Exclusive: Osborne’s jobless recovery

disenfranchised

"a duller country"? i'd say it's now as dull, anodyne, and english-trait-free as any indigenous would ever detest it to be.....

Sally Chatterjee

Fascinating Fraser. Curious to see Britain is solving Polish unemployment but it can't get the work-shy out of bed.

Time to make it clear that unemployment benefits simply cannot be a way of life. We've tried the carrot with plenty of help and training. Time to wield a bit of stick too!

Ruby Duck

According to the linked article, the jobs advertised in Coventry were telesales.

I'm not sure, but I think the lack of applicants is making me proud to be British.

Nick

He can also limit foreign workers to those who pay more than 11.5K a year in tax. That is what the government spends per person per year.

Easy to administer, since it uses HMRC and a tax form to administer it.

Under 11.5K, top it up or leave.

Luke

Check the comments on the Daily Mail website on the reality of telesale jobs - it's demoralising work for minimum wage, not £400 a week they claim you can earn.

I agree with your analysis though Fraser about this recovery being a jobless recovery for the electorate and the blame does lie with the benefit system. There needs to be better incentives right now, not in 2015. The income tax threshold needs to be raised to 10k today, not by 2015. Other incentives need to be given, such as real help with housing. How are young people supposed to get a home when they are earning just minimum wage? Property prices are too high. Getting to work is too expensive.... I could go on and on. IDS reforms are a start, I admire him a lot.

Red Rag

With every single quarterly GDP figure being worse than the last GDP figure the previous government had, and the economy has now flat lined for the last nine months.....how is that a recovery?

Dennis Churchill

As was reported in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph 80% of immigrants are from outside the EU so are we creating employment opportunities for immigrants from Lagos rather than Gdansk? Our welfare system can’t continue with this situation. There is simply no incentive for someone to take a job on the same money as if they stayed at home. Our political class has created an insane situation and have such short term “strategic” thinking that they just seem to be hoping it will last until they are old and retired somewhere far away enjoying their wealth. The media classes seem to base their social theories on 1960s pop songs. Altogether now: “Take a pinch of white man wrap it up in black skin add a touch of blue blood and a little bitty bit of red Indian boy...”

Archibald

Fraser, did the statistics include details of where these jobs were and the sorts of jobs they were? I'm assuming they are focused around the south east ie London and are in unskilled or semi-skilled positions? If it was possible to look at the jobs taken by Brits (were they more skilled?) versus the jobs taken by immigrants then this might support anecdotal evidence that I'm sure we all have of friendly, hard-working and motivated Eastern Europeans who speak clear English winning the more low level jobs that either (a) Brits don't want or (b) Brits competing in this sector are not being picked for because perhaps they are not seen to be quite so employable when compared to the immigrant competition.

Incidentally, I agree with your views on 'duller country', which is why I urge you to properly address the EDL and others head on, simply dismissing them is surely dangerous and not what I expect from the Spectator when you on the other hand address issues like the above with such rigour. Do some of the EDL's claims stand up to statistical analysis I wonder?

Nick

Spending far too much time reading the Guardian I have noticed in recent months (as the unemployment data isn't as bad as many feared from Osborne's "nasty vicious cuts") that the "left" has taken to complaining not that the Tory's economy doesn't offer any jobs but that the jobs on offer aren't "proper" jobs.

A "proper" job being an interesting £15 per hour job with full benefits and chance of rapid advancement. Therefore anything minimum wage doesn't count as a proper job.

nonny mouse

If Osbourne wants to create jobs then he should cut the cost of employing people, i.e. National Insurance for employers.

If Osbourne wants to help those struggling with the cost of living increases then he should cut income tax (or raise thresholds), but that helps those in work not those out of work and it does little to reduce the cost of paying benefits for people not to work.

Is there any way that he can cut NI for British workers but not immigrants, on the basis that NI is paid towards British social security that foreigners are not entitled to? That would solve the problem of tax cuts going towards foreigners and help reduce unemployment and the cost of paying benefits. Such a cut could pay for itself.

David Ossitt

Sally Chatterjee

“Time to make it clear that unemployment benefits simply cannot be a way of life. We've tried the carrot with plenty of help and training. Time to wield a bit of stick too!”

How about a lot of stick?

It used to be and was intended as a safety net, a short term protection, for when an individual or a family fell on hard times.

But now it is a lifestyle choice and not just for our feckless underclass but as is well illustrated by the £8,000 per month rent paid for a shiftless Somali family.

It is time to get real, time to sort out our own and to get rid of those who are not.

nonny mouse

>>The answer is that the government he runs has paved the road towards welfare dependency.

No, that road was built and paved by Gordon Brown. A better description is that he has failed to resurface it.

Dennis Churchill

Sally Chatterjee
August 29th, 2011 4:27pm
Would you get out of bed to pick fruit or clean offices for the same money, or less, than the State pays you to stay at home?
We are expecting people to behave in a completely irrational way.
For the unskilled a mixture of the black economy and welfare benefits maximises their disposable income. It is the system that is wrong. It seems designed for a non-existent human type. I know the concept of human nature goes against the core principles of cultural Marxism but our welfare system and criminal justice system seem so mad it is as if they were designed by some Marxist historian refugee who took up residence in London and encouraged his sons to enter British politics. They truly are that bad.

ollie

"...We’d just have fewer jobs, smaller economy and a duller country...."

Yes - we might have far fewer people and a far higher quality of life. I long for a duller country.

disenfranchised

my dear dennis, can't think who you could be alluding to. mister bean come into it somewhere?

ButcombeMan

Why say "many Brits are lazy"-only in private?

It is true, many are also regularly drugged, drunk or otherwise unemployable because of poor education.

They just will not get out of bed regularly enough to satisfy an employer. They are an ill disciplined rabble. Our problem is cultural. These are the offspring of the UK socialist project. We should not be afraid to say so and keep saying so.

At a hotel on the West Coast of Scotland with Polish & Lithuanian staff, I was told by the owner that Glaswegians would not come there for (admittedly seasonal) reasonably paid work, with accomodation and all found.

The Eastern Europeans would. They were also I was told well educated. Far better educated than the bulk of the worthless, feckless, UK born dross, who occasionally did venture out to the Scottish hospitality industry.

Bull

Is not being dull the new vibrant?

Dennis Churchill

disenfranchised
August 29th, 2011 5:38pm
Yes, the dynastic name escapes me for the moment; one of the sons does do a remarkable Mr. Bean impersonation...
ollie
August 29th, 2011 5:28pm
“Dull” being the opposite of “interesting” as in the Chinese curse:”may you live in interesting times.”Maybe we need a variant:”May you live in a diverse society.”
Smaller economy per capita?

David Ossitt

Dennis Churchill

“Would you get out of bed to pick fruit or clean offices for the same money, or less, than the State pays you to stay at home?”

Dennis the answer to your question and the solution to the quandary that poses is a very simple one.

Reduce all unemployment benefit to 40% of the minimum wage and to get them out of bed, those on benefit be made to sign on each day between 7 and 9 am.

Julian F

An excellent post, Fraser, based on careful analysis of statistics, rather than the "assumptions" that some posters accuse others of making. As I think I commented in an earlier thread, this is not an especially encouraging or sustainable picture. And that is not so much a comment on immigration as it is on the parlous state of the interplay between our benefits system and our labour market. The domestic labour market has not been allowed to function efficiently for many years and action is needed desperately to remove the distortions in the market. I wish the Conservative Party had a latter day Thatcher/Keith Joseph capable of making the case.

Ron Todd

Duller country

Does that mean fewer riots?

FvH

Very interesting insight Fraser - certainly IDS says he is going to fix this and I'm sure he is well intentioned BUT am I alone in thinking it will not significantly improve (and will probably just go on getting worse)- the scale of the task, the inertia in the system, the lack of "real" political leadership from David "let's make yet another speech" Cameron all conspire to make this the shape of things to come.
A stagnant economy that produces low growth,and only really dreadful low paid jobs that will be taken by hard working immigrants who view them as relatively well paid

Dennis Churchill

David Ossitt
August 29th, 2011 7:26pm
I think we need to look at the minimum wage and whether it should exist.
Globalisation of labour has distorted the supply and demand equilibrium for wage rates as we can, by opening borders, have a virtually limitless supply of labour. The problem for society, unless your wealth enables you to insulate yourself from the consequences when you are in Britain and staying in your £8 million Regents Park House, is that large numbers will be displaced and without welfare support we will resemble one of those third world countries where 80% of our immigrant labour came from last year.
Our feminised education system, along with our criminal justice system and welfare state is perfectly suited to a country consisting exclusively of women white collar public sector workers. What a shame it does not consist of such a group but rather a growing underclass that is outside both the legitimate economy and our social norms.
Yes we need to reduce the incentive to stay on welfare but we also need to provide jobs. If necessary introducing Workfare but without a halt to mass immigration, initially from non-EU countries other than permit holders, the situation will get worse.

Olaf

I'd always thought that any job was better than no job but then you have to consider telesales. Selling things people don't want to people who aren't interested. And as this company was selling alarm systems you can imagine the scare stories their employees are scripted to spell out. I'd happily work in any factory or sewage farm before telesales.

Peter From Maidstone

A halt to all immigration and the strict deportation of all those who should not be here would free up space in the labour market. The demand for labour would increase wages at the bottom end to a realistic level. The removal of benefits as an unlimited right and the insistence on working in any job provided would solve the problem of benefit receivers not wanting to work. If you get £200 on benefit and can work then you should do any job at all for either benefit, benefit+wage or wage.

In2minds

Congratulations to disenfranchised, ollie, Bull and Ron Todd who all picked up the 'duller country' thing.

I confidently predict that like Neathergate, duller country will never be seen on this website again!

Common Sense Tom

Maybe a good cure for the lazy welfare culture could be a very simple solution. This solution is to give food and clothes vouchers instead of the current cash in hand system, which is only spend on alcohol and fags more than often. This would still help genunie people in need, yet stop people having cash to waste on fags etc.It would give people that gently push they need to get a job, so when they get a job they can buy the things they want. People on benifits should get essentials not luxurys. I know people will say fags etc are not luxurys but to most long term welfare claiments these are thier essentials. Maybe vouchers would really work cause it would restrict luxurys and also shame the long term jobless shy back into work, yet still helping people who really need help.

Yet i know this would never happen cause of the human rights issue,the fact is the softly softly approach which is taken will never work.

Immigartion will be a key vote winner as well as the economy in the future of this once great country. Listen to average voters and they will say its out of control, yet politians say they will control it but know they cant. Immigartion is good if under strict control, Which it has not been for a long time.
Immigrants keep working class peoples wages low, use the already streched nhs, increase school class sizes. Teachers have to help children who dont speak good english while british pupils have to accept a poorer education for it. House's are out of reach for most under 25s cause they are still unaffordable, yet the council will not help them but will immigrants. All these sqeezes are impacts of large immigration and its not good, soon british people will say enough is enough.

Anon

Articles on this subject appear to contain an implicit assumption that those advertising jobs are more meritorious than those in need of work. It might be worth investigating the general competence of would-be employers and recruitment firms. It might also be worth looking at the impact employment law has on companies' ability to remove incompetent staff (of whatever race etc.).

Rather than needing to get on one's bike, perhaps the problem is that, where humans share a right with all creatures to take whatever we need from nature to provide for our well-being, we are instead born into a world that, we are told, has been carved up by other people. Thus deprived of securing their own capital, those with no inheritance are forced to seek jobs from others who may have a vested interest in impeding their meritocratic rise.

Instead of condemning the "workshy", we might marvel at the fact that most unemployed people do not resort to violence or dishonesty to claim their natural rights.

And what happened to all those bankers' taxes? I thought the bailing out of this sector was supposed to be justified by the huge taxes that they would then pay (back) to society? Are benefits payments (to those shut out of Britain's only remaining industry) not part of that payback?

JohnPage

We're not going to cut the numbers on long term benefits any time soon, so we should make them give society value.

Neil O'Brien has recently made the case for "conditional welfare".

After a period on welfare, he suggests, or immediately in some cases, people should have to work for their benefits. This, he argues, causes people to leave welfare more quickly, and find jobs that pay real money instead.

(It would, incidentally, also make it harder for people to claim out of work benefits for any length of time while they were holding down an undeclared job.)

We know there are plenty of things people would like their local authorities to do which just can't be afforded. If those on workfare do those tasks, they aren't putting anyone out of a job, because local government could not have afforded to employ people to do the work in the first place.

This needn't just be "cleaning the streets, picking up litter and removing graffiti". Let the local community decide what they would like their local workfare claimants to do.

Conditional welfare could "change the culture of entitlement without responsibility". It's popular. Is there a case against it?

London Calling

We hardly live in the times to be talking about leeches, George Osborne has obviously conveniently forgotten that public anger towards any form of sucking out of the system includes fellow parliamentarians and the Governments current will not to act by proposing tax breaks. The difference between the two sets of leeches here mentioned is that benefit leeches* (*his words) are named and shamed, however Swiss tax evader leeches* will remain unknown and masked and will continue to do business…

There’s something very creepy crawly about all of this…and nothing Christian at all with the use of words* or action to remove tax leeching off British citizens and small Businesses…

UK-Swiss tax deal 'a disgrace' warns Christian Aid {official website)

The UK-Swiss agreement will lead to Britons with secret Swiss bank accounts starting to pay tax on them, which the Swiss will pass on to the UK – but crucially, without revealing account holders’ identities.
Tax evaders will have the option of owning up to the UK authorities about their accounts, as an alternative to paying a one-off back tax of between 19 and 34 per cent on their hidden money.
However, Ms Minghella argued that by allowing people to keep their identities hidden, the UK government is, in effect, colluding with criminality.
‘Why would anyone rather pay a back tax of 19 to 34 per cent on the money they have hidden in Switzerland than reveal their identity, unless they have done something seriously wrong? And why is the government letting them get away so lightly?’ she asked.
‘The most likely reason is that they have evaded a whole lot more tax than that or been involved in other serious criminal behavior.

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/august-2011/uk-swiss-tax-deal-a-disgrace-warns-christian-aid.aspx

Baron

Get rid of the minimum wage, it has lost the country more jobs than any past recession, if having one job at a low wage ain’t enough, people could have two, three jobs, Baron did when he came over, it did him no harm.

Limit unemployment benefits to six months, to helping with retraining, moving council house.

Have those unemployed longer than six months work on council projects four days a week, the fifth day free to look for jobs, payment in vouchers for food, clothing, the rate a third of the unemployment benefits they qualified in the prior six months.

Reduce NI, increase tax free allowance, bring back the 10% rate for the lowest paid.

Simon Mason

The Spectator has been doing it's bit in employing immigrant stock with it's recent editors. Matthew d'Ancona was the son Maltese football player who arrived in the UK to play for Newcastle Utd and Boris Johnson is of Turkish origin, and was born in NYC - a foreign-born worker, I'm sure you'll agree? And Fraser Nelson the current editor hails from Scotland, which is a Londoner sometimes feels pretty foreign to me.

Alex Massie is right immigration is compliment to the UK and the magazines complement of foreign and foreign(ish) born recent editors, I'm sure goes along way to explaining why The Spectator the best and most lively and challenging magazine in Britain

Ruby Duck

ButcombeMan: "Glaswegians would not come there for (admittedly seasonal) reasonably paid work, with accomodation and all found. "

And who could blame them ? 3 or 4 months work means they have to sign off job seekers and make a new claim for any applicable in-work benefits, including housing benefit which they may find themselves not entitled to if they have accomodation with their work. At the end of the 3 or 4 months work, they have to make a new claim for job seekers allowance, a new claim for housing benefit etc. The chances are the DWP will not have processed the termination of the original claim when they make the new claim, and they will probably still be waiting for the working tax and child tax credits relevant to the 3 or 4 months of employment. While the DWP fumbles blindly through the new claim, the new housing benefit claim will be baffling the local authority officers. They will receive notification that their job seekers benefit has been stopped one day, and notification that they owe £768 in overpaid allowances the next day. The day after that they will learn that their claim for housing benefit has been disallowed. They will then receive notification that they are owed £496 in wtc and £932 in child tax credits. Two days later they will receive notification that their working tax credit has been discontinued . They will be required to fill in the form they filled in in the first place because the original documentation has been lost and the DWP system in Glasgow doesn't agree with the DWP system in Swindon. They may not, at this point, be interviewed for a fraudulent claim. They will fall behind with their rent and, without a sympathetic landlord, or generous relatives, will have to borrow from a money-lender.

If all goes reasonably smoothly, it takes about 6 months to sort out the paperwork.

E Hart

Fraser, there are 500,000 vacancies for 2.5m unemployed people in Britain. Okay, so you fill 500,000 vacancies. Then what?

Also, we have a serious problem with low paid subsistence work (min. wage), low paid part-time work plus an estimated 6.5m people who are "under-employed". This a major barrier to our economic well-being. Poor people contribute little to a dynamic economy.

FvH

A general question - why should any of us on here really care about this? Apart from not being willing to pay for the underclass lifestyle? So if we all go tour tax affairs properly in order why then should we care about it?
A serious question
Why?

Rhoda Klapp

If immigration is a compliment to the UK it is an even greater compliment to the inner-city shitholes and dull industrial towns the immigrants seem to favour. Maybe it's because they are so 'vibrant'.

TomTom

The simple fact is that Britain has a basket case economy. It has high paying middle class jobs in London centred on Banking/Media/PR/Law/Accountancy which is why most high-paying jobs are in BBC, ITV, Guardian, Banks, PR, Advertising.

In the real economy outside Bubble-World there are not many dynamic family businesses expanding and employing people - no Vileda, BMW, Hormann, to name three family businesses.

Britain turns factory sites into retail parks and housing estates and greenfield sites into subsidised Japanese or Korean plants. It does not have a culture of garden workshop and lathe which is where men like James Dyson learned so much as schoolboys.

It does not have railway engineering works where men like W O Bentley and Henry Royce learned their TRADE. It does not haveclusters of core businesses suporting each other as it used to in Bradford, Leeds, Black Country, Newcastle.

It has financialised its economy and made land values too high to support manufacturing plant. It has looked for fast, easy money, instead of steady returns and sold off anything that wasn't bolted down for cash.

There are very very few jobs with good salaries outside the public sector. Engineers get better rewarded in The City than at Weir Pumps or BAe.

British Culture is Literary not Numerate and focuses on word play and smart comment over hard graft and bending metal. It prefers Consumption to Production and Celebrity to Personality and Character

Steve Tierney

Put a time limit on benefits after which the amount you get decreases with each month to almost nothing (for those who aren't genuinely unable to work.)

Deliver a huge cut in income tax coupled with a rise in personal allowance.

Carrot and stick.

tim williams

What's missing from this analysis - which i broadly share - is an understanding of the worklessness problem in the former industrial areas a long way from the London/migrant-attracting economy .The link with social housing is also missed.

Worklessness in the former industrial areas is as much about people now living in areas too far from the market as it is about benefit dependency . Typically,worklessness is a massive features of such areas with certain neighbourhoods experiencing anything from 40%-70% not in employment.These are usually low or non skilled people who a generation or more ago would have worked in local mines or factories. I grew up in such an area and full employment was characteristic of that place then.It now has an almost permanently workless population of about 35%- most of whom would have been in work in my youth. When the non skilled jobs went away the people stayed and their skills have not been upgraded to do what jobs there are:a massive failure of education yes but also an objective problem of low motivation for low skilled young people.

Reinforcing this structural shift in the economy is subsidized social housing ,yes but also the complete absence of policies assisting people top leave failed places or any welcoming committee in growing places. Think back to when large numbers of people left the North and Wales in the 30s to find work. There were unskilled jobs waiting for them and cheap houses to rent or buy.None of that applies today.

So I'm afraid that merely punishing people by withdrawing benefits and reducing the attractions of idleness , as it were,will not work for a very large part of the UK.Policies which encourage housing in growing areas are required (and Conservative local government predominates in such areas so that isn't going to happen)as are policies which encourage regional economies (which despite the blather about unbalanced Britain,I see no sign of).

Moralism only takes us a little way to success in this matter.We need pull as well as push policies - and a strategy for the UK regions.

General Zod

It's both a problem of the tax and benefit system and a problem of feckless, lazy people who've been trained to be fecless and lazy, Fraser. The latter problem is the more difficult one by far.

j7sue

Immigration is largely because employers don't like paying proper wages. "Oh there's a shortage of".whatever. No, you're not paying enough for it.
It's called the market, which somehow doesn't seem so attractive when it applies to workers, rather than things, or privatising the public sector. I've heard people say there was a shortage of, for example, IT project managers so that they can import Indian PMs on short term visas...It's just meanness.

Hangmansknotinn

"A duller country" without millions of foreign migrants in it? That is the most stupid thing I've ever heard, Nelson. You should hang your head in shame.

If this is the current voice of the Spectator I'll be cancelling my subscription.

Peter From Maidstone

j7sue, immigration is not due to employers not wanting to pay proper wages since the vast majority of immigrants do not have a job when they arrive. The number of IT project managers who are migrating here is in any case tiny compared with the number of rural farm labourers.

ButcombeMan

"Ruby Duck"
August 29th, 2011 11:29pm
*********************
Great stuff, I am obliged and our two posts, put together, surely spell out the problem.

My big worry is that eventually we will turn eastern european or other immigrants, who have been here long enough, into even more leeches on the system. Already I detect that trend in immigrants from other parts of the world.

2trueblue

Ruby Duck, perfectly explained, no joined up thinking and that has been going on since the 80's when I was an adviser at the CAB. Brown made it more complicated and it should be fixed. If you are receiving benefits you have a file and no matter where you are that file should be made available so that it enables you to move and try for work. The system needs simplifying and should support those who are trying to get back to work and ensure that they do not fall into debt by withdrawing all support immediately and taking 6mths to sort it. Keep it simple s.....

London Calling

Just as Britain became addicted to migrant labor, so would working for welfare currently being proposed by the Labour Party. Although currently this would only fill in a few community jobs and inevitably remove part timers from employment, on a grander scale it wont happen because we don’t manufacture anything and will never be able to compete with cheaper labor and products from China. Tax on imported materials as well as the high cost of materials render Britain unable to compete.

The sinister part to all this if it did happen in my view, is that it would be much preferred to keep those on working for welfare rather than release them from welfare. The minimum wage has already enslaved those working as they rely on welfare in the form of housing benefit, council tax, tax credits, to make up the shortfall because the minimum wage doesn’t meet living costs…where are the charts for these dependents? Yet they are not classed as welfare recipients. When in fact they are…The Elephant is not only in the room, its blowing very large bubbles…

We are reminded that our biggest export is creative thinking, by the few, this is all well and good, but what do the rest of the population left behind do meanwhile?

This is not the Matrix and the jobless are not batteries…although last week it was announced that bio fuel can be produced from Alligators fat...:O

The fact of the matter is…in my view, is that capitalism in its current form and the global financial meltdown, added together with technological advancement has created a chaotic system, of which they are no longer compatible. I think that there is too much comparison with the great depression, we live in a different world now and technology with all its achievements for mankind has evolved and continues to evolve in a way that demands we change our complete way of living to adapt and survive. How we do that would require a change quite radical, but it wouldn’t represent the system we now know. It is my believe that we are destined for greater things, what holds us back can be resolved with an accord globally if we really wanted, its not a one world order, its common sense and natural survival instinct if we are indeed the most intelligent beings on our planet……(although that is debatable) ….The Elephants blowing bubbles again ;)

I shall ponder more on such thought…Good day…:)

Wily Trout

Certainly lowering income tax for the low-paid is a priority - they are the real 'poor' of the country, not those with substantial incomes from the state plus the benefit of free housing, which should be costed at the equivalent of the funds outlaid for a deposit, credit-rating for mortgage, maintenance and the monthly repayments. The total must be at least the equivalent of the higher tax rate wage. I see that most of the employed on the estate where I live drive far more modest cars than the 'poor', or rather workless, whose incomes in many cases are higher, but unearned.

WIlliam Blakes Ghost

I am sick of this complacent convenient line that the British unemployed must be lazy and work-shy. Furthermore, I'd love to know where all these jobs that immigrants are getting are located?

People seem to forget that in just about every area of work now people are expected to have job specific qualifications up the caboodle (many specified by Government and EU regulation) and ideally an associated membership of the institute of clone-like dummies and the mandatory degree in nothing in particular. So if you do not meet those criteria (and getting them can cost a fortune) and the suitable experience then there is absolutely no point in applying for a vast number of jobs.

Then there are those companies whose HR decisions are decided by psychometric (psychopathic) testing (and let's not forget positive discrimination as well). So if you don't 'fit' their 'team image' you have no chance either.

Then even if you fit the criteria in many areas you have to try and get past the vacuous parasite recruitment agents that are only interested in their % and have no idea what a specific job entails. So it is pot luck if you'll be selected by these parasites and then they will probably sell you wrongly to a potential employer or put you up for totally inappropriate jobs.

Of course then there are those employers who really only want to employ people in the 'golden decade' (25-35) or younger who they can 'mould'. In ageist Britain if you hit 50 and have an employment setback then you are pretty much finished.

Then there is often the need for having your own transport and either it can be a pre-requisite for a job or essential as a result of the location. Where do you get the money from for transport (forget getting a loan in the current climate) if you have been on benefits for an extended period?

And if you are lucky enough to get past that lot you have to pray that when the employer/ recruitment agent sees you haven't worked in x months/ years they don't just file your CV in the bin.

Trying to get work has never been strewn with more obstacles than it is today. Yes there will be those taking advantage of the system but the system of employment is as riddled with bureacratic barriers as every other aspect of work. The whole employment culture needs changing.

If you want to get people back in work you need to break down the barriers and change current employment culture just as much as you need to motivate the work-shy.

As for the cold calling jobs in Coventry I'd love to see the advert they put out.

Of course the other issue is whether having educated people with GCSE's, A-Levels and Degrees up the kazoo it is realistic to expect them to take minimum wage roles as care workers, cold callers and cleaners?

Of course not everyone has educational qualifications up the kazoo and there are no doubt many work-shy people out there. However, I suspect there are far more who are just completely disillusioned with the whole damn circus.

Ruby Duck

@William Blakes Ghost

Well said, sir. I agree, completely.

Norman Pagett

Jobs? What jobs? Everybody wants jobs but nobody stops to consider just what a job is, and why they’ve gone for good. Our jobs, everything from city banker to refuse collector, depends on digging up cheap carbon fuel and burning it. That’s been the basis of our industrial system for 150 years, our employment depends entirely on that. We have used finite resources to build an economy based on infinite consumption.
Now we’ve run out of cheap fuel, and what we have left is too expensive to use to power our factories. That’s why your jobs have vanished. OK, jobs have gone to China, but that’s a short term thing, they are just using cheap manpower to subsidize expensive energy. This is why they are frantically trying to corner world energy markets, but eventually they will hit the same wall. Our industrial ‘employment’ has been producing goods by burning fuel, that created the need for even faster fuel burning to produce more goods. And so on into some fictional infinity. We deluded ourselves that it was GDP, and the faster we burned it, the more ‘growth’ we had. But we have been creating employment from a finite resource, and there is no way of sustaining jobs as that resource diminishes.
Without that energy input, job creation schemes don’t work either, they are just a means of passing money around to give an illusion of employment for a short time. They all fail.
Even Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ , essentially a colossal exercise in fuel burning to build roads, dams and other public works was only saved by the biggest job creation scheme of all: WW2! That gave the developed world an impetus in consumption that rolled on for a generation. The economy of the developed world really is that simple, we can only create employment by consuming energy at a constantly increasing rate. It is the truth our leaders daren’t utter.
http://www.yourmedievalfuture.com/

Steven Carrington

The problem with the UK. Generations have been encouraged to seek something for nothing, this includes living at the taxpayers expense.

Certain groups are lazy and see no need to contribute to society, be it economically or socially.

Politicians need to grasp the benefits nettle once and for all and take it back to the point of being a 'Helping Hand' not a lifestyle choice.
The only way to discourage reliance on benefits is to make it impossible to have any sort of beneficial lifestyle by living on benefit monies.

Too many of the British are lazy and will not take what they regard as menial work, this has got to change, jobs of any discription should be made more rewarding than benefits.

The benefits system needs to be time - related, only available for a specific time period, then people should work or allow charities to take over.

There are jobs out there for everyone, maybe not the type of job everybody wants but millions of people have jobs they would like to swap but have an understanding that they have to make their own way in life and want to better themselves.

The mindset in the UK needs to change and work seen as a positive thing and not a chore. No wonder we have a great many immigrants in this country who grasp the principal of work and how it leads to self development and self worth.

Time has come for a complete shake up of the something for nothing culture, the workers should benefit, the workshy should not.