Jobs for the boys?

Yesterday on ‘The Twitter’ the evil* journalist (*Ask the feminazis) Mark Sparrow, suggested “Maybe MPs should have to do two years public service at minimum wage before they can be eligible to stand for Parliament.” It’s a notion with, as they now say, traction; most voters believe the ruling elite have become a self-serving irrelevance, except for the way in which their interference negatively impacts on everyday lives. So any way in which they could be forced to confront the concerns of ordinary people would be welcomed.

Of course, it would never work. Those dwindlingly few MPs who have actually risen from such ranks tend to stay firmly on the back benches, keeping their grubby experiences to themselves and those from more salubrious upbringings would always find ways to ‘dodge the draft’ or be assigned cushy positions far from the front line. Or simply treat it as some form of validation to be endured, rather than learned from. There’s always a way to defeat the intentions of well-meaning legislation.

Which is why Ed Balls’ assertions that Labour’s latest policy would not be abused is so much hot air. Guaranteed jobs? Real jobs, subsidised by the public purse? Firstly, that is not how the job market works; if such jobs existed then applicants would be vigorously sought without subsidy. Furthermore, these jobs at minimum wage would be most readily filled by cheap, migrant labour. So Labour’s jobs guarantee for young people can never be anything other than a bribe for companies to take a chance on an ungrateful British youngster compelled to the task for fear of losing benefits, rather than an eager migrant who may have travelled thousands of miles to be here of her own volition.

It is so typical of socialist thinking though; that a lifetime of being coddled and cossetted by the state can be overturned at a stroke by the introduction of compulsion. New Labour spent years stuffing colleges and ersatz universities with pointless studies of valueless subjects, pretending that anything called a degree was worth the same as anything else with the same title. Thus a degree in David Beckham Studies or Golf Management and Turf Studies (I shit you not) is the equivalent of a first in Physics or Maths in cloud cuckoo land, a place where employers cannot afford to dwell.

And worse, far from providing employment opportunities these so-called Mickey Mouse degrees have had the added effects of simultaneously raising expectations while holding back the development of responsible attitudes to work; most of these students should have either been pushing brooms or stacking shelves from the age of sixteen or better yet, attending technical college and picking up real skills allowing them to compete in the market that became utterly dominated by Polish and Lithuanian tradesmen.

Labour effectively presided over a period of distorting the labour market so severely that some of these youngsters are already well on the way towards a miserable middle age, trapped in a world which needs the simple skills and motivation they neither understand nor possess. And another effect of all this degree inflation is that where a job formerly required only common sense, application and a bit of experience, now a ‘degree’ in the subject is a necessary prerequisite even for interview. Well done Labour, you managed to reintroduce the closed shop.

Job creation - Labour style

Meantime, on the radio this morning, as most mornings these days, the worst of all news for Labour - the jobs market is expanding as the economy grows. Even the Eds have to preface their doom-mongering with a grudging welcome to good news, a welcome which sticks in their craw. But I have a solution to their troubles. Why not put serving Labour MPs on their jobs guarantee program and give their seats to the unemployed? The kids will probably achieve fuck-all during their six months in office but at least they’ll do less harm than Labour.