Unemployment
April 28th, 2010
Most of the articles you’ll find on this blog are about housing, council estates and the poor quality of new housing design but now and again you’ll find another type of article under the category of Thoughts and this is one such. It relates to housing in as much as council estates are often cited as being the source of individuals causing trouble through being unemployed.
With all the talk of NEETs (Not in Employment, Education or Training) whenever the subject of unemployed young people comes up, the ASBO culture, sink estates etc I thought it would be time to revisit an article from some years ago that I came across while at sea in a newspaper onboard one of the ships on which I worked at the time. I have reproduced the article in full below:-
Sunday Express September 15th 1991
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From Sunday Money
Why is unemployment so high in Britain and the rest of the EC, when it isn’t in America or Scandinavia?
The mistake in Britain, according to Layard, has been to depart from Lord Beveridge’s prescription that the state should provide work or training for all, and that the payment of unemployment benefit should be “conditional on attendance at a work or training centre.” He was insistent that “complete idleness, even on an income, demoralizes.”
Instead, benefits have been open-ended and for an unlimited period. And training and work opportunities have not been made available on a scale sufficient for the authorities to insist decently that, after a period the unemployed should accept either a training place or a job offer – or forgo benefit.