November 2014 – A Different Perspective

It emerged last year David Cameron’s failed “promise” of net migration being lowered into the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands we see year on year. I for one knew that this was not achievable when the words left his mouth, yet hoped that by sheer luck that he could for once follow up on something he’s come out with. I’ll mention the other side of the argument just briefly. Yes, we all know that immigration does add to the economy, but takes out more than it puts in. I’m not talking about benefits though. The simple fact is we were full up 10 years ago and our services failed to cope back then. Even though I understand that the NHS couldn’t survive without it’s mainly immigrant workforce, there aren’t enough doctors to go around. So how does adding potential patients to our overall population help exactly? It doesn’t, end of discussion.
Same can be said about school places, I don’t care what these people have to say about we have a ‘right’ to better our lives by coming over and giving our children a good education. No you don’t. OUR children come first as they were born here and they have the ‘right’ to have smaller class sizes so that the teacher can engage more easily with the pupils and give a better standard of teaching. It’s no wonder that white british kids are so low down the tables for literacy and numeracy, the classes are being overrun by extra students that we don’t have room for and thus shrinking their learning possibilities. Another quick point, also if they spent half as much time concentrating on teaching our children about the significance of literacy and numeracy in later life as much as they do about being ‘diverse’ we’d half the problem. We should also see the end of faith schools as a whole. Indoctrination into a single set of beliefs is outdated and if removed would also help eliminate radicalised extremism in this country. We should teach kids about faiths but that’s where it ends, no bias on ANY religion. Instead we should be teaching our kids about politics, and how running a country works. That’s what matters as they are the potential future leaders, why is it they have to wait until AS level until they can learn about politics? No wonder the number of young voters is at it’s lowest and non voters is at an all time high, it’s because they know nothing about the parties out there and what they stand for, if we want to connect with kids about politics we have to teach them early, just like anything else. I’d also like to touch on the subject of employment. The Tories constantly bang on about the growing number of Apprenticeships over the last parliament, even though Apprenticeships are great, do you think you could live off an apprentice’s wage? They are squeezing money away from the youth of today as they simply don’t have the jobs to go round. Regardless of what any opposing opinions are that will be commenting on this post, if the British people that are here already don’t have the skills then the employer should pay for someone in a lower position in the company to get training and take the step up. Something called career prospects, which doesn’t exactly exist anymore. In doing so it will leave the old position vacant, giving another person a chance at getting their foot in the door. I remember a time where the thought of moving up through a company was the only way to go for someone in my position. If you had no transferable skill or training once you left school, your only chance of getting an alright wage was to get your foot in the door at the bottom of a company and work your way up to at least a manager level through working hard and gaining responsibility with age. Now companies would rather take on someone into the higher role from outside the country and at a lower wage just to save the company on wages. This is not pro-active and the government should stamp it out and make it a fairer, even playing field for young British people. I talk from experience as I was unemployed for a whole year and a half, and when applying for jobs (even some I was over qualified for) I was up against 60, sometimes even 100 other candidates. No matter how good my grades were at GCSE (the only thing that I can claim is worthy on my CV) I was swept aside time and time again. Even after ‘tweaking’ my CV with the job centre it made no difference. The only thing that counted was experience and even then if you had the experience there would be someone else with more experience, so on and so fourth. You get the picture. It’s worth a mention that whilst in school the prospect of putting yourself in debt just to get a degree that would become worthless upon leaving university really put me off the idea of that, which blocks many avenues for you as a young person nowdays. I believe university should be a free system but only for people in this country, yet have partnerships with other universities around the world that specialise in specific areas and send out students to these other universities, on placement for a year which would be beneficial to both the university and the student, as the student would get a taste of life in a different culture whilst taking in a different method of learning and learning a different aspect of their desired course. Then upon return the university will have a more enlightened and engaged student with a broader understanding of the subject they are learning about. Obviously this would work both ways in a student exchange type of programme. I feel this would be a better way of preparing teens for their life outside of education in the real world where they will find it increasingly difficult to get into their desired sector of work and stop them from going after the jobs of the ‘less advantaged’ candidate like myself who didn’t have the academic ability or the want to go to university. As you can start to see everything is interlinked and the whole system needs a shake up and kick in the right direction and really to be dragged into the 21st century. I’ve had enough of seeing Etonian’s in parliament. Make way for normal working class people as we are the ones that keep this country running and express the views of the workforce, these Etonian’s never had it hard, never known the struggle of living off benefits or even the minimum wage and had all of their private school fees paid for. It has brought me to the question that has been rattling around my head for a fair amount of time but almost afraid to ask. But i’m going too. Would you vote for a party/MP that wasn’t deemed clever by academic standards but had real life experience and understands life ‘outside the bubble’? I’m in a toss up with my answer, one side of me believes the clever people should be running the country as we need brilliant minds in the right places or nothing would run properly, yet at the same time the one’s making decisions are people who are fully out of touch with normal people as they’ve had that advantaged upbringing and never known a hard life. It’s so hard to choose as i’d prefer a leader who is ‘normal’ but the cabinet to be experts at their ministry, e.g the chancellor should have an economics degree. However, I can’t imagine any of the brainboxes wanting to follow someone they may see as inferior or not qualified with the job of running the country. When I work it out i’ll let you know…