In the Guardian, 15 people talk anonymously about their jobs and it’s fantastic. British people are GR8 FUN. You know it’s good when the dominatrix has the most boring stories of all of them (okay, she has a good one about custard). BUT my most favorite is from the fashion intern:

“I’ve been a fashion-mag intern on and off for five years. Five years! I know. Completely unpaid, yes, I work six days a week for the magazine, then at a pub evenings and weekends. I drink Red Bull instead of having lunch and eat canapés instead of dinner. It’s not a game. Most of my cash comes from eBaying my freebies, … This life is all about stamina. If you can outlast everyone else, then there’s a job for you.”

(There’s also some sad stories about class and poverty but they are MIXED IN WITH THE FUN, so you can learn something and then also smile at Britishisms.)

The occupation of a Sussex University campus in protest of the “commodification of education” has entered is third week and second building. “It all began in May 2012, when Sussex University management said it was to outsource 10% of the university’s workforce. This means 235 staff – mostly catering and waste disposal workers – will be transfered to external contracts. Many fear that such workers, who are already on low wages, will have their terms and conditions undermined.”

College: A good place to become an activist.

The Guardian has a gripping editorial about hunger that is short, powerful, and a must-read. It opens with the literature of the Great Depression, and its preoccupation with food (“the 1930s really were hungry”), and goes on to explain that in England, right now, the tightening (and elimination) of welfare programs are bringing broad hunger back. It’s happening here too, but you know, whatever, keep calm and carry on, etc.

A group of long-term unemployed jobseekers were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.

Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government’s Work Programme.

Two jobseekers, who did not want to be identified in case they lost their benefits, said they had to camp under London Bridge the night before the pageant. They told the Guardian they had to change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday.

—Some people had a terrible time in London during the Jubilee. You see, they were supposed to work without pay, and also apparently without sleep or food or toilets. Your unpaid internship doesn’t sound so bad now, hmmmmm? (It’s still bad.) (But not this bad.) (Let’s not compare things, shall we?)