Break down that coalition policy to three groups rather than looking at the sentence:

1. provide help for those who cannot work
2. provide training and targeted support for those looking for work
3. enact sanctions for those who turn down reasonable offers of work or training

The three groups are not distinct, and each vague classification requires different actions.

The original policy statement leads to flawed policy implementation. By presentation, by failing to use bullet points in a document, the requirement to work is applied in the same way to group 1 and group 3.

Presentation of policy is as important as intent of policy.

This isn’t going to come as any surprise to the few old marxists left hobbling around, I take it that the term ‘poor quality jobs’ relates to a lack of autonomy, poor pay and social values which deem that a particular job has little status.
Although ‘alienation’ is probably the lot of most of our workforce, if you add this to the other negatives that low paid jobs come with, it’s hardly surprising.
And all of this was predicted in the 19th century.

The Tories intend to make being on the dole so brutal that doing the worst jobs would be preferable to the humiliation and stress of signing on.

Depends what you meanby Health,Mental ealth ,some jobs are ore stressful in terms of both pressure, repsonsbilit and bility to cope with the Buck of decision making

Halth can mean everything from stress ut on tehbody throug un social hours (both lenght and the time of day.
, time between shifts being called in last minute and Hours to do things (ie firemen getting woke up to do hard work,
mental anquish can also mean having to worry about Pupils falsely accusing teachers of abuse, or seeing nast sites, Ie doctos daeiling with road traffic acciedents, Soical workers haivng to deal with Peado;s

Firstly it is no surprise that crap jobs do not make people happy. What they can do though is provide a route to a better job. Staying on the dole is not a cheerful existence and without some entry into work, even if it is less than ideal, that is where people will stay.

Secondly, why should A have to do his dull as accountancy job 5 days a week while B mooches off him because he doesn’t want to undergo the boredom that A suffers? The money to pay for welfare comes from those who earn and this must be justifiable or the whole system will eventually collapse.

The answer to the title is so evidently “no” that it’s scarcely worth saying. “Unemployed” needn’t mean “idle”: think of all the possibilities for self-fulfillment, charity or simple entertainment that free time can offer. (And, indeed, idleness can splendid thing – see good old Bertie R for more.) Work, on the other hand, can be tedious and degrading – stultifying one’s body, mind and soul – often in the service of a cause you’ve no affection for and people who’ve no care for you.

This needn’t be true, of course – I’m aware that lots of people slob around and watch that curious talk show host who makes a living screaming at benighted proles – but the state’s praise for work is just concern trolling. What they mean is that the unemployed are bad for other people.

Sunny Hundal
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Sunny Hundal (born 1977) is a British blogger and self-publicising fence-walking careerist liberal who would sell his left knacker for five minutes on Newsnight, or failing that the One Show.

He was born in London to Sikh parents of Indian origin. He describes himself as a vegetarian and a strong environmentalist.[1] He failed a degree in Economics from Brunel University and has written ill-informed, opinion-mongering, ignorant and vapid online ‘have your say’ type word-salads for leading British newspapers including The Financial Times and The Independent. He has been interviewed by ITV News, Sky News, and Channel 4 News and in each case was not just an embarressment to himself but also, all of the crunk music loving, vegetarian airhead and twatter-commentariat parochial bullshitting tossers who infest the meedjia.

Sunny Hundal was the founder and editor of the now defunct Asians in Media website.[2] He also set up the now defunct Barfi Culture community website.[3] Both of these websites were instrumental in establishing Hundal’s credentials as a commentator on British Asian identity politics. In 2006 he was one of the founder members of the now defunct New Generation Network, a short-lived group and manifesto that attempted to challenge the current discourse on race relations in the UK.

Hundal now runs the Pickled Politics weblog,[4] which describes itself as politically illiterate, and deals with issues related to his own bizarre brand of Yellow-Tory obfuscation and stupidity. He is a regular troll on Comment is Free at The Guardian webshite, and was named as their Dipshit of the year in 2006.[5] In 2007 he started a website, a group blerrgGH which features a number of mainly middle-class tossers with rather confused ideas about just what liberalism actually is. His own blog there has been featured in the New Statesman’s “crappest of the blogs” selection.[6] Other newspapers have described him as a moron[7] and a well-known twittering eedjiot with too much time on his thick and dumpy hands.[8]

Hundal has criticised various religious organisations including the Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir,[9][10] the Muslim Council of Britain,[11] Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK,[11] Christian Concern For Our Nation,[10] Sikh Federation[12] and Hindu Forum of Britain.[12]

In February 2007 he made a BBC radio documentary Lost in Translation about Asian brides brought to the UK.[13] The BBC also quoted his claim that Shahrukh Khan’s endorsement of skin-lightening creams was “completely immoral”.[14]

Despite his supposedly ‘left’ wing credentials he has written praising the slave-state of Dubai[15], where workers are denied basic rights and conditions and jailed for attempting to organise. He opposes strikes and other industrial and direct action and denounces “Trots” and anarchists while calling for “left unity”.

In 2008, he wrote a blog post saying that non-white voters should consider voting Conservative, on the basis that “brown people” were having cameras put in their wheelie bins by the New Labour government of Gordon Brown. He became a fervent supporter of David Davis the well known Tory “Hang ‘em high and flog ‘em” civil wibbertarian. [16]

In 2010, on his Liberal Conspiracy blog, he personally backed the Liberal Democrats in the UK General Election.[17] The Liberal Democrats went on to form a Coalition Government with the Conservative party.

About 3 months after the Coalition Government was announced Hundal joined the Labour Party in order to influence its political direction even further to the right than it currently is.[18] In August 2010 Hundal personally backed Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership election, for which Ed expressed his heartfelt thanks by sending Hundal three dozen yellow roses.[19]

Sunny Hundal is well-known as the basis for Charlie Brooker’s character Nathan Barley.

7
And your point is?

I’d never heard of NAthan Barley, Very funny, Don’t mind if this is later removed as it referecnes the snideness of comment 7

6
Damn sure the unemployed are bad for other people, the more unemployed the less pay employers need to offer, we all pay in one way or another.

@6 Good ole Bertie R, I’ve always loved this paragraph of his:

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.

@ 7

So basically you’ve come on this thread to brag that you’ve vandalised Sunny’s Wikipedia page? How very grown-up.

@ OP

I agree with this, but I’d be interested to know how the study defined “unemployed”. If it includes retirees and so on that would obviously skew things. I suspect that the article would be right either way, but it would be good to confirm this.

In almost all circumstances it actually is, dear. So long as it’s real work and not a modern version of picking oakum and grinding bones. And that, naturally, is the real issue here.

Well the way things are going. The only jobs going that people will be qualified for thanks to education cuts are.low paid retail, warehouse or cleaning jobs.

@15 What else would a nation of shopkeepers need?
Heh.

@7 Definition of Unemployed within this context.

Unemployment is defined within this context as those who are of working age and fit to work but not in employment. The Daily Mail’s ‘spongers’ such as those high street bankers that got made workless because their industry imploded through no fault of their own….

@12 Chaise Guevara: “So basically you’ve come on this thread to brag that you’ve vandalised Sunny’s Wikipedia page? How very grown-up.”

As a one off, it is a neat trick. It challenges Sunny’s commitment to free speech, edging on LC’s policy about personal abuse. It reminded me that I can post here as a guest of Sunny and that it is very unlikely that my words will be deleted.

But it only works as a one off.

@17 Richard Shrubb: “The Daily Mail’s ‘spongers’ such as those high street bankers that got made workless because their industry imploded through no fault of their own…”

That comment distracts from a worthwhile opinion piece. When banks make people redundant, the victims are tellers who greeted you at the desk or back room staff who processed information.

@ 17 Richard

“Unemployment is defined within this context as those who are of working age and fit to work but not in employment.”

Even assuming that discounts people who run their own business or similar, that sounds like you might have a lot of early retirees pushing the stats towards “unemployment is awesome”.

@ Charlieman 18

I dunno. Freedom of speech isn’t the same thing as being able to change Wikipedia so it insults people you dislike. And none of it is relevant to this thread – Sunny isn’t even the author on this one. To me this seems like fairly childish abuse, even if some of it is admittedly funny. It’s not a far cry from pasting “Sunny Hundal is a wanker” into the comment box forty time then hitting send. The thing as a whole just reads as hate speech.

@ Charlieman (again) 19

Good point, and I’m glad somebody made it.

I have always had a rubbish job for reason of poor education, some I did to make enough to live on others I did because sitting at home on the dole was worse then the job.

But of course right now from labour to the Tories we have about five million people who are called work less, so will be interesting to see how many will find work. JSA was to be the end of people living a life time on the dole, it failed.

>>>One must warn against the welfare state being made too uncomfortable. If we had 100% employment, who could be recruited when a new company starts up? <<<

Well, I don't think 100% employment is likely anytime soon, do you? Unemployment is heading one way at the moment – up, up, up!

In any case, tight labour markets in which there is full employment are good for workers as there are plenty of job opportunities and wages are likely to be higher as the supply of people to fill vacancies is less abundant. It's also good for the economy as there are more people with disposable income which they can spend on goods and services.

“One must warn against the welfare state being made too uncomfortable. If we had 100% employment, who could be recruited when a new company starts up?”

Bloody hell, hadn’t noticed this! The answer is: people who already have jobs but would like a new one.

You’re welcome.

none of your beeswax …great post …

Well, there cannot be any doubt that a high number of unemployed people is bad for the economic as a whole. Sure there are bad jobs, but in fact everyone is paying for high unemployment rates, in one way or the other.

@Gosh: I’m sad that you could not lift yourself up by self study.

More generally, the underlying catastrophic flaw with this penalty regime is that there are not enough jobs. I note that, in another part of government, we hear today that LAs are to be forbidden to extort penalty payments from people who break the rules on rubbish disposal (leaving bins out on the street on the wrong day, etc) – unless they are very major offenders, that is.

@ Chaise

It’s not a far cry from pasting “Sunny Hundal is a wanker” into the comment box forty time then hitting send.

Are you claiming intellectual property rights on this idea?

Just asking……

Frank @ 26

Unemployment is built into our economic system, though. It is not a ‘mere’ side effect, it is, in many ways the economic driver that various Governments since the late 1970s to this day have used to keep everyone else either ‘honest’ or ‘richer’ depending on where you are on the labour force.

Those who usually say a crap job is better than no job at all often are people who’ve never had to work for a living!

@29 Jim,

So which policies have Governments implemented to ensure that there is always unemployment?

Has there ever been absaloutely ni unemployment? What do you propose Governments do to ensure no unemployment?

Yes, high unemployment reduces wages and high employment increases wages. However, the perspective that firms welcome high unemployment in order to reduce wages is missing a crucial factor. High unemployment also reduces profits. Firms clearly welcome a booming economy even though it increases nominal wages.

@5

Secondly, why should A have to do his dull as accountancy job 5 days a week while B mooches off him because he doesn’t want to undergo the boredom that A suffers?

If your hypothetical person A was paid as little for doing his “dull accounting job” as your hypothetical person B was being paid in benefits then you might have a point. However we both know that accountants as a rule tend to be paid rather well, so I’m struggling to see what you’re trying to say.

Give me back my legs and the full use of my hands and i will do a dull job all day, in fact i did a dull job all my bloody life.

@33 I didn’t say “dull accounting job” but “dull as accountancy job”, accountancy being a stereotypical dull job to do.

However, putting accountancy aside, A, like many of us, does a job that he doesn’t particularly like while B puts his feet up. B takes money from A to fund this option, (B has a free choice on work / dole options in this hypothetical), because B doesn’t enjoy work, even with the attendant rewards, as much as the dole.

Regardless of how much A earns, why should he pay for B’s parasitical ways?

32
The downfall to high unemployment and low wages (from the employer’s perspective) is the reduction of spending power, just as well we have a caring state that provides welfare benefits and even tops up low paid employees, whose wages gives them little spending power.
Praise be for the state. says he, with tongue in cheek.

@ 35 Falco

“Regardless of how much A earns, why should he pay for B’s parasitical ways?”

He shouldn’t, assuming B genuinely can’t be bothered to work. If he’s disabled or old or there are no no jobs to be had, then A can put up with paying a tiny amount to keep B alive.

Of course, it’s difficult to design a benefit assessment system that doesn’t either let a few frauds through the net or abandon a few genuinely needy cases. I prefer the former, because I’d rather put up with some scroungers than kick the vulnerable to the curb.

@35

Then I suggest to you that the better question is why is your hypothetical person A doing a job he doesn’t like? Aside from making me uncomfortable by using the word “parasitical” to describe another human being, even a hypothetical one (you are aware what happened the last time someone did that en masse, aren’t you?), I would suggest that person A is a hypothetical idiot. Yes, we do spend a lot of time struggling in jobs that we don’t especially like, but usually we keep ourselves sane by using those jobs as stepping stones to get into a position that we are happy with, or to fund activities that we do enjoy in our spare time in order to take our minds off the monotony, neither of which is easy to do when living on benefits, becuse benefits are for one thing only – providing a base-level quality of life.

Like Chaise, I’m happy to accept a certain amount of graft in the system (what doesn’t get reported is that following the massive campaign to weed out benefit cheats, it turns out that the number of people actually claiming benefits they’re not entitled to is surprisingly low) as the price for making sure that people are looked after when times are hard. It’s easy to be high and mighty when things are rosy for you career-wise, but it only takes an accident or illness to bring it all crashing down around you. Helping your fellow man is just a basic tenet of human decency, and we get an amazing quid-pro-quo in that should we fall on hard times our fellow man will look after us,

@38

Suppose A is a poorly-skilled shelf stacker with no realistic prospects of working her way to a better job. The small amount of extra money she makes above someone on benefits might let her buy some extra entertainment as you suggest, but mightn’t this not compensate for the considerable loss of free time and the stress and boredom that comes from spending the core of your waking hours doing a tiring and dull job?

@37. On the whole I agree with you about the system but that’s not the hypothetical we’re talking about in this instance. I would argue that even if the situation becomes, at least temporarily, worse for B on taking a job, he still has a duty to support himself where that is possible.

@38 “why is your hypothetical person A doing a job he doesn’t like?”

For the simple reason that we don’t live in a perfect world where we can just step immediately into the job of our dreams.

“Aside from making me uncomfortable by using the word “parasitical” to describe another human being, even a hypothetical one (you are aware what happened the last time someone did that en masse, aren’t you?)”

I know the answer to this one, nothing happened. If instead you mean to ask whether I am aware of what has happened in the past on a particular occasion then I suggest you have a chat with that nice Mr Godwin.

“I would suggest that person A is a hypothetical idiot.”

Well paying taxes is a bit of mugs game but that’s the system that we live under.

The rest of that paragraph appears to agree with my point in 35 so I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

“Helping your fellow man is just a basic tenet of human decency, and we get an amazing quid-pro-quo in that should we fall on hard times our fellow man will look after us,”

Very true. However, in this hypothetical we’re talking about someone who doesn’t ‘need’ support but prefers it to working.

“Very true. However, in this hypothetical we’re talking about someone who doesn’t ‘need’ support but prefers it to working.”

One thing which I’m quite interested in are employment guarantee schemes, where people who are able to work but unable to find a job are guaranteed a certain number of hours a week of paid work, paid at minimum wage level, as an alternative to Jobseekers’ Allowance. Would this help to address your hypothetical?

@42

I would argue that even if the situation becomes, at least temporarily, worse for B on taking a job, he still has a duty to support himself where that is possible.

And I would argue against. Why do we have a duty to prop up this corporate gangbang when we could be, say, doing an OU course or learning an instrument – something that enriches our lives and could one day enrich the lives of others as opposed to the bank balance of someone who’s already as rich as Croesus?

Well paying taxes is a bit of mugs game but that’s the system that we live under.

Until such a time that there are no selfish tosspots who think such things (or selfish tosspots wealthy enough to pay people to help them avoid it), then taxes will always be a necessary and good thing if they help keep other human beings from starving or dying of hypothermia.

And who said anything about “immediately” stepping into the job of our dreams? I certainly didn’t, but I don’t begrudge the person who doesn’t want to (or can’t) play that game. Why so bitter?

@40 Godwin’s Law doesn’t really count to UK discussions, in fact it only really counts when you begin actively calling someone a nazi and/or Hitler when they clearly aren’t. Pointing out that dehumanising language was a key step on the way to death camps does not fall foul of said “law”.

@41. On the face of it that kind of workfare arrangement sounds like a good idea. Working out the details, (doing what job, substitution effects, etc.) would be more of a challenge. Well worth considering though and if it could be worked out then it would address most if not all of the hypothetical.

@42 “Why do we have a duty to prop up this corporate gangbang when we could be, say, doing an OU course or learning an instrument”

No one is stopping people doing these courses or learning instruments. What I don’t see in your argument is any justification for forcing others to pay for this.

“Until such a time that there are no selfish tosspots who think such things (or selfish tosspots wealthy enough to pay people to help them avoid it), then taxes will always be a necessary and good thing if they help keep other human beings from starving or dying of hypothermia.”

It’s a bit of a catch 22 this. Currently people pay a large proportion of their income in tax, (adding all the taxes together, not just income tax), and yet they still give considerable amounts to charity. However, there are limits to what they will give to charity while (a) their income is so reduced through taxation and (b) what would be their charitable objects are supposed to be cared for by the money already extracted from them in tax. So effectively you are arguing that in the absence of an opportunity to “keep other human beings from starving or dying of hypothermia”, the fact that they don’t, (beyond the charitable giving they do in fact do), people are evil and selfish so we must tax them to pay for these things.

“who said anything about “immediately” stepping into the job of our dreams?”

Presumably B would be happy to work at a particular job for a given reward, whatever that might be. They are, in our hypothetical, unwilling to work at the job available even if that could be a stepping stone towards a job they would be happy to work at.

“Why so bitter?”

I am in fact both sweetness and light personified, (the word fact may not be being used in it’s usual sense above).

@43. I don’t see how the other party using a degree of subtlety disqualifies Godwinism. Otherwise you’d pretty much have to wait to be addressed as Herr Hitler before it came in.

@44

Most of what we pay in tax goes towards services we use – I think I read something like 1-2% of every working person’s annual taxes goes towards the welfare system – i.e. a tiny fraction. I’m happy to pay such a paltry amount for a service that useful, why aren’t you? Also, that was your hypothetical, not mine – and you never gave a reason why B wasn’t working. I’d call that moving the goalposts.

And finally, I deliberately chose my language carefully to avoid a “Hur-hur, I call Godwin”.

@45

“I think I read something like 1-2% of every working person’s annual taxes goes towards the welfare system – i.e. a tiny fraction. I’m happy to pay such a paltry amount for a service that useful, why aren’t you?”

According to this: http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/classic.html#ukgs302

welfare appears to be about 16% of spending. However, I am not complaining about paying for “a service that useful” but about something that I regard as an abuse of that service.

“Also, that was your hypothetical, not mine – and you never gave a reason why B wasn’t working.”

If you look back you will see that the hypothetical situation was that B could work but chose not to, I just extended some logical consequences of that but if you have specific objections as to how I have done so then I’ll certainly consider them.

“And finally, I deliberately chose my language carefully to avoid a “Hur-hur, I call Godwin”.”

Either it was a Nazi reference, however carefully phrased, in which case Godwin applies, (as much as it does under any circumstances), or it wasn’t, in which case the last time someone used the language as I did, nothing happened at all. Do let me know which of the above applies.

@44 http://xkcd.com/261/

@46

Clearly you believe that every person capable of doing so should work for the enrichment of our corporate overlords without question, and that’s your prerogative. However :

I am not complaining about paying for “a service that useful” but about something that I regard as an abuse of that service.

As I said earlier, the data gathered on benefit abuse showed that a tiny fraction (just shy of a single-digit percentage) of benefit claims were fraudulent. So you’re carping about less than 1% of 16% of public spending, if your figures are correct? You’re that hateful of the few people that get away with graft that you’d rather see them forced to work than billionaires forced to pay their fair share?

Nice.

@48 “Clearly you believe that every person capable of doing so should work for the enrichment of our corporate overlords without question”

This rests on the false assumption that every job is for “the enrichment of our corporate overlords. They can do whatever they want, set up their own business, find work that is “socially useful”, (whatever way you want to define that) or indeed do nothing whatsoever. All I insist is that if they are capable of paying their own way, that they then do so.

“You’re that hateful of the few people that get away with graft that you’d rather see them forced to work than billionaires forced to pay their fair share?”

I think the “hateful” stuff must be you projecting. I don’t hate these people I would just like to stop them taking money that they should not be entitled to. So yes, I want them to stop getting away with graft.

As to the billionaires, that’s an entirely separate issue and not directly comparable. However much X earns, the simple fact of his earning that amount gives Y no special right to X’s money. On top of that, what is “their fair share”? Further, what justification do you have from taking, by force don’t forget, from those who have worked to earn and giving to those who just can’t be arsed?

No answer as to whether you Godwined yourself or not I see.

From the grand master of internet knowledge, wikipedia;

Godwin’s law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one’s opponent) with Hitler or Nazis or their actions. The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering genocide, propaganda, eugenics (racial superiority) or other mainstays of Nazi Germany, nor, more debatably, to discussion of other totalitarian regimes, since a Nazi comparison in those circumstances may be appropriate… however, Godwin’s law itself can be abused, as a distraction, diversion or even censorship, that fallaciously miscasts an opponent’s argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. A 2005 Reason magazine article argued that Godwin’s law is often misused to ridicule even valid comparisons.

Reminding in a roundabout fashion that the Nazi’s characterised groups it sought to eliminate as “parasites”, and that it’s probably not a good idea to begin making sweeping generalisations about benefits claimants as also being parasites, and thus starting along the path to de-humanising them, does not run foul of Godwin’s law.