You are giving the oxygen of publicity to the lunatic who is impersonating me on the web with a blog that pretends to be mine.

I really think that more debate should be had intelligently on the proposals Cameron brought up on the unemployment benefit side of things. Most blogs attacking his plans focus on small issues that are more than slightly able to be debated and use those as reasons to trash not only the concept but the party offering them.

What community work these people could do is something we can debate, the rules on “refusing” job offers and “reassessment” of track record can be debated and the time scales involved can be debated. It seems as though rather than actually engaging and trying to shape a realistic policy (if the funding issues don’t kill it anyway) people would rather cheaply twist this and shoot down what is not an unreasonable concept.

While many of those lined to today want to see only the negatives in this policy suggestion I would rather ignore the smaller issues that can be modified and see the benefits of the bigger picture…schemes in place to encourage the lazy, the stuck in a rut and the “unemployable” to get experience on a CV through volunteering, that progressively punish that small minority of people that simply want to get their money and do nothing and try nothing, and the overall if handled right can give people on benefits a much greater feeling of social worth and dignity.

Of course I recognise the pitfalls also present, but is such a debatable issue really worth just rubbishing rather than looking at it objectively because of how it initially sounds?

Luke,

Am I missing some childish game? Really, I haven’t the time.

Shock horror, Hillary wins…

A DIEBOLDICAL FIX?

That Luke Akehurst blog (the one to which Aaron links, not the spoof one) is brilliant.

He’s agonising about having a private check-up – or “honourably” refusing to have one – while his job turns out to be a defence company lobbyist.
No qualms about that, then?!

You couldn’t spoof it if you wanted to!

Hey, the spoof blog ain’t bad either

And while we’re on the subject of sick humour at Chris Langham’s expense …

Lee: You make reasonable points, but the current government strategy which isn’t focused on forcing people into unpaid work which others are likely already doing or potentially making claimants destitute for refusing “reasonable” offers is much the same, just without the traditional nastiness and getting tough political point-scoring.

He won! He won! Obama won!

Well, according to ABC he probably certainly would have won if the NH Sec of State hadn’t changed the rules about how names are listed on the ballot paper. Obama lost by 3pc and guess how much difference the change made to his vote? No – no – wrong! *it was 3pc*
full story here: http://www.abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Decision2008/story?id=4107883&page=1

Pete

(Can we do html tags on this blog BTW?)

Interesting Pete, certainly one huge reason to advocate (working) e-election schemes is that it is very simple to completely randomise the order, either through structured process of actual randomisation.

8. Maybe I should clarify. I think the idea of plugging gaps in workforce without paying them is ridiculous. If you are going to do that you are undermining the minimum wage, you are causing issues for the workforce already there. If you’re going to think of doing that then schemes have to revolve more around forcing people into proper paid employment where there are no willing applicants. I understand quite easily that such an idea would be a big mess without some large nationalised body (or at least nationally accountable county bodies) keeping control of the workforce admin.

But why we can’t kill two birds with one stone, giving the unemployed the chance for a better amount of dignity, more experience and employability, and at the same time really giving a boost to the charitable sector. I know plenty of start up projects that rarely last a year because outreach work is too expensive to undertake alongside everything else. It would require a good quality study, but I really feel that there are enough non-commercial volunteering opportunities in this country that need little to no skills to do but do a great deal of benefit to those organising the work and to those the work is being done for. The state provides welfare to provide a safety net for those that find themselves in certain situations. If that safety net stops being a net so much as a bungalow with garage then I believe the state should expect some kind of return.

I feel that Cameron’s proposals are probably unjustifiably authoritarian, essentially slave labour that would almost certainly not last much of a legal challenge, I wouldn’t ever advocate “full time” work for your benefits, but I would advocate a requirement for those that have been on it for a certain length of time, and aren’t on a more stringent incapacity benefit, to do 2 or 3 days community volunteering. Admin shouldn’t be expensive as local organisations and charities are equipped to do it, and would only require slight additional funding to deal with the communication of “attendance” (for want of a better word). If this results in more people getting more on their CV, finding a passion, and/or motivating them to get out of a rut then surely this has the opportunity to be economically beneficial overall.

I agree with your sentiments, but you also have to consider the attitude of those who’ll be forced into doing the “volunteer” work. The very nature of it is that you have to want to do it; and I somehow doubt that those who’ll find themselves at the sharp end will be as delighted with the prospect for their CVs at the end of it.

Of course, but then I personally think that is an attitude they’ll just have to work with. The fact that we sit in a position where anyone that is receiving money for nothing just to survive can have any problems at all with very part time “volunteer” work in return, if they are still unemployed after a long period of time, is ludicrous. The culture needs to change, and we’re not going to get people out of long term unemployment if we let their developed negative attitude to change and work be one of the initial barriers to that change. Catch 22, either we accept there are a proportion of people that are going to be state funded “layabouts” regardless of the circumstances that get them there (again, not talking about disabled people), or we have to accept change is going to be met with resistance and bad attitude.

Lee Griffin: The problem is, if you have a bunch of “volunteers” who don’t want to “volunteer” then they are going to need monitoring and that will be expensive.

No real voluntary organisation wants anything to do with coercing people into work, it’s not in their skillset, naturally enough.

So, the alternative is to set up another governmental agency, which isn’t intrinsically a bad idea, but the successful examples in places like Norway suggest it isn’t going to be cheap….

I did say at the beginning that the whole idea in any way between my view or the Tories view is mostly likely to be cost prohibitive, it’d be naive to think otherwise. The question is always primarily going to be wether there are the guaranteed costs of trying to get people off of long term unemployment low enough to mean that at worst the numbers “break even”, while communities aren’t impacted in a negative manner. If that answer can possibly be yes then I think it is worth some real discussion on blogs rather than quick ridicule because of party allegiances.

Yep, I’m a fan of the fake Luke Akehurst blog too. Extremely funny.

Not a fan of the New Hampshire result though… the Democratic electorate have just handed a lifeline to Clinton, who is their worst candidate in a general election.