gis a job
I’ve often been told I’m quite a well-balanced kind of chap…in that I have a chip on both shoulders! One of those chips is undeniably my unswerving belief that I am working class and I remain working class. Consequently, many of you out there would expect me to be up in arms over Ian Duncan Smith’s work related welfare reforms where he’s going to force the unemployed to do unpaid work and if they fail to comply they’ll, ultimately, lose their benefit pay-outs. Well you’d be wrong.
Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s what I’m reading these days or maybe I’m watching too many Jeremy Kyle shows for my own good but for whatever the reason I’m pretty much all out of sympathy for some of the unemployed in today’s society. I also struggle to relate to them as working class as many are second or third generation unemployed who have never worked and in reality, have no intention of ever doing so. There is within Britain today an underclass, a feckless, work-shy, benefit-milking entity who have absolutely no intention of changing their situation.
We as a nation and economy have just supposedly enjoyed our most successful growth & development period in a generation but still many of the underclass have failed to do anything about their position and take advantage of the increased opportunities which have been available. The positive migration numbers from other European countries has shown that jobs have existed in quantity in this country and the nature of the free market supply/demand relationship has ensured they’ve been filled. Just not by anyone choosing not to. I will concede that there’s been a marked change in the nature of that economy, from a heavy-industry based manufacturing economy to a predominantly service oriented one but we’ve all known this has been happening for over thirty years and the individual has been powerless to alter this course. Therefore we have to live with it, get on with it and make the most of it.
And now it’s going to be even tougher to get a job, any job. With the economy now beginning to constrict and with the public sector leading the way in terms of job cuts the question has to be asked as to who exactly is going to provide work opportunities? Ian Duncan Smith, who was apparently struck by a TV documentary showing how people preferred to subsist on benefits rather than travel a relatively short distance to an assured job, has stated it’s just often a case of getting on a bus. At least the mode of transport has moved on from Tebbit’s days!
The other issue we need to understand is the nature of poverty. Today, 60% of adults defined as poor are in work – not the feckless, work-shy but hard-working dinner ladies, delivery drivers, postmen, shop assistants, cleaners, call-centre staff and the like. The cause of this poverty, and it’s this poverty that has my attention and support, is low pay. It’s going to be interesting how the coalition will help the poor in this situation by how it addresses the minimum wage. The voluntary adoption of the ‘London Living Wage’ (£7.85 per hour) by over a thousand organisations surely points the way forward and all this forcing of the wage-less underclass into work is nothing more than a subtle distraction.
