Ann Widdecombe's 'direct' approach to politics has its weaknesses but when she has the right target in her sights it is brilliant. Here she identifies just what a craven business our benefits system can be. The kinds of attitudes it creates. She talks a little about workfare but that isn't really the point. Whatever direction you think change should take this programme should make absolutely sure no one watching can fool themselves into thinking there isn't a problem.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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Absolutely priceless, and this ties in well with your earlier post(s) on dependency culture etc...
I think people forget how much this 'dependency culture' was created by the mass unemployment of the 1980s and the fact that a generation was socialised to think that there would not be (unskilled) jobs available for them and so have not bothered to look for them (and have passed such ideas on to their children).
Social security benefits (vis a vis average income) were more generous in the 1970s than they have been before or since. Yet, in the 1970s, because governments were still committed to keeping involuntary unemployment low - there were about 1m people on the dole (and far fewer on incapacity benefits). But, in the 1980s, the no of unemployed was raised to 3m - thus raising a generation of children in workless households.The attempt to downplay the rise in unemployment then led to the rise in the no of claimants of incapacity benefit
That's it vino. It's all Maggie's fault!
Come on Vino.
Are you seriously suggesting that all the Poles can tell there are huge numbers of opportunities in Britain but Britons can't? How stupid do you think benefits claimants are?
Also, Widdecombe found them jobs and pointed out what an easy process it was. There is no way these people haven't been exposed to the JobCentre.
So, Matt, are you denying that thatcherism created mass unemployment in this country that didn't exist before? I think that's pretty unarguable. I would further contend that this habit of seeing the adults in the household not going to work had bad effects on the motivations of the next generation.
Thatcherism didn't 'create' mass-unemployment. Economic failure created the pressure that made it happen. Thatcherism ended mass subsidy making it possible for the UK economy to reverse decades of relative economic decline. It turned a steady drift into mass unemployment into a more acute problem followed by solid recovery.
That meant unemployment but Thatcherism did little more to 'create' the unemployment than a doctor diagnosing the disease creates cancer.
Well, i would call an increase from 1.1m unemployed in 1979 to 3m in 1983 a move to mass unemployment.
Matt isn't there some truth- based on this that Vino might actually have something here. That one of the consequences of unemployment is a habit of not working in the next generation which ultimately leads to more unemployment further down the line. By which logic the rise in unemployment in the 1980s however beneficial otherwise must have strengthened the longterm unemployment rate now.
I didn't say there wasn't mass unemployment. I'm saying Thatcher didn't "create" it.
Consistent relative economic failure thanks to the socialism that is now confined to our public services (which - funnily enough - still show massive relative failure) did. Thatcher just stopped covering it up. The same problem of a sense of entitlement to a living regardless of your contribution existed in the old subsidised or nationalised industries.
The dependency changed from dependency on indefinite subsidy to dependency on unemployment benefit. The scale of dependency then shrank as there was a massive private sector recovery just a few years later and relative economic decline was reversed.
Matt, you are still ignoring the basic point that unemployment almost tripled in the first four years of Thatcher's rule. You are rhetorically trying to elide jobs in nationalised industries (and jobs in private sector manufacturing, which also disappeared in Thatcher's time) with unemployment. The fact is: there were people who had a job and then lost it as monetarist policies were applied. This may then have had an inter-generational effect.
Vino,
All you've done is drawn a correlation. It doesn't mean that Thatcher or monetarist policies created the problem of unemployment. Both Thatcherism and unemployment were creations of relative economic decline... one a result the other a response.
The problematic attitude is a believe that a person is owed a living. That wasn't created by the pain of the Thatcher revolution either. It was noisily on display in the miners' strike.
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