New unemployment figures: good news?
Just a quick post on the latest ONS labour market figures here. The figures on unemployment are being reported as broadly, but not excessively, good news for the government. The headline rate of unemployment is down, marginally, to 7.7%. That’s certainly moving in the right direction, but as a change of just .1% quarter on [...]
Griffiths: Long term jobs, not ‘here today, gone tomorrow’
Welsh Green Party leader Jake Griffiths opened up the Green Party Spring Conference in Cardiff today by outlining his manifesto for the Welsh Assembly. He promised to fight the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ jobs that the Labour/Plaid Welsh Assembly government are tying to attract to Wales through flirtation with big corporations and pledged instead to [...]
Employment and Growth: Latest Figures
The latest ONS figures for graduate employment do not make for pleasant reading. Particularly for those of us expecting to finish their current degrees this year (like myself). For the most recent graduates (0-2 years) the unemployment rate was up to 20% in the third quarter of 2010. Given the dip in the economy in [...]
On the Coalition’s Plans for Welfare Reform
We don’t know all the details of IDS’s plans on welfare reform yet, but Fraser Nelson in The Spectator has a few details. It looks likely the plans will roll out gradually, perhaps over two parliaments, to reduce up front costs and grandfather the old system. It’s reported that no-one should be worse off from [...]
Conference Fragments – A Crisis Not of Debt, but Unemployment
Conference is nothing new to me, last weekend’s in Birmingham being my 10th (makes me feel very old at 22!) but this one I expected to be different, being our first with an MP. Unfortunately I couldn’t arrive until after Caroline and Wales Leader Jake’s speeches but I heard they were both very good. The [...]
Conference Fragments – Mobilising the Jilted Generation
I spoke, along with Shiv Malik of ‘Jilted Generation‘, at the Young Greens fringe on ‘mobilising the jilted generation’. Shiv spoke eloquently about how Thatcherite liberalism has screwed today’s 20 somethings. This is roughly what I said. The Conservative Party has always opposed the welfare state. And now they are in Government they have successfully [...]
We can’t go on like this. Cut the deficit obsession, not the deficit.
There have been a number of mash ups of the David Cameron “We can’t go on like this” poster. Possibly the most entertaining is this: There has been, however, a concerted campaign by the political right to exploit the current recession for their longer term aims. The Conservative party, backed by the Taxpayers’ Alliance and [...]