Party Politics: Where truth goes to die. It often astonishes me how slippery politicians can be. Clearly I’ve not been paying enough attention lately. In the interests of feigning interest, I watched Prime Minister’s Questions today.

Yes, I know, I deserve everything I get.

Today Harriet Harman wanted to tell the world that the Coalition will put 1.3 million people out of work. Cameron responded by saying that the independent Office of Budget Responsibility has confirmed that they expect unemployment to fall, that more people will be employed by the end of the year than were employed at the start. He didn’t deny it though, which made me wonder what was really going on.

Round and round they went, with Harman complaining about the 1.3 of job losses and Cameron talking about the extra jobs.

It turns out, of course, that these 1.3 million jobs Harman is referring to are as follows:

Assuming the Coalition changed nothing in the Budget, and assuming the previous Government’s own predictions about the effectiveness of its plans were 100% accurate, and we didn’t actually need to take into account the unemployment and disaster that would be caused by having to go to the IMF for a bailout or worry about the consequences of unrestrained borrowing, and if the sun shines just right on exactly the right point on the tip of the Red Flag flying over Labour HQ then maybe, must maybe, there might be 1.3 million MORE new jobs by the end of this year (UPDATE: Ha! It’s not even that! It’s by the end of the parliament! It’s more slippery than I though) than there will now be. Of course, when you know you’re going into opposition it’s easy to make spending commitments you know are impossible, just to make the incoming Government look like bastards when they apply the reality stick.

And, worth noting, a huge chunk of these ‘job cuts’ are those absolute bullshit, flushing-money-down-the-toilet, making-things-worse-in-the-long-run ‘Future Jobs Fund’ temporary jobs for 18-24 year olds. Harman didn’t say anything about these 1.3 million jobs being permanent or full time.

So Labour’s still up to its old tricks, still spinning, still trying to make political capital out of anything they can get their hands on. Sure it sounds rad, groovy, right on and seems to care passionately about ‘the people’ but it’s all statistical bollocks based on fantasy budgets they never, in million years, expected to implement.

Well, that’s party politics, innit?

Nubcake

1. noun: Pejorative; A person of so little skill as to inspire mockery in others

England lose horribly. It’s a massacre. Disappointment turns to laughter. Got to love those Germans – they looked like they were having fun.

I’ll leave the final word to an Anonymous English Football Player:

Yeah, I’m well gutted about leaving South Africa and going back to my fit wife, fast sports cars, big screen telly and loafing around having a laugh until training for the next season begins. Absolutely gutted.

Of all the fall-out from the Coalition’s budget, it’s the culture it’s exposed that’s most interested me.

We’ve not seen it for a while, mostly because Labour didn’t cut anything anyone noticed which is how we ended up with the public financies in such a state in the first place. It’s where people seem to have an expectation that any cash or employment they get from the Government is somehow – or should be – guaranteed for life, forever, no matter what.

This belief seems to colour their reaction to everything. There’s no “well, it was good while it lasted, but time to move on.” The relationship is far more like that between a child and a parent: “You don’t love me anymore! You’re supposed to take care of me! Waaa!”

It’s a bit unsettling really. I just can’t relate to it at all. It’s like these people are from another planet. Compare and contrast that with what life is like for the private sector: Jobs exist so long as the company is solvent and has work for the employees to do. Orders and sales happen only if their customers need those products and services – nothing is ever certain, nothing is ever absolute. For me, that’s what makes life bearable – that the future is entirely unpredictable and full of surprises.

I like surprises.

Sadly for many people this doesn’t inspire the same “let’s ‘ave it!” attitude towards life that it does with me.

They don’t seem to get the same buzz of adrenaline from uncertainty and change – instead it makes them miserable and depressed, pessimistic and concerned more about what they’re going to lose than what they might gain in the long run.

They don’t relish the opportunity to try new things or explore different avenues – perhaps a lack of confidence in their ability  to adapt and learn new skills, or worst of all the mindset where people refuse to accept that their skills are “superflous to requirements”, that giving up and trying something else even if it makes things worse before it makes things better, is the only hope they have. Instead they wait for the world to change back to how it was… and it never does.

As an example from my own life, I invested a lot of time and effort in becoming a bit of a Javascript Ninja. I could (and still can) make extremely advanced and graphically awesome User Interface widgets for websites. What I discovered is that however worthy this skill might be, there’s no bloody market for it. No-one needs it, it adds nothing but ‘bling’ to a website, no-one’s willing to pay for it, so basically I’ve given up even trying to sell it. It turns out what is in demand are people with WordPress expertise, who can write plugins and customise themes to a professional standard. So, hey, I moved into that instead.

And, in a nutshell, that’s all markets really are. What’s to be afraid of? What’s wrong with it? Should I be entitled to claim unemployment benefit simply because no-one wants a Javascript ninja? Of course not! I do the work that needs doing, and if I don’t know how I learn.

Thinking about it I suspect that it is this illusion of security and insulation from what people in the private sector go through that attracts people to Government solutions to problems in the first place. To me it feels like they want the world to stop altogether, to crush the variables out of existence so that all that’s left is drudgery and waiting to die.

But, as this last budget has demonstrated, the truth is that people cannot and should not rely on the Government. Governments change. Attitudes change. The public financies change, too. You’ve got to keep the Golden Goose alive if you want to keep stealing the eggs, and right now that Goose is on its last legs.

To quote my all time favourite song lyric ever: “Life is unfair. Kill yourself or get over it.”

Due to problems with the box that this site runs on, I’m having to move it to a new box. I hope this will fix some of the problems people have noticed lately.

Until it’s all completed I can’t add new content, and for some people it may mean the site is down for up to 24 hours due to delays that can happen when you point a domain name to somewhere new.

That’s it! Budget analysis will have to wait, but needless to say I’m not impressed with the VAT increase. I’ll still be Twittering – I’m on there as @charlottegore.

So I got directed to a post on Left Foot Forward, which describes itself as “Evidence Based Blogging” to much hilarity from many commentators. The first thing I saw grabbed my attention:

Cuts of £290 million from the Future Jobs Fund, which provides paid employment for unemployed young people. The cut will mean a loss of 94,000 jobs for 18-24 year olds facing long-term unemployment.

I decided to go look at what the FJF was all about. Turns out the Government pays organisations minimum wage for apprentices (£95 a week) so that people who’ve been unemployed for 12 months who are between 18-25 years old can get a temporary job. Organisations that want a ‘free’ employee have to ‘bid’ to the Government. They don’t offer cash. Instead they make a promise about how great it’ll be for the people they take on.

The Government has decided to cut this program, describing it as ‘ineffective’. Existing commitments will be honoured but no further ‘bids’ will be taken. Left Foot Forward describes this as ‘cutting 94,000′ jobs.

I looked at who’d been winning the bids and mostly they’re quangos, charities, councils and other NGOs. In other words, it’s proven to be a very effective way for the public sector to boost their numbers without requiring additional funding. The private sector, by contrast, has shown little interest.

The costs associated with employing someone are not limited to just wages. There’s training, mentoring, software licences, uniforms, desks, chairs, equipment and everything else. For a private sector company with workers already sitting idle, this scheme is simply a drain on resources.

But what about for the people who get these temporary jobs? How does it work out for them?

I followed the ’94,000 jobs’ link and found this:

Evidence tells us that this type of demand-led labour market scheme is the most effective means to prevent long-term unemployment when vacancies are limited.

That’s quite a bold statement! So I followed the ‘evidence’ link to find out where it’s supported and found it linked to… well… Left Foot Forward again, where they write:

There is a strong evidence base to show that the Future Jobs Fund model is the best available to prevent long-term worklessness and unemployment setting in – participants in job guarantee schemes have a better chance of moving into future work.

Crikey. Getting pissed off now. But, finally, this link leads to a PDF, a report written by Professor Paul Gregg, who was New Labour’s Go To Professor for academic support for welfare reform. The report itself, rather than being an out and out academic support of the arguments put forward by the ‘Evidence Based Bloggers’, is actually rather nuanced.

In fact it begins by pointing out that across the world virtually every single attempt by Governments to pay organisations to take people on for the sheer hell of it are NOT effective, that they do not materially impact long term unemployment and worse still they actually cause people to remain on benefits longer and reduce or stop job seeking activities.

It continues, attempting to understand these failures and then reframes the debate in terms of ‘well, if you HAVE to have a scheme like this, what version of it might have the best chance of success, or, at least, the minimum chance of not making things worse?’

I quote the conclusion of the report:

The evidence base present here suggests that increasing the focus on employer engagement, job search and search support will improve the chances of success for this programme…. But will it out perform the Flexible New Deal, which only has job search and support elements? This is not easy to answer definitively but, as shown with intelligent design around securing the next step into work, there is a reasonable chance.

Ignoring the rather weasel worded references to ‘chance’ – in academic terms almost entirely fluffy, useless language that tells us nothing other than, “dunno. My guess is… maybe”. Not exactly the devastating ‘evidence’ that I was looking for, truth being told.
So in other words, when Left Foot Forward say,

Evidence tells us that this type of demand-led labour market scheme is the most effective means to prevent long-term unemployment when vacancies are limited.

They are being deceptive or wrong. The evidence does NOT say that. When they say,

There is a strong evidence base to show that the Future Jobs Fund model is the best available to prevent long-term worklessness and unemployment setting in

… they’re neglecting to mention that ‘best available’ is only by comparison to every other project of this type which, historically, have caused more harm and damage than they’ve solved. That, again, is somewhat deceptive. The ‘evidence’ they’ve linked to does not support their argument at all.
Then again, anyone especially surprised?