Hi, Martin - the point I'm trying to get across is how easy it is for these visiting youngsters (even if the visits expand to several years!) to find work when they arrive. So why is it so apparently difficult for the young people you know to not do so also? If you say the many youngsters you know have been on State hand-outs since leaving education, then why is that so, when an Aussie backpacker can trail into a bistro, pick up a job in the kitchen, or serving, or even managing, within a few days after his (or her, of course) arrival? The comparison appears to be that they're willing to move around, willing to accept fairly low-level starter jobs, and have the attitude that if they're going to keep themselves alive (rather than the State), then they'd best get working.
So I don't see why one shouldn't raise the comparison, which is quite appropriate, of why non-British youngsters can easily slot themselves into our economy, and British youngsters - well, those you describe, anyway - loll around bemoaning their fate, while presumably indulging in expensive and self-destructive habits? What is this rock and a hard place that thousands of jobless young people are between? Would the rock be the lack of desire to shift themselves to areas where there are jobs (hence Gareth's 'on yer bike' remark) and the hard place that they live in shitty areas/estates - which, if they would show a bit of gumption and get on their metaphorical bikes and go where's there's work, wouldn't be a factor.
You seem to be saying that the only thing for Britain's young girls to do is to get pregnant, and for its young boys to do is to either take drugs or panhandle them. Well, I've lived in areas of the UK where there are some pretty godawful estates, but what holds people down in them is their refusal to train, or to re-train, or to move away from Mum, Dad, Gran and their old school pals. If they're not willing to take the risk to shift around a bit, then they have only their rock-like mentality to blame for not getting jobs where they exist. As for dealing in drugs - there's no excuse for this other than greed and stupidity. If you saw the truly awful poverty of many countries around the world (as against the don't-care muckiness and self-imposed slovenliness of our so-called sink estates), then yes, there's certainly an appeal to better one's awful conditions (15 kids, two-room slum huts made of cardboard, no clean water, no electricity, etc.) if you're offered the job as a look-out, a mule, or a dealer. Certainly, the Cali cartel in Colombia has done wonders for such communities, raising them out of the gutters to which the country's corrupt and overbearing government consigned them. The top drugs bosses have built schools, hospitals, neo-natal clinics, roads, installed electricity and running water, and improved the health of villagers immensely - thanks to dopers like the young people you mention. But as for our young people, with free education offered (which is a hopeless dream for millions of young gutter kids all over the Third World), free medical services (ditto), and endless post-education training schools (ditto again), sorry, but I've no sympathy for the lazy little dossers.
