A place where I'll post up some thoughts and ideas - especially on literature in education, children's literature in general, poetry, reading, writing, teaching and thoughts on current affairs.
Wednesday, 18 January 2017
Worrying rise in numbers of young people flooding into the labour market
Announcer: "To get an idea on how Brexit is going down, we sent George Robinson to Wysham."
Cut to bus interior
George Robinson: "I'm on a bus in Wysham and with me are some people from Wysham. What do you think of the problem with young people?
Person on a bus in Wysham: I'm not against young people. But enough's enough.
Another person on a bus in Wysham: There are too many of them.
Another person on a bus in Wysham: Yes, and they undercut wages.
George Robinson: Do they?
Another person on a bus in Wysham: Yes.
Cut to field.
George Robinson: What do you think of young people?
Farmer: I need them to pick the fruit.
George Robinson: Thanks very much
Cut back to studio
Announcer: So, young people are undercutting wages, there are quite simply too many of them, flooding on to the labour market, putting a strain on education, health and public services. Will Brexit help? With me to answer that is Fiona Wilson-Grantchester.
Fiona: What Brexit will finally enable us to do is control the number of young people coming on to the labour market. It's not an anti-young people thing. It's simply a matter of controlling numbers. What we can now do is make sure that we get the right number of young people coming on stream, and we can target them to the places we need them.
Announcer: But what about the pressures that even that might put on, say, education? What if these young people might start demanding, say more education?
Fiona: We can simply say, 'enough's enough' and send them back, without having the red tape of the EU to say we can't.
Announcer: Interesting times. Thanks very much.