Misfits and Apprentii

I love the Apprentice, where else could you find such choice one liners as 'I'm not a one trick pony, I'm a whole field of ponies.' (Intelectual featherweight Stuart Baggs 'the brand.') and 'Everything I touch turns to sold.' (Baggs again)? Faintly ridiculous people who manage to get on in life with pure pigheaded drive and inflated ego will always make good television, purely for arse over tittery alone. Another viewing pleasure is Channel 4's excellent MisFits, the superhero ASBO drama based around 5 minor miscreants given superpowers by a passing storm. It is difficult to say which of these two shows should be considered less outlandish, but it is certainly the MisFits who have more fun.

The two sets of people couldn't be more different, thrusting business types who will do anything to 'get on' and those left behind, ASBO or no where they in the words of one J. Cocker 'Dance and drink and screw, because there's nothing else to do.' Those who are left behind by dreams of avarice and have an imposed ceiling as to what they can achieve and the quality of life that they can lead and those who may, if they can convince enough German people that goulash crisps are 'traditionally German' earn money beyond most of our dreams. The tuition fees debate has been a loud one but the voice that hasn't been heard as often as the one chanting epithets at Nick Clegg is one taking a real stand against the marketisation of our society. University graduates are to be encouraged by their huge fees to become a thrusting army of young Apprentii, marketing their skills to the highest bidder and 'getting on', making money with no real regard for what makes a good society for all. Every graduate competing with other ones to get full value for their fees with the rewards for becoming a banker or a marketing director far outweighing those of becoming a social worker or a teaching professional. No middle ground of being a well-educated graduate with a decent job who works hard but doesn't have a need to strive to earn more and more money for and from the Lord Sugarlumps and Sir Phillip 'tax efficient' Greens of this world. Fewer services in the future have the same effect, with no local library, free childcare or cheap leisure facilities life for those in the lower middle becomes worse, meaning in order to live a life in good conditions you continually need to be more like an Apprentii, not do a job you wanted to do but get into sales, eventually you may become a director and be able to squirrel away money yourself. Those who miss the boat or who don't want to catch it had better get used to a lower standard of living because the Apprentii and their masters earned their money and don't want it taxed, that would be 'anti-aspiration'.

With the marketisation of everything we are becoming a society of Misfits and Apprentii. In its most extreme example it is the contrast between those who if they are working are on a wage that barely pays for the cost of living compared to the denizens of big business. Things will get worse for the poorest but a new ceiling on quality of life is now being imposed on those who earn more but live with the same worries of watching their standard of living disappear. Cameron says that to tax the richest more is 'anti-aspiration', however by not asking the richest in our society to pay he is shutting off the aspirations of many to get on in life without wild dreams of avarice but to live a comfortable life in a good society. Forcing students to pay £40,000 in fees throughout their life is anti the aspirations of the majority to do a decent worthwhile job and not have to worry about the continuing erosion of services on which they may rely, or a huge debt burden which they will never pay off. As provision is shrunk, services disappear and the next generation are forced to pay for the mistakes of the last one, the chances for graduates and non graduates alike to merely 'get on' by doing a job whose worth isn't completely measured by the weight of its paycheck will become fewer and fewer, many more of us will be Misfits in our own society, trapped by a ceiling of increased outgoings and fewer services. It's a shame none of us will have superpowers though, nor fields of ponies.