Watching Loose Women only today – I know there is a trend at the moment towards not watching Loose Women and saying it’s rubbish, but honestly, it isn’t half bad you know! – I was reminded of how often the following things happen: a seemingly simple subject, one that you’d think would not divide opinion, divides opinion massively. The subject this time? It was about the government’s most recent scheme to get unemployed people back to work, and it goes like this: force people who have been long-term unemployed to work for four weeks a year, otherwise take away their benefits.
Personally, I think this is a sound idea. It means that long-term unemployed people get a chance to work with no real pressure, thus easing them into the work-place lifestyle again, and it means that all the jobs that nobody wants to do get done. But of course, there was an other opinion being bandied about, and this one said that it was unfair, because they weren’t getting paid for all this hard work.
Now, while it’s a fair point, if you ask me, what else would they be doing other than working? It’s a well known fact that most people who don’t work – who haven’t worked for a long time, I should say – sit around doing nothing, so isn’t it a fine thing that they get productive? I understand the point about them not being paid, but surely after doing these four weeks of work they might get the incentive they need to REALLY search out a job they like, no?
Either way, something needs to be done about the problem of long-term unemployment. And whether it’s giving people jobs at Bristol Airport Parking , re-painting the white lines, or working as volunteers in shops, I can only see this scheme as proving to be a positive thing.
