Work for benefits.

[Workingman]

Will the stick and stick method work or is the carrot and stick method better?

The Tories and Labour both want those in the 18-21 age group who are not in employment, education or training, (Neets) to either work in the community or get an apprenticeship and a proper job otherwise their benefits stop or get reduced.

The Tory plan is to get them to work in the community cleaning up litter, graffiti, working for local charities or making meals for the elderly and infirm. They would do 30 hours of this plus 10 hours job search.

Labour has pledged a compulsory jobs guarantee for the young unemployed, paid for by a tax on bankers' bonuses and .by guaranteeing a six-month job for unemployed youngsters, who would be "properly paid.

In both cases benefits payments would stop after six months if the claimants failed to meet the conditions.
There is no doubt that something has to be done to get these young people into the habit of working, but both of these pledges or promises are pretty much flawed.

The Tory plan assumes that all Neets are thick and can only do the most menial of tasks, tasks already being carried out by employed people or volunteers, What will happen to them, will they be forced to go on benefits? Labour thinks that there is such a thing as a short term meaningful apprenticeship leading to a proper job with proper pay. What jobs will these so called "apprenticeships" allow people to do? And where are those jobs?

If the work is not there, it is not there. Job creation, of meaningful jobs. should be the priority not kicking the unemployed in the teeth when there are no jobs available.

[Suff]

I am heartily sick and tired of the whole Labour Bankers bonus thing

FACT Bankers bonuses in 2111/12 were 13.75bn let's say 14.

Average tax and ni on that were 50%. Forgot to mention that didn't they.

Even if thejy rook all the rest, that would only be 7bn. We have 9 million not contributing plus 2million unemployed. Let's say 2 milion forced into work. That is 3,500 per year each. Where are they going to find the rest? Taxes and borrowing of course.

Sick of them.

[Workingman]

Thinking about jobs........

The latest figure shows that the number of Romanian and Bulgarians working(?) in the UK is now 172,000, up 15%. The total number of EU workers in the UK rose by 200,000 or 10.5% to almost 1.9 million.

They are, of course, all highly skilled, every single one of them, and all doing highly skilled jobs us thick Brits are not capable of doing even if we did pitch up on some super quality and relevant government apprenticeship scheme.