The Party's Over

And for many young people it hasn't started yet.

Today I met a young graduate who is volunteering three days a week for three months with the National Trust at Allan Bank in Grasmere, where I took this blip.

She sees herself as extremely fortunate to have this unpaid opportunity because the NT provides training and sometimes volunteering can turn into a job. Many of her friends are being sucked into, mangled and thrown out of the intern system, others have poorly paid part time jobs.

She needs casual work for more days a week to support herself, but so far can't find any in this key tourist area; the number one destination for wealthy Japanese tourists.

I asked her why her generation aren't out on the streets protesting long and loud about what free market economics has done to their futures. She told me that it wasn't that her generation are apathetic, more that they don't understand the jobs market, they don't expect to be paid much, they don't know the history of employment, they don't realise that previous generations were paid to work from day one.....

She told me that she was only just beginning to see the enormity of the country's employment problem.

How do we help this generation of young people and all the other people who are working part time that want full time jobs, but can't get them?