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Spectator
30-07-2025
- Spectator
Make teenage summer jobs compulsory
I'm of an age where a summer's evening often means a few gin and tonics on my balcony along with cheese, olives and an Etta James soundtrack. But it wasn't that long ago that the slow descent of the amber orb meant trekking into Chester city centre to catch a minibus that would take me to a shampoo factory on the outskirts of Flint. There, from 9 p.m. until 7 a.m., my job was to screw the tops on to bottles of shampoo and conditioner to a soundtrack of scatological invective from my workmates, broken only by a 2 a.m. canteen break for cigarettes and a semi-melted KitKat. I endured this for three nights a week between finishing my A-levels and going to university, knowing while I stood at the frequently malfunctioning conveyor belt that some of my mates would at that very moment be boozing in beer gardens and attempting to snog girls to the strains of Pulp and Blur in Raphael's indie disco back in Chester. I was 18, but I'd been working since I was 12 and a half – the age I got my first paper round delivering exactly 144 (that number will never leave my memory) copies of the Chester Standard after school to houses, far too many of which were guarded by dogs seemingly professionally trained to attack children representing the bottom rung of the local press. The canine attacks were frightening and the shampoo bottles were sticky, but the money I earned ensured that I was never short of football stickers and, latterly, pints of Boddingtons. More importantly, doing these horrible jobs as a teenager instilled two important lessons in me. Firstly, you do actually take a pride in getting a wage packet, no matter how vile the work. Secondly, these forms of employment acted as a stern cautionary tale: if I didn't crack on with my studies, then I could be doing this kind of toil for the rest of my life. This was all three decades ago. But as a disabled, state-schooled northerner in the world of London media, I've long stopped feeling incredulous at the reactions of my more privileged brethren when I tell them about those odious teen jobs. I'm painfully aware of the potential to sound like Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times so I've never laid it on too thick with my tales of northern manual labour; after all, doing a paper round and a factory job isn't the same as a career spent down a deep cast mine. But, to many of those I have shared my quotidian, minimum-wage tales with, it seems that I have emerged straight from a chapter of The Road To Wigan Pier, only minus the flat cap and rickets. Am I jealous of their ability to eschew ever having had a summer job – chiefly thanks to the Bank of Mummy and Daddy? Yes, of course. But I also know my soul is purer from having had little choice but to work from a young age. As a result, I'm far less likely to miss a work deadline because it's 'all been a bit frantic here lately' or, most nauseating of all, 'because I've been a bit under the weather'. I've been staggered to discover, from my fiancée's 16-year-old son, just how few of his classmates are working, or even being pressured by parents into getting some kind of summer job – whether it be doing an internship or simply earning a crust at a McDonald's drive-through or at an Amazon warehouse. To sail into university and then into your chosen career without ever having known what it's like to tolerate a summer job is a dangerous way to enter your twenties. You will be more entitled. You will have less resilience. You are far more likely to develop confused, patronising or downright pejorative views about people who have less well-paid work than yourself. And you really won't have the same grasp of the value of a ten pound note. You don't have to travel far these days to find much bloviating around the 'snowflake' attitude of today's teens. And while any legislated insistence on 16- to 18-year-olds procuring a summer job of some kind is hardly the equivalent to demanding the reinstatement of national service, there probably should be consequences for the in-betweeners who decide to spend their summer gaming and guzzling rather than doing at least a moderate amount of grafting. So, without wishing to sound too much like one of the Four Yorkshiremen from Monty Python, I humbly suggest that, if you have done no work at all between the end of your GCSEs and the start of university (and work could include anything from volunteering to a lengthy internship or just sweating it out behind the till at Lidl), then this should count against you when it comes to getting into your chosen university. This could quite easily be accomplished. A few pay stubs or a letter from an employer stating that you have held down a job of some kind should be included with a university application. (Oh, and getting a family member to say that young Toby or Cordelia worked as an intern at Dad's company absolutely won't cut it.) If choosing to party in Ibiza on mum and dad's money can make the difference between getting into either Balliol or the University of Bolton, then teens might find that earning a crust for at least part of their summer is worth the strain. Are there jobs available for 16- to 18-year-olds? Yes, of course – and any claim otherwise should be robustly dismissed by parents if hollered at them by a truculent teen. There is a recruitment crisis in the realms of catering, hospitality and manual work in this country. Many of the jobs are zero hours, many of them come via an agency and almost none of them are well paid. But any teen can get one. As I found myself, nothing works better for scaring you straight than the notion that a lack of academic effort could result in the foreman at a North Wales shampoo factory offering you a job, and I quote, 'full time, if things don't work out, Rob'. So far (and I'm 47 now), they have worked out. But the memory of screwing on those bottle tops at 3 a.m. in 1996 is palpable. Every young man or woman, if they ever feel complacent in their first post-graduation career job, should be able to summon up the smell of chip fat, the weight of a beer barrel or the mephitic odour of cheap shampoo in their leaner moments. A tough summer job isn't for life. But the memory and experience of one is capable, over the succeeding decades, of making you graft harder, make excuses less easily and, just maybe, make you a little more grateful for what you now have.
International Business Times
21-04-2025
- International Business Times
British Woman Avoids Jail After Forging DNA Tests, Leading Ex to Believe He was Father of Their Child for Two Years
A British woman was sentenced for fraud after she falsely led her ex-boyfriend to believe he was the father of their child for two years. As reported by the Chester Standard, On Tuesday, Beth Fernley, of Wroxham Road, Great Sankey, was handed a 13-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months due to her being the primary carer for her daughter. Fernley Forged Paternity Test Claiming Her Ex was the Child's Father, After Two Years Said DNA Company Mixed Up Lab Results Fernley faked DNA results indicating that there was a 99.9 per cent chance that Ryan Hampson, who she had recently broken up with, was the father of her unborn child. However, after acting as a father figure to who he thought was his biological daughter for over two years, Fernley, in another "sinister lie," told him she was informed by the DNA company that they had the laboraty results mixed up and he was not the father of the child. It turned out that the child's father was, in fact, a man Fernley had cheated on Hampson with during their relationship. Hampson 'Torn Apart,' Grieving For a Child No Longer in His Life After Caring for the Child for Two Years On Tuesday, April 15, Liverpool Crown Court heard how Hampson grieves for a child who is no longer a part of his life. He read out a victim impact statement in which he said how his world was "torn apart" when he was told he was not the father of a baby he had raised for more than two years. "Without the support of my family and friends, I genuinely believe I would not be here today," Hampson said. "The thought of seeing her [the child] in public fills me with dread as I grieve for a child that is no longer in my life. "The trauma I have experienced is something I would not wish upon anyone, even my worst enemy," he added. Judge: 'Perpetuation of Sinister Dishonesty' Judge Andrew Menary described Fernley's offending as a "perpetuation of sinister dishonesty." He said: "The label for the charge fraud by false representation does not reveal the particular dreadful nature of the offences you have committed." "Until March 18 of this year, you had in large measures lied to everybody about all of this," he continued. "This was a particularly dreadful offence that has had a profound impact on many people, not only the victim himself but his immediate family who believed they were aunties, grandparents and so on of the baby. "The offence will also have an effect on the child because there was a time when she believed that someone was her father. Whether it began out of some sense of apprehension or because you were keen to create some sort of perfect family, it is hard for me to understand." "For no good reason at all, you started about a course of action involving repeated dishonesty and deceit," he noted. "When the police became involved you lied and lied and lied, then when you came to this court you lied. It was a perpetuation of sinister dishonesty." Fernley must complete up to 10 rehabilitation activity requirement days as well as 200 hours of unpaid work. She must also pay £300 to Mr Hampson in compensation.
