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Sometimes politicians come up with the most ridiculous of ideas and unfortunately sometimes those politicians are in a position of governing power and sometimes they put their most ridiculous of ideas into practice.

Fortunately this doesn't apply to The Taxpayers Alliance, they play at being politicians but they aren't really politicians and as such they have to say outrageous things in order to get reported in the newspapers, and hence publicity - and they are very good at publicity as they seem to get more column inches than any other pressure group or pseudo political movement in existence - they have very good publicity agents you have to admit.

But now and again even they come up with an idea that take even the feeble minded just a few seconds thought to see the obvious flaw, and today was that day, for today was the day that The Taxpayers Alliance suggested that anyone in receipt of out-of-work benefits who was not willing to do at least 30 hours per week of work, work experience, training, charity work or active job seeking with a job centre aide would have his/her out of work benefits stopped.

And you stop and you think for two seconds and then it suddenly hits you - if you can find thirty hours work for an unemployed person THEN THEY WOULDN'T BE FEKKING UNEMPLOYED ANYMORE YOU THICK PILLOCK.



There are so many things wrong about this suggestion that its almost immoral to start pointing them out for fear of total humiliation for the authors, but here are a few for starters...

1. The aforementioned requirement to work for "at least" 30 hours in order to be unemployed, if you can find 30 hours worth of work for every unemployed person then you've solved the unemployment problem overnight and we will be back in the realms of the 1950s and full employment again - except that you can't.

2. You can't compel someone to work 30 hours a week for £65 a week, its illegal. HM Government will be paying people less than one third of the national minimum wage and will have to haul themselves off to a court to face charges of breaking employment laws, probably employing their own CPS to prosecute them, possibly using a trainee lawyer who is doing it as work experience for 30 hours a week etc.

2. You can't subsidise thousands of businesses across the land who will be handed as many employees as they like to work 30 hours a week for £65, if you do then you're going to find that a similar number of currently employed folk suddenly become unemployed, so the more you push them out of the front door into pseudo jobs, the more they flood in through the back door - and then the European Courts will suddenly sit up and notice that UK businesses are having their wage bills subsidised by central government to the tune of 75 or 80%, back to court we go with the trainee lawyers on work experience etc etc.

For a pressure group who are supposedly right wing in their "light government" approach to problems, they are doing a hell of a good job at revealing their communist answers to all ills, if we follow their guidance it won't be too long before the whole country is working for the government for £65 a week.

You've pretty much nailed it there.
The only thing I would add is that there are people (probably many people) out there who believe that the unemployed should have to work for their benefits in sweeping the streets and tidying-the-community type of projects etc.
The same people who believe this often believe that the public sector is over-staffed ... and can't see the contradiction.

Good post Jerrychicken I agree with everything you wrote. I'm pretty sure if you look into this 'Taxpayers Alliance ' you'll find its funded by corporate interests rather than the average taxpayer!

Agree with every word. Great post.

Great post. But these are the same sort of people who were floating that surely, pensioners should have to work for their pensions.

I'd suggest the minimum wage would appall even some Asian countries
under 25's get £56.80 per week
Universal credit expects 35 hours a week job searching as part of the contract to get this benefit
now add in 30 hours of additional work
means for every hour of directed activity, you are paid £0.87.

And will they also be expected to pay their own bus fare to get to these jobs.

The economy needs to become less dependent on the public sector, particularly in the north.

1999-2009, something like 400,000 new public sector jobs. No doubt many of them 'non' jobs paying decent salaries.

In which case, you won't be in favour of the sort of local authority jobs that people would have to do to get their benefits?

The suggestion is that "up to" one million employed who work less than 30 hours per week who are in receipt of in-work benefits should spend up to 30 hours per week actively seeking work with a job centre mentor able to confirm that the person has indeed done their servitude this week.

Anyone with any experience of a job centre will know that the job of a job centre member of staff is to point to the computers and the single telephone on the wall and tell you "The jobs are in there", and to repeat that for as many appointments as they have that day (possibly hundreds of times).


So now the suggestion is that the unemployed will be joined by up to one million employed but under-employed people, all of whom will require one-to-one mentoring in order to make up their allocated 30 hours per week and receive their in work benefits.

Sounds like a wonderful fix to the unemployment problem, the job centres are going to need hundreds of thousands of new front counter staff to deal with all of this.

Just out of interest, what would you deem an acceptable number?

What constitutes a job being classed as a "'non' job"?

If you think the employment figures in the public sector are too high, can you define which of the jobs are unnecessary and therefore which services to cut?

+1

The number required to run government departments and public services to an acceptable standard. By way of example, the MoD has decided it can function with 30,000 less civilian support staff then it had in early 2012. Which beckons the question as to why it ever had them in the first place?



See the jobs supplement to The Guardian on Thursdays. Aka 'Jobzilla'.

I have not looked at it since I left uni (several years ago) but it was page after page of equality and diversity officers, outreach co-coordinators, inter-faith performance managers, and other such bollox. It was rare to find these jobs paying less than £30K p/a and many of them paid much much more.



I am not a civil servant but I once did some work at a very large government department. It quickly became apparent that around 25% of civil servants who worked there were completely and utterly useless to the point that their posts could easily be disestablished and the work divided up between others. Which, funnily enough, is what appears to be happening now.

It is not a case of private sector = good, public sector = bad. But it is apparent that far too many public sector workers were on cushy little numbers earning decent money in return for doing not a lot of work. It has rightly been recognised that this sort of culture has to end.

Does it mean that? Or does it mean they are doing less with fewer employees?

If a hospital reduces staff but closes A&E does it mean those staff were employed in non-jobs? Or does it mean a reduction in the work being carried out?

You seem to assume 25% of staff fall in the non-job category, so it'll be easy to point them out wont it? So go on then.

This is not what I am talking about and you know it. I don't think anyone would ever try and argue that A&E was a non-job.



These people are not hard to spot. Generally they are overweight, have poor dress sense, facial hair (and that is just the women) and spend most of their time either in the canteen or on a cigarette break. If you do catch them sat at their desk they are probably on RL Fans bitching about how poop the tories are and how the world owes 'the poor' a living.







They have a never ending amount of sickies / doctors appointments / time off for personal reasons. Such people would have long since been binned in the private sector, but chances are they have qualified for unfair dismissal. So getting rid of them without a huge payoff or lengthily disciplinary procedure is an absolute nightmare. And if they happen to be BME, standby for a discrimination claim.

Yet some of the cuts in public sector jobs have led to A&E's being understaffed. As proved by Channel 4 & Sky News' latest programmes. So how many of the jobs that have been cut are "non-jobs"?





Ah another one who thinks he works harder than everyone else.

And another one who is blinkered about public sector workers sitting at a desk, pushing pens and shuffling papers all day long, conveniently forgetting they include lollypop people, bin men, doctors, nurses, paramedics, police, dinner ladies, care workers, firemen, lifeguards, librarians, roadsweepers and the list can go on and on. Without the public sector workers the country would be a worse place to live.

I don't believe that for one minute.

I mean, no potential Prime Minister would EVER put his face on a 30ftx60ft billboard during his election campaign with the words "We'll cut the deficit not the NHS" in answer to his opposition critics that his party were only remembered for previously decimating the NHS - would he ?

No, no-one would be THAT daft.

So withdrawing personnel out of Iraq and Afghanistan had no part to play in not needing as many civilian support staff?



I think your lack of understanding of some of those roles is more a reflection of your prejudice than it is about public sector jobs. My sister was an outreach co-ordinator and was often the first port of call for young people that were feeling suicidal and/or unable to go home. I know she is a hard worker. Personally, I think that is a valid service offered by the council. Would you prefer to leave all these young people on the street or worse, or is it a matter for the 'big society'?


Are you aware that local councils have already and are still making job cuts? It is not just 'non-jobs' that are being affected though. I am not a civil servant but I do work with quite a lot, mostly hard working.

If I was going to moan at public spending, it would start with the white elephants that are HS2 and the recent IT projects for the NHS and the benefits, but hey, you keep bitching on RL Fans about all those people who work for the council that get paid more than you but do less work than you, all because of those pesky poor people that dare to crawl out of the gutter.