Life, the Universe and Everything

It's an admirable ambition - the idea that people who work should be better off than those who don't. It's great politics because it carries the suggestion that people are choosing not to work and all we need to do is to put the right incentives in place to stop the "benefit scroungers" leaching off of hard working people. Now, if you're a temporarily unemployed merchant banker, the incentives to get a job paying £100,000 and stop claiming £71.70 a week Jobseeker's Allowance are pretty massive. Some more humble folks have an incentive too: Take Mr Single Youth, aged 23 and still living with his parents. His JSA will be £56.80/week. Out of that he'll have to pay jobseeking essentials such as travel, phone, Internet and newspapers (although he may wangle some of these for free). He gives his mother £10/week towards his food and then there's clothing replacement and maybe an occasional drink with friends (which can be partially "justifie...

There's something quite familiar about our government's recent "hate crime" . The target is immigrants Apparently, "Immigrant families will be kept off council house waiting lists in England for at least two years, under plans set to be announced by the prime minister" It's only a couple of weeks since the last "pop" at immigrants - the target then being "benefit tourism". And benefit recipients in general are another target - it's especially common for the more extreme cases to be singled out for press attention. EG: the recent case housing of  the mother of eleven children So, are these issues real "problems"? For a start, not all of the 11 children are dependents. I dug up some statistics on large families and found some here (see Table 1) and if you look at dependent children, there are no 9-children families and only 0.05% of Children live in 8-children homes. That's just over 5000 children which means ...

This is a hardy perennial - with a touch of recycling. Employers routinely complain about school/college leavers not having the skills required. They've been doing that for forty years to my knowledge and I doubt if there ever was a golden age when there was no difficulty recruiting staff who could spell properly. Then there is the problem of the aspirations and training/education of young people not matching the employment marketplace. Here's the "latest" on this from the BBC but it isn't really news. So why is it that "there are 10 times as many people aiming for jobs in the culture, media and sports sector than there are jobs likely to be available whereas "almost a quarter of jobs are in the distribution, hotels and restaurant category, only about one in 40 youngsters are considering careers in these industries"? Here's a number of possible reasons:  Culture, media and sports are far sexier than distribution, hotels and restaurant ...

If you've had the misfortune to become unemployed or sick, you've probably experienced “Jobcentre Plus” – the UK government's benefits and job-finding “shop”. They also do employee finding for employers too. Your experience with this arm of government is probably mixed. Some of the staff are hardworking, knowledgeable, reasonable, helpful, sensitive and even kind. Unfortunately, quite a few are lazy ignorant bullies. I know this from being a “customer” a few times over the years and because my in my working/volunteering life I sometimes hear stories from other customers – mainly bad ones. If you encounter one of the less pleasant staff, it's very bad news. They have the power to reduce your income to zero if you don't do what they tell you to do. Since last October, this could mean destitution for up to 3 years. You might think that such “sanctions” as they call them are reserved for “lazy benefit scroungers” but you'd be wrong.   Say your “Person...

The cry of the touts is everywhere "Tickets! spare tickets! Buy or Sell!" This year, I've tried to capture the atmosphere in the town A clue in the High St Bookmakers in festive mood Fancy a bet? Even the charity collectors exploit the theme The town crier outside Ladbrokes trying to lure custom away to William Hill

The bail conditions he's alleged to have breached do seem draconian. According to the BBC :   Tagged and allowed out of his home only between 08:00 and 16:00 Banned from traveling on the Tube, or by train, car, motorbike or bus Banned from contacting a number of named individuals Only family members, his lawyer, emergency workers and social workers can enter his home without approval Banned from using mobile phones, computers and other devices Banned from attending mosques, leading prayers and giving lectures Needs approval to take a job or enroll on a course Allowed one bank account and must surrender his passport So, it would seem he's Ok on push-bike or he could try a helicopter. One hopes that if he has a medical emergency, he will be allowed in one of those smaller cars adapted as an ambulance? What if he's taken sick in the middle of the night? Banning him from mosques would seem to be restricting his rights to practice religion unless a visiting Iman i...

Learnt a couple of things today. The first concerned the car. I'd not used it for over a week although I had briefly started it up once. Yesterday evening, it wouldn't start. It whirred away merrily but wouldn't fire. The battery started to give out so I put it on charge. I wondered what might be wrong and posted about it in the "cars" conference on CIX . It was CIX that got me into this Internet thing nearly 20 years ago. It was a crude "bulletin board" similar in some ways to many modern Internet "forums". The technology was unbelievably old-fashioned and still is not particularly modern but that's not the point. It's the community of people that make it so great. Next morning, someone had replied pin-pointing the problem -  brief start up that had wetted the plugs with petrol and they'd stayed wet for several days waiting for me to try another start. The solution was simple - run the starter for 30 seconds - something I ...