Well what a surprise......

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ity-stunt.html

Just a load of bollocks over something he was more than aware of before leaving his home in New Zealand

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/story-tw...ntion/41606274

Tom

I don't really understand it - why would he admit he was not honest? Somebody is giving him pressure to say that?

Keeping these positions unpaid is the only way to keep "the wrong kind of people" out of the organisation.

They don't want the kind of young riff-raff who have to work for a living soiling their hallowed corridors, do they?

I did this too in my younger days, try 25 years ago . . did a couple of courses at the UN in Geneva (no lying on my application, though I did over estimate my ability in French), and stayed at the Cite Uni during their uni holidays (paid all expenses myself, loaned the money from my parents), then after the course had finished, I stayed on in Geneva to attend some of the sessions for my MA and camped with my Belgium friend Peter in a tent at the camp ground.

We joked that we were part time diplomats, shaving in the camp ground amenities block and putting on a tie to attend the UN!

Plenty of the other students who attended the same courses as I did later worked voluntarily as unpaid interns at the UN after the course, that's just how the system works to eventually get f-t employment, it's very competitive, I was never that well qualified.

So good on the NZ guy for giving it a go I reckon, and showing some resourefulness.

Unpaid internships should be illegal. Unless your position is 100% training, which I highly, highly doubt, you are performing labour for someone else. Not being paid at least basic living expenses is absurd. It creates a system where you have to already be wealthy enough to afford to not be paid to work. Even if you pull out the take out a loan card, a lot of people don't make enough or have enough assets to qualify for a loan. I personally want to live in a meritocratic society not an aristocratic one. The way it is now, with unpaid internships being prevalent in a lot of industries at the moment (in countries where it isn't already illegal) you only have the rich kids who can get the internships that they need to get full-time employment in the field - do you really want the NGO world for example to be occupied by only those who can already afford to work for free? That's really going to help the organisations stay in touch with the needs of the average person... Also people pulling out these "back in my day I worked my way through college and bla bla bla" is nonsense. Anyone who has done 5 minutes of research has seen that the costs of an undergraduate education in North America for example has ballooned enormously faster than inflation and it is no longer physically possible to work yourself through college/university unless you have a lot of stock options to cash like the Romney's, living hard times while cashing in their stock portfolio.