This morning whilst conveniently late for work I somehow found myself embroiled in an argument with a good friend of mine concerning "internships". It started because I was bemoaning the fact that I will (outwardly) happily work for free to gain valuable experience whilst the respective company gets to joyously milk my slave labour. This enraged my friend to the extent that he made the simile that "doing a stupid internship is just like the fucking Victorians sending children down coal mines. Except at least they got bloody paid tuppence for it!"

Amusing and inaccurate as this may be (I don't spend my days earning nothing but the experience of my lungs being steadily corroded by coal dust, thankfully) it lead onto a discussion (read foul-mouthed fight at 8 am in the morning) as to the ethics of the situation.

Whereas my friend demanded that I stand up, shout FUCK YOU to the man and quit in a blaze of glory, I, in my cowardly and pathetic way argued that sometimes you just have to suck it up. If I was actually James Bond, (rather than just pretending to be on the ski slopes - the closest I come), I would fight the very principle behind unpaid work. The ethics behind this new accepted system of unpaid internships is frankly awful. I worked at one place where my daily expenses were £7 a day. Don't get me wrong, £7 is far better than a slap in the face with a wet fish, but when broken down to the tragic statistic of "£1 an hour"... well it was harder to stay so cheery. And it can become incredibly demoralising, working is better than sitting at home watching Jeremy Kyle "confront gangs" (oh where would we be without him to protect our moral backbone) but really, we need Jeremy Kyle to "confront internships". Surely the ethics behind companies continually hiring interns - to do a full time job for a period of months, and without pay are practically non existant?

So yes, I should have agreed, whole heartedly with my friend this morning. He was saying what I have been thinking, but it boils down to the fact that, unethical, boring and depressing as they may be, I have accepted that unpaid internships are almost like some twisted rite of passage. Perhaps when I have finished my purgatory sentence down the coal mines I may progress. Fingers crossed, certainly.