I have sympathy with St Paul's protesters
10:45am Friday 11th November 2011 in Colin Baker By Colin Baker
I DON’T envy the young people entering the world of employment that our generation has created for them.
When I left drama school, work was by no means guaranteed, but we all knew that if the notoriously fickle entertainment industry couldn’t offer us work, there were plenty of other short- term employment opportunities to tide us over to pay the rent. During my early years as an actor, I worked at various times as a hardware shop assistant, low-loader driver, taxi driver, opinion pollster, shirt seller, house-painter and cleaner. My competence in those roles was varied, which was reflected in the amount of time I was allowed to continue doing some of them. But without the opportunity to earn between acting jobs, I may well have not been able to continue in that profession.
Now, there is so much competition for every job that an actor ‘filling-in’ would not be a very attractive prospect for most employers.
There are too many people chasing long-term, full-time work. As a result more and more young people are still living with their parents long after my generation had left home, usually for rented accommodation for a few years before comparatively easily getting their first mortgage.
Today, even people on good salaries need to raise such a large percentage of the purchase price of even the most modest home as a deposit, that the prospect of them becoming home owners is receding way beyond the age we were able to do it.
Selfishly, I am not unhappy that my four daughters are still in residence and I don’t have to deal with the empty nest syndrome. It is another sign of the age in which we live, but my relationship with my children is a lot less constrained than mine was with my parents. There were many areas of my life that I chose not to share with my widowed mother; but there are fewer fundamental no-go areas these days, which serves to make sharing a house with young adults less stressful.
It is only for their sake that I worry about the employment and financial future they face.
I find myself having some sympathy therefore with the young people who have chosen to confront the way capitalism has shaped their world by occupying the steps of St Paul’s.
Whether it will change anything is another matter.
