Publicity and gaps

A posting from Emma Harrison on A4e's site says that she now has a daily column in Express newspapers. I can't find it in any paper today so perhaps that's a treat to look forward to tomorrow. You are invited to contribute to "Emmas [sic] Top Employment Tips". It's a great bit of advertising, if not of punctuation.

The Financial Times has pointed out that there will be a gap of several months between when the current contracts end in half the country and the Work Programme begins. About 50,000 people who would have been placed on these programmes will not be - and that's assuming that the new contracts start on time. Labour says that this will mean people staying on benefits for longer, while the DWP says that people will get "enhanced support" from Jobcentre Plus. The ERSA, the trade body for the providers, wants the contracts extended to fill the gap. I suugest that this is an ideal opportunity to judge the value of the whole welfare-to-work industry. Will the DWP have the bottle to compile the stats to show whether it makes any difference to whether people get jobs? I doubt it.

Richard Johnson of Serco has been philosophising again, on the Indus Delta site, on how wrong we are to think that there are limits to the number of jobs available.