DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

for really tho ken is going to get his arse handed to him

FFS Ken, you twit.

Which hapless LibDem sap gets to be Stalin in all this again?

Lembit?

Time was you could point at picaninnies in the street without anyone complaining, now look at where we are.

Tacky of you to bring that up again.

From The Sunday Times:

Some of David Cameron's ministers and closest advisers will personally "adopt" workless families to help the longterm unemployed off benefits and into work.

A group of ministers, MPs and special advisers will set an example by volunteering to become "family champions" under a scheme devised by Emma Harrison, the social entrepreneur whose company manages £300m of government training contracts. Chris Grayling, the employment minister, Tim Loughton, the children and families minister, and Jane Ellison, Tory MP for Battersea, which was hit by looting during the recent riots, have each volunteered to mentor a workless family. Rohan Silva, one of Cameron's senior policy advisers, has also volunteered.

Harrison wants the middle classes to follow their example to help families in which two or three generations have never worked. The mentors will introduce the families to their contacts, help them to manage their housekeeping money and guide them through bureaucracy.

"This isn't a gimmick, this is me seriously looking them in the eye and saying: come on then. Let's all get together and tackle this thing," Harrison said.

Jesus:

Harrison has pledged to take on a number of families herself and Cameron, although he does not have time to take part in the scheme himself, has promised to have a cup of tea with the ones she gets into work.

Families where two or more generations are out of work ? or have never worked ? are problem and a huge drain on the economy.

"Families like that are negative millionaires," said Harrison. "There are lots of different agencies whose job it is to have a poke at some aspect or other of a family's life - child protection or social work or whatever - but no one who ever sits down and says: what is the future for this family? "I came across one family that had 22 different agencies involved in their welfare. When you take into account all the workers, their managers, the infrastructure, it must take £1m a year to support them. And what's worse is that even so, these families have really crap lives. Really, really bad."

fuck me.

such a gimmick. there are cunts who can't even string together a sentence on the dole and talking to some tory dick is going to transform them?

been watching too many heart-warming Channel 4 documentaries

like i'd like to see some tory mp with the lad i used to know. he was unemployed because he didn't want to work. he had a bad back, and sold the painkillers he got for his back to his dealer in exchange for coke, he shot the coke in his veins. he died age 25. if only a tory could have been there to give him a lecture.

well you have an eternal situation where firstly, these cunts have literally no idea what the lives of people at the bottom end of society are like, lives so different from their own that they can't even begin to make the imaginative leap to understand how people live and what motivates them and what they want from the world. but then beyond that, we've got the long-standing lie that the government wants all these people into work. do they fuck. full employment wd be a nightmare for any capitalist economy cos it removes the downward pressure on wages. so not only is whatever latest do-good scheme they've copped from some 19th century social fucking entrepreneur a farce, it's a sham too.

stuff like this makes it perfectly legitimate to say that these cunts are the enemy, forever, compromise is impossible and we shd drive them into the sea by any means necessary

just ask freeview to create a 'secret millionaire' tv channel, where re-runs can be shown 24 hours a day.

yeah like i say for some reason Channel 4 have been pushing this Samuel Smiles Economics agenda for a while now

Wow, all we need is a 300,000 member Cabinet and they can cut unemployment by 10 per cent.

― James Mitchell, Sunday, August 21, 2011 6:54 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i like how this 'intervention' is nannying by another name but of course has nothing to do with the purported 'nanny state' so derided by the right over the last two decades.

purely and simply dave.

Born in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland, the son of Samuel Smiles of Haddington and Janet Wilson of Dalkeith, Smiles was one of eleven surviving children.[1] The family were strict Cameronians, though when Smiles grew up he was not one of them.[1]

lol amusing shit i didn't know

Samuel Smiles Economics

yes lol

- this is money; you don't have any of it
- don't i?
- no, and you wouldn't spend it wisely if i gave some to you
- oh ok.

govt policy finally taking its cues from reality tv, i have been waiting for this for a while

we've got the long-standing lie that the government wants all these people into work. do they fuck. full employment wd be a nightmare for any capitalist economy cos it removes the downward pressure on wages. so not only is whatever latest do-good scheme they've copped from some 19th century social fucking entrepreneur a farce, it's a sham too.

― Countdown to Alma Cogan (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 21 August 2011

This can't be repeated enough! This pretence that they want to 'solve' unemployment seems to become more effective and entrenched over time, not less

You can repeat it as often as you want but I don't think it's got an enormous amount to do with this. They don't want full employment for the reasons above, they probably don't want three million or more unemployed either because it makes them look like total clowns who can't run an economy. They need to be seen to be doing something but they haven't got a fucking clue what to do.

There's also almost certainly some heavy influence from the Christian wing of the Tory party who feel a moralistic urge to "do something about the poor" as long as it doesn't involve forcing anyone to pay more money or anything else that might be inconvenient to their worldview. So the end result is this policy that appears to be written on the back of a napkin by someone who's seen My Fair Lady one too many times.

There's also the willful refusal to even acknowledge the question of what jobs these people are supposed to do in places with no industrial base any more and not enough work to go round even in the boom, let alone in the middle of a global economic crisis. And "go and work in a KFC 30 miles away" isn't going to be the solution to anyone's problems, work ethic or no work ethic. Because if they did acknowledge that question then this whole stupid edifice would unravel in seconds.

hey don't want full employment for the reasons above, they probably don't want three million or more unemployed either because it makes them look like total clowns who can't run an economy. They need to be seen to be doing something but they haven't got a fucking clue what to do.

yeah it is hard for me to get a handle on the impossibility-of-full-employment argument when the short-term problems raised by no employment are so much more pressing. like i don't think they're worry about a decrease in employment leading to an eventual utopian period of full employment; there isn't such a systematic 'long game' imo

emma harrison runs A4e, which is one of the companies forcing people to work in tesco's for nothing. nauseating. everyone otm about these cunts.

no that's not really my point. my point is that they don't feel any real urge to reduce unemployment - except maybe for not looking like clowns reasons as Matt mentioned, altho previous Tory govs have not seemed to worry unduly about that. so unemployment and social exclusion is this area they feel the need to talk about cos you know it's in the news and that but it has no central place in their political vision, and nor does "where are the jobs gonna come from" or any of that.

i'm not proposing a conspiracy, i'm saying that every time a Tory talks about employment it has about as much weight as the SWP's stance on Celebrity Big Brother. it's not on the radar. there are underlying reasons why it's not on the radar, which i was commenting on. basically a Tory wanting to end unemployment is as likely as a Catholic wanting to end sin.

xp

that is a good pots. i agree, sure - i think whenever i hear that one strand isolated it sounds conspiratorial, but as a matter of priorities then yeah. feeling compelled to address a thing they're not addressing, as exemplified by the tree-on-the-logo makeover, feels like a key tory transparency.

post. good post. no pots.

As well as her business interests, Emma is a mum of four, works tirelessly for charity and lives in a “posh commune” with 20 of her friends and family. Her story is one of creativity, determination and hard graft.

it's like the innocent smoothies aesthetic stamping on a human face forever.

If Tesco needs people to stack shelves, then they can pay minimum wage to each and every one of them with their £3.54 BILLION in profits last year. Hell, they could even pay them £7.45/hr - the London Living Wage according to the GLA. Part of the experience of work is the money you should be paid whenever you do some for an employer.

was considering a separate thread for thick bastards who patronisingly use their own (distorted) life story as a template for how everybody else should be able to "succeed"

That's so gross - particularly when the people who hold themselves up as paragons of this sort of thing do everything to pull the ladder up behind them so nobody like them has access to the same pathways out.

yeah and usually the story gets distorted so the hard times are worse and the support networks disappear and the lucky breaks they had are ignored

govt policy finally taking its cues from reality tv, i have been waiting for this for a while

Kirstie Allsopp and Mary 'Queen of Shops' Portas beat her to it by a few years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/21/david-cameron-new-holiday-cornwall

"After an early return due to riots, PM takes fifth holiday of the year to avoid being 'completely fried' by pressures of the job"

If I could afford five holidays in 7.5 months (financially and actually having the annual leave available) I'd be wary of telling my employer that it was to avoid being completely fried, cos their first thought would be whether they need to pull the capability procedure out of the bottom drawer.

Mind you, not sure the Queen is too bothered what DC does.

I wonder what the Brenda/Dave weekly meetings are like.

- Phone tapping, prime minister, what is that?
- It tastes wonderful in Majorca, ma'am, with aioli and quince on the side.

Get him out of Cornwall, they have to get the place disinfected after every time he goes through there. Ugh.

However there appeared to be some confusion in Whitehall over the plan with employment minister Chris Grayling - who was also named among the volunteers - saying that he was not involved.

"I was rather surprised when I read this one. It was news to me that I was going to be in there," he told Sky News.

"Tim is the children's minister and I know that he wants to lead from the front over this. I am sure he will do an excellent job."

if i could afford five holidays in 7.5 months i'd take them, and wouldn't really care too much about what t'internet thought. Did blair or brown never take hols?

Doubt Brown did tbh.

Brown's idea of a holiday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/03/gordon-brown-community-work-kirkcaldy

^^^LOL - great minds, N.

David Cameron has cut short his holiday to return to London to chair a meeting of the National Security Council's Libya committee, Downing Street says.

he goes on hols- lol tory prick
he cuts hols short- lol tory prick

David Cameron - lol tory prick

that's what i'm saying, tbf, but is it enough for uk ilx politics threads to use it as the only looking glass through which this govt/pm can be examined? I use this place for my uk politics updates and you're better than that.

I think that he came back within hours of the Libya "success" but took three days to return when his capital city was being torched by marauding youths is worthy of comment tbf.

yeah, just not endless self-congratulatory reiteration of the 'lol tory prick' comment, is all.

now go think about what you've done eh

Wait, he had another holiday already?

So, if he interrupts his hol then goes back, does that make it 2 hols?

(xpost) or indeed, "Wait, he had another holiday all ready?"