Policy in Practice

This week has seen my voice become horse and my flatmates deafened; after two weeks off I’m back to watching political television. Not much has changed; Labour’s failures are still being exampled, the Conservatives look arrogant under pressure and the Lib Dems are meekly squeaking, yet for some reason UKIP are finding a strong platform to vocalise and the Green Party, a party gaining recognition, seem absent. Debates and hot topics have thrown up a mass of ineptitude and the Labour party have particularly disappointed; though Miliband looks more assured as party leader his content seems as sparse as past Labour promises. Two subjects have been strongly debated this week, both giving us an insight into where our future leaders may be heading. The Leveson Inquiry recommended statutory underpinning, an idea Mr Cameron seemed to support until officially suggested, so perhaps a peek into today’s press and recent by-election gives us a clue why. The Rotherham by-election saw a L...

In recent time the Work Programme has gone live and organisations (businesses) have been working with communities to improve their employability. This began under Labour where huge mistakes were made  and private businesses were allowed to bring their own buckets to  shower of money soirées. Since then nothing has changed (apart from an increase in bonuses) and unscrupulous private businesses are still able to tender for huge contracts and provide no measurable service quality either before, or  after they begin. In South Birmingham we have two training providers for the unemployed; one named Pertemps and the other named Intraining; they provide work experience opportunities/employment training and operate as referral  agencies for the JobCentres. The city used to have another main competitor in the way of WorkDirections but they, due to unsatisfactory performance and community complaints, lost many of their contracts. ...

Future Jobs Fund Future Jobs Fun or FJF was a great example of policy in theory and not in practice which once again looked at tackling short term statistics and not long term issues. Basic FJF eligibility from the part of the employer and employee included: The job must be new and additional to current staffing Be expected to last at least 26 weeks, a minimum of 25hrs per week and pay at least the National Minimum Wage Be of a benefit to the Community Clients need to be 18-24 yrs of age, have been unemployed and claiming JSA for between 39-52 weeks or be long term claimants who are in areas selected for support due to high unemployment Once again on the surface we can assume that this scheme gives young people, or those in areas of high unemployment, an opportunity to find a job however the drawback to the programme more or less undermines the reason for its creation. When the scheme was first announced it worked with a particular slice of our unemploye...