The Conservative party
No better than Labour?
I'd heard in 2007 that the Conservatives planned to abolish New Deal, but it seems that, in expecting something better, I was living on false hopes. I always assumed that they'd replace it with something else rather than my preferred option of straight abolition, but I had hoped that they'd find a better scheme. Sadly, it seems that they've found something worse. Once again, they've used the Stereotypes about unemployed people as a basis for their policy.
In earlier comments, David Cameron made the basic assumption that anybody who is physically able to work can get a job. You can't just take a job but in any case, there are No truly unskilled jobs. Furthermore, because two major parties both accept the Stereotypes, the vast majority of unemployed people who really want to work have all sorts of obstacles placed in their path to work. I'd like to do all sorts of training to qualify me for the contemporary jobs market, but I can't do that training (or can't do it properly) for reasons set out in this blog. As for the low-grade jobs that politicians think unemployed people should take, Employer attitudes make this difficult for those people who have a history of higher-grade jobs. So, at least for me, David Cameron's ideas might make a bad situation worse. Nevertheless, Gordon Brown appeared to agree with him at least on the broad thrust of future policy towards unemployment.
The Conservatives are saying that they will offer high-quality support for unemployed people to help them get back to work. Even if true, anything they do will almost certainly come too late for me in any event, but I am somewhat sceptical in any case. The cost of such high-quality support would be substantial and we know that the Conservatives are also committed to crack down on public spending. It may be that spending in this area would eventually pay dividends, but it would cost a lot of extra money at first with no guarantee of success. With such support, I might have found a job since 2002, but any such policy will come too late to make much difference to my prospects now.
The Conservatives also like to emphasise the old mantra about people refusing reasonable job offers. I haven't had a job offer of any kind since the one that ended The nineties job quest. I'll always carry the thought that if I'd turned that offer down, there's a good chance that I'd have secured a job anyway later that year. If that had happened, it may be that I'd have learned all the new skills that I needed to sustain a career until retirement, but I'll never know. In any case, I knew that I could lose my benefits if I turned the job down and the jobcentre found out. But really, I just wanted to get back to work and after more than eight years out of work, I wasn't in a mood to be choosy. However, it's also true that I had every chance to fail that interview and the reality is that if anybody really doesn't want a particular job, there are any number of ways to ensure that the job offer doesn't materialise.
In my case, I've only had two formal interviews since my last redundancy and I wanted those jobs. The first was at Agathos Systems in Nottingham. Indeed, when I saw the same employer advertise for a similar vacancy a year later, I let him know that I was still available but received no response. I discuss the second interview in my page titled EXCEL spreadsheets.
It is time for the politicians to abandon the Stereotypes and focus on other things including Employer attitudes. This would help those people like me who genuinely want to work.
October 2009
Presumbly as a result of the recession, David Cameron now knows that jobs are elusive, so he's had to change his thinking slightly. He said that a big, bold welfare shake-up would be at the heart of his policies aimed at getting Britain working. He said that New Deal would be among schemes replaced by personalised help to get the jobless and those on incapacity benefit into work, and that the initial start-up cost of the change would be 600 million pounds. Those comments nevertheless may not indicate a real policy shift. Since becoming Prime Minister, he is trying to cut welfare spending as severely as possible to minimise cuts elsewhere. Even if he gives these issues top priority, the fact that David Freud is involved in policy making suggests that things won't improve. After all, he switched from Labour to the Conservatives ater doing the same job for them.
George Osbourn's catchphrase
George Osbourn has his catchphrase and it's also the title of a song we are all in this together. I was thinking that he could have chosen we all stand together, but maybe millionaire would suit George Osbourn better, since the title describes him exactly.
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