“A working class Londoner could feasibly live at home and intern in a middle class dominated field like journalism or politics.”

I think we need to examine the assumptions around “living at home” there. Whether in the North or the South, the concepts of a) not having a parental home b) paying your way in the parental home if you have one, once you get to 14/15/16/17 exist for most people, don’t they?

When you look at just one or two professions like journalism and politics, of course you’ll find a bias! London is the centre for those fields. I agree with what you’re saying, its simply exploitative not to pay interns, but the north south divide in this case is a matter of where most major national newspapers are based.

Interns in science and technology can find placements all over the country, and often they are paid. (Example: I got a paid research internship at the Univerisity of Manchester) Same goes for placements in industry, where even if they’re not paid, they’ll provide accommodation.

Maybe journalism/law/politics in the UK is just full of extremely stingy people. :S

“If the government are serious about improving conditions for parliamentary interns and those in the wider field of this polite, modern-day form of slavery, they might stop to consider that not everyone is a simple tube ride away from these golden apprenticeships.”

Many MPs and PPCs have local offices in their constituencies in which it would be feasible to offer internships, paid or unpaid – perhaps Lord Ashroft could be forthcoming with sponsorships in Conservative constituencies or those constituencies that the Conservatives have ambitions to win at the next election.

but there is no way I could have worked at a national newspaper, the New Statesman, Red Pepper, or any of the other political magazines and blogs I considered applying for

You rightly point out that this means that this advantages the upper-middle/middle classes, or those who live within commuting distance, and d’you know what it shows quite markedly in the output of those magazines and blogs. You’d expect such a culture to overtly prevail at a publication like, say, the Spectator, but there is definitely a insidious damaging effect discernible in those outfits which profess to hold more egalitarian principles. London =/= the UK.

So Cleggy can stand up and shove as many ‘we inherited this intern system’ from the evil Labour lot in as he can. And actively campaign for all interns to get a wage. While at the same time his party has only just ‘improved’ their offer to a Greggs sausage roll and bus fares, and the party has multiple live vacancies for unpaid interns.

Does the sheer bare-faced hypocracy of it not make anyone else want to pull their hair out in frustration (and my poor follicles don’t need any encouragement these days)?

EU funding for luvvie internships?

Cut #1 I think.

@1 – ditto. I know when I left school I couldn’t have afforded an unpaid internship regardless of location simply because I needed to fund my own food. Many, many working class families cannot subsidise a member of the family not bringing in money to cover such basics.

@4 – abso-bloody-lutely. We should hold to account those organisations which proport to stand up for a fairer world who then use such schemes as unpaid internships. Far too many organisations get away with claims of how much these show how much they are committed to helping people into the industry and develop while literally sticking their fingers in their ears when its pointed out a great sweep of people is not able to actually access these internships.

Also, not to pimp my own blog or anything, but as Bob says above, why do we assume that internships in London are ‘where it’s at’? Shouldn’t we be challenging the fact that being in the Westminster village is what gets you ahead in a political career, as well as changing the relative access of different groups to that village?

http://s.coop/internships

Personally, I learnt more working in an MPs constituency office, and with a local authority Labour group, than I reckon many people pick up dividing their time between Portcullis House and the Sports and Social Bar. I understand that national publications and lobbyists tend to cluster around London, but MPs, at least in theory, have a base in two places.

This country is too centralised and too much is based in and on London, especially in politics and media.

Journalism’s full. The poor terms of getting into it is a price signal telling applicants to do something more productive.

@2 I think you might be right… OK to rip off people in politics or journalism in a way that is unacceptable in industry

@3 I tried to say that local constituency/local paper experience is extremely valuable but not always perceived as such by those… in the London bubble! The London focus is not just a problem in monetary terms, but also in terms of social attitude

Damn that Clegg for making a start on fixing a broken system. He should do like the last government and do nothing instead, much better.

Labour are really looking stupid over this. Sheesh.

Rich: http://www.labourlist.org/its-still-who-you-know-not-what-you-know – Lab making the right noises too, but we need a proper salary structure for interns.

I agree with this, although I’m not sure why anyone should be expected to pay for your lunch. Presumably you’d eat that regardless of whether you’re working – and you can get a lunch in for less than a quid, easy.

Good points about regionalism, though, which I hadn’t really considered before on this context.

Great article; agree entirely. Also I think Private Eye ran a story a while back stating that the DWP itself classes lots of internships as “real jobs” – insofar as it will not pay benefits to some people on them. & the DWP also states that a real job must pay minimum wage at least. Therefore, some of these organisation are engaging in illegal labour practices with the full backing of those in power until something is done to change the system (some radical notion, like, oh I dunno, paying people for work).

While we’re talking about a London bias, the TUC (and, annoyingly, the STUC) refused to organize a #March26 anywhere BUT London. The cuts bite in Scotland too, and for weeks and even months beforehand, I got marketing tweets and emails strongly implying nothing but laziness stopped me from getting to London. Well, the distance and the time taken to cover it and the costs/ancillary difficulties of taking 24 hours out of a weekend to go to a demo stopped me.

4′s right: the presumption that only London matters and there’s nothing much outside it, that it’s a terrible imposition to ask Londoners to travel a hundred miles outside London but only laziness stops people traveling four hundred miles to get to London, is something that affects the output of even supposedly-inclusive magazines, blogs, and organisations

@11: “The London focus is not just a problem in monetary terms, but also in terms of social attitude”

A fact of life, regretable or otherwise, is that London’s population has always been huge relative to any other city in Britain. Its population was c. 1 million at the time of the first census in 1801 when it was most likely the biggest city in the world at the time – Paris was only half as large.

Go to surviving scrolls of medieval rent rolls and you’ll find land rents were relatively higher for estates around London and the south east. Blame William the Conqueror for confirming the choice of the Roman colonialists and building the Tower of London in which to keep his treasury. Besides the London climate is arguably more cogenial than in other parts of Britain.

Taxpayers resident in London and the SE region makes net positive (or, presently, the least negative) contributions to the national exchequer – in other regions, the identified public expenditures are greater than the tax revenues.

“The sheer scale of the place is staggering. Although it has precisely the same population as New York City, it covers twice the area. Twenty million people live within an hour and a half of central London. Its economy is bigger than those of Austria, Sweden or Russia.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/200004100061

Try this BBC Newsnight report on: Why London is different
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7368326.stm

And then this from the musical: Me and My Girl (1937):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oimHJCURbo

Maybe it because I’m a Londoner . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0MCHqTxOiU

@ 16 Yonmei

“The cuts bite in Scotland too, and for weeks and even months beforehand, I got marketing tweets and emails strongly implying nothing but laziness stopped me from getting to London. Well, the distance and the time taken to cover it and the costs/ancillary difficulties of taking 24 hours out of a weekend to go to a demo stopped me. ”

Well said. It’s easy to wax lyrical about how all the provincial types just aren’t dedicated enough to travel hundreds of miles by train to Hyde Park when you personally can get there in 20 minutes on the Tube.

What #8 said, a thousand times. Yes, work should be paid, so in principle this campaign around internships is a good one. But we don’t want to end up legitimising the idea that the only way to get involved in politics is by getting an internship in Westminster.

I can’t speak for other parties, but few Labour MPs or CLPs would reject someone who wanted to help out at the constituency office or with campaigning as a volunteer, and taking more responsibility in campaigns (your CLP isn’t doing anything? write a leaflet, get it cleared by elected officers, start putting it out) is both more useful as experience and will get you more respect and credibility with a wider section of the party than Westminster hacks. Plus, you can do it wherever you live, and in many cases do it at the same time as pursuing your education, or working part-time or even full-time & so getting real-work experience that would benefit us all if more MPs had.

I still don’t see why the Lib Dems are hypocrites for wanting interns to be paid. All the parties make use of unpaid interns but the Lib Dems are the only ones actively calling for the practice to be ended and doing something about it as well.

I also fail to see how Clegg’s background makes a difference here when half of the people calling him a hypocrite at the moment are in fact private school and Oxbridge educated and themselves benefited from string pulling.

http://thepotterblogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/nick-clegg-is-hypocrite.html

@12

There should be a piece by me on that very subject published on Lib Con later today.

@19

Hear hear.

I happen to be considering a career in politics but my route is simply getting involved with my local party and getting stuck into the election campaign. It’s certainly more rewarding, less expensive and less cut-throat than an internship in London.

Yes, work should be paid, so in principle this campaign around internships is a good one. But we don’t want to end up legitimising the idea that the only way to get involved in politics is by getting an internship in Westminster.

Or, indeed, the media. I’m not sure George Orwell, Seymour Hersh or Paul Foot followed BAs in journalism with internships at The Daily Whatever.

If internships ever had to be paid, fewer organisations will offer them – particularly charities (which is the sector in which I work).

ISTM, paid internships are a side-issue in the broader discussion about how (upward) social mobility can be increased overall. There will never be a level playing field – without abolishing the family (and that implies a totalitarian state). Nevertheless, there are many measures that can be taken to improve upward social mobility — and rigorous academic selection (at several ages – not just 11 – and no ‘labelling’ of late developers by teachers) is an important one.

19: “few Labour MPs or CLPs would reject someone who wanted to help out at the constituency office or with campaigning as a volunteer”

The question is not “would they reject them” – hopefully not: the question is would they treat that volunteer working in the constituency office, hundreds of miles from London, on the same basis as they do an intern working at Westminster? For example, if there’s a paid job opening up at Westminister, would the local volunteers get the same notice of it and be encouraged to apply for it, as an unpaid worker already in London?

@24

Aye, but charities are expected to have volunteer staff – the clue’s in the name. Orgs like political parties & NGOs & think-tanks are just leeching off the goodwill and ambition of moneyed youngsters by “offering” internships rather than paying actual money for actual work.

George Potter,

I happen to be considering a career in politics

That perhaps is part of the problem – to have a career in politics you need to have experience of power and also, perhaps, to be selected to stand for a seat, the ability to imply you are close to power.

And power is far too centred in one elected institution – parliament (and far too much of it is wielded by the executive rather than scrutinised).

So if you want to go somewhere in politics it appears to be a career choice – you have to make the sacrifices, try and make the connections and move to London. And, as with anywhere you live, you find that London becomes a much greater part of your world.

Not sure if getting rid of internships will help matters here – there will be ways round anything to ensure that ambitious young people can get proximity to power – but actually questioning whether the centralisation of power, which enables a small number of people to control access to that power, is really a good thing would be useful. I think trying to get interns paid (if they just become volunteers, what do we do then?) is simply a sticking plaster on the problem, which put bluntly is the closer you are to Mr Cameron, or Mr Clegg, or Mr Milliband, the more chance of a career in politics you have.

And that ignores the silliness of allowing such concentration of power that politics can become a choice of career…

London bias?

C’mon. Try this song from WW2 – Noel Coward: London Pride
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTsIMVIWjlQ

Btw we are coming up towards London’s second millenium anniversary:
http://www.britainexpress.com/London/roman-london.htm

I couldn’t afford an internship having used my savings to do one in the US so have approached employment in other ways.

I feel strongly about the internship debate and you can see my response at http://graduatetoyou.blogspot.com/2011/04/realistic-resources.html.

Graduates are being creative in their search for employment and there are other ways in however sometimes we can’t help who and what we know!