The Labour party
Gordon Brown praises "New Deal"
Article on 10 Downing Street website
My response
Well, Gordon Brown and I obviously disagree about the merits of New Deal, the scheme that provoked me into setting up this blog. As I said in my page Lies, big lies and statistics, I'd like to know how the official unemployment statistics and the number of unemployed people returned to work supposedly as a result of New Deal are worked out.
Gordon Brown would like people to get more and better skills, but if I weren't sidetracked by New Deal and other stupid government ideas detailed in this blog, I'd have more useful skills on my CV. Indeed, I might even have found a proper job already.
During his time as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown looked forward to another ten years in power, but even Labour's strongest supporters couldn't really expect that, though when defeat finally came, it wasn't as heavy as had at one time seemed likely.
Peter Hain boasted about slashing claimant unemployment benefit in half. It's easy to do that by fiddling the official unemployment statistics as I said in my page Lies, big lies and statistics.
Tell me why "New Deal" is good
Maybe somebody, somewhere, can provide me with proof that New Deal is a good policy. Gordon Brown praises New Deal with empty rhetoric. I just don't see what's good about New Deal. Even if some people have benefited from it, I doubt that there are enough to justify its huge cost. I can see that the government has benefited in a cynical way, because every person on a New Deal placement is excluded from the official unemployment statistics, while some of the extra money spent counts as charity donations. Nevertheless, it all seems to be at the expense of schemes that would genuinely help unemployed people return to proper work, such as training schemes suited to those individuals.
The phantom top 50
In February 2008, the Labour party published a list of what it claimed were its top 50 achievements since 1997 but they deleted the page a long time ago. The Labour party's claim that 1.8 million people returned to work as a result of New Deal was rated 41 out of the 50. I'll just say that I think the list was rubbish, not least because if the Labour party really believed that 1.8 million figure, it would be number 1 on the list, not 41. And if they believed in the list at all, they'd have left it there for eternity. Did they delete the list because of the 2008 banking crisis? I don't know, but the timing suggests that it's a serious possibility. Actually, the list still survives on the Daily Telegraph website. I don't think that list will be deleted. It's priceless.
A better way must be found
There has to be a better way of solving the unemployment problem. Placements only make sense if they are voluntary and if they genuinely improve the chances of the participants to find proper jobs. In this way, the placement agency would be forced to look for better quality placements to remove the stigma they currently have, so that people would actually want to come back a second time if they remain unemployed.
2010
While I was pleased to see the end of Gordon Brown's government, I wasn't excited by either the new government or the replacement Labour leader. Can they be worse than what they replaced? Don't rule it out.
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