Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Echoes of Tebbit

Our work and pensions secretary, James Purnell (no, I have no idea either) has parodied Norman Tebbit's "on yer bike" moment.

The defiant minister insisted there were half a million vacancies in the economy and that taxpayers should not have to support people 'playing the system'.

Although I believe he is quite right, I do think it is a bit rich for a member of the party which has spent decades and countless billions of tax payers pounds encouraging people to do just that.

Of course, the modern myth is that Tebbit suggested that people who were out of work should get on their bikes and look for it - which isn't actually what he said at all. Tebbit was actually responding to a suggestion that the natural reaction of the unemployed was to riot when he said ....

"I grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking 'til he found it.".

... but that didn't stop the liberal left misquoting him repeatedly.

You could ask a similar question of Purnell today - something like .... isn't it true that if you give money to people just to sit on their backsides all day then the natural reaction is to find ways to make the most of that?

He's an MP - he should know that is true.

2 comments:

Lorenzo said...

Half a million vacancies mostly requiring some sort of trained experience or qualifications which the 2 million underclass do not possess then there are the other 1 million unemployed rapidly becoming 4 million, where will they find a vacancy. I'd say a majority of jobs require a car to get to them, most unemployed cannot afford to run a car and public transport seldom carries you to a place of work on time seven days/nights a week. To overcome all the problems would cost many times the benefits paid out. Tax for those already working would have to rise considerably to fund the resources required to achieve full employment.

Anonymous said...

Must be an election on the way...ZanuLab are starting to make middle England noises.

We've heard all this before. It's just another rehashed reannouncement.

All it is, is another means of fiddling the unemployment figures by moving the unemployed into "training schemes" so that they no longer count as being unemployed.