Welfare

[The Office for National Statistics figures showed a higher rate of young men outside work or training © Anthony Devlin/Bloomberg]

Two pieces in the FT caught my eye this Monday morning, reference 1 and reference 2. Drawing attention to two very serious problems: the huge bill for benefits for people with health problems (now £65bn a year) and the large proportion of young people not working or otherwise making good use of their time (now more than 10% of the total). The proper solution to both seems to be more help, including more training, to get people into work. While our new government does not seem to be minded to raise new money by raising tax rates - which reduces its room for manoeuvre in these areas.

But it does seem rum that at, the same time, companies are racing to reduce head count and to use technology (and lots of electricity) to do away with as many jobs as possible. That all the check-out ladies are vanishing from our supermarkets. And that we have probably failed to make care work sufficiently attractive: I dare say there are plenty of vacancies in that sector.

And that the one area where we seem to have created lots of jobs is for young men, mostly fairly recent arrivals, to drive food delivery scooters - often quite badly.

At least the heat seems to have gone out of the drive to do away with drivers for cars on the roads. It all seems to have gone rather quiet on that front.

I remember that, a very long time ago now, a chap tried and failed to interest me in his line that automation was doing away with lots of jobs in what was then the manufacturing sector and that this was going to be a serious problem. Perhaps he had a point after all - even if it has taken a while to really bite, to really become visible. We can't all be photographers, influencers and creatives!

It also strikes me that these influencers are another bunch of people on zero-hours contracts. They get paid by the click - and have every incentive to pump out whatever unpleasant rubbish generates clicks. I suppose some small fraction of them can entertain in a clean and decent way, full of family and social values, managing without either unpleasant or rubbish.

PS: some algorithm or other this morning thinks that I might be interested in 'Barriers to Occupational Health Services for Low-Wage Workers in California'. I wonder what brought that on?

The photographer

One of the arty black and white shots from reference 3 in the collection called: 'The last show at the Tameside Hippodrome before the theatre's closure, 15th March 2008'. Copy protected, but not proof against the Snipping Tool. Against which, there is some return in that the photographer does get his credit, along with the FT.

The Hippodrome is a building in Manchester with a history, but reference 4 suggests that they have not yet found something to do with it that both works and pays. 

References

Reference 1: UK needs to tackle ‘unaffordable’ benefits system, says minister: Alison McGovern pledges to reform assessment process that ‘leaves people on the scrapheap’ - Sam Fleming, Delphine Strauss, Anna Gross, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 2: Sharp rise in UK young people not in work, education or training: Figures are uncertain but suggest men in particular are struggling to enter slowing labour market - Delphine Strauss, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 3: https://anthonydevlin.com/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tameside_Hippodrome.