Yes - let's get back to the good old days of high unemployment and pay rises every few months (even though the cash didn't seem to buy as much as it did last month), eh Huge? At least it would keep the number of cars on the road down, wouldn't it.
Humph.
John.
I've no idea what you're on about. And I suspect that you don't, either.
You seemed to be saying that you found extra teachers, nurses and police officers and an improved minimum wage a depressing thought. Seems to me that these things would improve employment and generally improve the wealth of those on the minimum wage.
Maybe you hadn't thought carefully enough about your earlier response.
John.
You are assuming he can think.
I find it a depressing thought because it may mean that might have to put up with more of that smirking lying shit Bliar and his oleaginous thieving Chancellor and the whole lying, deceitful, nauseating bunch of yes-men they are surrounded with.
Speaking as someone who has had fairly recent experience (18 months ago) of Gordon Browns New Deal, I can say with absolute certainty that it is a sham to keep the unemployment figures low. We know politicians like to lie and cheat, but they have excelled themselves with unemployment.
Over 50? Not eligible - you get the dole but aren't considered to be unemployed. Claiming for more than 26 weeks? You lose your automatic entitlement for the dole and are required to go onto means tested benefit - if you pass the means-tested then you will still be counted as unemployed (but that's much easier said than done!).
If the job centre offer you some back-to-work type training (even one days worth) you are required to accept it, otherwise it terminates your entitlement. And if you do accept the training then (from what I recall) it removes you from the jobless figures because of some reason I can't recall.
I was queued up waiting my turn at the bi-weekly grilling session and got talking to an older chap next to me, and he filled me in on some of the above. He was 55 and had been unemployed for quite a while. He said he was no longer counted as unemployed for the above reasons.
I enquired what his trade was - turned out he was a hod carrier (he apparently worked out in the gym 3 times a week and he certainly looked fit enough!). And the training he was offered? Computer operator. Go figure.
It's a good job that I don't have a convenient pile of house bricks in my living room. I lose my cool very rapidly when yet another smarmy git comes on and claims low unemployment. Like low inflation - don't measure the things that real people have to pay for, just measure those things that hardly ever change anyway.
PoP
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I have some sympathy with your comments, but dislike being referred to as a "smarmy git" by someone who has no knowledge of me other than a post to someone else. Such comments tend to render your other remarks as probably not worth replying to. However I will do you the credit of assuming that the last bit was said in frustration.
As it happens I have had three members of my family unemployed in the last three years. Most recently my wife who is over 50. Incidentally she found a job within two months of being made redundant. In spite of that individual success, I am aware of the inadequacies of the current system. Your assumption of lies by the government means that any pronouncement by them, true or false will be rejected. However, there is a simpler measure of unemployment (or at least wealth) which can be adopted by anyone. As I implied in my earlier post, the number of cars on the road is a good indicator of wealth. I can remember driving around in the 1980s with much less traffic on the roads than currently. Stories of individual hardship (or incompetence) are not helpful - because they are not necessarily typical.
John.
Fair enough. It is fairly clear that 'New Labour' has exhausted any good will which they inherited when they came to office.
John.
I can't believe the crap I read on here. The economy is booming, the pound is almighty strong, unemployment is the lowest for 25 years, no more cardbord cities of homeless people, great anti-social laws, the world went into recession the UK never, etc, etc.
Are you actually in the UK?
Not only that, the age of them too. Far, far more newer cars around, and more expensive models too, these days than when the wicked witch was in charge.
And you think that the Government enjoys the same good will that they inherited when they came to office?
Yes.
John.
In a number of areas you write a fair bit of it though......
This is not necessarily helpful.
easily achievable when you adjust the methods of measurement. It's ironic that the current administration, who lambasted its predecessors so vehemently on statistical methods associated with unemployment measurement now plays the same game.
Have you visited any of the London main line stations lately?
Which?
.andy
To email, substitute .nospam with .gl
Oh come on. You shouldn't speak that scathingly of Barbara Castle.....
.andy
To email, substitute .nospam with .gl
That's fair enough - I was not actually referring to you, but to various politicians and city pundits who come on breakfast time TV and make sweeping statements about how wonderful it is to have low employment. Stated by people who have never had to suffer the indignity of unemployment. I don't think that applies to you as you have commented that others within your family have been through this.
I remember the days when I had a nice comfy 9-5 job with a major employer, never having had the experience I refer to. In those days I was a "smarmy git" who thought that those nasty unemployed people ought to get off their backside and find work. Little did I know what the system they were working with offered!
So when I first got made redundant (1995) I automatically believed that I just had to go down the job centre and sign on, and everything would be okay. I learnt very quickly that unemployment benefit and being treated sympathetically were not part of the unemployment scene, instead it was assumed by the job centre that I was unemployed because I wanted to be, and that it was all my fault that I was asking for money to which I had previously believed I was entitled to. My fault entirely I suppose - I honestly didn't realise that the money I thought I could expect actually came out of the personal accounts of job centre staff.
I don't have sympathy for those within the system that know how to bleed it dry and who live off the system. But I do have sympathy for those who find themselves out of work through no reasonable fault of their own. They are treated very harshly by the job centre, at a time when their world is turned upside down trying to cope with financial demands they can no longer meet.
PoP
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I suppose that the hard-nosed decision by those in power is that they should make it difficult to get unemployment benefit, because they assume that this will put off those who plan to 'sponge' off the system. However it isn't quite that simple, and I guess that those who are determined to make a living off others will be able to find a way to do that; while those who are genuinely in need are likely to be damaged by the experience of asking for help, and are likely to give up.
John.
Indeed. One is reminded of the punk flm 'jubilee' where the crime rate was reduced to zero by repealing all the laws...
Falling against the Euro, tho teh dollar is falling faster.
As defined by convenient figures that don't take into account the true state of affairs. And teh fact that many people are employed in make-work, because they went to a 'new university' and now have degrees in politics, museum management and media studies, instead of plumbing...so the real work doesn't get done..
Huh? must be jooking.
That had precious little to do with Gordon Brown, and the UK did in fact go into recession.
I agree we have great anti-social laws tho. Thanks Laber.
Yup, because by holding interest rates down its easy to borrow ten times your annual salary. However its a precarious thing. Maggie used norh sea oil to fnd a consumer boom, Gordon brown is using consumer credit. Both are finite resources. Bust is on teh way. Its just a matter of time, as north sea oil and credit are BOTH running out...
Precisely. The system is, and mostly always has been, broken.
If you aree interested in something a bit more radical try reading 'Instead of the dole' by Hermione Parker. She is/was an academic who proposed that the most efficient way to organise social security was simjply to give every man woman and child who are genuine residents a 'citizens income' ..not *quite* enough to live on, but almost. Then any income is simply taxes at - say - the 40% rate above that. The total tax take doesn't alter, but the poverty traps are eliminated, as are all means tests. It also can subsidise low paid work so there is no need of a minimum wage either. It also entirely dispenses with a huge bureaucracy that is engaged in working out whether or not someone is entitled to payments or not, thereby reducing the cost still further..bit of course it will throw loads of social security staff out of work but heck, its a crap job and they can always do plumbing. Or live off their citizens income.
Like the idea of also giving people copons for PRIVATE education and health, and thereby eliminating aother huge bureacracy that adds nothing to education or health care, and actually gibves people a real choice as consumers, it is of course anathema to both parties, since it essentially decreases their power base, and the size of what they manage. And gives power - in teh form of cash and coupons - back to teh people.
And that is the last thing they want, isn't it? To give up power.
I regard the money the State steals from me as totally lost. We've never even bothered figuring in the State pension in our pension planning. In fact, one IFA (*) said to us that by the time we reach State retirement age, the State pension will likely be means tested and we won't get it anyway. Despite having had half our earnings confiscated for our entire lives.
If you work out the return on investment in the State pension scheme, it makes Equitable Life look like a paragon of virtue. Indeed, if a private company operated the State pension scheme, they would be prosecuted for fraud.
(* And no, I don't have a lot of time for them, either.)
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