Student Rent Strikes Due to lack of En-suite Facilities

Sapphire

mumps wrote: »

My friends were finishing as you were starting, I think you are right that it was changing by the mid 70s. Of course there was more work about in the early 70s so my friends all worked, I just remember them talking about the lazy !!!!!!s claiming benefits in the summer.

I remember I worked during school holidays and on Saturdays (shoe shops, Woolworths), and also in a pub for a couple of evenings a week for quite a while. I've never claimed benefits. I actually enjoyed the work and feel I learned a lot from it.

SingleSue

Working while he is at the uni is almost impossible for eldest due to his SR duties, he can be called in at any time over and above his actual shifts and as his accomodation is part of it, he is not exactly able to turn round and say no he can't do it. However, when he comes home for short breaks or over the summer, he works. He is lucky that the job he has had since he was 16, allows him to just pick up where he left off the last time he was in town...as an example, he comes home late next Friday (won't get home until gone 11pm), he will be at work from 8 the following morning and all the way upto Christmas eve. He will then be back on Boxing day until he goes home a few days later.

Last year, he didn't get home for Christmas at all as he was rostered on duty on Christmas eve until 10am Christmas day in his role as SR and was only able to come home for 24 hours at New year...he spent a fair part of it travelling but he was determined not to miss out!

zagubov

Sapphire wrote: »

I remember I worked during school holidays and on Saturdays (shoe shops, Woolworths), and also in a pub for a couple of evenings a week for quite a while. I've never claimed benefits. I actually enjoyed the work and feel I learned a lot from it.

I remember that students didn't always work in the summer. Lots of people went to work (for no pay) on a kibbutz and then hitch-hike aorund Israel. Others would spend summer in the North America with BUNACamp or Camp America (again for little or no pay), or would get an Interrail ticket and tour the train systems of Europe. Rich parents I suppose

Not sure if these options still exist.:o

Sapphire

zagubov wrote: »

I remember that students didn't always work in the summer. Lots of people went to work (for no pay) on a kibbutz and then hitch-hike aorund Israel. Others would spend summer in the North America with BUNACamp or Camp America (again for little or no pay), or would get an Interrail ticket and tour the train systems of Europe. Rich parents I suppose

Not sure if these options still exist.:o

I don't remember any students I knew spending summer in North America, or touring train systems of Europe. I do remember a few people staying on kibbutzes in Israel – I believe they were watered and fed while staying there at no cost to them? Some may have travelled abroad (hitchhiked, etc.) for the experience while working for very little money (working on vineyards in France, etc.). I don't remember any of these people being funded by their parents, who were mostly not 'rich' – they just existed on very little. Possibly, more casual work was available to students before globalisation, and they were also more willing to do such work than they would be now…

mumps

zagubov wrote: »

Was at uni in the 70s. In the summer the benefits including Supplementary benefit was a bit over £11 per week. I took a job in a supermarket which cost me £5 a week to get to and paid £17.60.

I was a pound better off and it was much heavier work than any of the building site jobs I had after that.

Everybody got a grant for uni but it was means tested and if both parents worked it would be reduced. I think the full grant would have been somewhere near a £1000 and I got a bit more than half that. Only 16% went to uni.

Depending on when in the 70s, £11 was quite a useful sum of money. In the early 70s I wasn't earning that much in a fulltime job, although I was a teenager and female so not exactly at the top of the pay scale.:rotfl:

westernpromise

mumps wrote: »

Depending on when in the 70s, £11 was quite a useful sum of money. In the early 70s I wasn't earning that much in a fulltime job, although I was a teenager and female so not exactly at the top of the pay scale.:rotfl:

Yes, my first job was in the school holidays in 1980 and for 24 hours a week washing up at the local hospital I was paid about £45 a week. I did it again in 1981 after A Levels and then at university I was able to claim supplementary benefit in the vacations, although I think that was stopped. I do recall that I left a summer job to do actual course reading and my dole claim was denied on the grounds that I had had a job. I wrote to my MP to complain that I was worse off than I would have been if I'd never had a job, and a DHSS arrears cheque duly came through.

It is amusing ijn hindsight to recall the lefties' outrage at the disgraceful way students were treated back then. A full student grant was about equal to suppelementary benefit except that quite outrageously it had to pay for books and course materials!