Just What’s Needed, Another ‘NICE’..!

Carl Havern is a model Big Society citizen. He volunteers for three different causes every week and cares passionately about improving his community. He is also a recovering heroin addict on benefits, who has spent much of the past decade in prison.

I just love the idea that I’m working my guts out to provide tax revenue to these people… Sorry, these ‘vulnerable’ people!

Mr Havern is a member of a community group in Salford starting a quiet revolution against the prevailing stereotype of some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens. It has been meeting every Thursday since October, plotting ways to challenge the increasingly incendiary rhetoric about people on benefits. This month the group launched to the public in the hope that others who are fed up of being labelled as scroungers will follow suit.

Oooh, this’ll be good! *grabs popcorn, settles in*

The group’s long-winded name – the Non-judgemental Integrity Compassion and Equality group – thankfully boils down to the acronym Nice.

And it’s about as much use to society as the other NICE…

Funding cuts meant Golda Bolanda, 33, lost her job as a project coordinator for a charity in June last year. In the past four months alone she has been to interviews for more than 50 jobs but got nowhere.

She says the stigma around benefits almost stopped her claiming them – until things got desperate. “We’re called scroungers, but the work that we do in the community is so important. Yes, we’re on benefits, but in the meantime we’re doing something.”

But clearly, it’s not something anyone wants to pay you to do. I wonder why?

Letitia Rose, 46, struggled to cope with the prejudice she encountered when she found herself with a new baby and no job.

At 46?!?

Now she works part-time, but is still frustrated that lone mothers who stay at home face prejudice that mothers in relationships do not. “A mum with a partner gets the right to stay at home and look after the kids and bake cakes and go to pre-school without being judged. But mums on their own are seen as sitting on their backside claiming benefits. What’s that saying about society and how women are being judged?”

It’s saying that the ideal start for a child is two – count ‘em, two – parents, not one, plus Government stand-in.

Letitia’s neighbour, Fred Pilling, 60, is also in the group. He has lived in his three-bedroom home for the past 44 years but now the bedroom tax is making it unaffordable. Now that he has £26 less in housing benefit, he is often left with just £10 to spend on food. He has arthritis and literacy problems and survives on benefits, spending his time keeping his local area tidy. He said: “If I see rubbish I’ll put a pair of gloves on and pick up the kebab boxes and pizza boxes.”

So…I should pay excessive tax so an illiterate with no job can live in a three-bedroom home? I should coco!

"The Only Jobs We Really Care About Are Our Own!"

A Deptford pub named after the former job centre it now occupies has been accused of "insulting" the area and making unemployment "a joke".

Oh? By anyone we should be listening to?

Lewisham People Before Profit have written to pub company Antic...

Ah. That's a 'no', then?

...asking them to change the name of The Job Centre pub - which has been given a generally positive reception until now.

By which you mean, normal people aren't fussed, but a bunch of idiots have spat their dummies...

Their letter states: "In the case of your bar, the Job Centre name you have chosen underscores the fact that a location that once housed a service for the many struggling people in the neighbourhood has been replaced with a bar catering to those who can afford the sort of upmarket pub food your website promises.

"By choosing to decorate with an ‘eclectic mix of vintage décor and quirky design features inspired by its function as a place that once served the unemployed’ (a quotation from your website), you turn the experience of the unemployed—an experience so widespread and painful in the current climate that it is literally driving people to suicide—into a style feature for the amusement of those with disposable cash."

Translation: "Sod off, yuppies! We need the sort of underclass that might vote for us in this area (always assuming they can stop watching 'Jeremy Kyle' for ten minutes)..."

Maybe They Don’t Like Garage Coffee, Councillor?

Coun Barrie Yates, vice-chairman of Samlesbury Parish Council, who also represents the area at borough and county council level, said he was against the proposal.

…

“This will be of no benefit to the local community or anyone else because there are coffee facilities at the garage near the motorway.”

No benefit at all? Are you sure?

If approved at the council meeting on Wednesday, four full-time and eight part-time jobs will be created.

I guess you've got full employment in your area, Barrie…

Where Are All These ‘Charities’ Coming From?

Tens of thousands of teenage girls living in London do not know anyone with a job and are getting their career inspiration from television programmes, a charity has warned.

Really? There's a charity for everything now!

Nick Chambers, director of the charity, said: “These 50,000 girls don’t necessarily have role models in work.

“They don’t have links to different types of jobs. Often they find it very hard to get insights into the world of work and what jobs they would like.

“For many of these young people a lot of their knowledge is influenced by the television and social media. People see roles on TV — doctors or brainy scientists — and think that’s what science is all about.

“They don’t realise there is a whole team of people doing a wide variety of jobs, some of which they would be very well suited for.”

So, little Chlamydia might not have a cat in hell's chance of getting the A levels needed to get into university to become a neurologist, what with being up the duff to Wayne or Kyle or possible Syed or that cousin of his with the wonky eye, but fear not! She could always get a job cleaning the lab!

He added that programmes including Call the Midwife and CSI: Miami had inspired interest in midwifery and forensic science, while the “Brian Cox” effect had seen an upturn in physics.

Mr Chambers said: “This is positive, but just seeing someone on TV doesn’t help you find out how to actually get that job. A lot of people see a role but don’t know how to get there and what A-levels to take, especially if they don’t have a careers service or family connections.”

And why don't they have a careers service? Is that no longer a school's job?

Mr Chambers said some children in these homes were from the second or third generation who had never worked, adding: “It’s incredibly hard. ... These kids don’t have the networks. We want to level the playing field.”

If they are from that sort of family, it's not 'networks' that they lack, is it?

“My Parents The Tories Don’t Understand Me!”

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett worries…

I worry even more for those unlike me, whose parents can't offer anything, even love. Those with perpetually skint but not-so-nice parents, or those coming out of care.

I worry for young mums, with kids to support.

"Young people" are not a homogenous group in need of arbitrary policy – they are adults, quite vulnerable adults, actually, with different needs and desires and circumstances. You can't just slap a Neet label on them and order them back to the tech. You can't just force them to borrow 27 grand for a course they don't want to study.

If they are adults, they can shift for themselves, surely? Isn't that what 'adult' is supposed to mean..?

But then, I suppose if they're in work or education, rather than at home, thinking about other things, such as how spectacularly shafted they have been by the previous generation, then they're that little bit more malleable.

Ahhh, yes. The perpetual cry of today's perpetual childults - 'Waah, everyone else got all the resources and I'm left with nothin'..!'

I probably sound angry, and that's because I am. Over the years I've seen a raft of policies that make things tougher for young people, from the scrapping of education maintenance allowance to workfare to tuition fees. I've felt increasingly alienated by the government's failure to limit the power of the buy-to-let landlords who impoverish us, and the failure to provide us with affordable housing. How can young people hope to engage with a government that seems to hate us so much? How can that government expect to get our vote, when the time comes?

Since all the statistics seem to show that your generation simply don't bother, I guess they aren't worried.

The Conservatives don't understand.

Awwww, diddums! Have a sulk in the pages of CiF rather than your bedroom, then.

They don't understand that some of us don't have parents who can see us through, and that those that do still crave, nonetheless, independence.

Really? It’s a strange sort of ‘independence’ that demands everyone else fund your lifestyle choices, isn’t it?

And as they age, they'll expect this feckless bunch of worthless youngsters to fund their soaring medical bills and spoon-feed them, and nod politely when they make politically incorrect comments about immigrants.

Oh, those wicked racist elderly people! Can't wait for them to die, can you, Rhiannon? Much better to import a bunch of immigrants to do that job of caring for them, leaving your generation to think grand thoughts and be employed by...

Well, by whom? Doing what?

For 'A Young Man With No Previous Convictions'...

...he's a fast learner:

"This is a young man with no previous convictions, who accepts full responsibility for his behaviour," Mr Sayce said.

Hmmm, and while he was breaking one law, he seems to have decided to be hung for a sheep as well as a lamb:

Makepeace also pleaded guilty to criminal damage.

He admitted three additional charges, of burglary, theft and attempted theft – offences committed in Wood Gate, Loughborough, while on bail for squatting.

Well, a stay in jail will resolve his accommodation 'problem' quite handily. Oh, Silly me.

Magistrate David Womersley sentenced Makepeace to 18 weeks in prison, suspended for 12 months, for burglary and a total of nine weeks in prison, also suspended, for trespass, theft and attempted theft – to run concurrently.

*sighs*

The ‘Seven P Principle’ Is In Play Here…

At yesterday’s hearing, Jonathan Stone, prosecuting, said four men including Stringer arrived outside the shop on mopeds before Stringer used a hammer to smash through a window to steal the watches.

CCTV cameras inside the store and on High Street showed the group leaving the scene before Springer was seen being tackled to the ground by passers by.

Mr Stone said: “It was a well-planned operation but fell flat at the end. They had not planned their escape but there must have been a degree of research done.”

Stringer got five years, but we know he won’t serve it all, though. He already got 64 days off for time spent in custody.

And as there’s no report of other arrests, he possibly didn't give up his accomplices, either. I’d have tacked on an extra five years for each of ‘em!

William Woodman, defending, told the court that Stringer was in financial difficulty after being out of employment since 2009.

He said: “It seems that when he is in employment he does really well, but when he isn't it seems to have a significant effect on him. There is no suggestion he used the hammer to threaten anyone.”

In other words, when he’s got a job, he stays on the straight and narrow, but when he hasn’t, well, a life of crime is the only thing that beckons?

Incompetent crime, at that? I guess we know why he can’t get a job then…

H/T: MacHeath via email

Bus Travel Set To Get Even Worse!

Young people not in work or education could be in line for free bus travel after leading bus operators pledged to back a plan aimed at helping the under-25s back to work.

‘Free’ in the sense, of course, that it’ll cost everyone else.

The proposals come from Greener Journeys – a campaign funded by Arriva, FirstGroup, Go-Ahead and Stagecoach. National Express has also agreed to back the scheme.

The costs would be paid from the bus operators' existing revenues and grants rather than new funding, although government help will be needed to design effective identification of eligible passengers.

So, there’s another cost. The cost of a government department to set up, administer and monitor whichever scheme they come up with to identify NEETs to the bus companies.

While taxpayers would not directly fund the scheme, the operators are keen to make the point that bus travel is a key engine of growth for the beleaguered economy, after grants for bus service operators were cut in the coalition's spending reviews.

Then, surely, they are going to want more paying customers? Not fewer?

A study published on Tuesday by the University of Leeds Institute of Transport Studies found that commuters using buses generate £64bn of economic output in their work, and that 1 in 10 commuters are completely reliant on buses for their jobs.

So, you plan to increase the load on the service by packing more non-paying customers on to make the journey even more of a misery than it currently is?

Young people, with limited financial resources and facing prohibitive car insurance premiums, are particularly dependant on buses, with one in two students frequent users.

‘Students’, of course, wouldn’t be included in the description ‘NEET’, would they?

And all those dependent on buses for work or study are now going to find themselves squeezed out by those who can now access ‘free’ travel. Because, let’s face it, they aren’t all going to be diligently travelling to job interviews, are they?

They are going to be riding around aimlessly because someone else’s paying and they’ve exhausted the possibilities of the ‘Jeremy Kyle’ show for the day.

Even the people proposing this seem to realise it’s utter tosh:

Mackie said that he believed free travel would be "better targeted" at the under-25s than the older generation "in principle, although the political realities are such that you can't".

Well, quite. How is this going to meet EU age discrimination laws? 

This seems such a fundamentally ill-thought-out, pointless scheme, I can only wonder at just what it’s meant to distract us all from…

And Who Taught Him Media Appearances Have Value?

Well, we did, of course…

When contacted by the Croydon Guardian, Alex asked us to pay £1,000 for his story.

He was told we were unable to pay a fee to which he replied: "you can't pay me for a story? then you can go **** mate" before hanging up.

And how did he come by this attitude? Well, we taught it to him:

The boastful yob named as Alex threatened to rob and steal from Bobby Dudani, founder of the global chain Computer Exchange (CeX) who went undercover in New Addington on Monday's episode of the Channel 4 series.

Within minutes, the aggressive serial offender 20-year-old said if he was offered a job he would be good for two months before he would "take your till, take the safe. I will tie you up and leave you at the back and put fags out on you".

Hence the ‘entertainment value’ in having this ghastly, violent little yob presented as a job seeker, rather than a normal jobless youth with a clean record and no attitude problem, who would welcome the chance with open arms.

Struggling to decide how best to help Alex….

I had to stop reading for a bit at that point, because the red mist was beginning to descend…

… who blames his employment failure on a string of previous convictions including violence and robbery…

Note that – not on himself, or his obvious inability to control his temper, but on ‘the convictions’. As if they were something that just happened to him, something over which he had no control.

We’ve seen this before, haven’t we?

…Mr Dudani eventually got him a job with Able Clearance Removal, based in the town. He agreed to pay his wages and said he would give him a career, if he was successful in the role for a year.

But six weeks after starting he has been suspended "pending negotiations after a 'disagreement' with another employee in a removal van, the Croydon Guardian has discovered.

I wonder what sort of ‘disagreement’?

But this is the inevitable result of such ‘reality tv’ show appearances, is it not? It picks a person to cosset and reward based on what makes good tv, not on whether they deserve it.

And so it’s not really surprising that it turns out they didn’t.

Maybe That's Not What He Was Looking For..?

The 37-year-old carpenter said: "I can't stay here. He has come into my space – it's just wrong.

"The sad thing is all he had to do was ask for work and I would have given it to him. Instead he has broken into my house."

Mitigation should be awesome!

Defending, Sabha MacManus said Soth had moved out of his parents' home to be independent but his job did not work out.

She said he was ashamed to go home and ask for help. He had also exhausted his welcome at friends' houses.

She added that Soth had been accepted by the Prince's Trust on a course to learn skills for work.

Well, he's proved pretty good at house clearance, so there's one skill he doesn't need to learn...

The Thorny Problem Of Youth Unemployment…

Jonathan Portes puzzles over the high level of youth unemployment:

Since 1987, the UK labour market has changed hugely – mostly for the better. It is much more dynamic and flexible, yet at the same time the protections for workers (for example, the minimum wage and laws prohibiting unfair discrimination) against exploitation and abuse are stronger. And overall, young people are better educated than at any time in our history.

They are? Really?

You might find that numerous people – many of them potential employers – would look askance at that…

So why is youth unemployment so high? Obviously, the most pressing problem is a lack of jobs, the result of macroeconomic policy failures. But the government is right to point out that youth unemployment was persistently too high even before the recession. So what's gone wrong?

And Jonathan trots out the usual suspects simply to dismiss them, one by one.

First it is worth busting some myths. It is not the immigrants; youth unemployment has risen just as fast, if not faster, in areas where there are few or no migrants.

It might not be the most significant factor, but it can’t be said to be completely off the table, surely? Chris Grayling certainly seems to believe it to be a factor…

It is not the minimum wage; research has repeatedly failed to find any significant negative impacts.

What research is that? He doesn’t mention any. Are we just supposed to trust him?

It is not the benefit system, which for young single people is very far from generous.

And yet many seem to be quite happy to exist on it, perhaps suggesting that they have access to alternative sources of income?

And it is not that universities are churning out unemployable graduates; graduates still do far better than other young people in the labour market.

Aha! Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty…

Overwhelmingly, it is young people with few or no qualifications who can't find jobs.

Wait. What?

I thought you just said that we had a world-class educational system? How can this be, then?

So what should the government do? As a matter of urgency, it needs to find out why outcomes for young people have deteriorated so rapidly. And at a minimum, it should adopt the commission's recommendation for a part-time job guarantee after a year of looking for work.

A part-time job with….whom?

With local or central government? That’s a cost.

With businesses who sign up to some scheme? What’ll they want in return?

But it's not just about government, employers too have responsibilities: not to reject young people who want to work just because they lack experience or job-specific skills, to provide access to good quality training and to invest in their workforce.

That’s a cost on the business. Will prices rise to offset it? Common sense says they will.

And young people have a responsibility to make good use of the support that is on offer.
Work experience is a good example of how these responsibilities interact: new research by the Department for Work and Pensions (independently reviewed by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research ) shows that it works, increasing the chances of moving off benefit and getting a job. So it's reasonable to expect young people on benefit to try work experience…

Are we talking here about unpaid work experience? Because a few of your fellow CiFers might take issue with that!

More broadly, we need, collectively, to reject the logic that says it's economically sensible to keep unemployment unnecessarily high for unnecessarily long.

Who says that it’s sensible?