Solar Panel Discussions

£1bn scheme to create ‘non jobs’ a good idea?

A billion pounds is to be spent on creating tens of thousands of “soft” public sector jobs for unemployed people including dance assistants, tourism ambassadors and Solar Panel engineers.

Oddly, yes it does.

It actually also makes sense to build railyways, roads, plant trees and to create community facilties during a time of recession.

The reason for this is straightforward.

If half the population of your town is unemployed and this means that day 5,000 people are claiming benefit, that reduced income affects everyone that lives there, create a community scheme that means half people who are not working are say paid an extra £50 pw to take part in various schemes from gardening through building restoration to perhaps buiding a community stadium, this has a number of direct effects.

The first being 2,500 people are then £50 better off each week, enabling them to spend more in the shops lessen the chances of shops closing and therefore enabling those who still have jobs top use those shops rather than travelling to the more affluent town up the road.

All of the people participating in the scheme will have the advantage of keeping their work record up to date, this is known to increase their chances of getting full time permanent work as the situation improves. The same can be said if you independantly choose to volunteer for a charity, it gives you up to date references.

Further, say people restore an out of use building that can then be used as a nursery for small children, this has the effect of improving your environment, updates and maintains the skills of the people working on it in preparation for a return to work, Provides a new facilty that may then make money, create employment, and allow people such as lone parents an opprtunity to work where before they could not.

The same process would also be true of building railways, community stadia, roads, etc.

This idea is tried and tested, Margaret Thatcher had Community Programme in the 1980s (one of her few policies that really helped people at the lower end of the earnings scale), Tony Blair had New Deal.

Various independent charities in the UK also use similar ideas, people such as Tomorrow’s People, the Shaw Trust, Turning Point and many others excell at getting people into work.

It is also surprisingly cost effective, it reduces benefit fraud, and as a means of recruitment for employers it is the cheapest way to recruit staff as there are few costs involved apart from setting up interviews, no advertising, no agency fees, and if things like work placement opportunities are used to assess the suitability of candidates, this then often results in recruiting peope whio remain employees for longer than by other established methods.