Underemployment

                                                Underemployment

During the recent downturn a lot has been made of the fact that people are unemployed. Little has been made of the fact that many of the newly created jobs are part time. This has resulted in a phenomenon known as underemployment.

Of course this is great for the politicians as they can say that employment is on the rise. It does not however disguise the fact that there is a human tragedy behind all these things and that underemployment is actually quite a curse. Many people gain part time hours that still however ensure that they are not counted as unemployed yet they fail to make enough money to live a decent life and struggle to pay their bills.

Large numbers of people are reduced to working at a part time job when they would prefer to work more hours. This is very much a hidden statistic and its toll on the people involved cannot be underestimated. Not only do they have little money but they have the whole day to think about their problem!

Of course another aspect of this is the zero hour’s contract which is becoming increasingly common. Many forms are doing this and it becomes quite difficult as the person is only hired as and when required! This can also play havoc if a person is getting their income topped up by benefits as the hours can be variable and the bureaucracy of the benefit offices in this regard is something else!

However the politicians find this a very handy in painting their picture of an economy that is recovering!

Commuting to work

                                                Commuting to work

One of the great bugbears of London is the time it takes to get to work. Most Londoners are accustomed to spending long periods of the day just getting to their workplaces

As more and more people are forced into outlying suburbs and commuter towns so the daily commute grows. Trains coming from towns in the Home Counties are usually packed at weekdays with many of them providing standing room only. One of the annual miseries is the rise in rail travel tickets with all the fallout that it entails.

Even for those who live in London there is the misery of the commute. Many times I have had to spend about two hours actually getting to my place of work and that in London is not uncommon. Once I had an evening class to deliver in one location and I recall getting home at midnight which was in general quite a tiring commute.

Often it is said that everybody in London has two jobs, their own job and the other is getting to and from their workplace. In many ways it is fairly much of a truism that the daily commute can play a big role in your life and you can actually spend quite a few hours of the day getting to and from your workplace.

In the mornings the metro or tube system is packed. Most of the carriages are standing room only

And it is quite common to see tempers flaring as people all over themselves to get on trains and stay on the trains through all the stops. Busses can usually be packed as well and many buses will speed by as these are already so full of passengers that not is not safe or them to take any more.

Even private modes of transport are hardly an option as using a car in central London is a fruitless exercise. Not only do you have to pay to drive in this zone which is indicated by road signs bur you also have to find parking which is not easy and the few parking garages are quite expensive. Some people take to the roads and cycle but this also has its problems as London has an appalling record on road safety for cyclists. Many cyclists are killed every year by cars and lorries. The sight of bundles of flowers marking the death of a cyclist at a particular road junction is commonplace.

Every method of commuting has its problems. For most Londoners the idea is trying to find something to do in the long hours we spend commuting                               

           

Heat wave

                                                Heat wave

At the moment London is suffering a heat wave. It seems as if people are never satisfied. Now all the complaints are

“It is too hot!”

However those who work outdoors are enjoying the heat. Since air conditioning is nor so common here most people are sweltering in the heat. On the metro you constantly hear advice about taking a bottle of water with you. And it will probably come to a point soon when trains will slow down as usually happens. The transport system never seems to be adapted to cope with extremes of weather.

For the moment a lot of people are enjoying it. The parks come alive with people sitting in groups taking in the sun.

In a country where this does not happen so often many people are grateful for the short interlude because next week we could have rain. That is the ever present threat!

The recovery

                                                The recovery

In a time when the last recession has been decimating the high streets of the UK and led to a massive drop in the living standards of most people in the UK talk of a recovery seems a bit rich. For the past five years at least people in work that is have seen bills rose exponentially while wage rises have been small or nonexistent.

The truth is that now the government and press is trumpeting recovery. However people are still losing their jobs and for the average Briton life does not seem to have improved much

“The new conditions are rubbish” My one friend told me after going for a teaching job.

“What they expect from you is impossible!”

This sentiment would actually be mirrored in the exchanges various people have ad generally new jobs created seem to have worse conditions than the last.

In general people are accepting lower wages and worse conditions of employment just to get jobs which seem to still be very hard to come by.

One f the problems is that in education the paperwork that needs to be done is about ten times what is was When Labour left office so the government is increasing the load of paperwork all the time.

And the recovery seems ever so distant for most people as there seems to be very little work out there. In addition costs are rising all the time. Housing costs and fuel costs particularly. For the average person very little seems to be working at the moment.

Wirth the relentless increases in costs with wages staying stagnant there is likely to be large political fallout. 

Cheap shops

                        Cheap Shops

A good indicator of the health of the economy for most people is what is going on in the high streets of towns. This tends to reflect what is happening in the world at large and at the moment many high streets in the UK look pretty grim despite all this talk of recovery. The sight of  boarded up shop is still common. It is as if the enterprise has gone out of the economy. One aspect of the recession has been an explosion of cheap shops and for most people still in work this is one thing that has reduced the cost of living. We have the pound shop, the 99p store and poundland along with many other independent 99p or one pound chains. A huge range of goods are displayed there and of course nobody now asks their provenance. In fact few care about why the goods are so cheap but only the price. One of the signs of this recession is that even the Middle classes now go to poundland. Before the crisis that would have been unthinkable.

However these sops offer a range of goods from kitchen utensils to toys and garden accessories. All are offered at the standard rates of one pound. People are going there to stock up on all the essentials. Now the range even included such staples as cooked food ad it is possible to buy pizza salads and cooked chicken wings in some of these outlets. In fact there is a never ending streams of traffic in these places and this industry is one that has certainly not been suffering from the recession. So difficult has it become that even the major British supermarkets such as Tescos, Sainsburys and Morrisons have started price wars among themselves.

Certainly one effect of the recession has been an explosion of these shops and despite the so called recovery which for most people does not feel like a recovery with jobs still being very insecure, it looks as if for the moment these shops are here to stay.

World cup blues

                                                World cup blues

Now England is full of world cup fever. The papers are full of it with timetables daily. All the doings of the England team are scrutinized in finest detail. One of the main points of conversation is the hatches and matches and dispatches of the world cup.

Yesterday I passed by one estate full of bunting everywhere. From every wall and balcony flags were hanging. The cross of Saint George was everywhere.

Its inhabitants in fact consider themselves one of the most patriotic estates in the country and it shows in their flags. The country is football mad!

How does one cope if like me football leaves you comatose? It is not as if I did not have the experience of playing it as a child but I cannot see the point of watching any sport. I would rather play it. To watch and get excited seems to me to be the ultimate in wasting time. I always sit and wonder if these people don’t have anything better to do with their time. Why not actually go to the gym or play a game of football instead?

Paradoxically it is one of the few circumstances in these days of glass ceilings when it is better to be a woman. As a woman you are less expected to get excited over football. You can get away from it easily probably not before having to provide a shoulder to cry on for some “world cup widow” whose partner is permanently glued to the television screen. You at least have a choice! And if you find world cup fever a bit too much you will always find solidarity with somebody of your gender.

If you are a man however the expectation is that you are going to be obsessed with football. Most of your friends are taking time out of their social lives to watch the games and Ooh and ah over every goal missed by the England side.  Certainly you can hear the shouts across the neighborhood with the televisions blaring results at every turn.

Of course if you are not obsessed with football you must be somewhat abnormal in fact a one man freak show. Your friends start to get worried about you and try to concoct schemes to get you interested in the game. You must be abnormal if you don’t like football. How can you not love the “beautiful game”?

One the other hand you do start to meet other men who will confess their guilty secret. They don’t like the beautiful game either. It all starts conspiratorially discussing how to survive the world cup and takes on a new dimension. You realize you have something in common. Besides, many women are usually not interested in football either. You begin to develop an alternative social life.

How long this will last I don’t know. At least you find the “abnormal” minority and the companionship of other “freaks”. At least this allows you to batten down the hatches and watch and wait till the world cup is over and better times return.

Park design in London

                                                            Park design in London

Potters field park is one of the new parks destined fairly recently. Unfortunately some of the trends become very evident in this place particularly that of new urban park design. Gone now is the urge for something naturalistic against the cold, hard lines of the buildings. We live now in an era of sanitized parks full of low plantings that make everybody feel safe.

More or less the idea has been to cut out undergrowth. Very few trees dot the landscape. In a park that is designed to about the new London assembly buildings all seems to point to a reoccurrence of the old socialist planning ideas of Eastern Europe. Every part of the ark must be clearly visible so there is a clear loss of visibility. The philosophy is that if you are not doing anything bad you have nothing to fear. All plantings are of low perennials with even trees kept to a minimum

At the moment this is a common theme of newly designed parks in London. Much is made of the fact that if there is too much undergrowth people do not feel safe . All the newly designed parks such as Burgess Park exhibit some of these factors. For the new planners any undergrowth is anathema and they have this belief that everybody supports their ideas. So a thicket is something to be eradicated and we will get groups of schoolchildren to carve a path so that all you see are the are stems of trees and nothing below but the cold, hard ground.

This vision is supposed to make people feel safe but actually cuts away and mystery and perspective in the design of parks so that Potter’s field park looks decidedly like an urban dystopia rather than a reflection of nature. Nature is now something to be controlled in size and rendered totally controlled and antiseptic. Little of course is said about the effect it has on wildlife. Some species such as blackbirds relish the environment of low shrubs which afford them protection ad safety. Such things are forgotten in the endless search for sanitization.