I wasn’t quite sure where to start with my next post, but after hearing some news last week, I didn’t find it too difficult. So off to Leeds I go – nothing to do with football or rugby league, two of my favourite sports, and with me following Manchester United and St Helens, Leeds are possibly their worst enemies in both of those sports.
I have witnessed hatred in sport first hand, and as ‘hate’ is a word I try not to use, I certainly would never use it over a game of rugby or a game of football, that’s for sure. Hate is a strong word, and remember when words have been spoken, they can rarely be taken back. So when you tell someone you hate them, it pretty much comes from the heart, and that’s not very nice, and that’s why I don’t use the word.
So no sport involved, it’s actually off to the University of Leeds I go instead, and I had to do a little internet search after hearing the article on the news. Still, it seems the University of Leeds will give students £10,000 and their first years’ accommodation free if they defer their courses for twelve months. GIVE THEM £10,000. I’m still not sure I’m getting this right?
The University (and seemingly the University of Exeter are doing the same with their first years’ accommodation worth over £7,500) are ‘giving’ students £10,000 (so nearer £17,500) to defer an application, and if that is the case, if that is right, I’m afraid I do despair, and I have to ask why?
What happens if a student gets the £10,000 then decides twelve months later to become a bus driver. Do they have to pay the money back? Surely there is something in place to recover the money, but I couldn’t see it in the articles I read.
One paper quoted it was ‘to spend on preparing themselves.’ How do you spend £10,000 on ‘preparing yourself’ Please tell me because at my age I
honestly have no idea? Let’s be honest here, a lot of students want more than qualifications, they want fun. So give a student £10k to ‘prepare themselves’ and I for one can only see the money being spent on holidays, beer, sangria, sambuca and other forms of fun. How many do you see buying books, maybe a laptop and new clothes? Because if that is how you ‘prepare yourself’ it wouldn’t cost £10,000, try £1,000!
I have a better idea, and I am basing this on the number of job vacancies that are out there at the moment, and I am talking basic industrial work where no qualifications or experience is needed. Yes, a bit mundane and repetitive and not the type of work that those studying law and business would want long term, but it is work. Life lessons can be learnt in a workplace, and it would be a massive help to our economy and the recruitment industry.
There is a food packaging firm near where we live, who use several recruitment agencies to try to fulfil their vacancies and using those ‘various’ companies, they still can’t get enough people, so what are they doing? They are expanding their business, opening a new production unit and needing over sixty more staff! They can’t get enough people now, and they know they can’t, but they continue to build and want more people.
But if I were the responsible person at these universities, I would say this to students who couldn’t be accommodated:
‘Go and work for a year (or less), but when you can bring a P60 showing you have earned a minimum of £10,000 within twelve months, we will give you a year’s free accommodation.’ But that’s me, and that’s all they would get, just the accommodation.
We are back in the modern generation where we wrap people up in bubbles and cotton wool and give them a life that makes things easy for them, giving them things (money and free accommodation) they haven’t earned and don’t deserve, at least not in my opinion.
Life isn’t fair, and that’s a fact, life is hard, and life isn’t easy, so why make life into something it’s not? I don’t get this decision; it’s mollycoddling young people when the world isn’t like that.
If a university has 100 places and there are 150 applicants, names go in a hat, 100 gets pulled out, and fifty lose out – that’s how life is; that’s the real world. We don’t always get everything we want; we don’t always have an easy path. I have had job interviews and failed to get the position, I didn’t get compensated, I didn’t get mollycoddled, or a free gift or payment as a ‘sorry we can’t accommodate you on this occasion, we prefer Joe Bloggs.’ I had to pick myself up, brush myself down and get on with life.
Those fifty who lose out then get priority for the next year, and so on. What happens the following year when those who have deferred their applications apply, and then they have all the new applicants who they don’t have room for? Do they then keep doing this every year? More importantly, where are they getting the money from? Is there really that much money in education that we can ‘give’ people £10,000 (and more) because they don’t have enough spaces?
As you can tell, I am, well what am I? I’m not angry or annoyed, possibly fed up with these stories and back to one of my issues whereby I’m thinking, ‘what’s the world coming to?’ Some may say I’m bitter, but at fifty-eight, the only thing I ever wanted to do at school was leave; I had no interest in school or exams, I left with nothing worth talking about.
I have gained all my professional qualifications later in my life, having a good career in industrial management. I don’t need the money, would I turn down £10,000 if I was offered it? No, I wouldn’t. I doubt many would, but I don’t need the money. I just despair at the idea of giving away money like this when people are sleeping rough on our streets, and these students, other than applying for a place at University, have done nothing to deserve it.
I was in a pub some time back, and I watched in disbelief as a young child on the next table left practically all their food from the main course, it was such a waste, and no doubt ended up in a bin when once again we have people sleeping rough with nothing to eat.
Nothing much was said that I could hear, but I just sat and shook my head when the child was brought their sweet with the obvious lump of ice cream on the plate, and what happened? The child left practically all their sweet too, and so I just sat there despairing.
Yes, we are all different, and we don’t know personal circumstances, but if my daughter had left that much of the main course, she certainly wouldn’t have been rewarded with a sweet, that’s for sure. But again, we seem to reward the younger generation when there is no reason to do so, or they don’t deserve it. In this case, it was such a waste, and I watched the family walk away with no ‘doggy bag,’ no taking the food home to warm up or use later or tomorrow; the bin was fine!
Two different circumstances, but two rewards handed out when they were not deserved or earned, in my opinion, and again coming from an older generation, I’m afraid this does not sit well with me in either situation.
Many young children are brought up in a way that doesn’t stand them in good stead for a future life whereby they will get let down, will face disappointment and rejection, they will face situations where there will be no rewards when things don’t go right, and they will face hard times. So why do we bring them up thinking the world is fair and good and their little bubble will always be there for them?
Parents are too soft, and no, I don’t want to see children smacked and hit to control them, far from it. I just don’t want to see them molly-coddled and wrapped in cotton wool. It’s a tough old life out there, so if they don’t get into the University they want, and if they don’t get ice cream because they didn’t finish their fish fingers and chips, then so be it – that is how life is.
To finish, I want to mention these articles:
There are not enough spaces at our universities, our roads are congested so we can hardly move, even outside peak travel times. In twenty-one years, the population of the United Kingdom has grown by ten million people – ten million! That is a population bigger than London!
Imagine how we will cope if there are ten million people added into our country every twenty years; in one hundred years, a population nearly the same as England is now will be added into the UK – fifty million people. Think about it?
I know I have mentioned this many times before, but I think this is a major, major part of our future that we are ignoring. We will certainly need a lot more universities and a lot more money to compensate those people who are let down and need to defer their application for twelve months if things carry on as they are.
But the main point here is the link, the world and our country’s population is growing too quickly. In years to come, we won’t be able to cope, we can hardly cope now with places at universities and on our roads, with our housing or our country’s finances, as the people put so much demand on our Government. At over £2 trillion in debt and the debt growing, there will only be one outcome – I think the link or the root cause is a little obvious, but that’s me!
Thanks for reading, and stay safe.