According to the BBC, there are over 3 million families in Britain that are regarded as “workless households”. *Reporter* Paula Dear interviews poverty dweller Elizabeth Malcolm, in order to get a better understanding of what life is like for the downtrodden and marginalized:

Elizabeth Malcolm, 43, has never had a job. She lives in a two-bedroom council flat in Glasgow with her three children, one grandchild, two cats and a hamster.

Neither of her two working-age children has a job.

She concedes that she doesn’t really know why she didn’t get a job, and that there was an element of just “not getting round” to it.

She doesn’t think school wanted her to stay on because she “wasn’t too bright” and used to bunk off a lot.

Without any qualifications she assumed she wasn’t able to follow her chosen path and join the Army. She never actually made it to the recruitment office to ask.

I’m trying to think if there are any positions at City Hall that Ms. Malcolm might fit into. Let’s see: She has never had a job and doesn’t have any actual skills–I suppose I could put her on the Human Rights tribunal.  Better yet, I could make her President of the CBC. She’d be perfect, especially considering that all she does all day is watch tv.

Danielle, Ms. Malcolm’s daughter, is also unemployed and on benefits. A single mother of one, Danielle has no technical skills, but would like to be trained as a beautician or a hairdresser:

“All my pals are looking for work as well. But it’s not that easy to get a job straight away, you’ve got to write out your CV and everything and then hand it in to places.”

I feel for Danielle, looking for work is a job in itself. You have to wake up in the morning, consult a newspaper or the internet, go out and drop your resume off, talk to people, blah blah blah. It’s too much, there has to be an easier way. Isn’t this why we have social workers, so they can do this sort of thing on behalf of the downtrodden?

There is still hope for Ms. Malcolm though. Hope springs eternal, hope can build a bridge, hope can save the world, dontchaknow:

She would agree, she says, with those who say it is “terrible” that taxpayers should be in the position of paying for those without work.

“I’m sorry they have to pay tax money to me. If I could get a job… give me a job then and I’ll work, and then they won’t have to pay me.”

She seems like an honest woman. When you think about it, she has never really been given a chance. When she left school she plum forgot to get a job, that could happen to anyone. Over the years she still forgot to get a job and now here she is at 42 with no job. Let’s face it, that’s not her fault, that’s the fault of society.

It’s obvious what needs to be done. There needs to be more social workers assigned to cases like this so disadvantaged and at-risk peoples like Ms Malcolm don’t fall through the cracks. The system is broken and only administrators, social workers, superintendents, race relation co-ordinators, diversity specialists, guidance councillors and women’s study experts can fix it.

A large, unfettered Bureaucracy is the only thing that can fix a broken society–that much is painfully obvious

Take a second and go vote for Mitchieville as Canada’s Best Humour Site–The Mayor thanks you

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 5:17 am and is filed under Workless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.