#62

One of my co-workers on the summer course I’m teaching is Irish and only over here for the summer. He came via Liverpool and was saying back home the press talks about how the UK is doing so well re GDP/on-paper recovery, and when he came to Liverpool he immediately thought “Well where is all that money actually going? It definitely isn’t here”, and that although Ireland is doing badly after the crash he sees way more visible poverty and suffering here.

#63

Before 2008 I only had minimum wage temp jobs. I moved to London to seek my fortune in Jan 2008 so perfect timing.

#64

Do you think those minimum wage temp jobs still exist, or are they internships now?

#65

That’s a good question, I imagine some do as they were boring office jobs in non ‘creative’ industries so tbh they’d have to pay someone to do them. The first one was for a public sector organisation that no longer exists (thanks tories).

#66

The current wheeze for those admin jobs is make them an “Apprentice Administrator” which only pays £3 per hour.

#67

I was trying to think of a neat, concise description of what changed in 2007/2008, covering all the shit like consumer debt bubbles and suchlike, but soon realised that every explanation was “it’s a little more complicated than that.”

But I think ultimately the simple answer is: things really went to shit in 2010 when the Tories came in and decided to vigourously fuck everybody in the arse and not stop doing so. I think it’s really just as simple as that.

In 2007 I bought a house. Turned out fine, and I haven’t been sacked from my job yet so there’s that.

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#68

Can you see it yet?

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#70

Where is he? Is he OK do you think? Do you think he’ll like Alien Covenant?

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#71

It seems like places are becoming very top heavy, with more and more pay for top execs, but no people on the ground to actually do stuff, or a belief that you can conjure up people for the exact time period you need them, no more, like renting a car and this will somehow not affect the quality of anything.

I really wish someone would do say a high-profile tv show version of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

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#72

Oof, how is that even allowed :frowning:

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#73

I saw “Apprentice Receptionist” recently. Clearly takes years of vocational training to staff a reception desk.

#75

There’s a lot of this been going on.

I’ve had two jobs since graduating in 2007. In the first, when I started we were a team of 9, supporting one system. By the time I left, we were down to 3, supporting the same system and designing another. In my current job (started five years ago), I joined a team of 10; we’re now 4. I wouldn’t say that there’s any less work either. And none of these are low level jobs; it’s all skilled work, that just happens to be at the bottom of our particular chain.

You wouldn’t believe the number of times account teams in our company expect us to be available and 100% dedicated to them at a moment’s notice, with no regard to the half a dozen other projects we’re working on at the same time.

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#76

Yes

#77

I finished a graphic design degree in 2000, right in time for the recession and dot-com bubble bursting.

It felt different to now in that even though I lost my job in 2001, I didn’t feel any need to move back home or sign on, as my rent was so low in London. Also, I think I was earning OK money for a very junior job and I had gone through university for free pretty much, so I only had loans of 6k to pay off. Not exactly a daunting figure compared to graduates today. Having 1 or 2 months off work didn’t seem as unthinkable as it might do now.

$ - £ rate was amazing. Went to NYC every year, ski trips to the Rockies. And again, I wasn’t cash rich by any stretch of the imagination.

The biggest thing though, that a lot of people took for granted, was that property was so affordable if you took a punt on a crap part of London. So many people in their late 30s/early 40s are now set due to buying a place in the early 2000s.

#78

One part of the OP interests me. I was thinking about it the other day when discussion turned to Blair. I’m sure it’s not an original thought, but perhaps worth raising.

In terms of world events, it really matters when they happen in your lifespan, and I think we’re all particularly marked by the things that happen during our teenage years. What happens then seems significant and important (I would say overly so), whereas the things that happened during your first ten years probably have the opposite effect. For me this means I have stark memories of the miners’ strike, the Falklands war, Thatcherism in general, whilst I have no emotional response to say the three day week or the winter of discontent. That’s probably skewed. Similarly for people in their late twenties now the Blair governments and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars probably loom very high in their consciousness, whereas the fiasco of the Major years is insignificant.

The simple comment on the time before the financial crisis is we still had plenty to worry about, mainly terrorism and dodgy war. There was a consumer debt bubble building which meant people (in general) felt a bit more secure, but for many of us that was a very short bubble following the 1990s which were a lot less fun.

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#79

When the government says things are going well, I think they mean for themselves and their rich pals. The rest of us don’t matter so long as there’s enough of us to provide cheap labour for their profit making enterprises.

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#80

colinfilth
Where is he? Is he OK do you think? Do you think he’ll like Alien Covenant?

Has he seen it yet?

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#81

Same here. This July I’m teaching a residential course at a university for teenagers. We have 27 students. The staff are:

Manager- injured in an accident and has limited mobility
Me & Other residential teacher (acting as Duty Managers)
Residential activity manager (also Duty Manager)
Post-grad student teacher who is only legally allowed to work 20 hours per week per her visa
Two local undergrads on 15-20 hours per week, who are late and don’t do their work properly

I am teaching 25 hours per week (a full teaching load), with no materials provided, plus sharing being responsible for 27 kids 24/7 with two other people- which has added up to 3 weeks of 60 hours. The head office complained that I was doing too much overtime and didn’t want to pay me for some because it was “optional” until I threatened to walk out.

I taught a similar course a few years ago where we had 45 kids. We had:
Manager
Admin assistant
Academic manager
3 full-time teachers
Activity/pastoral manager
2 full-time activity teachers

#82

Purchased flat in Stoke Newington 2002. £110K, with an £11K deposit (my own savings from six years’ work). Currently a year off being mortgage free in a £500K house. So yes, this.

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#83

I was at university during the early stages of the financial crisis and as mentioned by _Em I guess one of the most immediate signs for me was the stark reduction in part-time\ entry level employment opportunities, compared to before then where it seemed like practically everyone I knew was easily able to find work.

Afterwards all I could find at least a year after I graduated was fairly precarious part time work or poorly paid entry level work much of which was being done by people who were made redundant and as such were incredibly overqualified for the position they’d taken.

There was a guy who previously used to work on in-flight entertainment systems in a previous company and now worked on repairing graded stock. Among other thoughts about Brexit, I keep thinking, anyone who’s saying they’d be happy to go through the same struggles in order to leave the EU must have an exceptionally short memory.

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