Question on A4e

Just a quick post on a discussion I came across on a business forum website.  It's here.

An employer looking for two part-timers in his warehouse has an offer from A4e.  If he takes people aged 18-24 from the WP (he doesn't say that, but it's what it looks like), employs them for 16 hours a week minimum and keeps them in work for 26 weeks, A4e will pay him £1,100 each.  He regards this as a government subsidy.  The sad thing is that he's reluctant because of the likely quality of the people he will get who have "possibly never had a job in their lives".
Another person explains the scheme but complains about "appallingly slow administration".  He also raises the "downside" that someone who is long term unemployed "may find work an unusual commitment".  Someone else says that they looked at the scheme but were put off by the paperwork.  He also says that "the quality and commitment of some of the 'applicants' was not what we wanted to be associated with."  The last comment simply says that you can't trust A4e.

So A4e's reputation is well and truly tainted, which is an impediment to them helping their clients.  But worse is the attitude of employers, occasionally justified, that the long-term unemployed are not worth the risk.

Stats, the BBC - and reputations

The publication of the latest unemployment figures didn't get much coverage because the media were all too concerned with the Thatcher funeral.  However, for analysis have a look at the FullFact site here and here.  The first shows how the government is "managing" i.e. manipulating the figures for the media.  It is telling it's own story which is just not borne out by the true figures.  The second shows "what the politicians missed in the jobless figures".

Another story which might warm your heart (or not) was in the Daily Mail.  It's a very long piece about Iain Duncan Smith and his "days on the breadline".  The most important part of it is his criticism of the BBC:

"He clearly believes passionately in the work he is doing, although he despairs at how the Conservatives’ austerity programme is reported — above all, by the BBC. ‘The BBC is always negative, never explains, never talks about why we are reforming, or the fact that national debt is rising to terrifying levels,’ he complains. ‘All the BBC case studies are hard-luck stories like that of the £53-a-week market trader. They never focus on a family stuck on a housing waiting list or in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.’ He is clearly exasperated, too, at how removing the Spare Room Subsidy — which will see housing benefit-payment cuts to council house tenants with surplus spare rooms — has been labelled the ‘bedroom tax’ by Labour. When the BBC employed the same phrase, Duncan Smith complained. ‘Now they call it the “so-called bedroom tax”. It’s a disgrace.’"

As I've said before, this carping and intimidation is disgraceful - though we know it's official Tory policy.  What he says doesn't strike me as remotely accurate.  But IDS bombards the BBC with complaints, was disgustingly rude about Stephanie Flanders, and is really trying to ensure that the BBC presents only the spin that the government wants.  That's what is a disgrace.

And there's another worrying trend.  Anyone who goes public with their opposition to the government is likely to have their backgrounds trawled over and their reputations trashed by the right-wing press.  It happened with the chap who challenged IDS to live on £53 a week, and now it's happened to the woman who led a Facebook campaign to have people turn their backs on the Thatcher funeral procession.  Isn't a free press great!

More figures - but not the right ones

The latest unemployment figures are out, showing the number of unemployed down, the number in work up.  Good.  Except that they mask realities which are not quite so rosy.
Far too many of those extra jobs are part-time, and taken by people who want full-time work.  Then there's the fact that the population of the country is higher than ever, which has an effect on the percentages, and lots of people who would have retired haven't been able to.  And the figures are an average; in many parts of the country unemployment has risen again.  The Express reports on a study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which shows that 66 people "chase every retail job".
But perhaps the most worrying fact is that long-term unemployment isn't going down.  While David Cameron threw in a plug for the wonderful Work Programme at PMQs today, it's this group which the WP was supposed to help.  And that, perhaps, explains why we still have no results for the first year of the WP.  It's those long-term unemployed who were going to provide the big bucks for the providers.