Elizabeth Malcolm, 43, has never had a job. She lives in a two-bedroom council flat in Glasgow with her three children, one grandchild, two cats and a hamster.
Neither of her two working-age children have a job.
The family is what the statistics gatherers call a "workless household" - one of three million in the country. In reality it's not quite so easy to put every jobless person into a neat little box. This is their story.
Elizabeth, known as "Biff" to family and friends, wishes now that she had got into work or college back in 1980, when she left school at 15.
It was hardly a great time to be a jobseeker, especially living in Easterhouse, a part of Glasgow long synonymous with deprivation and unemployment. But she concedes that she doesn't really know why she didn't get a job, and that there was an element of just "not getting round" to it.
She doesn't think school wanted her to stay on because she "wasn't too bright" and used to bunk off a lot.
Jesus wept. Didn't get round to it? It's the school's fault?
Neat little box, my festering cock: this is a bone-idle, scrounging and chav-rearing thief of my taxes.
Is that neat enough for you?
Update: Bobshead Revisited feels the same.
5 comments:
'I've been having panic attacks when I go out'
Hells Bells
"Without any qualifications she assumed she wasn't able to follow her chosen path and join the Army. She never actually made it to the recruitment office to ask."
Gaah!
You missed...
parasitic
slothful
feckless
wastrel
WV: DerSith!
Does not have to see the relationship between food on table roof over head & work.
I left school in 1980, joined the army had brief and inglorious army career, worked in engineering for a bit and am now a haulage manager. Have 2 kids (6 and 4) no grand kids as I waited till we could afford to pay for them oursleves. Women like this need sterilising to stop them bleeding the rest of us dry
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