When I was very young, future jobs, careers and career progression were seen as something you started and continued in, as you were, for life.   Microsoft CoPilot Designer powered by DALL-E 3 You chose your profession or your life direction and it was set in stone. A job for life until you retire with your pension. That very quickly and dramatically changed as job security became more precarious and a job was no longer 'a job for life' . It became something more fluid and changeable and something quite alien. I would say it was easier as an 80s child because the huge shifts happened parallel to our childhood, so by the time we entered it as adults, it was the norm. The History of the UK Job Market In the UK, under Thatcher, there were mass factories closures and policies that weakened trade unions. It's been 40 years since the coal miner strikes, ending in the majority of coal mines closing. There were 20,000 jobs losses and coal-mining communities were left decimated and i...

Fairness. Justice. These are things I contemplate as the week ends.  Photo by Ronak Valobobhai on Unsplash This wasn't the article I was planning on writing but it's the one shouting the loudest. As we watch American politics play out, it seems there is a sense of hopelessness.  The world — humans seem to be on a continuous loop, damned to repeat the ills of the past forever more.  Yes it's bleak. I feel bleak but I also feel a spark of something else. I'm in the middle of reading A Beginner’s Guide to Dying  by Simon Boas . Yes, if you've noticed, I have an obsession with death because I have an equal obsession with life and living. The yin to the yang. You truly can’t comprehend one without the other. He succinctly makes a very valid observation about life. The life we all live. At 46 he was facing a terminal cancer diagnosis with only a few months to live. He recognised that while his years may not seem long, he'd lived far longer than the majority of the hu...