Cameron and the 'feckless' Poor V's Cameron and the unemployed in the UK rose by 38,000 to 2.49 million in the three months

[Tortington]

you feckless fuckers

shock and surprise

Filthy Tory scum.

concise and apt as ever

Yes, every single one of those people just needs to get on their back, the lazy scroungers.

bike

or back - i mean its a valid choice

awaits feminists

What or who exactly are these feckless poor? Do you define by income??

I suspect they've been watching too many episodes of shameless.

Oh, you forgot, custy, being unemployed is a lifestyle choice, of course .

there will be 2 more when dp and i join the in late autumn

christ SEA redundancy?

yes both of us at the same time too, it's scary :(

It beggars belief that people are surprised that unemployment is increasing!

Anyone could have seen it and it's about to get worse I think.

Where I work a whole department is being scrapped all those people will be redundant in September. Most of the job cuts in the council haven't even started yet. My job will no longer exist in April and I will be fighting my friends and colleagues for someone else's job.

Were dh works also a whole dept. (in the private sector) scrapped and he only hung on to his job by the skin of his teeth.

I for one am not buying things I don't actually need right now, no holiday this year. I don't think I'm unusual either; I can only anticipate things getting worse for us financially.

How can anyone be surprised that less jobs are being created in that atmosphere?

"National output is still 4% below where it was at its peak in early 2008. As a result, private sector job creation is faltering at the time public sector job cuts are kicking in."
jobs just not there

"Ministers like to boast about how the economy created 500,000 private sector jobs in the latest year; what they don't say is that the "latest year" ended in March 2011 (more current data is unavailable) and that more than 300,000 of the 500,000 increase took place before the coalition came to office."

"The number of people working part time because they can't find a full-time job rose by 83,000 to 1.26m in the three months to June, the highest figures since comparable records began in 1992."

"What does all this mean? It means that the jobless total, currently at 2,494,000, is likely to go through the 2.5m level next month. It means that unemployment among 16-24-year-olds, now 949,000, will be heading towards 1m when this year's graduates enter the labour market."

Custardo: when do school leavers and fresh graduates start appearing in the figures? I can't see why they wouldn't have done already if they're out of work, as term has finished. Are their weird regulations about when you can start a claim?

Ministers like to boast about how the economy created 500,000 private sector jobs in the latest year; what they don't say is that the "latest year" ended in March 2011 (more current data is unavailable) and that more than 300,000 of the 500,000 increase took place before the coalition came to office."

number of vacancies down here.

It isn't a surprise that the jobless figures have gone up and I don't think anyone has said that. In case no-one's noticed, the world economy is in a complete slump at the moment with little growth anywhere outside of the developing countries. Consumer demand tailed off about three years ago which put a lot of private sector workers out of work. Oil and other fuel prices have shot up. Construction, Finance and Manufacturing are all struggling sectors. This, in turn, led to a nose-dive in tax revenues and the necessity for the spending cuts which have resulted in some public sector workers now being out of work. That's not just the UK, it's happening in all Western economies. And it would be happening, regardless of who is in government.

Within that environment there is an even greater obligation to make sure the money is going where it is genuinely needed.

"n truth, the welfare bill, as a percentage of GDP, is roughly the same as when Labour took power in 1997 ? despite a recession, inevitable higher unemployment and the spluttering economy. But to convince voters that Britain is broken, the prime minister is pushing social policy based on ideology rather than evidence. It is a belief system that will do little to help the people who need it."

from the article linked

I don't see what's wrong with a PM (or any politician for that matter) pushing an agenda based on ideology. Don't people vote more for an ideological change of direction rather than nitty-gritty, costed action-plans? If we always go by evidence it can turn into government by focus group which, in turn, risks losing something in the sense of vision or leadership. Labour struggled with that one, didn't they. Whether the policy is successful or not cann only be tested after the fact.

no, i don;t agree at all. We need to know that action is based on evidence and not on whim or pressure. governments need to think of the needs of the country first.

The article and you are assuming 'whims and pressure' and I don't think that is how policy is derived. It is more a question of emphasis and direction. If the fundamental philosophy of a party is that society needs to be tightly controlled by government for its own good then policy will reflect that. If the fundamental philosophy assumes society functions best when given greater responsibility & freedom then policy will be created with that in mind.