Tories and unemployment benefits

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pooley P
pooley Aug 22, 2008 09:02:30
Replying to grufty jim

grufty jim wrote:
pooley wrote:
Moon Cat wrote:
was too busy working to look at it properly, Still it's an awful lot less than the figure mentioned in this thread earlier. Shows there is hope for jobless/ work shy (;-)). Also too busy to put much effort into responses on this thread, just giving you an opinion. they are allowed aint they?
Pooley, you gave an opinion; people chose to comment, agree or disagree as they felt appropriate. You freely admit in an earlier reponse to Grufty that you weren't interested enough in evidence that was presented to you to 'look it up'. That hardly inspires debate does it? It seems a bit disengenuous to fall back on the "opinions being allowed or not" schtick just cos people have chosen to disagree with you on a couple of matters.

As it happens, I don't think SJD's comments were particularly helpful or warranted in response to...er....your response either.

Well, ok. I wasn't interested enough to look it up, and took them at there word. turns out that maybe i shouldn't have, as the figures were much less than suggested earlier. Still, there you go
Hang on a second. I didn't "suggest" any figures and I hope you weren't implying some level of dishonesty on my part. I quoted the UK's national statistics office and linked to the page.

As far as I'm concerned, those are the official figures. Where have the other ones come from?

Sorry, Grufty, I most certainly wasn't implying any dishonesty on your part. Really sorry if it seemed that way, I could have phrased it better. But, Looking through this thread there are different figures, and it seems when you take out certain groups that cant work, the figures shoot down to a more realistic level.

M Merrick
Merrick Aug 22, 2008 15:33:06
Replying to pooley

By subtracting the number of Job Seekers Allowance claimants from the number of vacancies, Vybik John came up with 229,800

However, there are far more people unemployed than that. And I'm not talking about those who can't/won't work. I'm using, as Jim did, the government's definition of 'jobless people who want to work, are available to work, and are actively seeking employment'.

The government's figure for that, cited by Jim, leaves a discrepancy of around a million people.

There's a few reasons for the difference between Vybik and Jim's numbers. Some unemployed people don't claim benefits, others can't. Then there's all the figure-fiddling scams that the Conservatives brought in during the period of high unemployment in the 80s and early 90s - only count one of a couple, don't count men over 60, don't count the ones you've coerced into Mickey Mouse training courses. Labour soundly jeered at these measures as they were brought in, then chose not to repeal them once in power.

There certainly are more who could work - the government says those who are of working age but economically inactive number about 8 million (mostly students, raising family or disabled) (Note: the figure I found is 4 years old, but as they say there's been no massive changes in previous years I don't see any reason why they'll have changed much since 2004).

But it seems that even if we exclude all those scamming sickness benefits, all those parents who could get part-time work and whatever, there are a million people properly unemployed.

Full employment is never coming back. It was demolished by automation and the huge influx of women into the labour market; neither thing is going to ever go away. So, there will always be more people than jobs. I don't see that compelling people to do the same activites we give to minor criminals - effectively criminalising long-term unemployment - is humane, fair or value for money.