The 'free markets' in action cause a massive meltdown in economic activity, millions are thrown out of work, but the Washington Consensus stipulates that government cannot create jobs, that is the function of the market.

But the Washington Consensus has never been put before the electorate in a manifesto, it has not been debated, it has never been democratically ratified.   [WC]

So, in the UK at any rate, political parties carry on as though nothing has changed.

The 2010 election is emblematic of the trend: three weeks of fantasy promises, and no one mentioned the "D" word, because there are no votes in telling people what a God-awful mess the country is in, and how UK living standards are going to fall. Drastically.   [Gdn]  

People are allowed to blame 'greedy bankers', immigrants, and 'unsustainable burdens'.   [UB]

But not the 'free markets'.

Real-life benefit cheats get maximum publicity; people going to food banks to feed their children are off the corporate radar.   [BBC]

David Cameron has turned 'displacement activity' into a significant aspect of government.

He regularly announces dramatic policy ideas which disappear from view within days, sometimes hours.

A problem with the High Street? 'Queen of Shops' - Mary Portas - is invited to write a report on the result of many years of the corporate takeover of local shopping centres, and the growth of out-of-town shopping malls.

When it comes to tackling youth unemployment, Cameron is similarly affecting the pretence that government can - should - control the labour market.   [Gdn]   [Ind]

Similarly there is that hardy perennial: the yob culture, and the underclass, where 'new' spending plans turn out to be recycled. Which is what we should expect under the terms of the Washington Consensus.   [Clause 7]

Blair used to bang on about 'respect' which gave rise to the ASBO branch of the law, a classic example of displacement activity: while cutting spending on prisons and probation, the appearance created was one of activity to defeat the 'yob' culture.  [Tel]   [Tel]

The case of Fiona Pilkington, and her daughter, demonstrated the grim reality behind the spin.

Then there's the case of Europe, and that cess pit of greed, The City of London.

In the same week that Cameron has the nerve to lecture the nation on 'Christian values', we learn that London is the centre of a complex tax avoidance scheme - dividend arbitrage - which is designed to deprive European contries of tax revenues.  [Obs]

The real Dave takes his 'ethics from the Sermon on the Mound rather than the Sermon on the Mount.

The best use of £50bn QE?

Bypass the banks and go direct to green projects

tonyp1
10 February 2012 7:55PM

Someone is having a post-modern laugh at everyone else's expense. What used to be devaluation is now called "quantitative easing". What is actually the privatisation of everything is called "The Big Society". What used to be referred to as the working class are now "the squeezed middle".

This type of vacuous, euphemistic nonsense is designed simply to fool us. Why does it work so well? Because we're finding it harder and harder to think for ourselves. And why is that? Because we are increasingly encouraged to rely on others to do it for us. This is the real dependency we are suffering from.

Modern politics is a confection, and so is it's lexis. Once we start to speak their language, we lose grip of reality. We live instead in a comfortable bubble of illusion where the soft repetition of oxymoronic terms like "responsible capitalsm" lull us into a false sense of security.

The capitalist economy is dead, no matter how much money they print or borrow. We are all just acting like King Lear, sitting there thinking we can detect a faint breathe emanating from the corpse of the our oh-so-beloved gift of a consumer society.  [Gdn]

In the absence of crap detection

The third face of power

David Cameron's NHS summit guests refuse to follow reforms script

Much of the hour-long meeting around the long table in the cabinet room heard concerns raised about the danger of extending competition in the NHS; the government's refusal to publish the Department of Health's official assessment of the risks inherent in the radical restructuring; the potential for NHS hospitals to be allowed to raised up to 49% of their income from private patients; and much else besides ...

Jeremy Taylor ... said: "I told the prime minister directly that a lot of my members were very concerned about the disruption and uncertainty being caused by the bill, and about how we reconcile the need to integrate services with competition and devolution, and that there's a lot of unease about … how the government, for whatever reason, has failed to command the support of a large proportion of the health professional community."

Thompson said: "I raised with the prime minister our concerns that competition could damage – and is already damaging – integrated care pathways and that the government should commit to a high-quality threshold for any qualified provider for clinical services.

"In addition I raised our view that the raising of the private income cap must not displace NHS provision.

"For example, NHS beds must not be closed to open private beds, and so any private provision in NHS hospitals must be additive." ...

Gdn  20 Feb 2012    Coalition Log    NHS 'Reforms'

Health policy

Clegg urges bosses to back £1bn youth jobs plan

Was the BBC's header only eight days ago. New Labour was adept at re-announcing policies in such as way as to create the impression of new activity, but eight days!

This is another out of the Reagan Republican 'small government' handbook: "do less, make it seem like more".

Coalition Log

'Pay-per-Neet' scheme aims to help teenagers find work

Cash reward for putting young jobless into work

Nick Clegg to offer 'neet' solution for unemployed 16- and 17-year-olds

Drought summit as rivers in England dry up

"Everybody knows how to save water" translated = "Not our problem"

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman is hosting a drought summit later as parts of England struggle with groundwater levels lower than in 1976.

She has invited water companies, farmers and wildlife groups to discuss the situation in south-east England, East Anglia and the East Midlands ...

Mrs Spelman told Today: "Water meters can be helpful, particularly for households with a small number of occupants or a reduced income.

"But the most important is to save water. Everybody knows how to save water." ...

BBC NEWS  20 Feb 2012    Coalition Log    Water Crisis    

Why not pipe the water from north to south?

Ignore this rain, it's the drought that we need to think about

David Cameron to launch attack on Britain's 'boozing scandal'

The Prime Minister will attack the “scandal of our society” caused by Britain’s drinking culture which costs the NHS more than £2.7 billion annually.

He will suggest that “innovative solutions” such as the US-inspired drunk tanks, more police on patrol in A&E departments and “booze buses” — vehicles staffed with paramedics who help intoxicated revellers — be supported by the Government.

Drunk tanks, popular in America, are prisons used to “house” drunk people overnight until they sober up, avoiding the need for them to be formally arrested and charged or taken to hospital.

Mr Cameron will say that responsible drinking needs to “become a reality” as he prepares to unveil curbs on excessive consumption of alcohol.

Next month, the Government publishes its alcohol strategy ...

Tel  15 Feb 2012    'Divi' Dave Log

Where Is Britain's New Alcohol Strategy?

Cameron To Tackle 'Scandalous' Alcohol Abuse

Cameron To Hold Racism In Football Summit

Clegg urges bosses to back £1bn youth jobs plan

(Youth unemployment rose to 1.027 million, the highest since records began in 1992 ... [BBC] ... which leaves 867,000 inactive for six months.)

The three-year Youth Contract scheme ... will give employers subsidies to take on a total of 160,000 18-to 24-year-olds for six months

Plans also include:

• 250,000 young people being offered work experience placements lasting up to eight weeks. These will be available to every unemployed 18-to 24-year-old who wants one and has been seeking work for three months or more.
• A £50m programme for the 25,000 most disadvantaged 16-and 17-year-olds in England - those not in employment, education or training - to get them onto an apprenticeship or into work.
• At least 20,000 additional incentive payments for firms in England to take on 16-to 24-year-olds in apprenticeships.
• More support for young people at job centres, such as extra time with advisers and a careers interview ...

BBC NEWS  13 Feb 2012    The Work Programme    Youth Unemployment

A free market train wreck    Full Employment ... where from?    The Myth of Full Employment

These empty apprenticeship schemes are failing our young

It's been a week of bad news for the young ...

One in five has no job, with 600 hotspots where twice as many chase nonexistent work.

Keeping them out of work costs £4.8bn a year, £28bn over the next decade, "a timebomb under the nation's finances".

Quarter of a million have been out of work for a year. Training schemes and exploitative, unpaid work barely scratch the surface.

The problem is deep and structural: there is too little demand for underqualified young employees, with too many out of work even in the good times.

The state intervenes too little too late: the vaunted Work Programme takes only one in 10 of the young, with under-19s left out.

There are just 50,000 subsidised jobs, spending half the OECD average.

The Association of Colleges reports alarmingly that the number of 16 to 19 year-olds with fewest qualifications enrolling for basic courses (level 1) has fallen, in some areas by up to 15%. Why?

The abolition of the education maintenance allowance (EMA) and transport price rises. Barnardo's reports this week on harm done by the loss of EMAs, its chief executive abandoning politically cautious language ...

Gdn  09 Feb 2012    A 'modern and compassionate party'    The Work Programme    Youth Unemployment

Elderly told: go back to work and downsize

Downsizing living standards, and swelling the labour market with the No.10 Behavioural Insight Team. What a waste of taxpayers' hard earned!

Evidence is now emerging of the dangers associated with elderly people becoming lonely and isolated after retiring.

The increase in the retirement age could lead to a wider change, under plans set out by Mr Halpern, the director of the No.10 Behavioural Insight Team, known as the “nudge unit”.

He heads the government team which has the task of developing ways to change people’s behaviour that do not require legislation or other heavy-handed actions from the state.

In a presentation, Mr Halpern said pensioners should be encouraged to return to work because of the benefits of social interaction for the elderly ...

Tel  09 Feb 2012    Caring for the elderly    'Nudge'    Ponzi Housing Market    Youth Unemployment

Full Employment? Where from?    The Myth of Full Employment

A4e got welfare-to-work contract despite 'abysmal' record

We learn three things from this interchange: A4e and their ilk are parasites, the target of 30 per cent is delusional, and New Labour started this expensive extract from 'thirs face of power' government.

The record of the welfare-to-work company A4e has come under scrutiny from MPs, as they questioned why a company with an "abysmal" record of delivering previous government programmes had been awarded new contracts to provide the government's flagship Work Programme when it launched last summer ...

Details of large dividends received by Emma Harrison, A4e's chair, also emerged during questioning of the company's chief executive officer, Andrew Dutton.

He confirmed that all of the company's UK turnover last year, estimated at between £160m and £180m, derived from government contracts, and of the £11m paid in dividends to the company's five shareholders, 87% went to Emma Harrison ...

... Richard Bacon, Conservative MP for south Norfolk ... said that the company had successfully got 9% of clients into work in the Pathways to Work programme, a much lower figure than the 30% they were expected to deliver.

The permanent secretary for the Department for Work and Pensions, Robert Devereux ... pointed out that most of the welfare-to-work providers had underperformed during the previous scheme ...

Gdn  09 Feb 2012    Coalition Log    Corporate State Log    The Work Programme

Full Employment ... Where from?    The Myth of Full Employment    

Work programme on track

a4e fraud

A4e and the British Heart Foundation

Unemployed win victories over A4e bullies

A4e pays £1m to former chief executive

A4e Waste Of Taxpayers Money

A4E – More from the poverty pimps

A4e – War Criminals, Fraudsters and Bullies

Work in progress

Dole Scum

A4E – The Initial Interview

A4e

Work programme on track

" there aren't jobs for people to go to "

About 20% of unemployed people who have been on the government's main welfare-to-work scheme, the Work Programme, for at least six months have been found a job, the BBC has learnt ...

When the programme was launched in June 2011, the government said it hoped that 40% of people on it would get a job ...

The overall figures ... may well hide regional variations and several contractors and sub-contractors spoken to by the BBC have expressed concerns about the situation in their own areas.

Other figures obtained by the BBC show that in some areas ... fewer than 10% of people on the work programme have been placed in a job.

In Liverpool ... A4E ... has managed to find work for 10% of people, while in Barnsley, the local council, which is one of the sub-contractors, says it is managing to place about 12% in a job.

"The problem we face is that the jobs simply aren't there," said Steve Houghton, leader of Barnsley Metropolitan Council, "so no matter how good the work programme is, there aren't jobs for people to go to." ...

Mr Houghton said the rules actually worked against the people the scheme was intended to help, the very hardest to employ.

"We are concerned that the providers ... are taking the low hanging fruit," said Mr Houghton.

"Even though the work programme gives more money for getting the really long-term unemployed into a job, the reality is that in order to help our cash flows and keep our organisation going, we have to take the easiest ones [to find work for] in the first instance." ...

BBC NEWS  03 Feb 2012    Full Employment?    Reserve Army    The Work Programmme

Churning Unemployment with the IPPR    The Myth of Full Employment

Will highly paid investors curb pay of highly paid bosses?

Vince Cable launches an empty vessel

To curb the excesses of executive pay, Vince Cable has passed the buck back to shareholders.

Investors will be given the power to formally veto companies' future pay policies - although, as is the case now, if shareholders dislike how businesses have implemented the agreed policy, their votes will not be binding ...

For about 10 years shareholders have had much more influence on pay in the boardroom.

This has coincided with a quadrupling in top executives' pay, whereas company share prices as measured by the FTSE100 index have gone nowhere and average earnings for the rest of us have increased just a few percentage points a year.

So will giving shareholders increased authority over executive pay serve as a brake on bosses remuneration ...

Arguably, the top fund managers - those who vote the shares we hold in our pensions or assorted long-term savings schemes - are disincentivised to be too aggressive in limiting corporate pay rises, because they are on the same gravy train.

That is why Mr Cable also wants more "diversity" in the board room - more "lawyers, public servants and academics" ... to introduce the views of the wider world into discussions about how and how much an executive should be rewarded.

You tell me if "lawyers, public servants and academics" represent a revolution in the variety of views likely to be represented in the boardroom ...

BBC NEWS  23 Jan 2012    A 'Greed is Good' Wealth Log    Corporate State Log

Fitting brakes to the pay merry-go-round

State to help elderly downsize as Government tackles housing crisis

It's not yet possible to force the elderly to move out of their homes, just as not yet possible to kill everyone on their 65th birthday, desirable though the latter objective would be to the current generation of social Darwinist politicians - on both sides of the House. This sort of proposal, placed alongside the current persecution of the disabled, confirms the line of travel. The Washington Consensus meets Aktion T4.

Research released last year estimated that 25million bedrooms in England were empty, largely because elderly couples do not move out of family homes to smaller properties.

At the same time, young families are increasingly being squeezed into small homes and overcrowded flats as a result of the country’s high property prices.

A government-backed pilot scheme run by Redbridge council, in east London, has won support from the Department for Communities and Local Government for helping elderly residents to downsize while retaining ownership of their homes.

Mr Shapps told The Daily Telegraph that councils should look to replicate the Redbridge “FreeSpace” project.

“For too long the housing needs of the elderly have been neglected,” he said ...

Tel  16 Jan 2012    Coalition Log    Ponzi Housing Market    

Aktion T4

Washington Consensus

Responsible Capitalism: Even the MoS is 'on message'.

David Cameron to anger City with plans to make shareholder remuneration votes mandatory

... the The Telegraph can reveal that Stephen Hester, the chief executive of the largely publicly owned Royal Bank of Scotland, is in line for a multi-million pound bonus this year.

Although a final decision has not been made, senior figures close to the situation have revealed that the board believe that Mr Hester deserves to be paid "the market rate" for his job.

Senior figures said that at present Mr Hester was being paid "very much in the bottom quartile" whereas the difficulty of the job re-organising the bank was "very much in the top quartile".

Last year, Mr Hester's package totalled £7.89m, comprising his £1.22m salary, a £2.04m annual share-based performance bonus, a £4.2m grant of stock under a long-term incentive plan, a £420,000 cash contribution to his personal pension scheme, and £8,000 in other benefits ...

Tel  07 Jan 2011

Greedy bankers to face prison ...

David Cameron: my vision for a fair Britain

In the interview, Mr Cameron outlined ...

A major reform of executive pay that would rein in what he called “crony capitalism”, where underperforming executives were seen to “fill their boots”.

Shareholders would have to approve salary packages and, crucially, pay-offs, instead of simply having advisory votes as at present ...

The measures on executive pay, which will be the subject of a consultation to be announced shortly by Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, represent the most significant moves yet on the issue.

They come as a new analysis from the IPPR think tank shows that chief executives in 87 of the FTSE 100 companies took home £5.1?million in basic pay, bonuses, share incentives and pension contributions in 2010-11.

However, there was not a corresponding rise in the value of their companies ...

Tel  07 Jan 2011

Labour urges 'responsible capitalism' in executive pay

Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna said on Saturday that increasing transparency was the key to ensuring executives were not perversely rewarded for poor performance ...

Umunna called for simplified pay packages and the creation of a league table showing how much more chief executives earn than their staff.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that excessive executive pay was "systematic" of the "kind of capitalism that has grown up in the country over the last 30 years" ...

The Labour MP said that while there was not a "magic pill" to solve the problem a variety of measures, including increased transparency, simplified remuneration packages and the publication of pay ratios, would help create a better pay culture ...

Gdn  07 Jan 2012    A 'Greed is good' Wealth Log    Divi Dave Log    Ed Miliband    George Osborne

David Cameron to anger City ...

Work plan for 'troubled families' across England

Eight specialist welfare-to-work firms have been appointed to help individuals overcome barriers to getting a job and staying in work.

These include skills like timekeeping, writing a CV and job interviews ...

The government has set itself a goal of turning around the lives of 120,000 "problem families" which it says are costing the state billions of pounds through the NHS and the criminal justice system ...

Employment Minister Chris Grayling will outline details of how the government hopes to encourage individuals who have not worked for many years to get back into the workplace.

Specialist providers from the voluntary and private sector will be paid by results if they meet certain targets, culminating in helping people finding a job.

They will also provide specialist advice on issues like family finances, managing relationships with schools, as well as housing and health problems ...

BBC NEWS  03 Jan 2012    The Work Programme

ONS Stats     The Myth of Full Employment

1.2M CRIMINALS GET BENEFITS

"Ensuring former offenders are doing a decent day’s work is the best way to keep them from the wrong side of the law"

BRITAIN’S broken benefits system was exposed last night after official figures showed one in four jobless welfare claimants is a criminal.

Experts warned taxpayers risk “bank- rolling career criminals” as statistics revealed 1.23million people on unemployment handouts have been cautioned or convicted of offences in the last five years.

Figures also show that 33 per cent on Job- Seeker’s Allowance – 400,000 people – have records of offending over the same period.

The figures confirming the link between claiming benefits and law-breaking were disclosed last night by the Department for Work and Pensions and led to attacks from critics of Britain’s bloated welfare state.

Robert Oxley, campaign manager of the Tax- Payers’ Alliance, said:

“Ministers can’t allow individuals to remain on benefits indefinitely.

"Ensuring former offenders are doing a decent day’s work is the best way to keep them from the wrong side of the law.

“Career criminals shouldn’t be bankrolled by taxpayers.

"Help like Jobseeker’s Allowance is for people who are looking for a leg up on the job ladder, not thieves looking for a leg up into people’s back gardens.”

A blitz is planned by ministers in the New Year to stop offenders from habitually switching between prison and benefit scrounging.

Employment Minister Chris Grayling said:

“This is the first time any Government has done detailed analysis of the link between offending and the welfare state and it paints a truly alarming picture.

“This underlines why Britain needs a rehabilitation revolution, and particularly to help former offenders into sustained employment.

"We will be giving more details of our plans shortly.”

Daily Express  28 Dec 2011

Third of unemployed are convicted criminals

The first detailed analysis of the criminal backgrounds of benefit claimants show that 33 per cent of Britons claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance have a criminal record.

Many tens of thousands more criminals are also claiming other out-of-work benefits such as disability allowances.

The official analysis ... found that 26 per cent of the country’s 4.9 million benefit claimants have been cautioned or convicted in the past decade ...

Ministers ... are now poised to unveil specialist work programmes for offenders to prevent them becoming dependent on the state for life after a conviction.

Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, is expected to announce intensive training programmes for convicts in the new year.

Employers are also likely to be offered “payments for results” to return former criminals to work ...

Tel  28 Dec 2011    Life on Benefits ...    Prison & Probation    The Work Programme

Chris Grayling     The Myth of Full Employment

Unemployment 'set to rise in 2012'

UK jobs outlook is the 'worst for 20 years'

Number of job-hunters chasing every post jumps to 23

UK faces bleak 2012

Young jobseekers told to work without pay or lose unemployment benefits

Britain will be back in recession this winter, warns OECD

Older people suffering under 'poorly publicised' fuel poverty scheme

The National Pensioners' Convention (NPC), which has 1.5 million members, has criticised the government's Warm Home Discount (WHD) scheme in the wake of statistics released by the Office for National Statistics which show there were 25,700 excess winter deaths last year.

Under the programme, participating energy suppliers hand cash-strapped pensioners a £120 yearly rebate on their bill.

But the "big six" energy companies and the government are failing to publicise the scheme sufficiently, meaning many pensioners are unaware they could benefit, according to the NPC.

For the first year of the scheme, which the government says is worth up to £1.1bn over four years, only older people on pension credit – worth £137.35 a week – are eligible for the yearly rebate, while participating energy suppliers have discretion to extend support to those on low incomes.

NPC's general secretary Dot Gibson said: "There has not been enough publicity about the scheme – it's too complicated and pensioners are unsure whether they qualify for extra help or not.

"The cost of fuel is rising and the government's cut to the winter fuel allowance means pensioners need all the help they can get to keep warm this winter – yet neither the government nor the 'big six' energy companies seem particularly bothered about letting people know what help is available." ...

Gdn  16 Dec 2011    Third Meltdown Log

Fuel poverty

David Cameron questioned over £448m cash to tackle problem families

As you might have expected, it emerges this isn't new money

Local councils will not receive the £448m cash until they can show Louise Casey – the new "troubled families tsar" – that their interventions have cut truancy, antisocial behaviour or addiction.

The scheme is formally voluntary, but if a family refuses to co-operate, councils already have the powers to evict tenants, take children into care or issue antisocial behaviour orders.

The proposals are largely built on ideas introduced by Tony Blair and then expanded by Gordon Brown ...

The cash is being drawn from existing budgets held by the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), the Home Office, the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions ...

Gdn  15 Dec 2011

David Cameron's problem family plan could face funding snag

Cameron puts £400m into helping families out of 'responsibility deficit'

An excellent example of government's displacement activity ... the cure, Dave, is called 'full employment'!

David Cameron will today throw his authority and £400m of funding behind plans to end "the responsibility deficit" among 120,000 troubled families said to be costing taxpayers £8bn.

The cash, part of the government's response to the summer riots in England, will be used to fund a national network of local authority teams charged with identifying "chaotic families" and helping them address their problems ...

In the wake of the riots, the prime minister appointed Louise Casey (Tony Blair's "respect czar") to oversee the government's response and expand the family intervention projects she had helped introduce under Labour ...

Casey told the Guardian ...

"The typical profile of a rioter is 35% out of work or on benefits, 42% on free school meals, 66 % with special educational needs, only 11% with five plus GCSEs, and 70% living in the 30% most deprived post codes, and 36% excluded from schools.

"It does not matter what newspaper you read, or what political party you are from, surely some of the response to the riots is about building resilience in our families and in our communities." ...

Gdn  15 Dec 2011    Coalition Log    Dave's Big Society

Changes do not take banking errors into account

Ben Chu
Economics Editor

The big day was supposed to be Friday.

But the euro-zone's Big Two seem to have decided that the Brussels meeting at the end of the week will be nothing more than a rubber-stamping exercise.

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy announced yesterday that they had reached an agreement on how to stabilise the eurozone.

It would seem that the job for the rest of Europe's leaders is simply to turn up and approve it.

The deal seems to bear a deeper German, rather than French stamp.

There will be treaty change for the 17 nations of the eurozone and a new regime to limit borrowing by member states-both central demands of Ms Merkel's.

There will be automatic fines for fiscally lax states and the European Court of Justice will verify national budgets.

But there remains doubt about the extent to which the fiscal enforcement regime will be beefed up.

The European Court will not, we were told yesterday, be able to veto budgets.

Yet there is an absurdity about this whole exercise.

This is not a crisis driven by over-borrowing by states.

Yes, the former Greek government spent too much and deceived its eurozone partners about its finances.

But the governments of Ireland and Spain were running budget surpluses right up to the moment the roof fell in on them in 2008.

It was the banking sectors of those countries - facilitated by profligate financial institutions in France and Germany - that were out of control and effectively destroyed their public finances.

Ms Merkel's treaty changes will not address that fundamental flaw - and they will not help to alleviate the present crisis.

As such, the German Chancellor is engaged in elaborate displacement activity.

i  06 Dec 2011    Bankocracy Log    Global Risks 2012    Government by Corporate Technocracy

Teenagers to be given jobs funded by the taxpayer

"Do less, make it seem like more"

The payment — effectively a taxpayer-funded bribe for companies — is designed to get more than 400,000 young people into work.

The scheme, which has hallmarks of the Thatcherite Youth Training Scheme of the 1980s, will be funded by freezing tax credits for up to three years, hitting millions of workers earning up to £28,000 ...

Tel  25 Nov 2011

Nick Clegg announces £1bn fund to tackle youth unemployment

The opposition said the move represented a U-turn and was in effect a revised version of Labour's future jobs fund, cancelled by the coalition government when it came to office.

After protracted negotiations inside the government, ministers will subsidise 160,000 work places by providing £2,275 to any private-sector business willing to hire an unemployed 18- to 24-year-old.

The scheme will be administered by private-sector providers via the government's work programme, and any young person taken on will have to complete the placement or be refused benefits.

Anyone rejecting a subsidised job offer will be required to undertake four weeks' mandatory work activity ...

roblet
25 November 2011 1:43AM

"May lead to permanent jobs."

More likely it tends to lead to a revolving door policy by companies who can obtain a constant stream of subsidised labour.

As with all compulsory schemes for the unemployed, this then becomes an incentive for unscrupulous companies to jettison their regular employees in menial work, in favour of cheap labour from the massed ranks of the enforcees.

The employers will be happy anyway.

Gdn  25 Nov 2011    Coalition Log    Full employment?    Outsourcing

The myth of full employment

Young jobseekers told to work without pay or lose unemployment benefits

Coalition sheds crocodile tears over young jobless

Minimum wage harming job opportunities for young

Welfare: the 18th Brumaire of Iain Duncan Smith

Government to launch work academies

"Do less, make it seem like more"

Employment Minister Chris Grayling said that coupled with the Work Programme and the Work Experience scheme, the new work academies will support up to 150,000 young people over the next few months and 250,000 over the next two years.

Industries covered by the work academies include construction, hospitality, logistics, retail and contact centres, where the Government said there were tens of thousands of job vacancies.

Mr Grayling said: "Sector-based work academies are the next key part of our strategy to tackle youth unemployment.

With training, work experience and a guaranteed interview, they will put people at the front of the queue for vacancies that employers are looking to fill."

Under the initiative, employers are being urged to offer work experience placements or guaranteed job interviews.

Ind  12 Oct 2011

Competition plan for state services unveiled

What a droll little man is Mr Cameron. It seems public services are to blame for inequality! But the real agenda here is the gradual 'outsourcing' of the public sector to firms - like Capita and Serco - who are drivne by the only motivator known to the free marketeers: profit.

The reforms would be driven by the principles of choice, decentralisation, diversity, fair access and accountability ...

This would include personal budgets for social care users by 2013;

funding following the user in state schools, universities, childcare and the NHS;

premium payments for school pupils and healthcare patients from disadvantaged backgrounds;

easily accessible information about public service performance;

and payment by results for providers of services such as welfare-to-work, offender rehabilitation, and drug and alcohol treatment ...

[David Cameron] described public services as "the backbone of the country" but complained that they still operate with a "take-what-you're-given" philosophy that has failed sufficiently to close gaps between the life quality of the rich and poor ...

Public services were "failing on fairness", with people in the poorest neighbourhoods dying seven years earlier than those in the richest;

children from disadvantaged families half as likely to get five good GCSE passes as their better-off contemporaries;

and just 40 students on free school meals getting one of the 80,000 places at Oxford or Cambridge universities ...

Ind  11 July 2011

Ministers urged to let schools and hospitals fail to hasten reforms

... documents obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act reveal research by civil servants warning that markets are susceptible to "failure" and costs could in fact rise unless a true market is created by allowing public services to collapse if they are unsuccessful.

It opens up the potential for schools, hospitals, social care systems and nurseries to fold without the government stepping in to prop them up ...

The documents obtained by the Guardian were prepared by civil servants as part of an internal government review into the consequences for democratic accountability of the coalition's localism, big society and outsourcing reforms that are integral to today's white paper ...

The document also:

• Concludes there is a benefit in choice and competition in driving up standards, but that it works best where there are fixed prices in health for operations, or in education per pupil, otherwise there is a risk that companies will simply compete by undercutting each other. Drawing on evidence from the first major wave of privatisation in the 1990s, it says "providers will compete on price but quality may suffer".

• Highlights the potential for "market failures" in the public sector, saying some areas may not be appropriate. "In particular, it is worth noting that if the service is complex; time-critical; and used infrequently, (for instance accident and emergency services), it may be difficult for users to make an informed choice."

• It warns that wealthier people may be better placed to exercise choice in which services they access, because they are more likely to be able to travel further for the school or hospital they want ...

Guardian  11 July 2011    Coalition Log    Inequality    

Cameron promises to 'end state's monopoly' over public services

John Lewis-style public services to break state monopoly

Cameron-backed report to protect children from commercialisation

And the action taken ... ?

The proposals come in a long-awaited report, leaked to the Guardian, on the commercialisation of childhood.

It was commissioned by Cameron and is due to be published on Monday with strong support from Downing Street ...

The report, which was prepared by Reg Bailey, the chief executive of the Christian charity Mothers' Union, finds "sexualised and gender stereotyped clothing, products and services for children are the biggest concerns for parents and many non-commercial organisations" ...

Key measures

• Retailers to ensure magazines with sexualised images have modesty sleeves.

• The Advertising Standards Authority to discourage placement of billboards near schools and nurseries.

• Music videos to be sold with age ratings.

• Procedures to make it easier for parents to block adult and age restricted material on internet.

• Code of practice to be issued on child retailing.

• Define a child as 16 in all types of advertising regulation.

• Advertising Standards Authority to do more to gauge parent's views on advertising.

• Create a single website for parents to complain to regulators.

• Change rules on nine o'clock television watershed to give priority to views of parents.

• Government to regulate after 18 months if progress insufficient.

Gdn  03 June 2011

Family breakdown damaging children    Gertrude Himmelfarb's Victorian Virtues    Libertarianism    Nudge

Leaders launch plan to tackle youth jobless 'scandal'

" ... a £60m package to boost work prospects and vocational education ... "

Mr Cameron said: "It's time to reverse the trend of rising youth unemployment that has held back our country for far too long and help our young people get the jobs on which their future - and ours - depends ...

BBC NEWS  12 May 2011    Coalition Log    Dystopia Log

'Reserve Army'     The Third Face of Power     The Myth of Full Employment     Youth Unemployment

Rise in youths out of work and education

Youth unemployment hits record high

'Savage' cuts to youth spending ...

Young unemployed 'face mental problems'

Coalition is abandoning young people to joblessness

Cost of youth crime rises to £1.2bn a year

Youth unemployment for two years or more soars by 42pc

Job losses hit the under-25s

New Labour's new 3,023 offences demonstrate just how deeply they have been seduced by the politics of penal populism. This astonishing number of new crimes reflects the desire of a government to legislate first and think later - if they think at all. For what matters most to them is not to carefully assess the evidence that they have, but rather to be seen to have "done something" - anything - in the face of each new moral panic that bubbles up in the red-top papers.

This month moral panics about asylum seekers; prisoners absconding from open prisons, and suspected terrorists with plans to blow up aircraft, and lastly - indeed a favourite target throughout the course of New Labour's tenure in office - a police crackdown on young people.

New criminal offences can symbolise many things - from the changing sensibilities of our culture, to the need to legislate because of technological or economic developments. But first and foremost they reveal a paradox that lays bare the Government's strength and weakness. The strength to push legislation through parliament and control a political process, but a weakness to actually do anything about that elephant in the sitting room - crime.

...

Under New Labour prison in particular has become a place to disappear that troublesome population which has remained resolutely resistant to Asbos, community curfews, on-the-spot fines, or the blandishment of all the new 'Bobbies on the beat', Community Support Officers, or private security guards who are now increasingly policing public space.

With little community infrastructure to support people with mental health problems, or addictions - often the reason why "crime" is committed in the first place - prison has re-invented itself and become re-legitimised as the functioning alternative to the welfare state of Old Labour.

...

Where will it end - 4,000 new offences? Perhaps 5,000? Would 10,000 new offences make us all feel safer and keen to re-elect New Labour?

Ironically, with the "fear of crime" still high, it might be that the best way to convince the electorate that "something is being done" is to do nothing at all.

Alternatively, we might elect a government that was keen to look beyond the statute book and deal with those structural factors in our society that impact on crime.

A government that saw its purpose in creating opportunities for employment; ensuring that our children get access to good schools and well-qualified teachers; and that this was all under-pinned by a welfare safety net to provide a bulwark against the extremes of poverty.

If we were to elect a government that got these things right, we would deliver the circumstances in which people could go about their lives peaceably and that would also make others behave without the need for more and more "crimes".

Independent 16 August 2006