Unemployment and Benefits

[Ian]

He started a few things to get people talking, and each time the Tory press ran the hate stories.  He also stopped Incapacity benefit for millions, and cut back on several other aspects.

[Fester]

Another rise in unemployment, all the key indicators are going badly wrong.
A catastrphic economic outlook.
See here...   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12477563

For me, the most worrying situation is that 20% of people between the ages of 16 to 24 have NO job.
Many more have temporary or part time work only, because they cannot find ''real'' jobs.

So, they are at least 20% into their ''working'' lives... and are unable to create any wealth for themselves, or contribute to society in any way.

This is only going to get worse as the public sector sheds more and more jobs in the next year or two.

[Merddin Emrys]

it seems the real jobs are now in China  ¢¢##

[DaveR]

We're paying the price now for the Labour years, where the only jobs created were hundreds of thousands of public sector ones. The public sector does not generate one penny of wealth for this country. We need to create a business climate that actively encourages businesses to expand - it's the only way out of this mess..

[norman08]

sorry dave this all started from the thatcher era when she started getting rid of industries from up north, and that was the start of overseas ownership

[DaveR]

Those industries closed because they were grossly uncompetitive following decades of weak management, little or no investment and suffered from disproportionate trade union influence in their running. Industries were closing left, right and centre during the 1970s long before Thatcher came to power - you'll recall that the flagship of British engineering, Rolls Royce, went bankrupt in 1971. Blaming Thatcher is a lazy economic argument.

Thanks to the last Govt, we now have public spending at levels so high that we have to BORROW an extra four hundred million pounds...EVERY DAY. Just consider that figure...£400,000,000...EVERY DAY. A complete disaster. 

[Ian]

Thanks to the last Govt, we now have public spending at levels so high that we have to BORROW an extra four hundred million pounds.

I don't think it's quite as simple as that. Most of our current predicament stems from two sources: serious fraud in both the investment and retail banking arms in the US and unwise lending decisions by banks throughout the world.

And Norman is partly right; it was the Thatcher years that saw control being taken off the lending institutions, allowing the years of loan profligacy by business, not the public sectors, and private individuals which, coupled with the opening up of industries already owned by the taxpayer to those who could afford to then buy them and thereby pulling off the most astonishing  con-trick in politics led to the never-never society and contributed mightily to the current climate.

Thatcher's obeisance at the alter of monetarism laid the foundations for today's proboems, but I still attribute most of the blame to the US banks. 

[Fester]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, Ian, Norman, Dave... anyone who fancies chipping in.

But in my experience there are two major forces at work.
In point one, you will see that Dave and Norman are actually saying the same thing, just in a different way.

1, There is not enough  manufacturing industry to create wealth in this country.  We are all basically selling insurance or imported goods to each other. We need to be making things, (food, raw materials, cars, machines) and selling them to oveseas buyers.... but we have lost the skills and the work-ethic.

2, In years gone by people used to borrow money, buy a house or suchlike and dutifully pay it back over time.  When that happens the system works fine and is sustainable.    Then society changed (and the mix of races in this country changed too)  suddenly people borrowed ''money'' which was artificially created, and had no intention of paying it back.
That is when the system collapsed.   The money has to be found from those poor mugs like us who work and pay taxes (Income Tax, or VAT or others)

If people no longer wish to play by the rules,  then the game cannot continue.... house price values collapse back to what can be afforded, and the mega pensions and salaries of the past are consiged to history.  Game over.

[Ian]

There is not enough  manufacturing industry to create wealth in this country.

That's very true. Effectively, the developed world has priced itself out of the market for consumer items production and that seems to be a pattern throughout the Western World. Interestingly, the UK makes most of its money through financial services, research, weaponry and hi-tech industry.  One major consequence of that is that the job market has become rather polarised between skilled  and unskilled work.  There seems to be precious little of the semi-skilled left.  How that came about was down to the factor I mentioned above, and - interestingly - the Thatcher government, who directed schools to aim most of their pupils towards higher education, and painted apprenticeships as jobs for failures.  

To be fair, I'm not sure any government would have acted differently;  the stats at the time implied that we would need an 80% degree-holding workforce by 2000. Unfortunately, that aspiration conveniently ignored the simple truth that most people couldn't acquire a degree.  To get round that, Polytechnics were given University status, encouraged to run degree courses that almost anyone could pass (Needlework, embroidery etc) and teachers set about subverting the government at every turn to increase their pupils' GCSE and A level exam result grades.

So we now find ourselves without an engineering base to speak of (and we used to be world leaders), a cohort of young people who've been led to believe that everyone should go to university and a world centre for financial transactions, particularly in futures.

Whether it will all implode as Fester suggests, only time will tell. But the world had a nasty scare four years ago, and we're all paying the price. But if it does implode then it will go a lot further than simply falling house prices.  We could witness a return to poverty, the like of which hasn't been seen since the eighteenth century. Then, we'll wish for falling house prices.

[Fester]

As Ian says, the world DID have a nasty scare 4 years ago.... but since then the pattern in progressively downwards.
What I mean is,  in 2008 there was a ''credit crunch'' which mean that banks would lend to no one, not even each other... certainly not for anyone house buying or launching a business.

From the credit crunch, we then entered a ''recession'' .... and everyone suffered accordingly.

Now, the recession is supposedly ''over'' .... but we are being warned that we are now entering a much worse phase !!   ?   What is it? What next?

[Ian]

   
Now, the recession is supposedly ''over'' .... but we are being warned that we are now entering a much worse phase !! 

I find that interesting - and worrying.  How much of this is the government lowering expectations I don't know, but the big tax and NI hits arrive in April, interest rates are likely to rise this year, which clobbers everyone, and apparently raw material costs are rocketing - oil, cotton, grain.  I think things might get a lot worse. 

[DaveR]

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better - 2 years worth of misery at least.

[Ian]

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better - 2 years worth of misery at least.

And on that cheerful note, here's the weather...


 Z@@

[Merddin Emrys]

reading all this reminds me of this...

Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen

[Ian]

Excellent!