We have failed our young

There are no jobs out there that pay a living wage. Kids are okay while they are at home with parents paying the bills but they cannot afford to save up to buy a place of their own. After waiting years for social housing maintaining these tenancies on Job Seekers Allowance or a low wage is reducing living to existence.

I recently had to help a lad on Job seekers to turn a little flat he was given into a home. Due to sofa surfing and low wages he had no money to buy furniture so I tried to get help for him. There was nothing out there in the way of a one off grant. There were various loans, but it would have been fatal to take one of these with all the other bills the lad would have to pay.

I calculated gas, electric, water and the bedroom tax and was left wondering how the lad would eat and clothe himself. I took him in my car to look for work but when wages were talked about after all the bills had been paid and getting to work factored in he was not much better off, but had the worry of losing the job or having his hours cut and not being able to keep his home going.

The TV licence fee was a massive problem and seemed obscene when you look at the salaries and pay offs given to people at the BBC on the back of the poor threatened with even jail for not having a licence.

The same goes for so many people in public life who grant themselves massive wages while over-seeing charities or being on committees and quangos. It is like going back hundreds of years to the robber barons or even to the thirties when we marched for the right to work.

Some of my grandkids have chosen to go to uni — again a massive debt to pay and again not the guarantee of a well-paid job at the end of it.

I waited outside a foodbank the other day for  a person who had nothing to eat and it was a Godsend for them, but for a country like ours to resort to this is a disgrace.

I feel we have failed and betrayed our kids and when at the same stage I could walk out of a job on a Friday and start a new one on Monday they have no such chances.

We have not even given these kids hope as what few jobs are available will be snapped up come the new year when more of the world’s poorest will flock to this already over-crowded island.

I do not know how all these people who rob, con and screw the working class sleep at night.

Marlene Guest, Old School Close, Greasbrough