Who Said That The Conservatives Wouldn't Create Jobs.....

[Anubis]

David Cameron 'jobs for the boys' row over 26 civil servants

 

Joe Murphy, Political Editor

08.11.10

 

David Cameron faced new questions over “vanity staff” today as it emerged that he has appointed 26 civil servants on fixed-term contracts since the general election.

 

These are the same contracts that were used to hire personal photographer Andrew Parsons and several former Tory aides on the public payroll without the usual strict civil service entry procedures.

 

Labour MPs said it smacked of “jobs for the boys” and demanded a list of all the names of the officials and their current jobs.

 

Mr Cameron has been under growing pressure over the appointments, which critics say are inappropriate at a time when Whitehall is shedding jobs to save costs.

 

Mr Parsons followed the Tory leader in the election to create favourable images of him on the campaign trail, including a photo session depicting Mr Cameron laying a wreath.

 

He has now been taken on at the Cabinet Office on a £35,000 contract to take photographs of the Prime Minister and other ministers for government publications.

 

Other appointments include Rishi Saha, 30, a former Tory candidate, to run the PM's website; Isabel Spearman, 30, a former fashion PR to help Samantha Cameron run her diary and charity work, and Anna-Maren Ashford, 31, the former head of brand communications at the Conservative Party, who is working in the flagship behavioural insight team at the Cabinet Office.

 

Fixed contracts can be awarded without a job being advertised or made open to other candidates. They can be seen as a way of getting a favoured individual into a public position without risk of them failing to win the job in open competition. Labour MP John Spellar said: “David Cameron said he was against putting politics on the taxpayers' bill but it looks as though he is doing the exact opposite.

 

“Yet again he has been caught saying one thing and doing another. This smacks of jobs for the Tory girls and boys.”

 

A Cabinet Office spokesman said there were a total of 80 staff on fixed contracts, more than 50 of whom were appointed by the previous government.

 

“The vast majority have never worked for any political party,” he said, adding that most of them were currently working under fixed contracts to provide temporary maternity cover or because they had specialist skills.

 

Downing Street has denied claims that officials urged Mr Cameron to reconsider the appointment of Mr Parsons, despite the controversy the move has brought.

 

 

David Cameron 'jobs for the boys' row over 26 civil servants | Politics

[Guest PurpleNose]

Made up for them.

[Antynwa]

We're all in this together

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Fascists.

[She Knows It]

But they are creating jobs. Just yesterday, Iain Duncan Smith announced plans to magic millions of jobs out of his arse, at the whopping wage of £1 per hour. Gotta love them.

[Section_31]

Crime will fucking soar under this Government, absolutely soar. The thought of people like IDS thinking they know what's best for people on benefits is laughable, great thinker and academic that he is, having dedicated much to his life to research into the subject. Will the millions among us who can't find work be happy to go and shift boulders for nothing? Or will they start selling copious amounts of drugs? I know what I'd choose - and I'm a 'nice boy'. It will be a Goodfellas fest.

[dennis tooth]

I'd never work for nowt, not for the government,not for private interests either. I'd rather starve than clean up for them outside macdonalds. The police can pick up the tab.

[RJ Fan club]

Damn right I'd never be forced to give my labour away or sell it for next to nowt.

 

That or crime, give me crime any day of the week.

[dennis tooth]

I am going to burgle people so hard. Then I'll wait to the nippled-helmetted ones go out to investigate the crime spree, all 3 of them on that budget and burgle the police station then when they get back to to the station and find that, them and tweet it to them from their house but the pcso's won't be able to pedal fast enough while kids drive stolen cars past them and squirt Maccies fanta straws at them to get to me. Something like that, Camerons vision.

[Wor Horse]

Just counting down to the riots starting all over again.

 

Tory cunts.

[Rafa's Peggy's]

This is David Cameron, the millionaire who so gallantly refused to accept his ministerial wage, using public funds to hire vanity staff for an amount equal to that which he has claimed it is so digraceful to pay housing benefit to the poor.

 

Well I know were I'd rather my money went.

[Guest San Don]

They are making jobs alright. They are selling 'our' jobs abroad to cheap foreign labour.

[Rafa's Peggy's]

Just counting down to the riots starting all over again.

 

Tory cunts.

 

Slowly, slowly catch the monkey. The anger is building.

[Section_31]

Just counting down to the riots starting all over again.

 

Tory cunts.

 

Slowly' date=' slowly catch the monkey. The anger is building.[/quote']

 

No chance, not enough balls. Social engineering will do that to you.

[Rafa's Peggy's]

Crime will fucking soar under this Government, absolutely soar. The thought of people like IDS thinking they know what's best for people on benefits is laughable, great thinker and academic that he is, having dedicated much to his life to research into the subject. Will the millions among us who can't find work be happy to go and shift boulders for nothing? Or will they start selling copious amounts of drugs? I know what I'd choose - and I'm a 'nice boy'. It will be a Goodfellas fest.

 

My union, PCS, did a study using IDS' own example of somebody in Merthyr Tydfil going to find a job in Cardiff. Below are the results:

 

The city where Iain Duncan Smith claims people from Merthyr Tydfil should go to find work currently has almost nine times more jobseekers than jobs, research by PCS shows.

 

Figures obtained by the union for the day following the work and pensions secretary’s statement about unemployed workers ‘getting on the bus’, show there are 15,000 people in Cardiff chasing just 1,700 jobs.

 

On Friday 22 October there were 1,670 unemployed people in Merthyr, south Wales, and 39 job vacancies, all temporary and part-time. The number of people out of work in Merthyr and Blaenau Gwent combined was more than the total number of job vacancies for the whole of Wales.

 

Of the Cardiff vacancies, the vast majority were temporary and part-time. Of the temporary jobs, most were unskilled labouring for just one or three weeks’ duration.

 

The most popular vacancy on the day the union carried out its research was a Christmas job in a well known store working four-hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays for the national minimum wage.

 

Among the permanent jobs was work in a casino or bars. Neither offered help with journeys home afterwards and the last bus out of Cardiff leaves at 11.06pm. Workers from outside the city might be able to get the bus to work, but they would not be able to get home.

 

Nationally, there are 2.5 million people out of work and fewer than 500,000 job vacancies. As part of this week’s spending review, the government admitted 490,000 public sector workers could lose their jobs and economists predict this could lead to another half a million private sector job cuts.

 

These figures prove it is not a question of people not being willing to work, there simply are not enough jobs for them to do – and there are unlikely to be any time soon because of the government’s plans to cut public spending, including cutting 15,000 more jobs in the Department for Work and Pensions.

 

Far from being about ‘fairness’, the union says Duncan Smith’s comments were part of an orchestrated campaign by coalition government ministers to recast some of the most vulnerable members of our society as the new ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor to help clear the ground for the biggest assault on the welfare state in living memory.

 

Also, the fact is that when people sign on, they already sign a jobseekers agreement that says they are prepared to travel up to an hour by bus to find work. After six months this goes up to an hour and a half.

 

If their travel is within an hour, the cost is not refunded so the jobseeker is required to find the money themselves out of their jobseekers allowance.

 

Instead of vilifying the unemployed PCS says the government should be creating jobs and opportunities to help people get back to work and to help our economy to grow. It should also put proper resources into jobcentres to help jobseekers find suitable employment.

 

 

I also watched Danny Alexander on the telly yesterday talking about what a good idea it was to have unemployed people do community service as it will give them something to put on their CV. This makes out as if the unemployed are all lazy bastards with no prospects, when the vast majority are people that are unemployed as a result of the recesssion and because there are no fucking jobs.

 

These lot are dangerous. They have no empathy or real life experience with the issues they are making decisions on. Treating the unemployed like some kind of fucking chain gang will be the last straw.

[Rafa's Peggy's]

No chance, not enough balls. Social engineering will do that to you.

 

I wouldn't say people will go as far as riots, but once the cuts start really effecting people's lives, I believe people can be mobilised. It will take work from like minded individuals and groups to make it happen, but it's possible.

[Wor Horse]

Slowly' date=' slowly catch the monkey. [/quote']

 

Didn't know you spoke Spanish?

 

No chance, not enough balls. Social engineering will do that to you.

 

True enough.

[Rafa's Peggy's]

Didn't know you spoke Spanish?

 

Kay?

[Section_31]

I wouldn't say people will go as far as riots' date=' but once the cuts start really effecting people's lives, I believe people can be mobilised. It will take work from like minded individuals and groups to make it happen, but it's possible.[/quote']

 

You have to look at the state of the country at the monent though.

 

In the 80s you had ideology coursing through the veins of politics, Thatcher had ideology, Labour had a philosophy, at both local and national level. Music was alive with activism, universities were alive with activism.

 

Compare that to what you see today, a homoegnous, bland, stupid population that - quite simply - doesn't care. You could strangle an Englishman these days and he wouldn't resist, he would however, be checking his blackburry to see who'd been thrown out of the X Factor. As I say, it's social engineering. I couldn't even begin to see how it's been done, I'm not that bright, but it has been done, the examples are everywhere.

 

 

With regards your union's findings, I don't doubt it.

 

The problem with the Tories, and this is something i've posted many times, is that the rank and file think in black and white terms. They think that somebody is rich because they 'work hard' and somebody is poor because they're lazy. It's that simple.

 

Yet when you unravel the tapesty of the lives of people like Cameron et al you see all the ways in which they've been helped along the way, given a leg up, protected, borrowed money, pointed in the right direction.

 

Someone like IDS will say 'well if I was jobless i'd knock on every door and woulnd't take no for an answer'. And of course he might like to tell himself that as he sips brandy in the wee small hours, but the real truth of the matter is nepotosm reigns in those circles. If a Cameron lost a job, a family friend would see him right, or one of his mates would. There'd be a banking internship or a job at the Hong Kong times lined up before you could say P45.

[Rafa's Peggy's]

You have to look at the state of the country at the monent though.

 

In the 80s you had ideology coursing through the veins of politics, Thatcher had ideology, Labour had a philosophy, at both local and national level. Music was alive with activism, universities were alive with activism.

 

Compare that to what you see today, a homoegnous, bland, stupid population that - quite simply - doesn't care. You could strangle an Englishman these days and he wouldn't resists, he would however, be checking his blackburry to see who'd been thrown out of the X Factor. As I say, it's social engineering. I couldn't even begin to see how it's been done, I'm not that bright, but it has been done, the examples are everywhere.

 

 

With regards your union's findings, I don't doubt it.

 

The problem with the Tories, and this is something i've posted many times, is that the rank and file think in black and white terms. They think that somebody is rich because they 'work hard' and somebody is poor because they're lazy. It's that simple.

 

Yet when you unravel the tapesty of the lives of people like Cameron et al you see all the ways in which they've been helped along the way, given a leg up, protected, borrowed money, pointed in the right direction.

 

Someone like IDS will say 'well if I was jobless i'd knock on every door and woulnd't take no for an answer'. And of course he might like to tell himself that as he sips brandy in the wee small hours, but the real truth of the matter is nepotosm reigns in those circles. If a Cameron lost a job, a family friend would see him right, or one of his mates would. There'd be a banking internship or a job at the Hong Kong times lined up before you could say P45.

 

Blunt assessment, but I find it hard to disagree with any of it.

 

On mobilising 'the resistance', I take heart over what was done to oppose the Iraq war not so long ago. Millions taking to the streets around the world, with over a million in London alone. I said in another thread that you have to give people something to mobilise around and get them interested and engaged, and I stand by that. How you achieve that is something for debate and that is what is currently happening in trade union circles.

 

What annoys me is that no prominent politicians have got the balls to call this what it is - class war. Gordon Brown shit out in the run up to the election when he got criticised by the media after making the 'dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton' comment.

 

Despite the social engineering, I think there is still enough of 'us' to make a difference.

[dennis tooth]

You could strangle an Englishman these days and he wouldn't resist, he would however, be checking his blackburry to see who'd been thrown out of the X Factor.

 

Kwote of the day with capital k.

[Strontium]

But they are creating jobs. Just yesterday, Iain Duncan Smith announced plans to magic millions of jobs out of his arse, at the whopping wage of £1 per hour. Gotta love them.

 

 

The existing New Deal scheme already includes four weeks labour | Westminster Blog: The latest on UK politics | FT.com

 

In case you thought the IDS scheme was familiar - forcing people to do 4 week’s labour for their benefits - that is because it already exists. Since last October anyone out of work and claiming jobseekers’ allowance for over a year (in most parts of the country) has to take part in Flexible New Deal.

 

As the website explains:

 

Part of Flexible New Deal includes you doing work experience for four weeks to improve your chances of finding a job. You may also get training and other support to help you find a job.

 

This might explain Labour’s refusal to shed too many tears over the plan. (Although as someone points out to me the Flexible New Deal is only kicking in about now, one year after it was set up).

 

The media might want to ask the question of Mr Duncan Smith later in the week - in what way is this plan different to the one the coalition inherited?

 

The thought of people like IDS thinking they know what's best for people on benefits is laughable, great thinker and academic that he is, having dedicated much to his life to research into the subject.

 

 

Is this supposed to be sarcasm? Because he actually has spent much of the past 6 years doing just that.

 

They are making jobs alright. They are selling 'our' jobs abroad to cheap foreign labour.

 

 

Outsourcing creates more jobs than it costs - fact.

[Section_31]

Is this supposed to be sarcasm? Because he actually has spent much of the past 6 years doing just that.

 

I'm in genuine stitches here.

 

 

So has Hermes, that doesn't make him any more qualified to release the social equivelant of agent orange.

[Strontium]

I'm in genuine stitches here.

 

 

So has Hermes, that doesn't make him any more qualified to release the social equivelant of agent orange.

 

 

Well, here you go, here's his thinktank's report "21st Century Welfare" (PDF), why don't you give me a brief critique instead of trotting out those tired old TORYS R EVIL mantras.

 

What I think people don't understand is that this is the first government in aeons that is playing the long game.

 

You know, it would be tremendously easy to go the sticking plaster route and borrow trillions from the Chinese and create bogus public sector jobs for people to do in the short term, and indeed, that's what the last government basically did. But that does absolutely nothing to solve long term poverty and welfare dependence, nothing at all.

[Rafa's Peggy's]

Well, here you go, here's his thinktank's report "21st Century Welfare" (PDF), why don't you give me a brief critique instead of trotting out those tired old TORYS R EVIL mantras.

 

What I think people don't understand is that this is the first government in aeons that is playing the long game.

 

You know, it would be tremendously easy to go the sticking plaster route and borrow trillions from the Chinese and create bogus public sector jobs for people to do in the short term, and indeed, that's what the last government basically did. But that does absolutely nothing to solve long term poverty and welfare dependence, nothing at all.

 

I can see you are an articulate lad, but I find it difficult to take your position seriously when I know that if your party leadership hadn't sold the country a pup you would be likely knocking on doors opposing many of the cuts being announced.

 

This Government are in it for the long game? Name me a single thing that they have announced that shows that? No real investment in Green technology to create jobs, no real investment in manufacturing, university budgets slashed, anticipated cuts in the Sure Start scheme which has been proven to make a real difference to the lives of poorer families, I could go on.

 

You are probably aware that I am no fan or apologist of the last Government, but those 'bogus' public sector jobs that you mentioned were doctors, nurses, teachers and other workers who provide the services that people actually quite like.

 

The last Tory government left the NHS,for example, in an absolute mess and it took investment to fix. My wife has just had a baby in Whiston Hospital, which is a fine example of first class facilities being accessible to people who couldn't otherwise afford it.

 

You can defend this Governments actions and say they are in the national interest if you wish. The proof will be in the pudding,if they are strong enough to resist the inevitable resistance that will mount.