Now its Birmingham with unemployment jumping 3 times!

A very interesting post by a conservative councillor on the unemployment situation in the UK's second city, Birmingham. I talked before about the situation in Sweden here and in Glasgow here. Its like a disease, all over Europe. I do not want to point fingers at various political parties because I think all miss the trick in thinking about how to help people be productive. The crucial aspect is that the balance should be tilted towards personal responsibility and not towards long term dependency, as one see's. Think about it, a ward in the country in which one in five person is unemployed. Every fifth person is unemployed!. Looking at the rate of job openings and the number of open job positions, it is inconceivable that a person can be long term unemployed. We need to provide a safety net, we do not provide a cushioned nest. I as a taxpayer do not like spongers and parasites. Right now, the balance is tilted way over.

Take a look at what USA did, here is a news story. There is much to learn from the USA, both about good things and bad things. So the British politicans have to ask the question, Where is the enterprise? where is the innovation? where is the productivity? And the answer is not for the Government to do MORE, but do LESS and let people stand on their own feet.

There is an old bengali saying, "boshte dile shoote chai", "allow them to sit and they want to sleep". Dependency culture is now deeply engrained and that has to be tackled by letting people walk, if you keep on giving them crutches, then they will never walk. After my accident, the doctors said that I will always be on crutches, but bloody hell, no way, 18 months later, through a hellish journey through pain, physiotherapy and all, I made it. And then I was a lab rat at the doctor's conference along with another lab rat who allowed himself to remain on crutches.

But dont take just my word for it, here's a good review of American Welfare reform in a peer reviewed journal. Evaluating Welfare Reform in the United States, Rebecca M. Blank, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 40, No. 4. (Dec., 2002), pp. 1105-1166. The interesting aspect is that so many countries have adopted the american mechanisms but what we missed out in the UK was to put in mandatory time limits. 5 years is a fair limit to getting benefits, that's an idea which nobody in the UK seems to be picking up. I hope somebody does in the next election.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!