Smart-arse BBC ‘Watchdog’ presenter Julia Bradbury seems to have been caught out in a £20,000 air miles ‘racket’, according to the Independent. Funny how these things always happen to people we knew we didn’t quite trust for some reason, but couldn’t put our finger on why. Ms Bradbury always comes across to us as a bit too smug and self-important, considering all she does is read an autocue machine in front of a camera, along with that other smug b***ard, Nicky Campbell. She has denied everything, of course, but in the meantime has withdrawn from the BBC’s consumer programme until the fuss dies down… pretty much like the dodgy fraudsters her programme fearlessly ‘investigates’. In the meantime, we miss the likes of Nick Ross, the late Jill Dando and all of the genuine people in whom we used to have complete faith. Who actually employs the Bradburys and Campbells of this world with licence payer money? We’ll be watching this case with great curiosity.
Those of us who have ever been made redundant at the age of 45 or over will know the situation only too well.
Now Channel 4’s exposé of recruiters discriminating against the over-50s has confirmed what we all suspected – that many recruitment agencies claim to have ‘lost’ CVs of more mature candidates when they’ve actually put them straight in the wastebasket. If any do reach employers, their own managers or directors probably do the same.
The Dispatches documentary (Monday 8th Feb), revealed that around 60% of our workforce is being wasted for this reason, and showed the extent of age discrimination in the application process. The programme showed the frustration of job-seekers, sick of being told time and again that they are ‘too experienced’ or ‘over-qualified’ for the often hundreds of jobs they apply for.
Can it be that many thousands of hard-working, reliable and conscientious employees with a wide range of skills and experience are no longer valued by employers in today’s society just because of their age?
A lot has been said about IKEA in the UK – the poor quality of its flat pack furniture, the missing parts in the box when you come to assemble it, the failure to put enough staff on the checkouts so you don’t have to spend an hour getting out of the place… and so on.
Now they don’t even seem to care about delivering the goods you’ve ordered and paid for.