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  • pray tell me which accent or accents are a total bar to any kind of employment?

    A little while ago I had the stunning good fortune to find myself in Barking Job Centre. It's a magical place, filled with the poor, the uneducated, the fuckups - the types of people who apparently consider paid employment beneath them.

    I listened to this kid, couldn't have been more than 16 or 17, standing at the job computers, calling job after job on his phone, and getting knocked back for every single one of them.

    Why? Because no matter what job he called, none of them want to employ someone who has a rudeboy accent.

    And you can't say that this kid has a choice about how to talk, when you grow up on estates EVERYONE under 20 talks like that. EVERYONE. Those who don't mark themselves as victims and nothing more. This kid had no idea that this was why he was getting knocked back, and unless these kids have something to go for they never will.

    I went to school until I was 16, did my exams, was a smart kid. I paid attention and even though I was in a shitty comprehensive in east london, I did OK until I was about 14, when I started getting beaten up, my bike taken, what have you. It didn't stop until I started running with a crew of kids who'd nick cars and fuck anyone up who talked shit about us. And I wasn't a bad kid, but the baseline of any human being is safety - unless you're safe you cannot progress onward to anything else.

    Left school with some shitty exam results and went straight to work in a warehouse in Barking. I did that job for £8,000 PA for a year and a half and were it not for the fact that I met a girl who helped me get a job in media, I'd still be there, working with sociopaths, wife beaters and scum.

    I went back to Dagenham the other day and saw a mate of mine. His best friend, a guy we all used to buy acid from back when we were grunge kids, is currently in prison for 15 years for stabbing another mate of ours through the heart with a screwdriver. Over nothing, btw, some pub argument. That guy was smarter than I was, funnier too, more resourceful. He just didn't get the break I got.

    You can libertarian it up you want but there for the grace of god go I. And, if you had any imagination, you as well.

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