On the surface, the Birmingham suburb of Erdington seems like a typical small town, with a handful of pubs and a somewhat bustling centre complete with a Greggs and B&M.
But off the high street, several boarded-up and closing-down businesses offer a glimpse into the reason the West Midlands constituency is suddenly on the map.
Erdington has been named the youth joblessness capital of the UK, with 16.2 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds on unemployment benefits, according to labour market data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
English is lit! Great Expectations rewritten by AI in Gen Z slang
‘I call myself Pip. It’s not a name with much rizz’
One of the great classics, written by Charles Dickens, has been modernised – but it’s not aimed at children studying the text in class.
- The Dickens classic has been fed into the AI model Claude Opus 4 to produce “Bare Expectations”.
- The shortened adaption uses the slang of teenagers today, using words like “ick” and “drip”.
- It was made by Tesco Mobile, in partnership with author Chloe Combi, to help parents better understand their children and keep them safe online.
- It was also read as an audio book by Allan Mustafa, from Kurupt FM.
Classic for the modern age
You’d think the best MC in the galaxy would know all the latest slang, and I do. If any kid tells you otherwise, they’re lying. Any words I don’t know are just not cool enough for me to care about!
Allan Mustafa, MC Grindah from Kurupt FM, told Retail Times.
Thousands of children will receive their first phone when they start secondary school
But 77 per cent of parents worry about their online safety. One in four parents felt unprepared when giving their child their first phone. More than half are confused by their child’s language at least once a week.
But campaigners say the best way to keep children safe online is by not giving them a smartphone in the first place.
Are Channel crossing numbers down?
The French authorities have become more “effective” at stopping migrants crossing in dangerous small boats across the Channel, the UK Government has said.
The numbers
The figures compared with last year
5%
The increase in the number of small boats intercepted in the last three months compared with last year
The Home Office said, citing French figures, that since April, 61 per cent of small boats have been intercepted
This includes £161m in performance-based targets
Channel crisis
In the past few weeks, three boats were stopped – two of which were at sea.
Numbers falling
Some 15,897 migrants have crossed the Channel, 43 per cent down on the same period last year.
Last month, a record 165 migrants reached the UK in a single boat.
The deal ‘is already having an impact’
“People smugglers should be in no doubt, we’re taking down their operations, seizing their equipment and breaking their business model for good,” said Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood.
3 min read
British rapper Yung Filly to face retrial on rape charges in Australia
The rapper and YouTuber who appeared on Celebrity Bake Off will face a retrial after a jury could not reach a verdict during trial.
Yung Filly denied all charges
The Colombian-born rapper, whose real name is Andrés Felipe Valencia Barrientos, was charged with raping and assaulting a 20-year-old fan after his show in Perth 2024. He denied all 10 charges and a jury last month found him not guilty of three charges of rape.
5 min read
3 min read
He was accused of raping a fan
Barrientos was accused of having consensual sex with her until he turned violent and didn’t stop when asked. His lawyer said the evidence was full of “inconsistencies, embellishments and outright lies”.
4 min read
Jurors unable to reach verdict
- Last month, a jury found him not guilty on three counts of rape.
- He was cleared of one assault charge and another of strangulation.
- But he was found guilty of two counts of assault. Jurors were unable to make a decision on three counts of sexual penetration without consent.
Could El Niño make next year even hotter?
The naturally occurring phenomenon known as El Niño, which can drive up global temperatures and is brewing in the Pacific, could be the strongest in living memory, the Met Office has warned.
What is El Niño?
It is a climate phenomenon which occurs in the Pacific Ocean every two to seven years.
Normally, trade winds blow east to west across the equator – during and El Niño period, these weaken or reverse.
This pushes up global temperatures as warmth is taken from the ocean into the atmosphere.
El Niño’s impact has already been seen
It has already started to affect weather systems in other parts of the world, with below-average monsoons in India and suppressed hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. In the UK, El Niño is usually felt later in winter.
A particularly strong El Niño coupled with global warming has left scientists worried that 2027 could be even warmer.
El Niño is strongest in living memory
We should be clear that this is an unprecedented event. I have never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts.
Professor Adam Scaife, head of
long-range forecasting, the Met Office
Risk of most intense El Niño in 1,000 years
- El Niño is declared when the sea temperature in the tropical eastern Pacific rises 0.5 °C above the long-term average.
- But currently it’s over 2°C and could reach 3°C later this year.
- Some have suggested it could go above 4°C – meaning it would be the strongest El Nino in the last 500-1,000 years.
Next year could be hottest ever
The precise effect El Niño has on global weather can be unpredictable. But Met Office climate scientist Dr Nick Dunstone told the BBC average global temperatures could rise next year. This would make 2027 the hottest year on record, after 2024.
4 min read
Why children’s eyesight is getting worse – and what parents can do about it
More and more children are becoming
short-sighted, but scientists have discovered it can be reversed through behaviour change.
Rates of short-sightedness are rising across the world – and we now know why
- In the UK, short-sightedness is rising at a rate of 0.7 per cent per year.
- This means that by 2050 about four in 10 British children will be short-sighted and need glasses.
- But contrary to old myths, we are not (exactly) becoming more short-sighted because of too much screentime.
Short-sightedness is linked to the outdoors
Large research studies have found a lack of time outside causes short-sightedness. This could be because children are simply not using their long-distance vision as their eyeballs develop.
The other theory scientists are considering is that our eyes need the brighter light that we are exposed to outdoors to develop properly.
How to combat
short-sightedness
- Randomised trials suggest more outdoor time reduced the development of new short-sightedness.
- For children who were already
short-sighted, using eyedrops with atropine every night until age 16 helped reduce the degree of
short-sightedness. Specialised glasses can also help.
This is far beyond the national average of 5.7 per cent, showing that young people in the north-east Birmingham suburb are nearly three times more likely to be claiming unemployment benefits such as universal credit or jobseeker’s allowance.
But the statistics are no surprise to young locals, who told The i Paper they have spent months looking for work – as business owners say they can’t afford to take on new staff.
“It makes me feel worthless,” said Will Butler, an 18-year-old who finished college in July but signed up to the local job centre after putting in “countless” unsuccessful applications.
Speaking to The i Paper while on his way back from an appointment at Erdington Jobcentre, he added: “I spend two or three hours a day looking for work online, and then I’ll spend another two hours going out handing CVs every day.
“I’ve only ever had one interview in the past three years, and I’ve just been continuously applying to places and never had anything back from anywhere.”
Will hoped the job centre would help him find entry-level work in retail or hospitality, but when he asked for help, the work coach said: “Sorry, we don’t do that here.”
“I had no hope after that,” the teenager said, adding that he wished he had taken more steps to find work “a bit earlier on” while he was still in college.
Cameron Nicholls, 22, who spoke just before an appointment at the same job centre, said finding work is now “harder than it used to be”.
He has been out of a job since the start of the year and looking for opportunities in construction and warehouses, but a lack of responses from employers and limited help from the job centre have left him feeling “a bit useless”.
Cameron said he will be “in and out” of the job centre in five or 10 minutes, where staff will sign off his benefits rather than spending time to help him find more leads.
Young people ‘not getting support’
Will and Cameron are among more than a million young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK who are not in education, employment or training – also known as “Neets”.
New Labour-era former minister Alan Milburn, who has been carrying out an independent review of youth unemployment, said a “whole system failure” across welfare, education and health has left young people permanently “detached” from the world of work.
His final report is due this autumn, in which he is expected to propose overhauling the system to get young people into work and drive down the benefits bill. A Government spokesperson said “further reform will follow”.
Richard Parker, Labour Mayor for the West Midlands, said the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was “failing” young people, with job centres providing inadequate support.
“Young people currently aren’t getting the direction or the support they need to help them get into the world of work, and we’ve got to address those fault lines,” he told The i Paper. “Frankly, the current ecosystem is failing our young people.”
Parker said the system “encouraged” people to claim social security rather than work, as they can sometimes earn more from benefits than from low-paid jobs.
“It is heartbreaking,” he added. “We’ve got to make sure we support that transition and support people moving from benefits to work in a way that doesn’t act as a disincentive.”
Parker said he would use his devolved mayoral powers to implement employment hubs in “every major town centre” and provide training programmes that were linked with the region’s “growth sectors” such as construction, logistics and life sciences.
Firms ‘don’t want to hire young people’
The i Paper spoke to several young people on the streets of Erdington who have spent months applying for countless jobs online – and in person – without any support.
Raghad Arif, 20, said she had been applying for “about a year” while at university, getting at least 50 rejections a month. “It was really tiring,” she said. “I felt like I was applying to every job, but they either just weren’t getting back to me, or I was just getting rejected.”
“Companies don’t really want to hire young people… they want to hire the person with the most experience,” said Lewis McKeirnan, 18. “But what that always means is that the person who’s younger and doesn’t have experience, they often miss out.”
Waheed Saleem, head of policy and partnerships at Witton Lodge Community Association – which helps find young people employment and training opportunities in north Birmingham – said it was “not surprising” that Erdington had the highest youth unemployment rates in the UK.
This was partly due to “intergenerational issues”, with both parents and children being unemployed, as well as “educational achievement”, he added, but “the biggest barrier is people not believing in the young people in Erdington”.
“There’s a lot of ambition,” Saleem said. “We just need to create opportunities for the young people in Erdington to be able to grasp those opportunities.”
However, small business owners in Erdington told The i Paper they could hardly afford to pay their own salaries, let alone take on a young trainee.
Kamlesh Bali, who runs a newsagent, said she and her husband work from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week, because they cannot afford to take on another member of staff. “What we take in, it’s very hard for us, and to pay a wage as well, we struggle as it is as a small shop,” she said.
Faiz Qumar, the owner of an LED lights business, agreed there was not enough business in the town to hire more staff, but said that if he did he would go for an older person with “a little bit of experience, a little bit more serious with a job”.
Davis Woods, owner of Oikos Cafe, a charity on Erdington high street, said young people often come in asking for work, saying they were “struggling” due to a lack of experience. The cafe takes on volunteers to help them develop skills that could lead to future jobs in hospitality.
There are schemes to help young people find work, with ministers choosing Birmingham and Solihull as one of six pilot locations for its Jobs Guarantee programme. The scheme will support 275 young people into fully subsidised six-month work placements with local employers.
Ministers are also expanding their nationwide Youth Guarantee, with a £2.5bn package including 300,000 new work and training placements for young people and financial incentives of up to £3,000 for employers who hire and train eligible young jobseekers.
Julien Pritchard, deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, said youth unemployment remained a “significant challenge”, and the council was working to connect young people with local organisations. “Although it is early days, and tackling entrenched inequality takes time, there is evidence of young people progressing into work, education and training,” he added.
A spokesperson for the DWP said it was “determined to give every young person – in Erdington and around the country” the chance to earn with its youth employment support, which is hoped to reach nearly one million people and unlock up to 500,000 jobs and training opportunities.
“Businesses already receive significant tax breaks through the national insurance exemption for under-21s and apprentices under 25, and we are providing hiring incentives worth up to £8,000 when they take on an eligible young person,” they said.