05/27/2009: "could you live like this?"

you come from an area where there have been 3 stabbings in the past week, one of them right outside your mum's front garden.
you have a small bedsit, provided by a "company"
in return for this accomodation, you must work on a "training course" for 8 weeks.

the training course consists of:
being driven to a city hundreds of miles away then staying there for a week - from that city each day you are dropped off in surrounding towns without any maps etc, with a bag as heavy as you are, to knock on doors and sell household products like dusters/tea towels, at way above the prices you can get them in a local pound shop.

if you sell 6 items a day, you get 50% off that weeks cost of your accomodation.
if you dont, you pay the full going rate for your accomodation.

you are dropped off at 8 in the morning in each town, and picked up at 1pm, miss the van and you are left there.
no breaks, no shelter, no toilet, etc.

if you dont sell anything, then nothing to eat that day.
oh and did i mention, if you dare to say anything the van driver doesnt like you are left by the side of the road where the van stops.... could be a motorway, a service station, a street, in any part of the UK. without any means of getting home.

i met one such person today... tracey (ive changed her name)
she knocked on my door, soaked to the skin, she cant have been any older than 16.
tracey comes from a big city in the north of england, i invited her in out of the pouring rain to show me what she was selling and to get out of the rain.
the bag she was humping around was bigger than her, i made her a drink, then had a look through what stuff she had.

she told me she was in wales yesterday and that last week, the van driver didnt like what one of the girls said to him, so he stopped on the hard shoulder, ordered another girl to beat her up, then drove off and left both of them at the side of the road!

i asked about her going back home with mum and dad, she didnt really get on with her dad but was close to her mum, i suggested that she seriously consider going back to mum and dad, she said she was seriously thinking about it, as her first week doing this sales lark was getting her down.
i pointed out where the "jam butty" (rich estates) were in the area, gave her a packet of cigarettes i had and she thanked me for buying some tea towels, and off she went, back out into the pouring rain.

this is the real side of how the UK treats its young people.
how can people live like this?
living in fear and being exploited, used for profit and dumped on?

in 2009 there are people in your area living like this, poor people are not in the news like they were in the 1980s, they are put on schemes like this so they are out of the public eye, all to often lately, if you dont know about them, you cant ask awkward questions about them and make those in power accountable.

gordon brown has been speaking on this very subject this morning, promising that "no young person will be left on the streets like they were in the 70s and 80s"
no gordon, they will instead be shipped around the country in vans and forced to sell cheap products, at higher prices, or they cannot eat or afford to live in rented accomodation, and your party will stand by whist this happens and do precisely NOTHING!

the exploitation of anyone (young or old) is wrong, this could so easily be my son or daughter knocking on stranger's doors!