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£1bn plan is too little, too late
Closing the stable door after the horse had bolted - that's what Nick Clegg did yesterday as he unveiled a coalition policy supposedly designed to tackle youth unemployment.
You always know when David Cameron's heart isn't in an initiative: He sends out his Lib Dem clone to put on his well-rehearsed Mr Sincerity act.
The gloriously-named £1billion Youth Contract is designed to assist jobless young people get back into work or education. But they had to wait until the figure for the so-called lost generation had reached 1,163,000 before they did anything.
The number of 16 to 24-year-old NEETs (not in education, employment or training) is a national disgrace. And this new package is just too little, too late.
What is more sickening is that it has been suggested that they will find this money by again cutting the working tax credits that millions of families rely on to hold their heads above water.
What is even worse is that once these short-term contracts of work or education are finished we will find these young people thrown straight back onto the dole.
In fact all that will have been achieved by this dodgy bit of sleight-of-hand will be that the employers that do this will take their government hand-out, and then wait for another handout when they do it all over again, and in the process the youth unemployment figures will have been fiddled.
I have to ask: Do these people think that we are stupid or something ?
Closing the stable door after the horse had bolted - that's what Nick Clegg did yesterday as he unveiled a coalition policy supposedly designed to tackle youth unemployment.
You always know when David Cameron's heart isn't in an initiative: He sends out his Lib Dem clone to put on his well-rehearsed Mr Sincerity act.
The gloriously-named £1billion Youth Contract is designed to assist jobless young people get back into work or education. But they had to wait until the figure for the so-called lost generation had reached 1,163,000 before they did anything.
The number of 16 to 24-year-old NEETs (not in education, employment or training) is a national disgrace. And this new package is just too little, too late.
What is more sickening is that it has been suggested that they will find this money by again cutting the working tax credits that millions of families rely on to hold their heads above water.
What is even worse is that once these short-term contracts of work or education are finished we will find these young people thrown straight back onto the dole.
In fact all that will have been achieved by this dodgy bit of sleight-of-hand will be that the employers that do this will take their government hand-out, and then wait for another handout when they do it all over again, and in the process the youth unemployment figures will have been fiddled.
I have to ask: Do these people think that we are stupid or something ?
