Getting a graduate job is the bane of existence for many final year students including myself. Getting rejected after going through dozens of time consuming online judgements tests and interviews is tough to take and leaves you feeling like there isn’t much hope left for your future. I’ve been in that position for the last few months where every graduate scheme or job I apply for seems like a never ending blackhole with no acceptance in sight. This worry for your future becomes even worse when newspapers are publishing articles regularly with titles such as ‘UK employers will offer fewer entry level jobs in 2020, figures suggest’ (Makortoff K, The Guardian, 2020).

This kind of article is worrying, particularly for final year students like myself who know exactly how difficult it is to find a graduate job in a saturated market and just how competitive these jobs already are. The article uses research from the Institute of Student Employers’ (ISE) whose data found that recruiters were failing to hit their target’s by around 3% last year and this points to a potential stagnation across the jobs market and a slowdown of hiring school leavers in the months ahead.

The matter of stagnation in the market isn’t the only issue though according to Makortoff. She states that ‘many of the jobs created in the UK over the past decade are too senior for students fresh out of school or university’. Most of the jobs on offer are professional with around 500,000 low skilled jobs available out of 3.4 million compared to 2.5 million senior/professional jobs. (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/jan/06/uk-employers-fewer-entry-level-jobs-2020-survey)

But is this prediction of 2020 true? or am I just very unlucky in the graduate jobs market? I decided to investigate this issue of graduate jobs being in decline as well as graduates not moving jobs once they have found one. In order to do this, I did some interviews with students as well as economist Dr Balázs Muraközy.

I first interviewed final year students largely studying humanity subjects in the Sydney Jones Library based at the center of the University of Liverpool campus. Believe it or not, it wasn’t hard to find students struggling to find something to do after graduation. In fact, the first two students I spotted who featured in our radio segment had been talking about their struggles before I’d even come over to them. I interviewed 10 people in total and the answers from the students I interviewed were almost unanimous with 9 out of the 10 people saying that they have been rejected from two or more graduate jobs with one student studying history having been rejected from over 20!
Another unanimous trait was the belief that doing a masters was the only way to counteract the difficulties of trying to get a graduate job and more than one student told me that graduate schemes for the area they wanted to go into didn’t even exist.

But is this something we need to worry about? I interviewed Dr Balázs Muraközy to find out. His research is currently with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and development on the relationship between age and productivity, the research is only in the initial stages but points to a positive relationship between age diversity and productivity of businesses. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1748-8583.12011). Dr Muraközy says that young people will always be needed in industry and emphasizes the cyclical nature of this change rather than It being a long-term trend saying that students don’t need to worry about this as it may just be a trend that some companies are not able to invest currently but will be able to in the future.

I wanted to end this piece on a positive note. So far, I have spoken about the difficulties of finding a graduate job, the fact that competition may increase as employers reduce their graduate recruitment numbers and that students are worried about this future. But there is hope I assure you! there are services that can help with your job search and advise you on what you can do to better your chances in an interview or application. You could go and pay a visit to your academic advisor or speak to a recent graduate for example. I decided to pay a visit to the career’s office and interviewed Paul Gratrick about the worries surrounding third year students.

Paul insisted that it was normal to want to do a masters and pointed to the seasonality in graduate jobs market. He pointed out that a lot of graduate recruiters start searching for graduates again around graduation time so there are still options left. He also said that around 50% of applications get rejected for silly things that we can change for example spelling.

I asked him about the recent articles stipulating that graduates aren’t moving around as often as they used to. He told me that around 69% of graduates will stay in the region they are from and that most graduates will never work in London. Paul sits on the ISE research board and said that the study they did (in The Guardian article cited above) only accounted for a small proportion of companies that recruit graduates and that 20-25% of students go on to further study and more graduates are opening their own companies.

When asked about what the careers office could do to help students, Paul told me that The University of Liverpool has the first ever career studio introduced in the UK with career coaches. It is drop-in service for any student to go to for help with anything from applications to not knowing what you want to do. So, please go and pay them a visit if you are worried and need some guidance.

The final person I spoke to for this piece was Hannah, a politics graduate from 2016. I wanted to get a recent graduate’s perspective on this issue so reached out to her and she was happy to tell me her story in the hope that it will help others who are in a similar situation. She said that it was a struggle to find a job and that she didn’t actually start her graduate job until February 2017.
She said that in the time between university and finding a job she kept her barista job to ensure a steady income. Hannah told me that she definitely experienced the desire to give up as did many of her friends and that this wasn’t helped by the fact that she wasn’t 100% sure what she wanted to do. She stated that particularly with humanity degrees like politics, it is harder to find something than when you are in a set field as there isn’t a clear-cut option of what you should do for a career. She recalled that one of her friends that did the course ended up as a wedding planner! Hannah went into the private healthcare profession for her graduate job and said it gave her invaluable experience.

Hannah’s story really spoke to me as someone who is struggling currently to find a graduate job. Her resilience to keep trying to find a job that suited her and her ability to pick herself up even when she felt like giving up is something that is universal when experiencing rejections and trying to find where you fit in the world of work. It might take time and you might see no light at the end of the tunnel at times but there are many other people in the same position and whether it takes 1 year or 10 years, you will find something eventually.

Written by Megan Lyon
13/02/2020

“Our gun laws will change, now is the time … People will be seeking change, and I am committed to that.”

These were the words of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern following the deaths of 50 Mosque-goers in Christchurch on 15^th March at the hands of a white-nationalist.  This was the biggest fatal gun-attack witnessed in New Zealand’s history, the deaths of 13 people in Aramoana in 1990, and the previous mass shooting in 1997 in Raumiru, where 6 people were killed.

The Christchurch attack brought a truly peaceful nation to its knees as the rest of the world watched on in horror.

However, through the pain and suffering caused, New Zealand has recognised what has happened and has responded accordingly, to do justice to those who lost their lives.

The best way to do that? Gun reform.

Response

This is exactly what PM Ardern promised in the aftermath of the attacks.  Within 72 hours she had called for every semi-automatic weapon used in the attack to be banned.

The proposed legislation, which Ardern hopes to implement into law by 11^th April, also includes proposals for a gun buy-back program for military-style semi-automatic weapons (MSSAs).  She announced that MSSA owners will receive “fair and reasonable compensation” for weapons purchased legally and has set out a figure between NZ$100-NZ$200 million for buy-back scheme.

As of last year, some 15,000 of New Zealand’s 1.5 million firearms were military-style semi-automatic rifles. The minimum age to own a gun is 16, but for semi-automatics, New Zealanders must be at least 18. In the attack in March, the Christchurch shooter used two semi-automatic rifles, both of which he purchased legally online.

The Australian Example: A case for optimism?

In terms of inspiration, New Zealand will see a plethora of developed nations which have themselves witnessed mass gun violence, have acted in response, and have achieved positive change.

Perhaps the best example took place just 3,000 miles away in New Zealand’s Antipodean neighbour, Australia.  In 1996 in Port Arthur, Tasmania, a lone gunman left 35 people dead and 18 seriously wounded by firing a military-style semi-automatic rifle.

Australia’s response? A mere 12 days after the shootings, in John Howard’s first major act of leadership as Prime Minister, his government announced nationwide gun law reform.

This included the banning of rapid-fire rifles and shotguns; gun ownership licensing was tightened and remaining firearms were required to be registered to uniform national standards.  The introduction of a comprehensive registration and licensing system made the requirements for owning a gun much tougher. A mandatory buy-back scheme resulted in at least 600,000 guns being handed over to the authorities.

Howard and his government met significant dissent, especially within Conservative interest groups, but the majority of Australians, shocked and appalled by what had taken place, backed the proposals.

Dissent is something Ardern will surely experience, considering New Zealand’s powerful gun lobby and its connections to the country’s hunting and farming communities.

But has action in Australia worked? Undoubtedly.

In the two decades before the law changed, there were 13 mass shootings.  In the last 20 years there have been just two mass shootings where four or more people were killed.

It is this kind of recognition, response and reform that New Zealand will surely hope to replicate itself.

What can we expect in New Zealand? Will it be 4^th time lucky?

Although it is extremely encouraging to see swift and immediate action in response to the events in Christchurch, New Zealand’s track record on gun reform is not promising.

In her first address following the attacks, Ardern referred to previous attempts to change gun laws in New Zealand on three separate occasions: in 2005, 2012 and most recently in 2017.

Ominously, there has not been a significant change in New Zealand’s gun laws for more than 26 years.  This does not provide great cause for optimism.

This is why Australia’s example is so important.  The statistics don’t lie and Australia has undeniably seen positive change.

Hopefully, New Zealand will see the same.

James Rowan

By Casey Burgess

It’s the most wonderful time of year again. While Christmas Trees are being decorated, there is a very serious debate raging.

The centre of this debate is the song “Fairy-tale of New York” by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, released in 1988, which still holds its ground at the top of people’s favourite all time Christmas songs.

What could possibly be controversial about a Fairy-tale in New York? One of the lines, often the most famous (or infamous, depending on your view) is “you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy faggot.”

Now, this is where the centre of our debate lies. Faggot is a reclaimed word by the LGBTQ+ community, with it being an incredibly vicious slur often hurled at queer people. Does the fact that it appears in a somewhat outdated song mean it’s OK for heterosexual people to say it?

The answer? No. The reasoning behind this is not the “snowflake” generation taking offence to every little thing that they don’t like. The reasoning is based in power dynamics, gender politics, sexuality and hateful murder.

There is absolutely no circumstance in which a person who does not identify as LGBTQ+ needs ever to utter the word. There is also no circumstance in which people are referring to “lazy Irish people” or “a bundle of sticks”.

The word did mean a bundle of sticks, but that meaning is obsolete. When it did mean that, however, the “faggots” would be placed under a suspected homosexual and set alight.

Bringing the point back to the song, the debate centres round two tenants. Whether it is OK to censor the word in the song and whether it is OK for straight people to sing that particular word.

The Pogues frontman and writer of the song, Shane McGowan, has said that it is OK to censor the word if it does make people uncomfortable. He adds that it was not intended in a homophobic way, but instead used to portray the character that Kirsty MacColl played as a deplorable person.

The reactionary right-wing media, and even some moderates and liberals, would have you believe that the censoring of this word is snowflake political correctness gone mad. It is anything but this. What this is, is compassion.

Queer people often have a tough time around Christmas due to family issues around their sexuality or gender identity, and the entire family gathered round with cans in hand singing a queer slur is hardly going to make it comfortable for them.

Similarly, the word faggot has been shouted at many queer men and trans women when being violently assaulted, raped and even murdered. Do their tragic stories, lost lives and broken bones mean nothing to heterosexual people?

This word is reclaimed. It is reclaimed by those who felt powerless, embracing a label to make sure it was defined on our terms and used in our community.

There are three hundred and one words in the song “Fairy-tale of New York.” Three hundred and one. Is it too much to ask, given queer blood has been spilled with that word being the last thing they ever hear, that you miss out one word? One. Single. Word.

That is one thing that the queer community asks you for this Christmas. Be a good ally. Don’t make excuses. Skip the slur.

The UK’s railways are quite frankly not fit for purpose. Passengers regularly face delays, cancellations, and overcrowding on an outdated rail network. This makes for even worse reading, when rail fares are set to rise by 3.1% to next year, which will accumulate to a whopping 37% increase in fares in the past decade.

It is current Labour party policy that if elected, they would renationalise the railways, but would bringing the railways back into public ownership bring lower prices and better service?

The case for renationalisation

There is good reason to support the case for nationalisation. Privatisation has put an onus on business performance over service. For example, the infamous Southern rail fully or partly cancelled more than 58,000 of its services in 2016, in that same year collecting profits of £100 million. The bottom line is that profit comes first for train franchises, and the customer comes second.

Bowman (2015) makes a thought-provoking point, suggesting that the UK railways are in no meaningful sense privatised. Bowman argues that extensive subsidies are being channelled through network rail, and have enabled backers of the current system to maintain their narratives about the successes of privatisation. If you consider that most of the railway is already nationalised: “three-quarters of the industry – the track, signalling and big stations – are already under public control“, then are train franchises simply profiteering off of the work of the state?

Could renationalisation  empower the people? Public ownership would enable the public to regain the power to hold the government to account for the quality of service provided. Earlier this year, a BMG poll found that 64% of people supported renationalising the railways.

The case against renationalisation

For all the possibilities, there is always the chance that the grass isn’t always greener. Putting the railways fully under public control will once again put the railways in competition with other services for funding; that means a battle with the NHS, education, and other vital infrastructure such as roads, houses etc.

Privatisation has seen passengers double, and a host of new trains put into service. The Rail delivery Group said on the 30th November that we can expect “7,000 new carriages, supporting 6,400 extra services a week by 2021″. Would this sort of investment be feasible, when it would be in competition with other key areas for finite public resources?

Renationalisation also potentially harms large-scale projects that are attempting to address the growing number of commuters. For all its critics, and there are many, HS2 is going ahead, with work starting in only the past couple of months.  The £55 billion high-speed rail network will “add almost 15,000 seats an hour on trains between London and the cities of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds – treble the current capacity“.

Admittedly, the the fruits of this project won’t be felt until the end of 2026 at the earliest, but renationalisation could throw HS2 into doubt, and the reality would be that despite its faults, Britain’s railways would once again be left in limbo.

Where does this leave us?

As Brexit continues to overwhelmingly saturate the news sphere, it will be difficult to gain traction for the renationalisation argument in the near future. This is unless Labour won a general election next year, which due to Brexit is by no means a complete impossibility. In sum, renationalisation is probably too great a change to incur in the near future, given the instability the UK currently faces.

Then again, critics would argue there is never a good time for such a major overhaul. The faults of the railway’s past doesn’t forebode its future if the UK decided to go down this route. There is no one solution that can guarantee improvement, but as the voices of public discontent rise in opposition to the current situation, support for public ownership of the UK’s railways will continue to grow. Something will have to give sooner or later.

Chris Lomas