Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Dedicated to both Cynic and Haystack......................

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyl5DlrsU90

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The Tory war on young people

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Oct
2013

Tuesday 8th

posted by Morning Star in Features




People don't claim the dole as a 'lifestyle choice' - the jobs just aren't there, says ZOE HENNESSY

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The Tory Party Conference passed in typical right-wing fashion, with talk of tougher welfare cuts, privatisation and tax cuts for big business.

However, one particularly nasty proposition made by David Cameron in his closing speech caught the attention of many.

This is the pledge that if the Conservatives are elected to government in the next general election they will seek to pass legislation meaning that those under 25 would lose their right to access jobseeker's allowance and housing benefit if they are not in employment, education or training - those known as "Neets."

The Tories are dressing this up as a workable solution for the high level of youth unemployment, arguing that they want an end to a generation of young people who apparently claim the dole as a lifestyle choice.

The patronising phrase Cameron used was "nagging" the long-term unemployed back to work, telling us that that young people need to "earn or learn."

Obviously the Tories' analysis doesn't match the reality of life for the 1.09 million Neets by any stretch of the imagination, with up to 20 people chasing every vacancy in certain parts of Britain, according to research published by Unison. It is clear that these jobs are just not there.

Since 2010 the Tories have worked hard to ensure that further and higher education is an unaffordable option for many young people.

They have made significant cuts to the education budget, raised the cap on tuition fees to a staggering £9,000 and abolished the education maintenance allowance which provided regular financial support to students from lower-income families who wished to continue their studies after secondary school.

Over the last few years they have closed dozens of Remploy factories which provided long-term employment for people with disabilities, knowing that many of the thousands who are made redundant will find it difficult to compete for mainstream employment, particularly now as jobs are hard to find.

The Tories also brought in workfare, forcing those that receive benefits to do unpaid work or risk losing them and at the same time the government can count those on these schemes as "employed" in government statistics.

This unpaid work is often for private companies, whose profits benefit from free labour at the expense of the taxpayer, as the government continues to pay the benefits.

Not surprisingly, research has revealed that workfare has been replacing paid employment.

Many on workfare placements have been recruited over Christmas, meaning that these companies have not offered their permanent staff any paid overtime or hired extra temporary workers. In some cases they have sent paid staff home early.

Workfare isn't small scale either, as tens of thousands of these forced, unpaid work schemes are being rolled out across the country. And the number is expected to increase.

With up to half a million jobs to be axed from the public sector, it is clear that some of these jobs will be replaced by workfare placements as outlined in the guidelines of the Community Action Programme. We have already seen workfare programmes being used in the NHS.

It is clear that these opportunities are not available to young people and that this government has actively created policies that have undermined the youth's ability to access education and training. But there is also the human cost to people who are long-term unemployed through no fault of their own.

Research published on Neets by the University and College Union (UCU) earlier this summer shows that:

n Nine out of 10 aspire to be in work, education or training, but a third feel that they have no chance of ever getting a job

n 37 per cent rarely leave the house, 40 per cent feel they are not part of society, 33 per cent have suffered depression and 15 per cent have a mental health condition

n 71 per cent say that with the right kind of support they could "contribute a lot to this country" but want help boosting their confidence and better information and advice about their options.

As UCU rightly says, these results are heartbreaking. In Cameron's simplistic and condescending analysis, these people have made claiming the dole a way of life, but the reality is that they are effectively being removed and alienated from our society, criminalised and forced to degrade themselves by doing the jobs of other workers for free in order to survive.

Rather than being told to apply for jobs that aren't there, the unemployed deserve a government which is committed to providing decent and rewarding jobs, affordable housing and a good standard of education.

In his speech Cameron advised us that no-one should paint his ideas as callous. But they are callous, because he is a callous man who represents the interests of big business rather than ordinary people.

Together with his Cabinet of millionaires he is seeking to use this crisis of capitalism as an excuse to extract any money he can from the toiling masses and the poorest and most vulnerable in our society in order to shore up the profits of the super-rich.

The Tories and their anti-worker policies should not be allowed to divide people and should be resisted at all costs, by those in employment and the unemployed alike

http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-c9ec-The-Tory-war-on-young-people

jeepers ... don't you ever get off that soapbox? .... that's why i don't bother to read most of the stuff on here

Dave Camoron‏@EtonOldBoys1h
What ever happened to the Bonfire of Quangos, there are now 12 more Quangos than in 2010 #votetory

And thats why you are coming over as a simpleton most of the time.

I cant understand whats gone wrong with you.

You were the salt of the earth 20 months ago. The change is rather worrying.

i prefer alphonso mangoes personally

=================

And thats why you are coming over as a simpleton most of the time.
does it worry me one jot or iota?
no
am i actually rather pleased about that?
indeed i am

and i'm still the same guy that i was 2/3 decades ago, but perhaps you don't realise that and/or you have become rather more radicalised and/or chip-laden in that time

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/obama-buffett-says-default-akin-to-nuclear-bomb-JXsYUy78QeCah03fyUK14g.html

Cynic, but sending Haystack love letters online........its sickly. Post 30721.

Use the PM function please.

"You were the salt of the earth 20 months ago etc." - unlike you gf, you have and always will be exactly the same unfortunately. On a few occasions you actually sound like a decent kind of bloke.

And youl always be second rate.

hils,


"Too bloody right. For a start, I don't go into pubs and, for seconds, Birmingham's a cesspit.

There's more chance of Hell freezing over than of us ever meeting".

------------------

Interesting.

Not my home town, but you seem to know it better than I do.

If they won't let you into the pubs, do you do your trading outside?

I am told there are commuter trains between London and Brum.

But, be careful, I may have been an undertaker who makes allowances.

Fick innit?




Business leaders issue stark warning following OECD education study

CBI chief says England's position near bottom of global league table of young adult education risks economic 'car crash'


Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor

The Guardian, Tuesday 8 October 2013 21.57 BST


Britain's business leaders have warned that the country risks an economic "car crash" as a respected international thinktank issued a stark warning that millions of English adults cannot read, write or add up better than primary school children.

An investigation by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that a quarter of adults in England have the maths skills no better than a 10-year-old, a conclusion that also prompted a political row in which the Conservatives attacked Labour's record in government.

That means an estimated 8.5 million adults are only able to manage one-step tasks in arithmetic, sorting numbers or reading graphs. The same body also concluded that one in six adults could only just decipher sentences and read a paragraph of text – the literacy level of a child in their final year of primary education.



More bollox here: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/08/uk-economy-warning-oecd-education

Hils
I hope you didn't smear the polish after taking that picture.

Should we be Worried, I remember the last warning like this saying their were hundreds, not thousands.

Also comes on the back of the islamic school in Dearby closure. Making Western women wear islamic clothing.

Whats going on in this country??????

9 October 2013 Last
MI5 chief Andrew Parker warns of Islamist threat to UK public
By Frank Gardner

BBC security correspondent

Andrew Parker was named as the new head of the Security Service earlier this year. Thousands of Islamist extremists in the UK see the British public as a legitimate target for attacks, the director general of MI5 has warned.

Andrew Parker was making his first public speech since taking over as head of the UK Security Service in April.

Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan and Yemen present "the most direct and immediate threats to the UK," he said.

He also warned of the damage done to British security by the leaking of classified documents from GCHQ.

Addressing the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall, Mr Parker added the security services must have access to the many means of communication which terrorists now use.

'Not perfect'

Threats to the UK are growing more diverse and diffuse, he said, but warned: "It remains the case that there are several thousand Islamist extremists here who see the British public as a legitimate target."

He explained that "knowing of an individual does not equate to knowing everything about them".

"Being on our radar does not necessarily mean being under our microscope," he said.

"The reality of intelligence work in practice is that we only focus the most intense intrusive attention on a small number of cases at any one time.

"The challenge therefore concerns making choices between multiple and competing demands to give us the best chance of being in the right place at the right time to prevent terrorism."

Mr Parker added: "We are not perfect, and there are always things we can learn, do better and sharpen up on."

With 30 years in MI5, Mr Parker was previously deputy director general and before that director of its counter-terrorism division at the time of the London bombings in 2005.

'Stopped at airports'

In his speech, he named al-Qaeda and its affiliates in south Asia and the Arabian peninsula as presenting "the most direct and immediate threats to the UK".

By that he meant primarily its elements in Pakistan and separately in Yemen, from where al-Qaeda has three times succeeded in smuggling explosives past security on to planes in the last four years.

Former GCHQ Director Sir David Omand: "Nobody is reading all your emails"
Referring to the ongoing conflict in Syria, he said a growing proportion of MI5's casework concerned individuals from the UK who had travelled to fight there.

He said extremist Sunni groups in Syria were aspiring to attack Western countries.

This has long been a concern of Western governments - that British-based jihadists will one day return from the killing fields of Syria and turn their new-found skills on the population back home.

A number of people have been stopped at airports and some have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism.

"For the future, there is good reason to be concerned about Syria," he said.

Mr Parker said 330 people had been convicted of terrorism-related offences in Britain between 11 September 2001 and 31 March 2013.

He added that in the first few months of this year, there had been four major trials related to terrorist plots.

Chillingly, he reminded the public that these included plans for a 7/7-style attack with rucksack bombs, and named two other plots.

There were guilty pleas in each case, he said, with 24 terrorists convicted and sentenced to more than 260 years in jail.

'Reach and limits'

Mr Parker's speech also went on to reveal some of the fears and frustrations his service was experiencing over both the advances in technology and those who leak government secrets into the public domain.

He warned that terrorists now had tens of thousands of means of communication "through e-mail, IP telephony, in-game communication, social networking, chat rooms, anonymising services and a myriad of mobile apps".

Mr Parker said it was vital for MI5 - and by inference its partner GCHQ - to retain the capability to access such information if the Security Service was to protect the country.

Intelligence officials in both the US and Britain have been absolutely dismayed at the wealth of secret data taken by the former CIA contractor Edward Snowden when he fled to Russia.

Some 58,000 of the files are from GCHQ, whose intelligence, Mr Parker said, had played a vital role in stopping many UK terrorist plots over the past decade.

Without mentioning Mr Snowden by name, he said ''it causes enormous damage to make public the reach and limits of GCHQ techniques".

Doing this, he added, handed the advantage to the terrorists.

In conclusion, Mr Parker said he did not believe the terrorist threat was any worse now than before. But it was "more diffuse, more complicated, more unpredictable".

Situation normal.....




Chaotic UK e-borders scheme failing to stop terror suspects

Border control system was so overwhelmed that 650,000 smuggling alerts were deleted, watchdog reveals


Alan Travis, home affairs editor

The Guardian, Wednesday 9 October 2013


The Home Office's flagship "e-borders" programme, which has taken 10 years to develop and has so far cost more than £500m, has yet to deliver significant benefits to controlling immigration and has had only a limited impact on tracking terrorists, an official watchdog has concluded.

John Vine, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, reveals in a report published on Wednesday that high-profile e-borders alerts are not even being routinely used to stop "high-risk individuals" – such as terror suspects, war criminals and those who have previously been deported from Britain – entering the country at ports and airports, apart from Heathrow.

The e-borders programme, which requires passengers to provide airlines with their personal details before they travel to and from Britain, began in 2004.

The declared intention was to "export the border" to improve immigration control and to ensure passengers considered a threat to Britain could be prevented from boarding their flights. But it is thought that only two airlines have so far signed up for the pre-departure screening checks needed for such no-fly lists to work.



http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/09/e-borders-scheme-failing-to-stop-terror-suspects

We are all in together.

£600000 for a pad in London and

WEDNESDAY 09 OCTOBER 2013

Vice-chancellor of Oxford Professor Andrew Hamilton calls for £16,000 tuition fees
Elite universities should be allowed to charge far more, Oxford chief argues


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/vicechancellor-of-oxford-professor-andrew-hamilton-calls-for-16000-tuition-fees-8867323.html
==========

"Vice-chancellor of Oxford Professor Andrew Hamilton calls for £16,000 tuition fees
Elite universities should be allowed to charge far more, Oxford chief argues".....ends


Yep saw this on later Sky news paper talk Fred.

I had suspicions under the tories that this might happen.