Showing posts with label Jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jobs. Show all posts
07/12/2012
Do I take Sugar?
Whenever there is a news item about people who live with a disability a representative pops up on the telly to speak on their behalf!
Where do these representatives come from?
Who elects them?
Who selects them?
I am very hard of hearing and I have up to 50 absence epileptic fits a day, but I have never, ever, been approached by any organisation purporting to represent my disabilities before they give evidence on my behalf to the National Assembly or Westminster Committees. When I see these people representing me on BBC Democracy Live I wonder how on earth they were selected to speak for me because they haven't got a fucking clue about the realities of living with hearing loss or epilepsy in rural north Wales.
Who are Epilepsy Wales/Epilepsi Cymru? I have lived with epilepsy for 40 years without this organisation ever aproaching me or asking my opinion about epeleptic issues! Apparently Wales Council for the Deaf is a lead organistaion in informing the Assembly about hearing loss issues - sorry for the pun, but as a deaf person, I've never heard from them!
Today's news about the closure of another two Remploy factories in Wales is apparently supported by SCOPE a charity that has grand ideas about some disability utopia, but doesn't have a realistic clue about the realities of living with a disability!
How many people who live with a disability voted for the Scope Representative to "speak for them" in support of a Tory attack on real people whose only chance of a job is in a Remploy factory?
I agree with IDS, most people with a disability can work! Disabled people should have work. Working is a good therapy, but the idea that I can compete in an open jobs market is a total fallacy. Be honest – given the choice of employing a healthy young 17 year old or 50+ deaf epileptic – who would you give the job to?
Sorry SCOPE, but your trendy lefty lovey attitude towards disability doesn't help me!
The only way that I can get a job is if I can get an employer that discriminates in my favour – like Remploy!
The only way that I can be represented is if I am consulted as a disabled person -rather than be represented by the wheelchair pusher who is asked does he take sugar and answers, wrongly, on my behalf - like Scope!
19/01/2012
Jobs, Schemes and Political Backbone
When I left school without the A levels that I needed to fulfil my academic dreams I was put on a job creation programme in my local library. I loved the scheme whilst it lasted!
I learned more in those six months than I had learned in a previous lifetime of school. There was something almost magical in handling so many books. Even without reading them, just stamping a book with this book is the property of Gwynedd Council and knowing on which shelf to place it gave me new information about the latitude of human knowledge, experience and insight. It was probably the most influential six months of my life!
But it was still cheap, and useless, labour!
It was a scheme that would never have allowed me to become a librarian or to get even the lowest job in a library. After six months of infatuation with the process I was kicked out because my term had ended, and some other person was inducted to the joys of librarianship in my stead with the same non chance of having a career in the library service.
Pointless really!
Given the resignations of the Apprenticeship Tsars I hope that the Westminster Government will look again at the meaning of apprenticeship and give young people the hope of gaining employment as electricians, plumbers, mechanics, librarians etc, rather than doing what Mrs Thatcher did – dangling the smell of such jobs under their noses in the knowledge that those jobs were never going to be available to them!
But I doubt it – getting kids through schemes, in order to keep them off the streets for a few months is easy politics – giving them meaningful apprenticeships that will lead to lifelong skills and employment is a real challenge that the ConDem Government is too frightened to contemplate.
I learned more in those six months than I had learned in a previous lifetime of school. There was something almost magical in handling so many books. Even without reading them, just stamping a book with this book is the property of Gwynedd Council and knowing on which shelf to place it gave me new information about the latitude of human knowledge, experience and insight. It was probably the most influential six months of my life!
But it was still cheap, and useless, labour!
It was a scheme that would never have allowed me to become a librarian or to get even the lowest job in a library. After six months of infatuation with the process I was kicked out because my term had ended, and some other person was inducted to the joys of librarianship in my stead with the same non chance of having a career in the library service.
Pointless really!
Given the resignations of the Apprenticeship Tsars I hope that the Westminster Government will look again at the meaning of apprenticeship and give young people the hope of gaining employment as electricians, plumbers, mechanics, librarians etc, rather than doing what Mrs Thatcher did – dangling the smell of such jobs under their noses in the knowledge that those jobs were never going to be available to them!
But I doubt it – getting kids through schemes, in order to keep them off the streets for a few months is easy politics – giving them meaningful apprenticeships that will lead to lifelong skills and employment is a real challenge that the ConDem Government is too frightened to contemplate.
03/10/2009
Can Anglesey have its £48 million back please?
Apart from owning a sweet shop for a couple of years, which was an abject failure as a business venture (mainly due to my own sweet tooth eating into the profits) my working life has either been in the true public sector or the quasi public sector (where private businesses are paid by the government for providing public services). So I can't pretend to understand how the real business world works.
Because I am venturing into a subject that I know little about this post might be a load of codswallop. If it is I would appreciate a word from the more business savvy of my readers to explain where I am going wrong.
Last June the Assembly and Westminster governments offered RTZ, the owners of Anglesey Aluminium a £48 million package to help secure the plants future. The offer was refused, and as a result about 400 well paid jobs will be lost on the island.
The £48 million to save 400 jobs that was offered (and turned down because it wasn't enough) works out at just short of a quarter of a million pounds per job!
This is where I get confused, if those jobs were worth a quarter of a million each, and if the cash was available to save them at that price, why aren't there 400 grants of a similar size available to 400 individuals on the island to create 400 new businesses after RTZ said No?
Indeed a quarter of the price of each job would be a huge boost to anybody wanting to start up an SME! The £48 million offered to RTZ could be £30k each to help start up 1,600 new Anglesey companies, and if each of those companies employed just one individual each that would be 3,200 jobs for the price of 400!
If the £48 million had been spread a little thinner it could have given £1,500 to each and every working age person on the island as a deposit towards self employment!
In short if the governments have £48 million to spare as (turned down) backhanders to billion pound turnover companies, why isn't that cash available to new Welsh entrepreneurs?
If Wales needs to get out of its public service culture, shouldn't we be using these multi million pound "grants" to encourage the creation of indigenous companies, rather than subsidising multinationals?
Despite the fact that I am a nurse, a public servant and part of the Welsh public service problem, I do appreciate the need for a vibrant indigenous Welsh capitalism.
If Wales is ever to stand on its own two feet it needs interim government financial support aimed towards the creation of Welsh owned businesses, rather than that support only being available to externally owned labour intensive multinationals (Like RTZ) that just happen to be in Wales whilst it suits them.
Because I am venturing into a subject that I know little about this post might be a load of codswallop. If it is I would appreciate a word from the more business savvy of my readers to explain where I am going wrong.
Last June the Assembly and Westminster governments offered RTZ, the owners of Anglesey Aluminium a £48 million package to help secure the plants future. The offer was refused, and as a result about 400 well paid jobs will be lost on the island.
The £48 million to save 400 jobs that was offered (and turned down because it wasn't enough) works out at just short of a quarter of a million pounds per job!
This is where I get confused, if those jobs were worth a quarter of a million each, and if the cash was available to save them at that price, why aren't there 400 grants of a similar size available to 400 individuals on the island to create 400 new businesses after RTZ said No?
Indeed a quarter of the price of each job would be a huge boost to anybody wanting to start up an SME! The £48 million offered to RTZ could be £30k each to help start up 1,600 new Anglesey companies, and if each of those companies employed just one individual each that would be 3,200 jobs for the price of 400!
If the £48 million had been spread a little thinner it could have given £1,500 to each and every working age person on the island as a deposit towards self employment!
In short if the governments have £48 million to spare as (turned down) backhanders to billion pound turnover companies, why isn't that cash available to new Welsh entrepreneurs?
If Wales needs to get out of its public service culture, shouldn't we be using these multi million pound "grants" to encourage the creation of indigenous companies, rather than subsidising multinationals?
Despite the fact that I am a nurse, a public servant and part of the Welsh public service problem, I do appreciate the need for a vibrant indigenous Welsh capitalism.
If Wales is ever to stand on its own two feet it needs interim government financial support aimed towards the creation of Welsh owned businesses, rather than that support only being available to externally owned labour intensive multinationals (Like RTZ) that just happen to be in Wales whilst it suits them.
27/04/2009
Job Seeking
Apparently the Wales Millennium Centre is looking for a new chair. According to Head Hunters Odgers Berndtson:
After all the money that the Assembly Government has pumped into it, one would have thought that the Wales Millennium Center could at least afford a new sofa by now, rather than just another chair!
Odgers are also looking for a Chief Executive for Scarlets RFC
Decision, decisions! Should I apply to be chair of the WMC or CE of the Scarlets?
Nah! The North Wales Weekly News has an ad for a toilet cleaner in Llandudno, a job with much better prospects and a damn site less sh** to deal with than either of those offered by Odgers.
The Board of Trustees is now seeking a new chair on the retirement of Lord Rowe-Beddoe after 9 years of outstanding service.
After all the money that the Assembly Government has pumped into it, one would have thought that the Wales Millennium Center could at least afford a new sofa by now, rather than just another chair!
Odgers are also looking for a Chief Executive for Scarlets RFC
Decision, decisions! Should I apply to be chair of the WMC or CE of the Scarlets?
Nah! The North Wales Weekly News has an ad for a toilet cleaner in Llandudno, a job with much better prospects and a damn site less sh** to deal with than either of those offered by Odgers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)