in huge billboard posters. As a society we tell people it is wrong to have a sex underage but do not explain the full emotional consequences that make it so and instead bullshit about risks of STDs and pregnancy (not that they aren't issues, but they are not the be all and end all). Even though we tell schoolchildren that having a child at that age will mess up their future prospects in reality these girls are often given specialist help and education, a council property and benefits.
It may sound like an outdated right wing whinge, but I really would remove incentives for teen mothers (of the under 16 variety). No council house, no benefit money, instead they could go and live in a teen mother and baby unit. They would be expected to look after the children, complete their education to a level where they could get a job, be expected to work part time alongside their studies while their kids were in the units creche and would get no preferential treatment or funding. The babies would not suffer at all, in fact they would at least have the chance of a decent life and the mothers would be equipped to go and get a job rather than loafing around at the taxpayers expense.
For my views on sex education please read the post: girl+boy=xxx (I can't link it at the minute as my internet is being crap)
I will be the first to admit that I have been acting in a rather silly manner these last few days. Saturday was the first day in ages that I actually felt reasonable, so what did I do? Make the most of having less pain by getting a good nights sleep? No, I stayed up all night until lunchtime on Sunday playing on the computer. I then had about 4 hours sleep, got up feeling exhausted and mooched around the house for a while. However come midnight I felt quite awake and ended up staying up until about 4am. Then had to get up about 4 hours later and do general Monday type things. So then yesterday evening I was knackered, but come midnight I was wide awake, became involved in a loooong debate on a forum I sometimes visit and finally crawled into bed at about 7 this morning. Slept until noon and then dragged my poor self out of bed so I could go to the supermarket as I had run out of food. I really have not helped myself out very much doing this, so now when all I want to do is go and lie down and get some sleep I can't because I have to go to the AGM for a charity I volunteer with.
Why do I do these things to myself? I must be some kind of masochist. I have vowed to go to bed by midnight tonight to get some much needed rest - which means no getting involved in all-night discussions with other British insomniacs and those pesky Americans who all come online just before I plan to go to bed and are all awake and lively and opinionated...
But at least you might understand why I am just a little bit grumpy today.
*signs off to go and pour coffee down throat*
It is 8:30 on Sunday morning. I have spent the last 16 hours involved in one of the following activities:
blogging/foruming/surfing the net mindlessly on the laptop
eating
playing guitar hero on the wii
I have been up for something like 24 hours, my eyelids feel like they are coated with sand (on the inside) and I only stopped playing guitar heroes when the "waterfall effect" made me stagger backwards as I watched the 42 inch plasma go flying off the TV cabinet towards the ceiling (please note: IT DIDN"T ACTUALLY DO THIS, it was just my poor confused mind playing tricks.)
so instead of crawling into bed what do I do? I sign into to blogger so that I can tell you all about it. At what point did I become a nerd? Was I always this way? Coffee or sleep?
Good news people - for the first time in 6 weeks I do not have a headache! It is amazing, I had forgotten how nice it is to be able to see clearly and not be in pain. I have no idea how long it will last, but at this moment in time I actually feel OK! I mean my neck and shoulder are still pretty painful, as is my right knee but it is definitely a step in the right direction.
However this is not down to any physiotherapy. Oh no, that is something I got very grumpy about. I went down to my local GP practice on Thursday as planned for my physio appointment, checked in and took my uncomfortable seat in the waiting room. And then I waited...and waited...and waited until almost an hour had passed. When I went back to the reception desk to query my unusually long wait I was told the physiotherapist was off that day. So why did the reception staff let me check in and then leave me sat there for an hour when they already knew she was off ill?! Pissed off doesn't even come close and I am drafting a letter to send to the practice manager about this.
On the plus side my wait did give me a good chance to observe the other people in the waiting room and three things in particular stood out:
I live in an area with a large muslim population (it was 50% at the last census and has risen since then) and as such there are quite a few women in the area who sport the ultimate sun protection look which leaves only the eyes visible (and in some cases even these are hidden). So I was quite surprised when one of these ladies, dressed literally head to toe in black walked into the waiting room and was immediately recognised by another woman across the room who called her straight over for a chat. How did she know who it was?
I was also amused by the conversation of two men who were sat on the chairs behind me, who were discussing some building work one of them had recently had done. The man whose property had been extended was not happy about the quality of the work, so the other man asked a few more questions and advised the man to take the builder to the small claims court. The first man replied that he couldn't do that because he had been refused planning permission for his extension and so had hired an immigrant friend of his to do the work illegally, cash in hand! The phrase "you reap what you sow" comes to mind.
The last thing made me more angry though. The woman who sat next to me in the waiting room was a muslim lady who took her seat next to me and said hello, took out an English woman's weekly magazine and started to fill in the crossword puzzle. Now I reckon that to read a crossword clue, come up with an answer and correctly fill it in requires a relatively good grasp of the language in question. So imagine my surprise when the doctor called the lady and she said in good, if accented English, that she could not come through until they found her an interpreter.
This makes my blood boil. Firstly, if you do need an interpreter then book one before you arrive for your appointment. Secondly if you do not need an interpreter then don't waste the resources and the money. It costs the NHS millions to provide interpreting services for all the many languages spoken by the people in this country and the experience of friends and relatives working in the NHS is that a large number of people booking interpreters do not actually require one.
Last thing for today, when I was in the city centre earlier I was approached by two besuited Americans who wanted to talk to me about the Book of Mormon. Well, I hesitated for a second, thinking to myself "shall I take them to pieces or shall I just smile and see what they actually have to say?" and I decided to be nice. I am genuinely fascinated by religion, why people believe it, what makes them follow it, how different religions grow and flourish and others fail so I thought I would see if he could tell me anything interesting. My boyfriend however decided to go to town, especially as one of the men was rather rude and aggressive. I stood back and watched the mormon try to argue against the atheist scientist and it was all rather amusing, especially when the mormon actually tried to use the watchmaker argument (rather badly), refused to believe that atheists had emotions such as love and ended up walking away sweating profusely and refusing to talk to us anymore. That really cheered me up a great deal. I got chatting to the other, friendlier mormon and asked him what he hoped to achieve by stopping people in the street. Apparently he is on a two year "mission" to the North of England to spread the word of the Book of Mormon. I asked if I could have a copy of the book to which he called over his colleague, Angry Mormon who extremely begrudgingly handed over a copy. So I now have a new addition for my fantasy fiction shelf along with my bible and my koran. I will let you know when I have read it.
I must apologise for not posting regularly these last few weeks, and also apologise for the lack of posts since last Wednesday.
Since being hit by that blasted car in January I have been suffering with terrible headaches and am finding it very difficult to use the computer. I have seen my GP who has prescribed yet stronger painkillers, I am going to see a physio tomorrow and I am considering going for a massage to see if that helps. Chances are it is a muscular problem causing the headaches, although the x-rays at the hospital revealed I had an osteophyte (spiky bit of bone from a previous injury) on one of my neck vertebrae, which may have caused some bruising to the nerve into my shoulder and arm, apparently. All I know is that it is extremely painful, and the pain and lack of sleep due to the pain is making me feel pretty miserable and the headaches make it rather challenging to use the computer. Hopefully I will be fighting fit soon, but I wanted to let you know where I had gone. Alas, it is not on some winter sun beach holiday.
As expected the government has once again ignored scientific evidence and refused to downgrade ecstasy to a class B drug. While this comes as no surprise it is extremely frustrating for several reasons. If the government are so happy to go against scientific evidence on something like this, then what other acts of lunacy are going on behind the scenes? We know now that the lords involved in financial grey areas are not to be punished, we have been told that no action is to be taken against Jacqui Smith despite questions being raised over her claiming expenses for her family home that total more than the average wage of a British worker and we know that the government have repeatedly gone against science in order to further their own cause or, in the case of drugs to "send out a strong message". It seems they have not realised the message they are sending out is that they are incapable of doing the job properly, are not to be trusted and, in most situations will take the most stupid approach possible.
I think there is a real danger in the government trying to "send out a message" that drugs are inherently bad, because as they continue to ignore the highly publicised scientific evidence and stick to their own agenda there is a danger that people, especially young people, will conclude that if the government says ecstasy is a class A, but scientists who specialise in this field say it isn't bad, then maybe heroin or crack, also class A, aren't so bad either.
There is also the issue of cost involved in all this - the government are paying scientists to go away and do research, but then outright rejecting the evidence and subsequent proposals that these experts provide. This is not good for the taxpayer.
The government has also rejected a suggestion that the UK adopts an approach to drug testing similar to that in the Netherlands, where people can pay to have their ecstasy tablet tested so that they know whether it is contaminated. Considering the government claim to be acting in the interests of our health, then why would they refuse to allow a service that would actually help to ensure the safety of drug users?
According to the media articles today police believe about 5 million ecstasy tablets are taken every month, meaning the death rate of around 30 a year is actually very low.
This is a topic that I think people should be taking very seriously. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the major problem that drug use causes to society is the illegal status of most drugs, rather than the drug itself. In cases were the drug itself is responsible for personal and social damage this would largely be prevented if people were able to access a clean safe supply of a regulated dose.
Unfortunately the government refuses to accept this logic and continues to carry on with whatever stupid idea they thought up last.
You may be interested in this article from the BBC, about Jacqui Smith's comments on a recent article by scientist Prof Nutt, who compared the dangers of ecstasy use with the dangers associated with horse riding, and asked interesting questions about society's attitude to different risks.
I personally think it was a completely acceptable thing for him to do, and highlights the lunacy that is the drug classification system in this country. Jacqui Smith however seems to think that he should not have made these comments and is set to disregard the advice provided by experts yet again later this week.
Have a read and see what you think.
I have been indulging in one of my favourite pass times again recently - people watching. And, oh people do some strange things. Here are a few of my favourite recent examples:
Firstly I think it is worth giving a mention to all the people in my city who seem to be unable to actually feel the cold. Personally I would say that I am not built for a northern English climate - I hate the cold and like nothing better than summertime. I love the heat, the bright summer light, the long days, the smells of summer and the fact that you can wear next to nothing and still be plenty warm enough. It would seem though that there are some real fans of the cold because over this last week I have seen some hugely inappropriate apparel, mainly from the student population. Mini skirts with sandals, shorts with flip flops, people who seem to believe that a vest and jeans worn with a hat and scarf classes as "winter woollies". It is all very strange for me, the one sat in the bus stop wearing a coat that resembles a sleeping bag, my scarf tied round my head and neck, leggings under my jeans and 3 pairs of socks. Do these people have no nerve endings?
I have decided there can only be one possible explanation for this behaviour: we may live in a northern town but these people must have come from even further north - maybe Scotland, and as such think it is positively balmy here.
One little girl on the bus this morning with her grandmother made me smile. The little girl was about 3, at an uneducated guess (she was small, could talk but was not at school, therefore I am guessing 3) and was chatting away to her grandma when a woman got on wearing a short skirt and little kitten heeled shoes (always a winner in the snow). The little girl just looked at the woman and exclaimed to her grandma "Blimey Grandma, that silly girl will catch her death dressed like that". The old woman looked like she didn't know whether to laugh or be embarrassed.
The final one for today was a conversation I overheard in my local library. The library has a desk where people can talk to a council worker about housing benefits, social housing in the city and so on. I was sat near this desk in an armchair for a brief rest on my way home when a man went to the desk asking for help. I pretended to study "hair monthly" or something whilst listening to the bizarre conversation (I know you shouldn't eavesdrop but sod it)
The man was asking for a council house "urgently" because he needed somewhere new to live. The council worker explained it was not quite that simple and asked for a few details, such as why he needed to move so urgently. The man proceeded to explain that he was currently living with a woman in her flat. However he had got two other women pregnant, although so far his girlfriend had not found out. He wanted to move into a council house that had 4 bedrooms - one for him and one each for his 3 girlfriends and their kids! he went on to say that if he could only have a 3 bed roomed house that would probably do as he didn't know if his non-pregnant girlfriend would still want to live with him.
Sometimes, reality is far stranger than fiction.
I have just been reading about the nurse who was suspended for trying to pray for her patients, who has now been told that she can go back to work. The story has been running all week and it seems to have really got people talking. Naturally many of those people have been running around in a self righteous tizzy whingeing about how christians are being persecuted and complaining about the new NHS guidelines regarding religion in the workplace. You can probably guess what my opinion is going to be (the clue is in the name), but guess what? I am going to tell you anyway.
I really do not think that religion has any place in the work environment, whether that be a shop floor or parliament. It certainly shouldn't be brought up in this way by a nurse to her patient. I think I would probably feel offended if I was an inpatient and a nurse offered to pray for me. I would also be worried that she had seen something on my notes saying "there is no hope" and I would doubt her ability to make logical and rational medical decisions.
That said I would not want to be accused of just having a go at the christians and I think there is no place for any religion in the NHS. If people practice their religion at home and in their private lives then that is their decision, but when people are displaying their religious associations in the workplace, especially a medical environment then that is wrong. I therefore would go as far as saying that all outer symbols of religion should be barred from the NHS workplace. That could be a sikh turban, a hijab, a skullcap or a crucifix. I would also remove NHS funding for religious chaplains and use the money saved to pay for more nurses or other medical staff.
It is not necessary to know a medics religion and the patient should not be put in such an uncomfortable position. If they are religious, and they do wish for someone to pray for them they can always contact their usual religious community.
I believe their are too any concessions to religion in the workplace which is divisive and creates inequality. I have worked in places where the muslim staff members would take their lunch break, then an hour later would vanish for up to 60 minutes in order to "pray", or where members of particular christian denominations would be allowed to finish work during daylight hours throughout the winter. These kind of things create a great deal of negativity amongst staff. During work hours, whatever your job is you should put your own beliefs, interests and faiths to one side and do the job you are payed for. What you do in your private life should be down to the individual but there is no place for religion at work and I think it is quite right that the nurse in question was disciplined for her behaviour.
Seriously, it is just a little bit of snow, so will everyone please just chill out? It is winter, this kind of thing is not that unusual.
A couple of inches of snow and it seems that virtually the whole country has come to a standstill. I mean, come on people there is no need to act in such a pathetic manner.
Buses and trains have been withdrawn from service, schools have been closed, many workers were sent home early and panic buying has emptied the shelves of some shops.
Now, I can understand that some people are nervous about driving in the snow, but it is possible to walk, a 2 or 3 mile journey should not be difficult for most people, yet when I was on my way home from town today people were wailing like the world was about to end. And this, from a bunch of Northerners!
Maybe the reason I am so scathing of the pathetic snow-fear is because I grew up in a rural backwater in the middle of nowhere, the kind of place where to visit your friends as a kid meant walking a couple of miles over fields, the kind of place where popular teenage pass times are getting drunk and cow-tipping and the kind of place that routinely saw over a foot of snow on several occasions each winter and yet life carried on as normal. OK, so our school sometimes had to close for the snow but to be fair to that hell hole it was in the middle of a field on a hill above town and had a large catchment area that included many isolated hamlets and farms. It wasn't unknown for groups of kids from outlaying areas to be stranded at the school when weather was bad.
But the people panicking today and acting like idiots that had never seen snow before where all in a large city where the roads were (partly) gritted, buses were running and there was no reason why most people could not get to work. Despite that, by mid afternoon the city centre was eerily deserted, schools had closed before lunchtime and we were all being advised to stay at home.
I would guess that much of the world is currently laughing at our utterly pathetic response to a perfectly normal weather condition.
I have a theory which I believe goes some way to explaining the mess that this country seems to be in. It is my theory about the public sector workforce and it is quite possible that someone else has managed to already write this up in a far better way than I could manage but anyway, here goes.
Anyone who has worked in a pubic sector job will be able to tell you that a large percentage of the higher-ups are pretty incompetent. The public sector of course includes all government run bodies, the NHS, certain media outlets and so on. All organisations that are renowned for being a little less than brilliant in terms of management and that frequently have long running jokes about how hard it actually is to get sacked from a job like that. And I think I know why.
When working in a organisation like these there seems to be a culture of working your way up. You start at a low grade and every few months you receive an increment in pay and responsibility. The idea is that each person can begin their ascent of the chain up to management, and that no one should remain stationary in their role. So you may start of at a junior level working for the local government and after about 6 months you will receive your first little step up and so on. However many of these organisations also have policies about fast tracking - as in you can't. If you start work as an assistant and a month later a higher level job is advertised that you are qualified and able to do, you will not be considered for that role because you have not yet worked your 6 month increment. So even if you were brilliant you would lose out to an internal candidate who is not great but who has been in the job for a longer time.
There is also the problem of over promotion. Basically as each person keeps being bumped ever so slowly up the chain at some point they reach a level that is just ever so slightly beyond them. Because you cannot really be demoted that is the level at which you stay, just out of your depth. Once in that position it would seem that people do everything they can do try and cover their ineptitude in order to cling on to the job they can't quite do. As they cannot really go any further the whole chain below them halts and no one else can move up a level as there is nowhere to go. So the rather brilliant person who took a junior level job because they really needed work and it seemed a good post remains stuck at junior level. Their input in meetings either goes largely ignored due to their low status, or the ideas are taken and passed off as those of the incompetent who has been over promoted. Everybody becomes demoralised. It is like a blockage in the system. All the higher ups have to protect their own interests and try to hold on to their current position without being found out. All the new ideas, the enthusiasm and the innovation of lower level staff goes undetected. Nothing changes and the same flawed plans are rolled out time and again.
Having worked in the public sector, and having many friends and relatives working in these areas it would seem to be the way these organisations are run. It seems such a shame because slowly, after while everything starts to unravel or disintegrate. There may be people who could sort the problems out but they are stuck at the bottom of the ladder. There may even be high level staff that can see the problems, but whose workforce are unable to cope with the challenges. As a result everything just stagnates.
In some sectors the people who are so wonderful at the hands-on work are promoted to management level, despite being trained not for management, and not particularly wanting a management post except for the financial incentives. In others the culture of constant promotions and increments means that some teams are left with more managers than workers. I know someone who worked in team where managers outnumbered non-management staff 2:1
I think that in order to make any good lasting change this system needs to change. If people are not performing in their roles they should be demoted back to the level at which they can excel. If junior level staff have good ideas they should be listened to. If someone wants to apply for jobs and move up the system faster they should have that opportunity. And there should not be a situation where managers outnumber their employees.
I think that if the system were changed it would effectively free up the workforce to be more productive and happier. An undervalued demoralised team of employees will not achieve anything great. If people know that their input and work will be valued, that good change can happen and that their role is related to performance then they will be more motivated. Considering that we are all affected by the public sector I think it would be excellent to see some much needed shake ups.
However considering how fearful these organisations and many of their employees are of change I doubt we will see anything change for a long time yet.
And besides, what would I possibly know about it? I only worked at a junior level, after all.
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