The tail needs to start wagging the dog

"Social mobility is the key to a successful future job market."

"We need to have social mobility to make sure people from lower-class backgrounds can gain promotion and rise through society's ranks more easily."

These are the types of phrases repeated each week by politicians throughout the EU. I wish they would back their words with deeds. The problem, as I see it, is not one to do with class, but more to do with qualification and talent, and that has just as much to do with the kind of values we pass to the younger generation. What do we consider to be more important: the ousting of an incompetent government, or the continuation of a favourite contestant on a TV talent show?

We live in a society that has unprecedented access to education. But we have also allowed a whole generation to become fascinated in the stardom of sports personalities, singers and actors. When I was younger, if I had said to my father I wanted to be a singer, he would have told me to run along and think about getting a *real* job. Nowadays, this seems to be the bar we set, rather than the exception to the career-rule. So many parents seem to try and push their children into modelling, singing or sports, with the goal of becoming famous, and more importantly, rich. When their children fail, the disappointment is so great for the parents that their child has been "rejected". And the children themselves are so utterly traumatised, nothing will be the same again for them.

What an awful thing for any child to suffer. Pushy parents.

Pushy parents are not always required in the age of social mobility. Offspring of famous people are making their own way up the greasy pole without having to do much. Just look at anyone whose name contains Geldof.

Who is to blame here? The media, for allowing TV shows like X-Factor and The Only Way Is Essex to proliferate, but also parents for succumbing to the pressures of their children who want to be accepted by their peers. How many parents take their kids to Paris to view the contents of the Louvre? And how many go to Paris to trace the Da Vinci Code? Or to Disneyland Paris? How many parents take their children to London to view the Cabinet War Rooms, compared to the O2 to see a concert? Giving in to children's mealtime demands (chips instead of broccoli, burger instead of lamb cutlets), has extended itself to education.

Social mobility is a good idea in theory, but in practice, this is no longer viable in the 21st century. In the 1940s and 1950s, my father - who left school very young - was able to negotiate four or five jobs of varying requirements and skills very easily. Admittedly, the Second World War helped in this, as there was a severe shortage of staff, but still, the moral of the story back then was "if you have the talent, we'll hire you", whereas today, it is hard for anyone to come out of school, college or university and walk into the job they trained for. I know some recent Cambridge graduates who, not even finding work in call centres, have turned to gaining further qualifications in a bid to out-qualify their competition. That is fine for those with the money, but the vast majority of people simply cannot afford this luxury.

The problem is now that employers have the world at their feet: they can choose the most highly-qualified candidate, or they can choose a less qualified, but more enthusiastic candidate for the position. They can hire and fire at will, because the market has moved away from hiring permanent members of staff to taking on contractual agents who stay in the job for anything from a week to a couple of years before they are thrown back onto the pile of bodies mounting up outside the Job Centres of the Western world.

All you need to do to get a job these days is:

A. Be the cheapest (less qualified, more enthusiastic)

B. Accept that you might be living with your parents way into your thirties

C. Keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself

D. Accept that very, very few people really do enjoy social mobility, and you are not one of them.

Social mobility is a myth. And it will remain a myth until employers are made to be more ethical. And the chances of that happening are quite remote at the present time, whilst there are such rich pickings, and employees are competing with one another to keep their positions.

Another astonishingly blatant lie dressed up as truth is the ability to change career direction. The days are long past where the system is flexible enough to sustain a change of career path. It is of course not impossible, especially in countries like the UK or the USA, but in Europe, I cannot see a person who trained to be a translator, who has a fascination with plants and flowers, being permitted to go into the horticultural business without three or four years' course first, rather than on-the-spot guidance or apprenticeship like used to happen. And there are very important reasons for this. In my father's day, the proportion of take-home pay was far higher to the amount of household bills and acquisitions. This meant a drop in pay in any subsequent job did not make so much of a difference, so people could go off and do something else without fearing too deep a cut in pay. Nowadays, a weekly food bill alone may cancel out any savings. We need to get back to this basic state, but whilst most people's minds have been fixed on "Panem et Circenses", there is is no way this silent majority will change anything. Especially if people consider owning one or more cars per household as a given and not a luxury.

While the dog is definitely in control of its tail, not many with a wish for self-improvement will have enough support to change the mentality of hundreds of thousands of people who are indifferent to the type of information they pass onto their own children, and the kind of food they feed them.