Number of workless doubled under Labour

[meditrina]

Link to article quoting ONS statistics.

It's not good, is it? Even allowing for some of the increase being students. Especially in conjunction with reports of stalling social mobility.

Er, wasn't there a worldwide recession in the years leading to 2010? Do you think that might have something to do with it?

Sorry - should have been clearer. The number is for households where no-one has ever worked.

Not just out of work in 2010.

Well, that is bad if it's people who have never worked. But the recession is still a huge factor, which the article doesn't even mention. How incredibly biased!

There's been a massive problems with school leavers and Uni graduates not getting jobs well before the recession. In my area, there were complaints about colleges and Unis advertising how great certain courses were for jobs when those areas weren't really hiring as far back as 2005. There is a huge pile-up of young, educated, and no where to go and less resources out there to show those people any other ways out.

It's not good. Labour, despite claiming to be for the working-class, did the square root of bugger-all to get people out of unemployment. The tax credit system ironically made many low-paid jobs financially unattractive, except to people coming in from new EU countries that snapped them up gratefully. (And that is not a racist/anti-immigration dig, just making the point that Labour's policies were riddled with unintended consequences) One big reason Labour lost the last election was that people who work hard and struggle to make ends meet got fed up seeing non-working friends and neighbours living equivalent or sometimes better lifestyles.... Labour concentrated far too much on 'eradicating poverty' ie. giving out money, and far too little on getting people back to work.

The dependency culture that has grown up over the Labour years is very dperessing.

Numerous factors affecting employment, inlcuding immigration levels being at peak numbers.

(www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/8539116/Immigration-flows-hit-six-year-high.html)

A fair few of the couple of generations who have never worked would have previously been employed in manufacturing or suchlike, which was destroyed by Thatcher.

Madlizzy, totally agree she still has a lot to answer to answer for!

OOPS

Madlizzy - I've just had a look at the linked ONS report. It's specifically for the period 1997 - 2010, so this is not a Thatcherite issue. The doubling of "never worked" households is what occurred in exactly the Blair/Brown years.

cookcleanerchaufferetc: interesting point - we're always told that new immigrants cannot claim benefits. If this increase is down to immigrant families who have never worked, then this has to mean we've been lied to during those same years, doesn't it?

I don't think anyone's claiming that immigrants are adding to the unemployed. If anything, immigrants have been putting nationals to shame by taking up jobs that locals reject. And you're right... blaming Thatcher is a little old hat. Might as well blame Asquith or Disraeli...

Why bother blaming anyone? All governments make mistakes - just look at the present problems.

I really don't care who is responsible. I just want to look at why it happened and make sure it doesn't happen again.

This drear old game of party politics is irrelevant imo. It seems to me that the parties in government need to do their best to work together to carry out the wishes of the people, whatever their philosophies. The parties that are out of government should watch and learn from their mistakes and build on their successes.

Left/right wing has lost its meaning. Priority needs to be given to finding people jobs, making big businesses pay their taxes, funding hospitals and social care.

What's ironic is that during the years of so-called 'boom' only a very few people at the top actually benefitted from it. So economic 'growth' (for the few) is not what we need at all. We just need policies that are more socially responsible.

No wonder this country's so backwards. People can't stop looking to the past and squabbling over it. Like pointing a finger at a glass of milk spilled on the floor and blaming it for your lack of milk now - a useless and stupid exercise.

The problems are multiple.

For a start everyone wants experienced staff but no one is willing to give anyone a chance to learn in the first place.

Then you have the student problem, Nu Labours demand that at least 50% of the population should be uni educated was a stupid idea from the get go, thats 50% of the work force held back from actually working until they are in their 20's and gaining qulifications in fields that they have little chance of getting a job in as the numbers of jobs you actually need a degree for is tiny.

All that did is fuck things up even more for all of us, as having a Masters degree in something makes you more likely to get a part-time burger flipper job at Maccy D's (not that you'd want to if you had spent 4 years of your life learning something and was in 20k of debt) but that pretty much meant anyone without a uni education can't get anywhere at all (hence the poor workless families staying poor and workless from generation to generation).

Then you have the immigration problem, the reverse racism I call it, people thinking they would get good money coming over here to work and tempted over by some companies, not realising the high cost of living when they get here and being stuck in crappy student like shared accomedation working long hours on wages that most of us couldn't live on because we have families to keep, exploited by employers, hired over the brittish because they think the immigrants are better workers willing to worker hard and for longer (the reality being of course they haven't got much choice they are pretty much stuck here now until they can make a few pennies and most are not intitled to benefits).

Then you have the whole job centre system which is geared towards preventing people from finding long term work, the government pays external companies to train and help people with job search but they never cater for anyones skills it's all a half arsed effort consisting of giving people computer training but with a in house certificate at the end of it that no one recognises and egnoring what people can actually do and just sending them off to apply for Tesco 20 times, other then that they just shout at, belittle and bully people. it's all a deliberate ploy to just make it look like they are doing the job, it's all lip service, as well as the massive amount of money they get in contracts from the government they all so get given £300 a week per unemployed person they take on so it is not in their interest for people to actually find long term employment and low unemployment levels.

Labour were useless, but the tories are going to put it right but getting poor people back on the streets or in workhouses where they belong.

Mellowfruitfulness, your posts are thoughtful, compassionate and forward-thinking. Have you ever considered joining the Labour Party? I think we need you! :)

I didn't start the thread meaning to attribute blame - more to show how much worse the problems of long-term joblessness had become of late.

The TUC paper (under discussion in a separate thread) showed how the wealth gap and wage stagnation has been around since 1977.

Ryoko's post highlights the errors and unintended consequences of higher education and immigration policies under the last administration.

onagar: the first part of your post is spot on. I'm heartily sick of the "blame the previous administration rhetoric", but as the normal cycle of Govt statistics rolls on and data becomes available, it's becoming all too painfully evident that it's true.

'I didn't start the thread meaning to attribute blame -'

Then why mention a political party in the thread title at all?

Thank you, SalmeMurrikAgain!

But I think I'm too Green for the Labour Party. Tbh, after voting for them all my life, I was so disappointed that I deserted them, and became mere flotsam and jetsam, a lonely floating voter bobbing along on the river of life, at the mercy of tides and storms ...

As I said above, the differences between the parties seem less important to me now than them telling the truth and getting the job done and for once actually representing the will of the majority of the people.

Senior moment. I did vote for them in Scotland, and also for the Green Party. But I made my mind up at the very last moment, as my pencil was hovering over the paper ...

I mentioned it because

a) that's the period of the linked ONS information and discussion
b) it establishes a baseline between administrations
c) it is possible to analyse the past in order to avoid a cycle of the same mistakes (ie analysis to benefit not blame), and
d) to advance the rhetoric away from the usual expectations of which party's policies consign people to the dole.

Fair enough, Meditrina. But does d) mean that you want people to think it's not just the Tories who don't care about working people? So if we accept that Labour doesn't care about them either (which I don't), how does that make things better?

I think not enough is being done by any party to create jobs. However, in spite of your article, we all know that historically, the Labour party has always defended the rights of the workers - the clue is in the name - that's why it's called socialist, even as a term of abuse, by some tories.

My problem is that it has changed and it's not socialist enough. The previous government was much too deeply in thrall to vested interests to be able to protect the poor, imo - but so is this government. The difference is that most Labour Party members sincerely want social justice, equality of opportunity, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' etc. I don't know what the tories want. The only way to guess is by looking at what they're trying to do: privatising the NHS and schools, making it impossible for poor people to go to uni, removing benefits from hard-up families, while cutting jobs etc. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that the tories want global companies to flourish, the rich to get richer and poor people to die scrabble in the dust for the crumbs they leave behind. Seriously, what is the logical conclusion to all their policies, taken as a whole? What is their vision of the future?

We should learn from the past - your c) - but it's impossible for ordinary members of the public to learn anything unless we are told, truthfully, what's going on. If we are fed a lot of lies, we are going to end up very confused, believing all sorts of things - and very vulnerable to being manipulated by whoever is in power.

Sorry to go on ...

Mellow: still rather early to judge the effects of the Coalition policies. But we shall have a baseline against which to judge. And I think your "free-market with safety net" quotation "each according to ability, each according to need" is very applicable to Tory policies.

It is annoying when policies are criticised and the nasty Tories blamed when even the most cursory examination would show that Labour pre-emptied or agreed eg: introduction of private providers to NHS - Labour 2004. Cuts agenda - very little difference (according to the few pronouncements thus far made), Academies and external sponsors - Labour policy. Introduction of tuition fees - Labour.

In the interests of balance this does need to be pointer out from time to time. It's wrong (and illogical) that two parties can use essentially the same policies but only one is slatted off (not you, personally, but some MN posters)

But - unless some results are shown sharpish - then we probably will need to see the current administration's intensification and acceleration of Labour policies as unproductive. Then I think I shall be agreeing with you, Mellow, that no party at present has worthwhile policies.