Labour's hijack of the mansion tax is a victory for the party, whatever the result of today's vote
Ed Miliband looking unusually triumphant
Labour’s sudden conversion to the mansion tax cause could be that rumoured beast: a One Nation Labour policy. A real, One Nation-values espousing policy. The sort of concrete, saleable idea eagerly anticipated by party activists, who can now rejoice in the hope of more where that came from. By stealing a Liberal Democrat flagship policy to partially fund the return of the 10p tax rate, Labour may have just pulled off a political coup. Read full article at Total Politics magazine.
You've finally graduated, with a good combined degree in Humanities and Other Useless Studies. You spent your university years relatively well. You played sport for a team, you joined an orchestra. You had a social life. You're reasonably well rounded, and entirely sure that you can a: answer the telephone, b: send an "email" and c: talk to people without accidentally saying "cunt". Ready to take on the adult world of employment.
But the glorious, hopeful summer has now turned to October, and you're sitting in your parents' kitchen in yesterday's pants with a mysterious crust on your face (this bears no relation to my own life, I'm totally fine. Having a great time, actually). You're on your fifth cup of instant coffee and its only ten in the morning. You're flicking through the same unpromising job ads that you've seen every day this week. Most of them tell you neither what the job is nor who it would be for, but they do use plenty of fun, meaningless phrases like "self starter".
The fortnightly trips to the job centre take on a nightmarish air. The night before sign-on day you wake up in your sleep, soaked in sweat. Will you be able to convince the sceptical woman behind the desk that you are worthy of this week's £56.25? Difficult to say, when passing the test to keep your benefits depends on you accepting individual blame for the failings of the political system.
Of course, there's always an opening in recruitment consulting, bribing other people into becoming recruitment consultants. If you don't think about it hard enough, maybe you won't notice that its an empty, self-perpetuating job cycle created to give desperate graduates something to do. Sometimes these consultants even call you up, deliberately ignoring whatever sector it is you marked as desirable on your CV:
Consultant: "Would you like a mind-numbingly boring job that you have absolutely no interest in?"
You: "No, thank you kindly"
Consultant: "You are clearly a benefits scrounging loser. I read about your kind in the Telegraph."
I've never had a conversation like that, but it's only a matter of time.
In any case, from one work-shy feckless job-seeker to another, here are my five top tips for getting a job. They have served me admirably well in the past:
1. Start your cover letter thus:
"Dear Company,
I have no idea who you are or what you do, but frankly the position advertised is an insult to someone of my abilities. Obviously I am capable of filing, answering the telephone, and making tea. During my degree I had to write essays about dialectical materialism, for fuck's sake. Please, please, please give me this job, I really need the money."
2. Apply for unpaid internships. When they offer them to you ask if they'll pay you. If not, turn them down in an outraged email railing against slave labour, linking them to the wikipedia page for the principle of "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work". Repeat.
3. Turn down any job offers you receive. If they're offering you a job, it can't be that great a job. What's wrong with them? (See: Groucho Marx)
4. Write intimidating speculative applications to companies who don't have job openings. Threaten to leave the country if they don't create a job for you. Why should multi-billion pound businesses receive favorable treatment?
5. Whenever friends, parents, partners or bloggers try to give you well-meant job advice, laugh long and loudly. You have no need of their advice! Have you not sent five thousand applications this very week! Do you not have as much chance as anyone else of landing the BBC Director-General job (as and when George Entwistle vacates it)? Shout all these things aggressively, then cry and run out of the room.
My first print publication is out! It takes the form of a chapter in a book entitled Regeneration, mainly edited by Guy Shrubsole and Clare Coatman, but edited a bit more by Ben Little and Shiv Malik. It's primarily a book about intergenerational justice - proposing solutions (to pervert a favourite Tory phrase) to 'this mess we've inherited'. The first print run has already sold out, which suggests to me that it's bloody good.
My chapter is called "The Feminist Evolution: Queer Feminism for the Next Generation". It has little to do with intergenerational justice, but much to do with how feminists might - and are - reconfiguring the movement in opposition to both new and old problems.
To adopt a queer approach to gender is to recognise that transgression, subversion and play are kinds of anti-normative political activism that can also disrupt existing gender hierarchies. One person born with a body called ‘female’ assuming the trappings of masculinity is unlikely to change any government policy about women as a class, but neither was the vote won by one women chaining herself to the railings of Westminster. In time-honoured suffragette style, the more people who, by manipulating gender, expose cultural dogma about men and women for what it is – arbitrary and abusive – the more the binary line dividing ‘M’ from ‘F’ trembles.
My chapter is on p.70 - but the whole book is very much worth a read. Feedback on my ideas also very much appreciated.
