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‘I’ve applied for more than 5,000 jobs – it’s brutal out there’

When lay-offs hit my role as a senior copywriter at Virgin Media O2 in August 2023, I knew the job hunt wouldn’t be easy. But two years, a drained bank account and a psychiatric unit later, I never imagined it would be this brutal.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/career-advice/applied-over-5000-jobs-brutal-market/

Not to go all Leon, but AI....

5000 jobs in two years is seven a day.
He really needs to think about tailoring his applications.

I often think this when I see stories like this. I’ve been lucky - I’m in a job I love and have been able to progress here too. But I think I’ve genuinely only applied for about 10 jobs in my life, plus about six letters asking about post doc positions. And each application was crafted to match the job specs, and all the rest.
Those who are applying for 5000 jobs are not really applying for 5000 jobs. A better focus would help.

Yes, he should have spent more time building his skills to better prepare him for a job.

My guess is this is the core problem. His expertise is in an area that LLMs have and will even more so eat the role. If he doesn't have much to add beyond crafting words nicely, its a difficult hire.

Honestly, he should have spent two years doing woodworking or something. People always need cupboards built and doors adjusting. Electrical work is what I'd do today.

"Starmer pushes digital ID cards for all after Macron demands action to tackle scourge of illegal working in Britain"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15058275/Starmer-pushes-digital-ID-cards-Macron-demands-action-tackle-scourge-illegal-working-Britain.html

So now he overturns our liberties after receiving orders from the president of France

Every day he manages to make me hate him just that little bit more

Dystopian Britain. The government tracks your every move.

It doesn't, though, does it. Turn your phone off, nobody knows where you are.

I wouldn’t be so sure. Go for a drive and there are number plate cameras everywhere. Use your credit or debit card and you are logged. It’s harder than you might imagine to completely disappear. How many ring doorbells do you pass? CCTV installations?

Now 99.99% of the time no one is following you. But if little kinabalu should become a suspect in a crime, well there would be the ability to track you.

In which case, you would think the police would actually be able to catch some criminals committing crimes other than upsetting someone on X.

Did a senior policeperson not stop and think "Wait, the police have an issue with perceived bias and over-reaction at the moment, should we really arrest this 57 year old Irish comedian, for three possibly transphobic tweets? Yes, we should!!"

Then they must have had a chat about how to do it, to improve the image of the police, in a country where the polling says the public has calamitously lost trust in them

"Shall we quietly send around a constable? Ask him to come to the station? What's the most politic and delicate way to handle this? So we don't alienate still more citizens?"

"I know, let's send a squad of three, no four - yes four armed police to arrest him as soon as he gets home from America, like he's a jihadi but worse."

"That's brilliant but I've got an even better idea, let's send FIVE - five armed police! - and let's do it literally at the airport as he lands so it looks like we are insane and have lost all sense of proportion and we have no clue about catching actual criminals, because we think bad tweets are worse than rape?!"

"This is genius, Sir. Soon the public will love us once again."

What are you talking about, "a second Labour term"? Leon has already said on the previous thread that the Labour Party are done. Bet accordingly!

He just doesn't see any way back for them, does he. It's a worry.

As far as I know - I am happy to be corrected - no governing party with polling as poor as Starmer’s Labour has ever gone on to win a subsequent election

That could be wrong, I’m still traumatised by my near death experience with the birds of Frankfurt, but if it is true then it suggests history is on my side here

For recent Labour reference, Mr Gordon Brown of the Manse's Labour hit absolute rock bottom in May 2009 leading in to the local and Euro elections (including one 18% poll with MORI equalling the July 2019 and current FoN lows).
The average May poll rating was above the current Labour average and had recovered to mid 20s within a month. We know how well his recovery went.......
So, with SKS Labour in worse shape and huge economic headwinds (Brown's nadir was in a major recession) I think they struggle to recover.
If Labour are in similar shape in May they'll be utterly mullered everywhere - Brown in 2009 Euros saw Labour come sixth in Cornwall behind Mebyon Kernow. Losses in London could be apocalyptic as could the Welsh and Scottish results

Isn’t this all a bit of an Apples and Oranges comparison though?

Reform’s rise means it is the first time in a generation that we’ve had a possible 4 way split. 5 if you count the Greens. 6 if you count the Corbyn/Sultana party. Possibly more if you count the Home Nations’ parties.

Labour are certainly in trouble on current form. However they could also - quite viably - get a majority under FPTP, if A) there’s even a small ‘Vote Labour to keep Farage out’ effect and B ) the Tories/Reform stay divided.

Expect tactical voting in abundance, also.

We’re in uncharted territory and that’s not taken into account enough on here. It really isn’t impossible that Labour squeak through on something like 28/29% and it’s very difficult to predict what that means in terms of seats/ the makeup of the next government.

The very fact that Reform themselves are streets ahead on around 30-35% should say it all

TECHNICAL ECONOMICS POST

I'm no-one to give this government the benefit of any doubt. But I'm not entirely joining the current panic about long-term gilt yields for an important reason: we are currently engaged in the largest programme of quantitative tightening in our history. The Bank of England is essentialy dumping £75 billion of gilts, mostly but not entirely long-dated, on the bond market every year. This is a formidable headwind for that market, even if we had a government with a clue what it is doing (we don't).

Here is a fairly technical but not completely incomprehensible article on the Bank of England's website about it.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2025/june/catherine-l-mann-fireside-chat-at-the-federal-reserve-board-of-governors

For those that can't be bothered to read the whole article, it estimates, quoting other research, that QT of around £80 billion in a year, roughly our current rate, raises 10-year yields by 25 basis points. As we've been doing this for three years, and will do it for several more, and as the ECB is much earlier in its QT cycles, it is clear that the higher interest rates we see are not entirely due to the Reeves "moron premium". And also that the government could influence the Bank to postpone its QT programme if it got into desperate straits, certainly before calling in the IMF or whoever.

A further piece of evidence in favour of the theory that QT is a powerful influence on our current bond market tightening is the normalising of the yield curve over the last year or two. Two year gilt yields have actually fallen (the opposite of what you'd expect if the markets were expecting a short-term crisis) while 10 to 30-year gilt yields have risen. Since most QE happened at the longer end of the curve, this is exactly what you'd expect if QT rather than some imminent expectation of doom were a dominant factor in the bond markets.