Isn’t the 83% increase in youth unemployment since January proof enough that this government’s policies are a failure?

First topic message reminder :

The number of 16 to 24-year-olds looking for work increased by 67,000 in the quarter to September to 1.02 million, the worst total since comparable records began in 1992.
The unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds is now 21.9%, also a record.
Total unemployment rose by 129,000 in the latest quarter to 2.62 million, the worst figure since 1994, giving a jobless rate of 8.3%, the highest since 1996.
Other data from the Office for National Statistics showed a 5,300 increase in the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance in October to 1.6 million, the eighth consecutive monthly rise and the highest total since the start of 2010.
Meanwhile, the number of people in employment fell by 197,000 in the quarter to September to 29.07 million, the lowest figure for over a year.

For the full article:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/youth-unemployment-level-shocking-6262890.html

The Labour Party has come up with a five-point plan for jobs:-
1. A £2 billion tax on bank bonuses to fund 100,000 jobs for young people and build 25,000 more affordable homes.
2. Bringing forward long-term investment projects.
3. Reversing January's damaging VAT rise.
4. A one year cut in VAT to 5% on home improvements, repairs and maintenance
5. A one year national insurance tax break for every small firm which takes on extra workers

For more details:-
http://www.labour.org.uk/plan

Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: "These figures show just how much our economy is being affected by the crisis in the eurozone". Yes of course, Mr Grayling, you can’t really blame Gordon Brown for all the ills of the world any longer, so let’s blame the eurozone. Why not try putting the blame where it really belongs for once – on this corrupt and incompetent Tory-dominated government of overgrown public schoolboys who haven’t a clue what to do? A PM whose CV includes ‘Black Wednesday’ and helping Carlton TV to lose millions of pounds, and a Chancellor whose previous work experience was helping in daddy’s wallpaper shop and folding towels in Selfridges. A clueless Foreign Secretary who announced to the world that Gaddafi was on his way to Libya, while Oliver Letwin and Vince Cable fill up public litter bins with confidential papers. And that’s before we mention Fox’s antics, Coulson, a Home Secretary who lies through her back teeth, Lansley dismantling the NHS, Hammond stashing his wealth overseas, and both Cameron and Hunt deep inside the pocket of the Murdoch family. How much longer must we suffer the worst government in living memory?

The same old "Catch 22" applies in surprisingly many cases. If you want work you must have experience, but you can only get that experience at work.

Many recent Graduates from university have hit that wall where a prospective Employer is not interested in a paper qualification, but wants to know what you have DONE. Hence the intern, prepared to work for nothing.

If you notice it's one of the powerful 'trade' unions which is calling for no restrictions on immigration, that Union is the CBI...

The same union which is constantly telling Britains young that they are useless and do not have the 'right' skills for employment......

The same union which keeps asking the government to pay for training of the young so it's members do not have to pay for it.....

The same union which keeps asking for tax consessions but complains about the level of benefits payed to the unemployed and poor...

the same union which pays such low wages many of there employees have to rely on the benefit of Tax Credits to give them a living income.....

Yet the Torys complain about the power of trade unions.......

According to the latest figures from the German Statistical Office and Eurostat, youth unemployment across Europe has increased by a staggering 25 percent in the course of the past two and a half years. The current levels of youth unemployment are the highest in Europe since the regular collection of statistics began.

Cameron suggests today that the blame for next week's proposed Public Sector strikes is that of 'union leaders'.

A typical subtle Tory ploy to reinterpret facts to suit their prejudices. He simply cannot bear the thought that thousands of individuals disapprove of his government's dirty dealings to such an extent that they will take a stand against him and his shabby policies. Instead he will seek, in a somewhat cowardly way, not to alienate those thousands by direct criticism of them, but choose instead to create a substitute representative 'bogey-man' for general public consumption.

When it comes to propaganda there is no doubt that Tories are well-rehearsed and skilled in the dark arts of manipulating the fears of the man in the street. Disgusting and shameful, of course - but nothing else can be expected from such a bunch of despicable political vermin...

Hello Phil,

The PM, (cant abide writing his name! ) is making a lot of noise that the strike is to cost £500 million pounds,


Please remind me, Gideon selling Northern Rock to Sir Dicky when he did has left the country short of rather a lot of money, but no mention of THAT is there?


"Taxpayers lost at least £400million yesterday with the sale of bailed-out Northern Rock"

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062616/Northern-Rock-sale-Virgin-Money-costs-taxpayer-400m-Were-shortchanged.html#ixzz1efBRQevo


I do trust this will be mentioned in the next newsletter! It is only the Torys who are allowed to lose the country money is it not?

Mr Astra - a good point, indeed!

Hypocrisy is the Tories stock-in-trade and the emerging picture of the Press at the Leveson enquiry shows just why they are the Conservative's closest 'friends and relations' - each is quite capable of intimidation of those who dare to upset or speak out against them...

You may have noticed none of the three parties, to my knowledge, have mentioned the strike of EU Civil Servants. (on www.ukip.org

Surely a day off for a very justifiable strike is no more harmful to the economy than that unnecessary day off for the wedding of the Queen's grandson last April?

Perhaps in a few weeks, Cameron will be able to blame snow for his government's failings once again. Current Tory policies didn't work in the 1930s, so why on earth should they work now?

No need to buy a Newspaper next Wednesday, most Libraries have archived copies from the Thatcher era carrying the same message.

Sadly, no matter how badly people perceive this coalition, the majority of people still don't want a return the failure party that began the problem. Bollocky Balls crying over the antiques roadshow, says it all. Has he began to read the "Cutting Edge" perchance?

It was the Conservative Party that took Britain into the EEC, EC and EU that began the trouble for this country and New Labour stupidily carried on obeying the EU all through the years they were in power following suit. Whilst I have no time for the three main parties at least be honest and not forget who started the trouble . Since the coalition government has been in power this country is getting more and more in debt and do nothing to stop the problems being in the EU. Each government can blame the previous one but to their shame the three main parties are subservient to the EU.

Frances Fox wrote:It was the Conservative Party that took Britain into the EEC, EC and EU that began the trouble for this country and New Labour stupidily carried on obeying the EU all through the years they were in power following suit.

....

How tedious they are when the incoming Party set about trashing all the legislation introduced by the previous incumbent. It takes a remarkably blinkered personality to conclude that everything "the others" do is wrong, and change for the sake of change is usually expensive.

tlttf. Since the Second World War, no party has won the support of the majority of the voters. Some people might claim disingenuously that the current government represents more than half the voters, but of course those who opted for the Lib Dems last time were voting for left-wing policies, not to prop up the most ideological and callous right-wing government in living memory.

A quick glance at tonight's YouGov poll shows Labour on 43%, the Tories on 34% and the Lib Dems on 11%. Ask the voters what they want now and on those figures there would be a landslide victory for Labour.

Ivan, that is what is wrong with our governments they are as I have often said "See-Saw" governments. This one we have now is a coalition so they say but to my mind those who stood for Parliament other than the three main parties should have had been able to join in a lesser per cent to be a TRUE coalition. To me the EU probably enforced the Conservatives to make it sound like a coalition instead of a partnership and that it had to be the very pro EU Lib Dems.

The mystery is how Cameron-Clegg-Osborne could possibly have thought that they were capable of resolving the fallout from the Bank Crisis in time for the next Election.

Just to get back to the point the jump in youth unemployment is simply that the vast majority of them are unemployable as evidenced recently by many employers speaking out about lack of interest,lazy,no sense of time keeping and illiterate. All back to the ruinous destruction of education by a succession of meddling politicians intent on social engineering and general encouragement of lack of discipline in schools. Blair's insisting university education for all no matter how unsuited the candidates were resulting in a rush crap and useless degrees at half baked ex poly's masquerading as universities.The result is that practical skills of plumbers electricians even nurses etc have been dumped to allow imported workers to thrive on the black hole in these sectors.

kentdougal wrote:Just to get back to the point the jump in youth unemployment is simply that the vast majority of them are unemployable as evidenced recently by many employers speaking out about lack of interest,lazy,no sense of time keeping and illiterate. All back to the ruinous destruction of education by a succession of meddling politicians intent on social engineering and general encouragement of lack of discipline in schools. Blair's insisting university education for all no matter how unsuited the candidates were resulting in a rush crap and useless degrees at half baked ex poly's masquerading as universities.The result is that practical skills of plumbers electricians even nurses etc have been dumped to allow imported workers to thrive on the black hole in these sectors.

It is always nice to see British bosses, you know the ones who want unfettered immigration, support British youth with words of encouragement.......

Of course they will take on British youth but only if the British Tax Payer foots the bill, well they wouldn't want to put their bonus's at risk would they.......

I can understand why the previous board went down the tubes its full of raving reds. The bosses that I saw interviewed and read about were small businesses-you know the poor bastards weighed down by red tape,EU edicts, equality dictates unlimited maternity leave and all the other socialist crap. No big bonuses involved just trying to make a crust and help the situation so we can continue to pay huge pensions and wages to public service 'workers'

Strangely, the coalition has spent more money on apprentice training in their short tenure, than the "failure party" spent in it's final dying 5 years. They've also put into place a system where kids instead of claiming for "Higher (joke) Education" grants in how to f*ck the system and spend a lifetime claiming benefits, they now have to register as unemployed. Strangely when the reality is taken from the Statistics there are less claimants than previously, they're simply catagorised correctly.

kentdougal wrote:I can understand why the previous board went down the tubes its full of raving reds.

And this board looks so much better for the enormously-constructive contribution of the 'Bleating Blues'...

And this board looks so much better for the enormously-constructive contribution of the 'Bleating Blues'... [/quote]
and I thought it was the New Labour contingent that did all the envious bleating about perceived injustice and the right to be nannied by state and kept by those of us prepared to get of our arses and take responsibility for our own lives

Give 'em enough rope ....

We in Great Britain find ourselves back to the days of 1939, where we stood alone against force from the European continent. Our fine upstanding Prime Minister has refused to sign the new Euro treaty to rescue the Euro, because Germany and France would not respect our grievences. For once, (and i wouldn't like to make a habit of it) agree with our fine upstanding Prime Minister.
We fought a war against dictator's, we will certainly not submit to bully tactics now in 2011. The German's and French want it their way, if we don't like it then it's the highway for us. Well that is nothing in it's self, we have travelled alone before and can do so again. The British always do better when our backs are up against the wall, we have just one slight problem though. Our fine upstanding Prime Minister is no Winston Churchill.

It seems Germany will eventually rule Europe, with the French as their Poodles...but I think this was the plan all along

It's a case of play by our (Germany's) rules, or you cant play at all. Well done to Cameron for not backing down and maybe the UK and the other non Euro currency countries should start their own club seperate from Germany and their pets

Gosh. I'm relieved that it is all sorted thanks to Dynamic Dave and that all our troubles are now over. That is the position, isn't it...?

If the euro collapses, we will be in big trouble. British banks have invested heavily in southern European countries such as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and if those countries revert to their own currencies, and no doubt devalue them, our banks will incur heavy losses of our money. Whatever you think of the EU, and it unquestionably has many faults, it’s in our interests to support the survival of the euro. However, Cameron has now discarded our place at the table. The cretin has traded influence in the EU for a brief respite from rebellion by some of his backbench ‘fruitcakes’ (a word he once used about UKIP members). The joke is we will be bailing out the eurozone anyway, as Cameron recently increased our contribution to the IMF by 40%.

The UK won’t be “starting its own club” because all the other 26 countries in the EU (even Hungary has changed its mind) will sign up to the new deal, leaving the UK on its own and on the sidelines. Cameron hasn’t actually achieved anything. He hasn’t won any safeguards for his banker friends in the City (who contribute more than half of all donations to the Tory Party nowadays), and he hasn’t vetoed anything. A veto stops something, and the euro rescue plan is still going ahead. The only thing Cameron has achieved is to make himself look ridiculous and isolated to everyone except ‘little Englander’ knuckleheads. As Lord David Owen commented: “We have to ask ourselves why the government has allowed us to get into this mess. Have we been coherently governed over the last few months? Is this coalition able to represent British interests? Or are we being driven by about 80 to 90 Conservatives who want us to get out of the EU?”

Six weeks ago, the master of the U-turn, Nick Clegg, warned against “the emergence of a a weaker and divisive Europe where the aims of 'euro-ins' are set against those of 'euro-outs'", but that's exactly what's happened. Clegg, being the good little poodle he is, has now justified Cameron’s stupidity.

Cameron appears to be happy to see the break-up of the EU, but being a hypocrite, doesn’t want Scotland to go it alone. Still, as long as his financial backers and backbenchers are happy, Cameron will not hesitate to destroy this country’s future. For 'safeguarding' the bankers who wrecked the economy, while lusting after the power to do down the pay and conditions of ordinary British workers, is there to be found anywhere a less patriotic creature than the eurosceptic Tory?

Here are a few thoughts from the blogger known as ‘Cicero’:-

The fact is that the image of Britain is so rooted in the Second World War, that we have become imprisoned in a national myth which insists on our unique righteousness and moral certainty…….In the face of inexorable national decline, the country clings ever more tightly to "the finest hour", but it has little to do with the historical right and wrongs of the 1930s and 1940s, and even less to do with the present day.

The problem is that the latest generation now still thinks in terms of the stereotypes shaped by this national fetish. The French are cowardly "surrender monkeys", the Italians even more cowardly and probably mafiosi, and the Germans? Well the Germans are literally unspeakable. Sinister, brutal, efficient. Still planning global domination and undermining democracy everywhere. Yet it shows how little people in Britain actually know of Germany that this stereotype has grown and morphed into a profound but irrational fear and hatred of our Teutonic cousins.

This fear and hatred of Germany has become bound up into British ambiguities about the entire European project…..yet it was Winston Churchill himself, who first argued, not for a community or a Union, but a full "United States of Europe".

http://cicerossongs.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-uk-has-lost-euro-argument.html

This thread has gone off topic, and by answering the points made, I’ve been guilty of prolonging that deviation. If you wish to continue discussing the UK’s relationship with Europe, please do so on the Europe board. Thank you.

Is this a good moment to list the Coalition's Achievements in office?

blueturando wrote > "It seems Germany will eventually rule Europe, with the French as their Poodles...but I think this was the plan all along"

Though this discussion probably ought to be in "European Issues", I feel it necessary to point out the foolishness of making such a claim.

The European Union consists of 27 nations, of which Germany, though the largest by population, is still only one of the 27, the idea that Germany somehow could control the other 26 states is complete fiction, and is in actual fact not possible.

Witchfinder say's.
The European Union consists of 27 nations, of which Germany, though the largest by population, is still only one of the 27

Might be only one of 27, and one in the 17 country Eurozone, but it appears Germany and the French lap dog, are doing the most talking and doing all the planning. If the UK tried to offer advise over the Euro, our people are told to shut up, it is nothing to do with the UK. Even though what ever they decide effects this country, and our finances in the long run. Are we in the European Union or not, if not, give us our money back that we give them every year, the UK is one of the top payers into the Union. Cameron, for once in his life is trying to stand up for Britain, veto till they are prepared to listen, not just the UK but all the other countries in the Union, bully tactice won't work.

"the idea that Germany somehow could control the other 26 states is complete fiction, and is in actual fact not possible."

Let me guess! Neville Chamberlain, 1935 ?

oftenwrong say's.
"the idea that Germany somehow could control the other 26 states is complete fiction, and is in actual fact not possible

The point is that it is already happening, fact, for the past weeks the only people doing the talking and coming up with plans are Germany and the French poodle. What the Germans and French couldn't do by warfare the are trying to do it by diplomacy. Anyone noticed that the country that put a stop to their past adventures, is going to be a thorn in there sides for the present one.

Cameron, for once in his life is trying to stand up for Britain

No he isn't. He's standing up for the bankers - who caused the bloody mess in the first place - because the Tories get more than 50% of all their donations from them. We could get £20 billion a year from a financial transactions tax, but Cameron would rather take it from the poor, the sick and the disabled.

Cameron's also standing up for himself, because he's running scared of Dan Hannan, Bill Cash and the 80 or so Tories who rebelled against him a few weeks ago, and who could bring him down.

Now kindly move this discussion to the Europe board, as previously requested.

Source:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2011/dec/14/coalition-policies-unemployment-steve-bell

Britain's unemployed have enhanced opportunity to watch the proceedings of Parliament on TV.

What can be their reaction to seeing the personification of PRIVILEGE nonchalantly leaning on the despatch-box while turning away to acknowledge the plaudits of the similarly privileged?

You're not as good as us, and don't you forget it!

(In the next reincarnation, be sure to have a Stockbroker as your Daddy.)

oftenwrong wrote:Is this a good moment to list the Coalition's Achievements in office?

Can I please kick off the list with (1) Dave loves Nick

638,000 16-18 year olds have had their Education Maintenance Allowance taken away by the Tories.

1.2 million students have had their tuition fees trebled by the Tories, supported by Lib Dems who each made personal pledges to abolish such fees.

Over 1 milion young people under the age of 25 are jobless.

That's a total of nearly 3 million young lives being ruined by the vile and callous Tories.

Ivan wrote:638,000 16-18 year olds have had their Education Maintenance Allowance taken away by the Tories.

1.2 million students have had their tuition fees trebled by the Tories, supported by Lib Dems who each made personal pledges to abolish such fees.

Over 1 milion young people under the age of 25 are jobless.

That's a total of nearly 3 million young lives being ruined by the vile and callous Tories.

Ivan, a truer word and post will not be sad. but they will not stop here, it will only end when the Tories are out of office. unemployment is there true trademark when in office

The evidence of events like last Summer's rioting in Tottenham and elsewhere is that many youngsters do not feel that a government is ever going to help them to a better existence.

When you've got nothin'
you've got nothin' to lose.
Bob Dylan 1962

oftenwrong wrote:The evidence of events like last Summer's rioting in Tottenham and elsewhere is that many youngsters do not feel that a government is ever going to help them to a better existence.

When you've got nothin'
you've got nothin' to lose.
Bob Dylan 1962

youngsters do not feel that a government is ever going to help them to a better existence.
Tories do not see this as the job of Government its not within there ideology. to them you sink or swim by yourself. utter rubbish in my view...as everyone needs some sort of help at some point in life.

Reading the comments on this forum, you would think only the UK has a unemployment problem.

Eurostat has just published (.pdf) fresh numbers on the subject.

In December 2011, 5.493 million young persons (under 25) were unemployed in the EU27, of whom 3.290 million were in the euro area. Compared with December 2010, youth unemployment increased by 241 000 in the EU27 and by 113 000 in the euro area. In December 2011, the youth unemployment rate was 22.1% in the EU27 and 21.3% in the euro area. In December 2010 it was 21.0% and 20.6% respectively. The lowest rates were observed in Germany (7.8%), Austria (8.2%) and the Netherlands (8.6%), and the highest in Spain (48.7%), Greece (47.2% in October 2011) and Slovakia (35.6%).

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-latest-jaw-dropping-european-youth-unemployment-stats-2012-1#ixzz1l3PfuzAo

A problem shared is a problem halved.