[Aileen]

Hm. A few decades ago there were a lot a mining and manufacturing jobs that were either dangerous or highly repetitive and boring. I wonder what the proportion of "good" vs "bad" looks like now, compared to then?

Re dangerous jobs, I suspect a lot more safety regulations are in place now.

Given the noises that are already being made about there not being enough low paid workers for things like fruit picking due to Brexit, I think this is unlikely.

Presumably Brexit has scared off the immigrants who could usually be relied upon to do jobs like that?

[laundry]

Technically the government could irradiate JSA and jobseekers altogether. They could transfer all the funds which go to the DWP for JSA to councils instead, then the councils would have a forced 'open employment' policy to which they would have to always have open vacancies of work available to everyone without any other employment. Now the councils could create new positions for these extra people in exciting new careers such as 'Stood doing nothing looking at a wall for 10 hours a week' to make their pay exactly equivalent to what they were earning before on JSA (you could call them a Special Wall Security Guard Surveillance Agent or something).

The statistics would then show everyone who isn't disabled being in employment, and on paper everyone would have a job. It would also cost the government exactly the same amount as the exact same funds would be given to the councils and was given to the DWP previously.

As stupid as it sounds I believe the public would actually be overjoyed by this proposal. Because everyone will then be suffering along with everyone else in the joys of boredom, having their time wasted and pointless employment. A large portion of the people who 'hate jobseekers' and even disabled people claiming benefits do so simply because of that innate feeling of things being unfair: that they have to go and out and work while others can do nothing and still get money. This is a perfectly normal emotion and it was a very useful one in our past, when people were living in groups in the wilderness and someone wasn't pulling their weight it would have a direct negative effect upon their own survival.

However times have now changed and those emotions are no longer very apt to our modern society. The example I outlined goes to show how misplaced those feelings can be and also how bad a measure 'employment' can be to anything meaningful. For all measurements except the employment figure our society would function exactly the same and have am identical level of productivity.

This is where we really need to be measuring employment figures. In how many hours of productive work is being carried out by the country's workforce and how much benefit this is bringing to our society. How many jobs are there in the country that actually need to be done that aren't being done, that is the true measure  of how successful or not your workforce is.

A lot of that often comes down to people having the correct training though, but that is ultimately also the governments responsibility - to make sure it's education system is giving the young the right skills to fill those roles that the country actually needs when they are older. But also to have systems in place that can allow older people to be retrained as well, otherwise a vast portion of the society just become redundant and a burden.

You can drive the unemployment figures as low as you like but at the end of the day it doesn't mean things will be any better. In reality it would often be better to do the reverse and actively remove people from employment that are really doing nothing of use, because they are quite simply wasted resources. You need to consider carefully what values and roles are actually important to a society and have proper educational structures in place for all ages and proper incentives for intelligent people to actually want to work in those fields otherwise those gaps will never get filled and our society will be the thing that suffers.

[Iluvandy]

,@ laundry.   Interesting.    You still need to define productive work and whether what comes off the production line is of benefit to society.    E.G. cakes and biscuits and all kinds of junk food produced in large quantities, fatten up the population and cost the NHS millions to treat obesity, diabetes and many other health problems.    Gives employment to many, however.

[Aileen]

@laundry - That must be really frustrating for you, and I agree that more funding needs to be made available by the government for education and training, not just for younger people - and you aren't the first and won't be the last who's chosen the wrong uni course and come unstuck as a result - but for older people as well, particularly as people are living longer and healthier lives, apart from the irresponsible ones who'll happily eat, drink and smoke themselves into a state of ill-health and then expect the equally poorly funded NHS to take care of them.

[tamila]

Regarding the election fraud post, could it be by any chance a kick back against the accusations of double voting which I believe is being seriously investigated

[Iluvandy]

Regarding the election fraud post, could it be by any chance a kick back against the accusations of double voting which I believe is being seriously investigated

Could it even be that Tories cheated or can that not be contemplated?

[Iluvandy]

It does seem unlikely and too easily detected but I was querying the knee jerk reaction that it must be some other reason than a Tory could be at fault.