On the Marr show today the question was put to Harriet Harman that 67% of people say the Welfare system isn't working and by way of response she launched into unemployed and people not having a work programme to go on. "You don't have a work programme, so that if people are offered a job and they don't take it, their benefits can be cut." And yet unemployed is just a fraction of the welfare state.
Says it all for me; she doesn't want to talk about other welfare issues. Why didn't she just say, that at the time Britain was engaging in an illegal nationally expensive war with Iraq, the Labour government was actively bribing the working poor to get their votes by increasing the size of the welfare state?
Harriet Harman wants a work programme and says after 2 years of being unemployed they will be provided one and they will have to take it or have their benefit cut. So, she wants the government to create public sector jobs and push up the national debt even more? What else could a work programme entail? I'm trying to have visions of a private sector company starting up to get unemployed people to pick litter from the countryside and sell it onto waste companies to turn into something new. But on the face of it it would not appear to make any sense unless she has those images of Indian folk doing just that in down town India,? But then they''re hardly making what we recognise as the minimum wage. Follow this through logically and you'll have politicians clamouring to scrap the minimum wage.
Governments don't create jobs; government is there to manage and govern. If the private sector can't find a way to make a job pay, then neither can government without it costing tax payers even more.
What is a "proper work programme" and how much would that add to the National Debt, now standing at over 18k per person?
