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Anyone need a recently graduated physicist? My eldest is struggling to find anything except very occasional short term temp jobs.

Hopefully things will pick up for him, but it’s very demoralising to be stuck in your parents home.

What part of the UK ?

Oxfordshire. He had mixed A-levels (ABCC) & ended up going to Swansea where he got his head down & was given a first (yes, I know a first isn’t hat it used to be, but still) & the prize for best experimental thesis in his year.

He’s never going to be the first pick for the plum jobs - those will go to the Oxbridge/London grads with impeccable CVs - but he’s just getting nothing at all. Any suggestions that I can point him to are most gratefully received - he’s personable & does the work, but he can’t demonstrate that if no one will even interview him.

I’m sure something will turn up eventually, but leads are a bit thin on the ground.

Try with the F1 teams and motorsports-related companies in that region. Apply for unpaid or min wage internships, and take a job (any job, working in a bar) in the meantime to keep up morale. There’s loads of temporary work in retail and hospitality in Dec and Jan.

F1 is /incredibly/ competitive. He is taking whatever temp work he can get his hands on.

So the BBC is going to fight - fight like hell - and I'll be there with them. They should crowdfund the cost of the case. Allow people to contribute if they are so inclined. Put me down for £500. I'll give up nuts for a year. It's a no brainer.

There was some stuff from Newsmax on the BBC this morning saying both that the BBC couldn't afford to fight the case (£50m plus) versus settling (maybe £10-15m) .. and that they would be embarrassed by the discovery process.

I'm with you in saying bollocks to that.
The BBC's own right to discovery is likely to be very interesting in what it might turn up. And I'm happy to help pay to defend such a transparently nonsense lawsuit.

It's important, I think. People talk a lot about "British values" and if not giving in to extortion by malevolent foreigners isn't one of them it jolly well should be. I also like the calculus of it. IMO the potential damage to Donald Trump of having this litigated in open court in the US is greater than that to the BBC.

I'm on the side of freedom of speech here, and in that case that means I'm 100% behind the BBC in this case.

US law should be on their side here too - far more than if the case was going to be heard in the libel capital of the world, London...

They should not settle, Trump has an extraordinarily high bar to pass in the US court system. And any halfway competent attorney ought to be able to defend them quite honestly.

“I’m on the side of... Trump… in the US court system”

“The BBC in this case… has an extraordinary high bar to pass in the US court system”

Are those fair edits of your comment? Because that’s what the BBC did to the President. They’d decided in advance the narrative they wished to portray of Trump’s speech, and then edited it way out of context when it turned out that he didn’t actually say what they wanted him to have said that day.

(Yes I know this is an unpopular opinion on here).

The edited or unedited comments from randoms on here have about as much chance of influencing Trump's electoral prospects, prosperity or reputation as the BBC's clip.
ie fuck all.

In any event, the totality of BBC reporting on the election was overwhelmingly generous to Trump, sane washing him to an embarrassing degree.

The fact that a program made a bad edit is not evidence of general BBC bias - and Sandpit trying now to persuade us that the man who pardoned 1600 felons for their assault on the Capitol was trying to dissuade them is ... novel.

Anyone need a recently graduated physicist? My eldest is struggling to find anything except very occasional short term temp jobs.

Hopefully things will pick up for him, but it’s very demoralising to be stuck in your parents home.

What part of the UK ?

Oxfordshire. He had mixed A-levels (ABCC) & ended up going to Swansea where he got his head down & was given a first (yes, I know a first isn’t hat it used to be, but still) & the prize for best experimental thesis in his year.

He’s never going to be the first pick for the plum jobs - those will go to the Oxbridge/London grads with impeccable CVs - but he’s just getting nothing at all. Any suggestions that I can point him to are most gratefully received - he’s personable & does the work, but he can’t demonstrate that if no one will even interview him.

I’m sure something will turn up eventually, but leads are a bit thin on the ground.

He's not doing anything silly like listing the A level grades on his CV is he?

He probably is. If he cuts them out won’t employers draw the obvious conclusion?

Degree erases A levels. His academic performance as a child is not really relevant. If an employer really wants to know they can ask. But many more would be put off by seeing them than would ask, I would imagine.

Sorry, but that doesn't accord at all with the recent experiences of my son and step-daughter. Employers are generally still very interested in A-levels after you graduate, probably because so many firsts and 2.1s are awarded these days that the degree grade has become a limited indicator of ability.

95 per cent Firsts and Upper Seconds from Oxford when I checked a few years ago.

Exactly, which is why employers generally need a bit more to go on than degree grade when choosing who to interview. Especially so when that degree wasn't awarded by an institution with the (alleged) cachet of Oxford.

I'd take an interest in A level subjects and grades if recruiting a graduate. They get less relevant (as does your degree) as you progress in your working life with experience becoming the main thing. Hope your son finds an opening soon.

It's Phil's lad we're taking about (my son's doing alright, thanks).

It’s odd that unemployment is rising at the same time as net immigration is plummeting. The news agenda is behind the curve; before long we are going to be crying out for workers.

There could be a whole economy effect here that UK businesses are so reliant on cheap labour, the sudden reduction in immigration is going to kill them before they can adjust/invest, and employment everywhere is going to take a big hit. It's post-COVID all over again, and the Treasury will be itching for Boriswave 2 + minimum wage cut.

I think there will be adjustment and the employment market will eventually sort itself out at a higher productivity. No consolation to young people who are missing out now though.

Rachel from customer service has really fucked the economy. Real terms pay contraction for private sector workers next year, inflation unlikely to drop and the BoE being forced to cut rates because the economy is in the shitter and the jobs market has been shat on.

I'm not sure the country can take 3 more years of this level of incompetence and malevolence.

I heard Stephen Kinnock on R4 this morning. It was gently suggested to him that the rapid increase in youth unemployment and policies such as increasing the NMW and Employers NI were perhaps somewhat related. He wasn't having it. We are the Labour party, we believe in proper wages and the money can come out of the profits of the companies that employ them.

The economic illiteracy was genuinely painful to listen to.