Will Brown's job scheme work?

Mike, Brighton

Jobs, jobs, jobs...er no it's spin, spin, spin...do something for the media to be seen to be "doing something" however irrelevant and ill-conceived.

Gordon Musgo

A training course after six months on the dole has long been on offer. In fact the prime purpose was to reset the clock. When you've done the useless course and can't find a job you are at zero months, and the >six months figure is massaged down. The other tactic is to get you off onto the incapacity benefit at this point. From the stress of not having a job!

Oh, of course it won't work, but there will be plenty of other posters to say that.

Nicholas

This is just the usual New Labour modus operandi "combo" of soundbites and figures that sound good, leaked ahead of any actual action and trumpeted by the BBC without challenge or question.

Rather amusing is the fact this Labour party, already in power for nearly 12 years, has chosen to embark on a paltry imitation of Obama's internet "grassroots campaign" as the basis of its drive for a fourth term. The fact that they have already started this, even though the date for the GE has not been announced shows how desperate they are and just where their priorities, in this time of crisis, lie. So what's the change we can believe in then? More of the same nonsense or more crazy new "initiatives" dreamed up on the back of a fag packet (kept under the counter of course)?

Their "Go Fourth" motto reminds me of the old (services?) euphemism "Go forth and multiply", which meant something else entirely and was intended to be rude. I wish they would "Go forth" etc!

TrevorsDen

Labour politicians can spin any lie they like so long as cosy TV 'presenters' simply lie down and fail to contradict them.

RW

Characteristic headline grabbing, tabloid teasing, ill thought out and unprincipled PR from a floundering Government.

Why not just give half a million people a £1000 bribe if they'll agree to stop claiming the dole? Much simpler and more direct way of letting Brown pretend he's done something about unemployment. And it's taxpayers' money, so who cares? Plenty more where that came from.

That's all it's about - fiddling the figures, yet again.

Don

Guido has an interesting take on this. Even McNulty seems to think it is rubbish.
http://www.order-order.com/2009/01/mcnulty-slams-browns-desperate-golden.html

Chuck Unsworth

Jobs won't be created by this - except for consultants. If Brown was at all serious about jobs he'd have been better off trying to increase capital investment - by those who actually create jobs. But then that's not going to help the headlines, is it?

Does he seriously believe that MacDonalds and KFC are going to open yet more branches in response to this 'initiative'? After all, what other jobs are there?

john oxfordshire

Once again fiddling whilst Rome burns. My grandson, made redundant recently, asked about a training course,any course.Nothing available!!!
All spin Mr Brown, hot air as usual.

Alfred T Mahan

Speaking as an employer, it'll make b*****r all difference to whether or not I employ someone - except possibly, if I was taking on staff anyway, I might make sure I employed someone who qualified for the bung rather than someone who didn't. The idea didn't make sense in the autumn and it still doesn't.

mac

@ Chuck Unsworth:

As an adjunct to more Big Mac branches perhaps the world's saviour can bribe McDonald's to open a British version of their Hamburger University (Ms J Smith to become its first Vice-Chancellor).

In fact, the HU could be franchised and each big city can have one. Education, education, education, modern-socialist style.

(details of HU in today's Times2)

skooch

This is gesture politics.

Firms will be lucky to keep on the workforces they already have! Those that have not already cut employee nos are looking closely at any flab they carry from better times, and are considering laying off, rather than taking on.

When it comes around, eventually, to employing, as opposed to 'letting go', firms will have the pick of a flooded job-seekers market. Why would they necessarily prefer a guy with a £2500 gift tag? Answer is, they won't. They'll do what they should be doing, employing the most appropriate applicant.

This policy is typical of emotionally driven thinking. It has no real rationale, and may well have unintended and more unfortunate consequences for those caught up in it.

Publius

All spin. You hire someone. They turn out to be useless. You let them go. Then what? You pay back the money?

I have never seen such blatant cynicism and contempt for people's intelligence as I have over the past months of desperate Labour media manipulation. And then they have the gall to complain that politicians are despised, and blame this on the bloggers!

jennywren

Just supposing that an employer was taking on people, why should someone who has just lost his job be discriminated against. This measure could be condemning someone to unnecessary time out of work, with all the attendant problems that this causes.
Fiddling about with this sort of micro measure always has unintended consequences and is generally a waste of time.

Hawkeye

I agree with Alfred T Mahan - I am also an employer and the £2500 handshake would evaporate in a few weeks thank to the increased costs that Gordon has force on us. The PAYE bill has gone up here, wages have not.

Verity

The headline asks the unlikely question: Will Brown's job scheme work?

Nothing Brown has ever done in public life has worked. Nothing. He is Tony Blair's last laugh in the face of the British electorate.

Paul B

Quite right Verity. Brown is Midas`s reflection in the mirror, except everything he touches turns to pony.

Jeremy

Total madness. Why should we spend more money that we do not have to bribe employers to dole out jobs which are not needed. It is madness. Brown has now lost the entire plot.

Employers will employ people if they need them and do not need government handouts to be persuaded.

Like so many of Brown's policies this one is built on sand and it will further stoke the inflationary fires in a few months time.

The man is a wrecker.

Gordon Musgo

Now we see DCs master plan. He proposes a stupid plan, and Gordo steals it.

Unsteady Eddie

I seem to remember 'benefitting' from such schemes the last time we had a workers cull.
' Job Club', that was it.

What it amounts to this help, is being shown how to write a CV (creative lying), role play interviews and staring at globules of badly stirred Marvel.

Shite then. Shite now.