Election 2015

[kenneal - lagger]

And we must do what we can to prevent such tendencies.

It's why the EU was created, after the experience of the last strong leader.

So now we have fascism by committee instead. It will just take longer to get to fascism proper but it has started: ask the Greeks what they think has happened to their democratic rights.

[cubes]

It won't be free work and will not be seen as such because the salary they would receive would be a proper wage and where the alternative would be to get sod all for no work.

Your argument is akin to saying that an existing local council road worker would make a crap job because they are paid out of general taxation. As it happens, I have had experience of both private and public road works on my stretch of road and I can confirm that the private work was far inferior. I'm not using this as an example to prove the rule that public is always better than private. However, i am using it to disprove the rule that the reverse is true. It is not.

I'm not saying it's free work - some of the people forced to do it would consider it that way though - even though they would be paid a 'living' wage. The ones with get-up and go have already got sub-minimum wage jobs that are 'self-employed' (although you wouldn't think they are s-e). These are the exploited people yet nothing is done. My brother's employer just outsourced him (he delivers hire cars). He pretty much unemployed now as they've replaced him - an employee on minimum wage, with self-employed people on less than that - they're paid per job, but not a rate that will get them min wage delivering over most of Norfolk, and then they have a percentage removed from their pay for 'materials and insurance' to try and strengthen the pretence of self-employment. Obviously they get no holiday or sick pay either. Is anyone doing anything to help these people?

Regarding your second paragraph - wtf did you get all that c**p from? I don't recall even hinting at any of that. You said that they could build houses - that isn't an unskilled job, 95%+ of the people you're talking about just don't have the skills to do it. We could train them up, but once the houses are built - what then?

[Little John]

It won't be free work and will not be seen as such because the salary they would receive would be a proper wage and where the alternative would be to get sod all for no work.

Your argument is akin to saying that an existing local council road worker would make a crap job because they are paid out of general taxation. As it happens, I have had experience of both private and public road works on my stretch of road and I can confirm that the private work was far inferior. I'm not using this as an example to prove the rule that public is always better than private. However, i am using it to disprove the rule that the reverse is true. It is not.

I'm not saying it's free work - some of the people forced to do it would consider it that way though - even though they would be paid a 'living' wage. The ones with get-up and go have already got sub-minimum wage jobs that are 'self-employed' (although you wouldn't think they are s-e). These are the exploited people yet nothing is done. My brother's employer just outsourced him (he delivers hire cars). He pretty much unemployed now as they've replaced him - an employee on minimum wage, with self-employed people on less than that - they're paid per job, but not a rate that will get them min wage delivering over most of Norfolk, and then they have a percentage removed from their pay for 'materials and insurance' to try and strengthen the pretence of self-employment. Obviously they get no holiday or sick pay either. Is anyone doing anything to help these people?

Regarding your second paragraph - wtf did you get all that c**p from? I don't recall even hinting at any of that. You said that they could build houses - that isn't an unskilled job, 95%+ of the people you're talking about just don't have the skills to do it. We could train them up, but once the houses are built - what then?

The point I was getting at in my second paragraph is that the statement that people who would have to work for a basic living wage under such a scheme would resent having to do so because they would rather be given the same amount for doing nothing could be equally applied to the vast majority of working people right now working for the private sector. In other words, your argument already applies to millions of low paid workers working in jobs they would rather not be doing. At least under the scheme I have outlined, they would have the psychological benefit of knowing they were doing something that was of services to both themselves as well as the rest of society and not having the piss taken out of them by unscrupulous (or desperate) businesses.

The number of people who I have met in my life who would not take a job that they were capable of doing, that they could rely on to not throw them back on the scrapheap at a moment’s notice and that paid an amount sufficient to allow them to live a basic but decent life could be counted on less than one hand.

[kenneal - lagger]

.........
The number of people who I have met in my life who would not take a job that they were capable of doing, that they could rely on to not throw them back on the scrapheap at a moment’s notice and that paid an amount sufficient to allow them to live a basic but decent life could be counted on less than one hand.

You must live in a very nice part of the country.

At one time Newbury had about 400 people unemployed. There were loads of jobs available at all sorts of skill level but these 400 remained unemployed. They were basically unemployable for various reasons.

[Little John]

.........
The number of people who I have met in my life who would not take a job that they were capable of doing, that they could rely on to not throw them back on the scrapheap at a moment’s notice and that paid an amount sufficient to allow them to live a basic but decent life could be counted on less than one hand.

You must live in a very nice part of the country.

At one time Newbury had about 400 people unemployed. There were loads of jobs available at all sorts of skill level but these 400 remained unemployed. They were basically unemployable for various reasons.

I've lived in some of the most economically deprived parts of the country in my life K. The North East, mainly.

To take your example of 400 people unemployed in Newbury. The questions I would like to ask would be:

1) What percentage is 400 of the Newbury working population total?

2) Did the available jobs, all other thing being equal, match the abilities/knowledge of the 400 people who were unemployed or did the requirements of the jobs exceed their abilities/knowledge?

3) How many of the 400 unemployed had unambiguous medical conditions that precluded them from being able to work?

4) How many of the jobs advertised did not afford a sufficiently sized or sufficiently reliable income for someone who was unemployed to be able to pay for the essentials such as housing and food. In other words, many low-end jobs are now sufficiently poorly paid in comparison to living costs that they can only be conceivably done by a single person living in a multiple occupancy house. Fine if you are single, childless and do not have elderly or sick to look after. Not fine if you do.

5) At any time there will be a lag between people and jobs. That is to say, there will be a certain number of unemployed people and also a certain number of jobs available on a given week. But, that may not be all the same 400 unemployed or the same jobs in any given week. In other words, there will always be a degree of churn as people move in and out of jobs. So, another question would be what is the degree of employment churn in Newbury? This question should be answerable by assuming it is represented by all those who are short-term unemployed.

I would suggest that when you remove the short-term unemployed, remove those who were too thick for the jobs advertised, remove those who were too sick for the jobs advertised and remove those who were unable to find jobs that paid sufficient to be able to live, the final long-term unemployed total (as compared to the total Newbury working population) for which there is no reasonable explanation will be relatively tiny.

I repeat, the number of people who would not take a job that they were capable of doing and that paid an amount sufficient and reliable enough to allow them to live a basic but decent life is arguably tiny.

All of which is separate from the hurt that working people are feeling right now and the extent to which working people may well resent paying out any money to anybody when they are experiencing that hurt. Least of all, to people who are not working. However, the extent to which the working poor are physically unable to support the unemployed poor is a functional issue independent of the reasons you have cited. What I guess I object to is the after-the-economic-fact, Daily-Mailesque type of narrative that is being pushed by the oh so predictable Tories blaming the poor for being poor and getting people to turn on each other. We are where we are and tough choices face all of us. But, let's just call a spade a spade shall we.

[Catweazle]

I repeat, the number of people who would not take a job that they were capable of doing and that paid an amount sufficient and reliable enough to allow them to live a basic but decent life is arguably tiny.

From talking to my sons ( in their 20's) I get the impression that there are quite a few in their age group who are quite happy to be on the dole as long as they can afford some weed.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

Hmmm.

It takes years to learn to be a carpenter, bricky or plasterer - who will train the army of redundant civil servants in the time available? Who will employ them once the Government has housed all the unemployed as you will also have destroyed the house building industry.

There is also the thorny issue of keeping vacancies open. If you insist that the unemployed must either take these jobs funded by tax payers or starve then you must make sure these jobs are actually there. So if there are 2 million unemployed then you need to create 2 million vacancies overnight and convince the rest of us to pay for it.

You also need to keep a vacancy open for every work-shy slob that refuses to play ball otherwise they could rightly argue that there is no job.

I can hear the chants on the streets now...

£1 billion per week interest and rising. The Government already has its hand in my pocket for a 1/4 of all that I earn and another 20% of all I spend and you want to put taxes up so that people can build themselves a better house than I rent?

[Little John]

Hmmm.

It takes years to learn to be a carpenter, bricky or plasterer - who will train the army of redundant civil servants in the time available? Who will employ them once the Government has housed all the unemployed as you will also have destroyed the house building industry.

There is also the thorny issue of keeping vacancies open. If you insist that the unemployed must either take these jobs funded by tax payers or starve then you must make sure these jobs are actually there. So if there are 2 million unemployed then you need to create 2 million vacancies overnight and convince the rest of us to pay for it.

You also need to keep a vacancy open for every work-shy slob that refuses to play ball otherwise they could rightly argue that there is no job.

I can hear the chants on the streets now...

£1 billion per week interest and rising. The Government already has its hand in my pocket for a 1/4 of all that I earn and another 20% of all I spend and you want to put taxes up so that people can build themselves a better house than I rent?

Firstly, in relation to your last point, we already do "made up" jobs provided by the state. That is to say, jobs that could possibly or even probably be done more "efficiently" by machine or by being off shored. However, we don't call them "made up" jobs. We just call them "jobs". I'm merely suggesting that we provided enough of these jobs such that there is no longer such a thing as "unemployment" except for the old, the young and the sick.

As for whether taxpayers would stand for that, well lets just consider the advantages; Firstly, the devil makes work for idle hands. Under such a scheme, there would be no idle hands and so there would be massive savings, i would suggest, in terms of policing, the judicial system and the penal system. Secondly, anywhere the unemployed cost the taxpayer money could be where they are gainfully employed. So, for example, an automated refuse lorry will probably cost several tens of thousands of pounds to purchase, never mind the maintainence costs. Instead, an open-topped lorry of the old-fashioned kind could be used and employ a team of men instead of the two or three that currently work on such vehicles. Similarly, for road works that currently use machinery, human labour could used instead. The unemployed could be used to maintain the social housing stock as well as build it. in other words, all things that are paid for out of taxation could be things where jobs could be created for the unemployed. These things would not represent savings to the taxpayer in comparison to unemployment benefits. However, they would bring the overall bill close to what it would have been on those benefits. Add in the massively reduced housing benefit bill currently paid, not to the unemployed, but to private business men and women who are having their commercial mortgages paid for by the taxpayer., and you might well be getting to a point where there is actually a net saving as compared to the current benefits arrangements.

What's not to like?

[the_lyniezian]

It seems very unlikely that offering low-skilled work (or work that is skilled and suited to a person's actual skills) as part of some government scheme would be a good idea unless the cost benefits equal or outweigh those of the alternative. I suspect there is plenty of useful work that could be done- even just picking litter. Heck, give me a litter grabber thing and a black plastic bag and I'll do it for free if I can just drag myself off the internet... (yeah, right! )

As regards my predictions for 2015 I think it likely that the main effect of UKIP will be to split the Tory vote. They might be lucky to win the odd seat but recent by-elections would suggest that safe seats will remain safe. I'd expect a decline in the Tories in marginals plus a decline in the Lib-Dems who can no longer expect a surge in popularity from the protest vote crowd. Unless the Tories can pull something radical off with their European exit sops (or UKIP miraculously gain enough seats for them to enter into a coalition) I predict a narrow Labour victory by default. I doubt Labour have the credibility to pull any more off or even anything off but for the fact the opposition will probably be the greater of perceived evils.