Wednesday 5 June 2013

An open letter to Mary Portas


Dear Mary,

I am writing to express my profound disappointment at your decision to offer a one week internship at your Portas communication agency as an auction lot to the pupils of Westminster School.

The lot offers ‘the opportunity to take up a one week internship this summer at [the] London based brand communication agency, Portas’ to the highest bidder. This letter will argue, in the strongest possible terms, that the auctioning of prestigious internships and work experiences is a harmful and immoral practice. Commodifying work placements in this way acts to entrench existing privilege, disadvantage worthy applicants from lower social stratas and promote the notion that one should pay, rather than be paid, for the privilege of 
working.



As a leading broadcaster and journalist in the field of retail and business, you will understand that an internship with your Portas agency gives a significant boost to the CV and the personal confidence of anyone lucky enough to undertake one. We live in a time when, for young people entering competitive fields of employment, internships are increasingly crucial in achieving success.

You have gained considerable respect for your rise from a Saturday job at John Lewis to your position as a formidable businesswoman and respected thinker on retail businesses. To rise as you have done, from a position as a part-time shop assistant to the pinnacle of your profession, makes you a true exemplar of self-created success. As is well documented, you achieved your success entirely through your own volition, having lost both parents at a young age.

This is why it is so disappointing that you would choose to bestow even a single internship on a young person on the basis of their parents’ ability to pay. The auction site, operated by Westminster School, accepts bids on internships at Portas and a host of other top-flight businesses. The school states that the primary reason for this is to raise funds for ‘its expanding Bursary Programme as well as cover the expense of the new facilities’.

This is an utterly disingenuous basis for conducting the auction. Recipients of Westminster’s bursary scheme are very unlikely to have family wealth sufficient to bid for the Portas placement, so the auctions designed to raise money for poorer Westminster pupils still manage to disadvantage them in comparison to their well-heeled classmates. If anything, auctions such as this will reiterate to bursary pupils that though they attend Westminster through the grace and generosity of wealthy families, they will never quite attain the possibilities and privileges of those families and their offspring. All this is, of course, to say nothing about the effect of purchased privileges on ordinary state school pupils without family wealth or connections.

Many young people, especially in the artistic and creative industries, toil in interminable unpaid internships to gain necessary experience. Still others are barred from certain professions forever because they cannot afford to work unpaid and gain the experience required. You did not create this trend, but by making work experience with Portas an auction lot, you perpetuate and promote the idea that working is a privilege which one might do unpaid, or for which one might even pay, rather than a right for which one ought always to be paid.

Make no mistake, this auction was wrong. Even if it was conducted for the school’s ‘charitable’ purposes, it was wrong. Even if every other intern at Portas has acquired their place through merit alone, the act of auctioning off a place was morally wrong, and an insult to the very many ambitious and deserving young people who would have relished it.

If you wish to use internships at Portas to promote charitable causes, I would like to draw your attention to a fantastic charity called the Social Mobility Foundation. The SMF provides prestigious internships and mentoring to high-achieving but low-income pupils. The connections and experiences they gain through the SMF enable them to more effectively compete with pupils such as those at Westminster, who have benefited from wealth, social connections and nepotism. I know that the SMF would be delighted to work with you to help bright and deserving pupils, and I urge you to get in touch.

I hope you will join me and many like-minded people in working towards a fairer, more equal and meritocratic culture of employment. It requires bold and brilliant businesspeople such as yourself to make a crucial stand against all forms of bought advantage, nepotism and financial barriers to professions. I would like to end on the words of another respected businessperson and entrepreneur, ex-Dragon’s Den star James Caan:

“What I have found myself is when you take people on [who are] not from privileged backgrounds they tend to be more driven, they are more motivated, they have more to prove and generally can be an asset to an organisation.”

It’s not just about fairness. It’s also plain old business.

Thursday 2 May 2013

Versions of the North: Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry

Two of my poems, 'Brighton Pier' and 'Gloomy Sunday', have been published in Versions of the North, an anthology published by radical publishing house Five Leaves Press. I was delighted and honoured to attend the Leeds launch and be published alongside eminent poets such as Ian Parks, Ian Duhig and Helen Mort.



Copies can be purchased here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Versions-North-Contemporary-Yorkshire-Poetry/dp/1907869743

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Chugging Hell





Shortlisted for the columnist competition on ideastap.com, February 2013.

For the average person perusing their local high street, little is more traumatic than accidentally making eye contact with a crocodile-smiled clipboard wielder just ahead. As he or she strides amiably towards you as if they’d known you all your life, you feel a sudden desire to become one with the pavement.

Tabloids have gifted us with the word ‘chugging’, a portmanteau of ‘charity’ and ‘mugging’, to encapsulate this socially awkward experience. Just as with the zombie apocalypse, we know the chuggers are coming for us with their shining eyes and uniform of cagoule and eerily white Converse, yet we are woefully unprepared when that day arrives. Whilst opinion polls show that up to 80% of interviewees were against the use of paid street fundraisers, chugging remains one of the most lucrative forms of charity fundraising, with an average return of £3 for the charity for every £1 spent on hiring chuggers. For all the people who rush past, mumble excuses into their socks, or even step in front of traffic to avoid chuggers, plenty of folks do stop. And of those, a fair few commit themselves to direct debits which run, on average, for 5 years. In a recession where charitable giving has fallen off a cliff, this long-term commitment is crucial to many charities’ survival. This is perhaps why there seem to be more chuggers than ever before.

It is that peculiar guilt and fear we feel at walking on by that is utilised by chuggers. Unless you spend your spare time thinking up hilarious and witty retorts to use on chuggers such as ‘Chug off’ and ‘Curb your enthusiasm’, or you can sprint like Jessica Ennis, you might not be able to avoid it. But isn’t it a little odd that we feel this way?  We know that chuggers are often skint and desperate students rather than people with a profound calling towards the tertiary sector. Heck, many of us have friends who have chugged for a living. One of mine attested to how grim it is: ‘Essentially you don’t do the job unless you’re really broke/desperate for work and you live under constant fear of being fired. People would turn up for work, do half an hour and be sent home. It was brutal. The senior fundraiser managers are on huge salaries.’ So while it’s wrong to assume that everyone who chugs for money wouldn’t give their ‘free’ time for charity, the training given to paid chuggers doesn’t exactly promote altruism.  My friend put it more succinctly: ‘You had to be a wanker to get by’.

We’ve lost the plot if charity, a tool for socio-economic wellbeing, is contracted out to companies who use financial uncertainty and aggressive tactics to cow their young staff. But the public anger tells us there’s nothing at all wrong with our cultural sense of fair play. We can use our very British embarrassment at the current situation to build a better future for fundraising. We can give our regular support, financial or otherwise, directly to charities. There is a world of volunteer schemes, fundraising events and community projects out there. We can take charity back from parasitic managers on bloated charities. Let’s chug off and do it.