Remember the famous Saatchi & Saatchi poster campaign from 1979? Growing dole queues, strikes, riots, more riots and uncollected rubbish. If it was re-written today, it would look exactly like this:
There's another shot there, look... remarkable.
16 hours ago
32 comments:
Are you really dishonest enough to blame the high unemployment on the Tories?
The coming one yes. Think of the hundreds of thousands of public and local authority workers who are getting post-Crimbo redundancy letters as we speak.
I know! Isn't it great. And with the private sector hiring, maybe the parasites can contribute for a change.
Do I really need to tell you that unemployment is a pool between 2 fast flowing streams, job creation and job destruction. The latter is rather constant. Unemployment doesn't respond to job losses rather a slowdown in job creation.
Finally, unemployment responds to economic changes 1 year to 18 months earlier. I expect the changes from the budget will start to lower unemployment from this summer.
I bet you £50 to a charity of your choice (mine's the RNLI) that unemployment (labour force survey) is lower in dec 2011 than it is in June 2011.
And with the private sector hiring, maybe the parasites can contribute for a change.
You do believe in fairy tales, Jackart, dont you. I do hope you're right with your optimism, otherwise we're in deep shit indeed.
Incidentally, writing "parasites and "isnt it great" over real people suddenly losing their source of income and getting stomach cramps over their family and future bills, rent, mortgage etc, is a little bit...how do I call it..."shitty" would lower the tone too much which I don't wanna do.
If you've ever lost your job without knowing of/when the next one was going to come you'd speak with more respect.
I've been fired 4 times. My sympathy for people who do pointless jobs for which I'm force at gunpoint to pay for, is limited.
You believe in the fairy-tale of safe jobs for life. They don't exist.
So.
The point about Job destruction being constant over the cycle and job creation being what drives unemployment was ignored....
You cut taxes and regulation on employment, you get more jobs. Simple. You try to "create" jobs, or "save" jobs, you get fewer and therefore more unemployment
This is why EVERY labour administration in history has had MORE unemployment at the end of its term than at the beginning.
That's before we deal with Labour's other economic catastrophes.
What you're trying to achieve is to "stimulate" the economy. I don't believe it works: look at Japan 30 years of "stimulus" and all they have to show for it is 40% of Tax reciepts going in debt service.
So. The first premise against the cuts is wrong.
You don't think anyone should be fired, ever? THat's just naiive.
So you have to (if you want to have a grown-up debate) accept that jobs have to go from time to time.
So you need to ensure that there are jobs to go to. Which means you must make it less risky for employers to hire. This means that if you make it easier to fire, there will be MORE jobs created.
So attempts to stimulate the economy by spending fail, because they destroy the ecomomy. Attempts to mitigate by preventing people getting fired fail because they cause MORE companies in trouble to go bust, and they make it riskier to hire, redcing job creation and resulting in HIGHER unemployment.
In attempting to reduce a small evil - being fired in a dynamic economy, the left condemns millions to a life on benefits without the hope of work.
Lefist policy is to the benefit of insiders - those with full-time public sector jobs (especially unionised insiders) but that is the detriment of everyone else, tax-payers, the crowded out unemployment but most catastrophically the unemployed.
The Tories want the same as Labour. Low unemployment. The fact is the Tories have a MUCH better track record in delivering it.
Everything you people think you know about how the economy works is wrong. Every solution leftists come up with is catastrophic and full of unintended consequences.
The state is the wrong tool for the job of reducing unemployment. In fact the best thing the state can do to create jobs is build infrastructure (yes, that means roads) and bugger off, leaving the people to use it as they see fit without interference by Government.
The less the state does, the better.
"You believe in the fairy-tale of safe jobs for life. They don't exist."
No I don't. Ditch the strawman technique, that won't wash with me.
But for a self-professed 1st world country to have to cut down rubbish collection to ONCE A FUCKIN MONTH so that this government can indulge in masturbating Free-Marketeering ideology and Trustafarian Gideon Osborne and his Bullingdon pals can recite their Free Market Psalm verse by verse makes me see red.
"So you need to ensure that there are jobs to go to. Which means you must make it less risky for employers to hire. This means that if you make it easier to fire, there will be MORE jobs created."
I've said it before, I'll say it again. You are soaked in ideology. You are the right-wing's equivalent of the Communist Party of Great Britain cirac1948. Black--->White. You do one thing---->Another happens. Action----->Consequence. Easy---->Peasy.
Fire local authority workers---->Jobs in the private sector.
Last year the Republic of Ireland tried that bit of the Free Marketeers' Bible. They're going cap in hand to get bailed out now!
Lest we forget. Let me remind you, my libertarian friend, Britain suffered the BIGGEST crisis in 60 (sixty) years under the most business friendly, "flexible", "casual", hire'n'fire labour-market framework since the Victorian era. It did a lot of good, it did, didn't it?
"The Tories want the same as Labour. Low unemployment. The fact is the Tories have a MUCH better track record in delivering it."
Absolutely ri-di-cu-lous. Your ignorance of history is actually touching. Look at the statistics from 1981 to 1995 at least. 13/15 years with ravaging unemployment amongst the highest in Europe, just so that Thatcher's Free Marketeers' wet dreams could be implemented.
Some of the worst unemployment rates ever in this country took place under the watch of Thatcher and Major in the 1980s and 1990s and that is a fact and there is no excuse for you not to be aware of it. But I guess for someone who (in)famously said that fascist dictator Franco "left people alone", that should come as no suprise...!
"Everything you people think you know about how the economy works is wrong. Every solution leftists come up with is catastrophic and full of unintended consequences."
Like George Osborne with EIRE. Oh yeah babe. Do us a favour.
"So you need to ensure that there are jobs to go to. Which means you must make it less risky for employers to hire. This means that if you make it easier to fire, there will be MORE jobs created."
This is brilliant logic which could be expanded further: return our workforce to third-world conditions and we can finally compete with all those countries we've been outsourcing to. Holiday pay and lunch breaks are crippling our economy! How about a bit of child labour while you're at it?
The problem with your argument is twofold:
a) It isn't difficult to fire geniunely incompetent staff.
b) Staff turnover costs money, which is why the more successful companies put so much effort into retention.
What you're on about is mismanagement of utilisation (e.g. I'm not selling as many widgets so I need to lay some people off). I'm all for increasing efficiency but that should not be used as justification for taking labour laws back to the dark ages. Successful business people don't see irregular throughput as an impediment, they innovate (see also the business model for the Easy group).
The fact is that if someone living on 30k a year is forced by market conditions to take up a 10k a year job overnight then they are well and truly fucked. Multiply that by 100,000 redundancies at the same time and you'd have to be a callous bastard to suggest it was all for the greater good. Given the social cost (increased crime, poorer health, homelessness etc) there will very soon be a high financial cost following.
If that's a fair free market then you can piss off to the US and enjoy it on a much grander scale.
@Claude
"But for a self-professed 1st world country to have to cut down rubbish collection to ONCE A FUCKIN MONTH so that this government can indulge in masturbating Free-Marketeering ideology ... makes me see red."
Claude, perhaps you can help me here. Government is spending around 50%+ of GDP and a big chunk of that is local government spending. *What* exactly are they spending it on that is more important than rubbish collection? I know it isn't the banking bailout, so don't try that canard. Transfer payments are a big chunk, but don't explain all of the rise over the last 5 years or so.
Surely there must be some savings that are possible (even if they do result in job losses) that could preserve services like rubbish collection?
@ Ben E
"a) It isn't difficult to fire geniunely incompetent staff."
The problem isn't ability, it is willingness to actually take the painful decisions. My wife works in a small team in a quango. One of her colleagues *literally* spends more than 50% of her time on the internet, principally facebook, the guardian and the bbc websites. She does half her job reasonably well, but does absolutely nothing towards the other (more difficult) part of her job, preferring to follow up on leads from other people rather than generate new ideas herself.
No concept of performance reviews, suggestions she isn't doing her job, etc...
(And I know that you can't extrapoloate from one example, but I'm willing to guess this is symptomatic of other public sector jobs. The private sector just can't afford to carry passengers for long"
Charles - I regularly work in both private and public sectors and I can assure you that timewasting, idleness, and being carried by others are not unique to the public sector. Any organisation with insufficient control over its productivity and activities and sufficient profit to absorb that inefficiency, will suffer the same problem. There are plenty of banks, utility companies, and oil companies, that have sufficient profits to support the high levels of inefficiency you describe. Likewise there are areas of the public sector where the pressures are disproportionate to the remuneration (e.g. the lower end of NHS operations). Trust me, a lazy person will always find a way to take the piss while those more conscientious keep things going.
Charles,
the last time I checked BT or nPower were not owned by the State, yet I'm sure you'll agree there are no adjectives to describe their level of incompetence and inefficiency. It may also be that the money spent to lavish supermegamanagers with inappropriate wages and to keep shareholders happy while more staff is needed to deal with customer service may be one reason behind some unrivalled inefficiency.
Still, to say that "I know a council worker who spends all her working day on Facebook ---->THEREFORE----> let's fire more local authority workers, yeah, FIRE them!" is, sorry, daily-mail-style daft, as well as intellectually dishonest.
I don't understand where this "it should be easier to hire'n'fire" pap comes from.
British "wealth creators" has long enjoyed some of the most business friendly or "flexible" (to use a word that really gets on my tits) labour-market framework in the Western World. This was acknowledged by the CBI as well.
What good did that do?
Even during the Binge Years we had growing numbers of default part-timers and temping people and casuals then ever. Wages inequality was galloping, increasing millions of people were using their plastic to top up their shitty "flexible" wages and "snap!", the whole edifice came crumbling down.
There is something wrong structurally when you have a nation where the whole economy keeps rolling thanks to mobile phone and call centre workers splashing out virtual money three times a week at the Bullring or Blue Water. There's a deeply ingrained illness there.
By the way. It's amazing how the right is now acting as if the whole crisis created by a vicious circle of bingeing, greed and fake optimism is now to be fully blamed on public sector workers. By all means, curb managers' wages, cut down on useless council-funded festivals, do what you have to do. But the cuts are being too radical and are affecting front-line services and we're all the poorer for it.
That is also economically ignorant and I don't need to repeat what I said before about the consequence of massive, radical, glaze-eyed cuts across the Irish Sea.
You say "I've said it before, I'll say it again. You are soaked in ideology. You are the right-wing's equivalent of the Communist Party of Great Britain cirac1948. Black--->White. You do one thing---->Another happens. Action----->Consequence. Easy---->Peasy.
Fire local authority workers---->Jobs in the private sector.
Last year the Republic of Ireland tried that bit of the Free Marketeers' Bible. They're going cap in hand to get bailed out now!"
Ireland is irrelevant they're in a mess because of 2 decades of the wrong interest rate.
If you make it harder to fire people, you make it riskier to employ them. You therefore increase unemployment. This in undeniably true. It's not black=white. Your belief that this isn't the case is the idealogical postiton.
Your job protection works for insiders - those with jobs already It works catastrophically against the poor unfortunate unemployed.
As for the Tories causing the highest unemployment in Europe look at the unemployment figures at the beginning and end of every Labour and Tory Government since the war. THEN tell me Labour isn't catastropically incompetent. Labour ALWAYS increases unemployment. That is a fact.
The reason is because they ALWAYS increase job protection. Tories Always come in when the country is in a mess because of Labour incompetence. Unemployment goes up for a bit, then down as reforms start to work. When people have forgotten, they let Labour who promise the moon on a string, screw it all up again.
You, and the entire left is wrong on the unelployment issue. I'd love everyone to have a job for life, if they wanted it. (I'd hate it for myself). Ain't gonna happen. Sorry.
"Your job protection works for insiders".
BenE had it downpat earlier on. Then why not make our labour market like the one in Bangladesh? That's flexible and it'll make us all thrive, right?
For the record it couldn't be any easer to hire'n'fire in Britain than it is now. I still struggle to understand what more you want. And you still struggle to grasp that a mammoth crisis happened anyway under this current labour market. Meaning that it's nt the labour market that is the problem.
Your claim that unemployment went up under each and every Labour government is shallow, wrong and dishonest. Just look at how the figures soared the moment Thatcher took power. And no, I'm afraid, your fable that "Unemployment goes up for a bit, then down as reforms start to work." is a load of BS. The Tories always say that it takes time to cure the patient. "Unemployment under the expert Tory watch stayed higher than at any point since the 1930s for 13 to 15 years.
As for "reforms start to work", one could point you in the direction of the statistics that say crime and social unrest skyrockets (through more widespread deprivation- as if that wasn't going to cost society and the taxpayer) under each Tory government, but that's a whole other story.
Finally, look at how depleted the British workforce looked (compared to say, that of Germany or Scandinavian countries) even when it seemingly recovered from 18 years of Tory "cure". A nation with a booming City and the masses of unskilled indebted people working in call centres or mobile phone shops. Blair and Brown will always carry the responsibility of cashing in on the bullshit illusion of Fantasy Island.
Bangladesh is a very poor country, not remotely comparable.
The fact is Germany and France have SHOCKING long-term unemployment. through the 90s it ran at over 10%. Insiders have jobs and vote for more rights, but the unemployed are denied the the True they're not as bad as ours at the moment, but a flexible labour market is not abusive.
I've been fired reasonably often. And the important thing is that there are jobs to go to.
The UK economy makes 150,000-200,000 jobs a month, and a similar number are lost. There's significant turnover. Unemployment is the movement between 2 fast-flowing streams, by far the most variable is the job creation stream over the cycle. Job losses are NOT the main cause of unemployment, a slowdown in hiring is.
At no point have you addressed this simple point, I suspect because it blows your argument, and your entire political philosophy out of the water.
"The fact is Germany and France have SHOCKING long-term unemployment. through the 90s it ran at over 10%."
But you keep lying. That's no way to debate. See at the way you throw in France as a red herring while at no point did I mention France as a model to imitate.
Fact. Unemployment in Germany was ALWAYS significantly lower than in the UK throughout the 1980s and up until 1993-4 when - and this is crucial - the impact of the reunification and of having to nurse 16 million East Germans took its toll. Read up on it.
"Bangladesh is a very poor country, not remotely comparable."
You obviously missed the hyperbole there. Alright. Let's talk about the US. I wouldn't want that social model if you paid me. Massive crime rates, people living in trailer parks vs gated communities with barbwire to keep the cum out, highest inequality levels in the Western world, people going bankrupt over basic health costs and for what...?
"I've been fired reasonably often. And the important thing is that there are jobs to go to. "
I agree there. For once. But how that will materialise Gideon never explained. By magically sacking 300,000 to 500,000 public workers, how are private firms going to hire? And if you withdraw so much money from contracts that local authorities put out for tender, how can anyone with a bit of sense deny that the private sector too is also going take a massive blow?
"Job losses are NOT the main cause of unemployment, a slowdown in hiring is."
That is BS. Crucial is your inequivocal, swiping "NOT the main cause of unemployment". Do the Maths and look at the job losses incurred in 2008-09 and look at the impact they had. The fact that you think it's 100% ALL one thing and NOT 100% the other is again a bit Khomeini-style.
But even if it was that simple, what better way to incentivise hiring then to stimulate the economy Germany-style?
By the way, I see that you keep glossing over the structural devastation of the Thatcher years (which Blair and Brown did FA to reverse). Once manufacturing was wrecked in such scale, it becomes automatically more difficult to stimulate employment, certainly quality skilled employment instead of mickey mouse temping on mass scale.
Lol. The above should have read "to keep the scum out", not cum. :-)
OK. 1) Germany is not "stimulating" they're with the Coalition in the Austerity camp.
2) Whilst I agree with you about re-unification, to deny that labour market flexibility increases employment is just head-in-the-sand nonsense.
3) When you're having a boom, you can afford big, expensive job protection. It's when the boom ends that the costs become apparent. Labour increased the cost of workers, and the pain is NOW being felt.
4) I have no idea why the Left continues to use the USA as a bogey-man. Last time I checked poor people were flooding IN and people aren't flooding OUT (unlike Labour's UK). In any case, when did I mention the USA?
5) manufacturing output went up consistently '82-'90 and '92-'08. This is not "devastation". Yes manufacturing EMPLOYMENT fell consistently for the same reason agricultural employment has fallen since 1750. THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT MANUFACTURING.
6) "mickey mouse temping" are starter jobs. Ditto "McJobs". No sensible businessman ever employs the unemployed. Do I really need to explain why?. Few worthwhile "skills" can be taught by communists at FE colleges, instead they're learnt on the job. So if you want a decent job, get a job, (any job) then find a skilled one when you're gainfully employed flipping burgers. A good job will NOT be handed to you on a plate, and the Government shouldn't try. This approach worked for me when I left the army as a useless, unskilled graduate. Working in retail whilst I sought a skilled job.
If you don't believe that Job Protection has costs (especially to the unemployed) then you're the idealogical ostrich pretending not to see data with he disagrees.
1) Germany is not cutting anywhere near as savagely. They have adopted Austerity now, this is true, but -crucially- they waited until they were proper out of recession. Which they did by stimulating the economy big time, in a way that would give a free marketeer apoplexy.
2) ""Whilst I agree with you about re-unification, to deny that labour market flexibility increases employment is just head-in-the-sand nonsense."
I don't fully deny it. Elements of flexibility are important. The Scandinavians know it too (their conceot of 'flexicurity' I witnessed and appreciated). Like I said before, I don't like black and white views of the world. But it's not that simple.
Enormous flexibility in the UK did nowt to stop the crisis. Businesses went bust like a domino anyway.
On another level, too much flexibility exposes workers to profiteering and impacts negatively on companies as well, not to mention the human and social cost which sooner or later will come home to roost. Unless you want to claim that most of the social conquests made since the Industrial Revolution have been bad.
3) Labour increased the cost of workers, and the pain is NOW being felt"
How? Unless you mean the minimum wage? In case you do, let me remind you that there was no minimum wage until 1999 and UK unemployment was super high throughtout the 1980s and the 1990s WITHOUT a minimum wage.
Take Italy. It doesn't have a minimum wage. Yet their jobless rate has always been higher than in Britain. Does it mean that not having a NMW causes higher unemployment? No, exactly. But it goes to show that cause and effect are not so simple.
4) ""I have no idea why the Left continues to use the USA as a bogey-man. Last time I checked poor people were flooding IN and people aren't flooding OUT (unlike Labour's UK)."
I thought you right-whingers were moaning that too many people came "flooding in under Labour"? How does that work? ...Could you please inform the Daily Mail about your new findings?
Replies to points 5 and 6 coming soon.
1) Germany isn't cutting as savagely because it didn't run up an insane deficit during the good years. Brown was not in charge in Berlin.
2) Good, we're getting somewhere.
3) No. I mean the whole Gammut from the Min Wage, Parental rights, working time directive etc... each one adding a small cost to the price of hiring and firing. Italy is not comparable. It's a corrupt, black-market economy. I'm not saying these workers rights aren't necessary, it's just important to acknowledge they don't come free, and the cost is bourne by the unemployed. The welfare state (more accurately 'the way the welfare state is structured') is another major cause of unemployment, but that's too big for here.
4.) "Right wingers" may be. I, however, am a libertarian who often argues with my readers on this issue. I regard borders as an affront to the human spirit, and when people and merchants can't cross borders, armies do. I like schengen and free trade. I dislike immigration caps.
In practice, you need to reform the welfare state if you want open borders but on this issue, and employment, I like the way the coalitions going about changing the incentives.
Jackart.
5) "THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT MANUFACTURING."
I read your post the other day, and it's even more ideological than John Redwood, so enough said.
"Nothing special about manufacturing?" Except that accounted for 83% of all UK exports in 2003, something I wouldn't dismiss so light-heartedly. So imagine how much more factual wealth it would generate and how much it would help the economy if it had been fostered instead of being constantly knocked and/or crippled by the high value of the pound especially (but not just) during the Tory years.
And that's because, while you may think the world now depends on service industries, in reality their output is a fraction of the traditional industries.
You can big up the City as much as you want, but official figures give the total contribution of financial services sector between 6.4 and 9 percent of the country's GDP (and mostly owned by US companies). That's not a typo. It's really that small. After thirty years of battering, instead, manufacturing still contributes between 20 and 30 per cent. You draw your own conclusions.
The Germans, who are practical people, know it, and even their conservative/liberal government know that manufacturing is precious stuff when the economy is in desperate need of something to fall back on.
Once you lose skilled workers you lose them forever. It was former CBI boss Lord Digby Jones, hardly a commie, who said last year "We've got to get the skills of this country in manufacturing kept, maintained and ready for the upturn".
He also said: "you can have all the flexible labour market in the world but, if you haven't got anybody in work, what's the point? I don't want the investors in manufacturing in a year's time to say: 'Well, we haven't got any skilled people in manufacturing in Britain we'll go somewhere else'".
What the UK Coalition did, for instance, to Sheffield Forgemasters, for me is borderline criminal.
6) "This approach worked for me". Good for you, that's great, perhaps it wprked for me too, but thats the Richard Littlejohn approach. The fact that it worked for you, me or John doesn't make it a universal law.
I don't think the world "depends on financial services". Nor do I dispariage manufacturing. I just think there's no substantive economic difference between them. I don't care whether it's Digby Jones or Arthur Scargill saying it. We DO make things. We don't need to do this any more than we do (or, for that matter, any less) because of some nationalist dick-waving contest about "exports". There's nothing special about manufacturing. You can export a service by selling a steak to a tourist.
"It worked for me too". And, you'll find almost everyone else with a decent job. A good job via temping or burger flipping for those of us not employed straight out of school or university. So don't disparage "mickey-mouse temping".
"So don't disparage "mickey-mouse temping"."
I disparage it if it's on a mass and growing scale, if it becomes the backbone of a country's workforce. If more and more full-time and skilled jobs are lost to part-time and dead-end, which has been happening for a while and even more so since the crisis.
You talk as if "McJobs" were the sole preserve of kids straight out of school or Uni. You talk as if, no matter if pre or post recession, Britain was bursting with excellent well-paid jobs for almost everybody.
I don't know if you haven't had the depressing "luxury" to meet any, but I'm afraid there are millions of skilled people out there, technicians, engineers, foremen etc who had to resort to finding work in telemarketing or similar (taking a major pay cut) in their mid-40s or even later on in life.
Better than the dole, sure, but how sustainable is that in the long term? (and in fact it wasnt)
Don't belittle human tragedies. People's lives are not simple economic variables.
"And, you'll find almost everyone else with a decent job."
I'd argue that mummy and daddy's salary and their circle of influence also play a major part, but I'll leave it at that..
"I just think there's no substantive economic difference between [financial services and manufacturing]".
I do. And we disagree on this one big time.
"We DO make things. We don't need to do this any more than we do (or, for that matter, any less) because of some nationalist dick-waving contest about "exports"."
Less and less so. And it's nothing to do with "nationalist dick-waving contest about "exports", you'll find that that's the position often embraced by the Mail, the Express and some Tory MPs.
Aside from what I said earlier about the workforce and skilled jobs, it's a matter of sustainability, reducing trade deficts and avoiding constant booms and busts (to quote Uncle Gordon and his bullshit). I maintain, the Germans got it. We didnt.
"I disparage it if it's on a mass and growing scale, if it becomes the backbone of a country's workforce. If more and more full-time and skilled jobs are lost to part-time and dead-end, which has been happening for a while and even more so since the crisis."
Evidence please? how is a dead end job in a factory different from a dead-end job in a call-centre? They're both shit.
As for the skilled people languishing on the dole as they're too proud to reskill: well that's a price of progress. THere were a lot of unemployed buggy-whip makers and blacksmiths when the Model T went on sale. I know lots of people of my father's generation who's businesses and trades vanished (shoemakers from Northampton for example). Many found other trades and businesses.
You think the Government should guarantee you employment in your chosen trade for ever? How? Why? The expectation they should is profoundly damaging.
Canute couldn't. Neither should you try holding back the tide. Adapt in a changing world.
Saying something, like skilled people being unemployed, is bad, it does NOT follow that the government can, or even should, do something about it.
You forgot, Jackart, that Britain, and the US, under their most "Jackartian" system to date of uberflexibility, "adapting with the times", casino capitalism uber alles and dont-you-dare-subsidise-manufacturing, were both hit in the nuts in a gargantuan scale only previously seen in the 1930s .
I also love the fact that you talk about all forms of government intervention as the devil incarnate, while forgetting the tiny little spare change that the taxpayer had to spend in order to "save the banks".
I'll say it again. Germany and the Scandinavians suffered from recession nowhere near, NOWHERE NEAR, as much as the "forward-looking", "dynamic" and "knowledge-economy"-based UK. They didnt have to bailout anywhere near as much as Britain because their economy was/is organised differently and more practically and less ideologically.
"As for the skilled people languishing on the dole as they're too proud to reskill:"
And it's sweeping and tactless statements like that thay kill the debate. That you can even believe that a skilled person is happy to languish on the dole for the sake of £65.45 a week, frankly, smacks of Daily Mail.
"I also love the fact that you talk about all forms of government intervention as the devil incarnate, while forgetting the tiny little spare change that the taxpayer had to spend in order to "save the banks".
I was, of course, against the bank bailout, and I have always been of the view that Governments main role in the economy should be competition: too big to fail is too big.
The UK, US and Europe are all corporatist. The big state is in bed with big business and I don't like it. It's not freedom and it's not free market. You know who benefits from increased regulation? The biggest players - only they have the bureaucracy to enable them to comply.
You misunderstand my position.
"And it's sweeping and tactless statements like that thay kill the debate" I am tactless because I've been there myself. Perhaps your wishy washy, unrealistic sentimentality makes debate hard? I was a professional soldier, all I'd ever wanted to be was a soldier, but my knees said "no" after 18 months. I had to take some shitty work, but I NEVER had a problem finding work. It took 18 months of crappy, soul-destroying temping whilst studying to get a job I wanted to do. You think daddy paid?
So yes. I DO think the dole is, in part, voluntary. And there are a lot of people who think so too. We've lost faith in the welfare state because we're paying, and we don't think it's helping, not least the people who are supposedly benefitting.
The US, French & German experience of agressively time-limiting unemployment benefits is that it works in getting people back to work.
The main problem with our country is that for some people, benefits ARE a lifestyle choice.
Well, we agree to radically disagree. I'm getting a headache from being online!
No worries! Always fun to debate.
Happy new year, by the way!
Ignore the troll patriot.
I just want to add my my tuppence worth to this by making a point no-one has.
Jackart is wrong to make the simplistic assumption (Tuesday, January 04, 2011 2:12:00 PM) that a "dead-end-job-in-a-factory" is the same as a "dead-end-job-in-a-call-centre".
Let's ignore the lost skills. Let's ignore the total practical differences.
Jackart's view also completely ignore the role that factories play at the core of a community.
My dad worked at Longbridge for a long time. When the hawks of Phoenix Consortium were allowed to buy it and profiteer from it, the plant shut, and with it went dozens of companies and businesses from the supply chain as well as the bars and take aways and greasy spoons and shops that kept the town's economy going. In total, thousands of people who weren't employed by Rover at Longbridge suffered from its closure.
A factory gels a community together like no call centre does.
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