Guardian leader article today -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/28/unemploymentdata.welfare

'Scrutiny is the first victim of political consensus. Governments of both stripes have imposed ever more conditions on recipients of unemployment benefits since the 1980s. Each time the promise is the same - to get tough and stop benefits being treated as a career option. Both parties are so used to such language that it comes naturally to neither to ask the obvious question about whether new conditionality is justified.

This week it was the turn of the Conservative welfare spokesman Chris Grayling to rattle out the standard script, before making a specific proposal for mandatory "boot camps" for the unemployed aged under 21. What these would involve is entirely unclear, but borrowing language from the American correctional system sets a punitive tone. Mr Grayling wants taxpayers to believe that numerous lazy youngsters are milking them for a living - a living that he would make them earn. He shows little recognition of how miserly jobseekers allowance (JSA) is. Having lagged behind average earnings for 30 years, the under-25 rate is £47.95 per week - half the official poverty line. Eking out an existence on that is something few would choose, and indeed few do so for any period of time.

Across the country, only 9,000 claimants under 25 have been on JSA for more than a year. There are no figures for the under-21s, but fag-packet maths suggests there might be five such cases in the average parliamentary constituency. Prolonged unemployment is of course serious for these few individuals, but it hardly represents the stay-at-home culture Mr Grayling describes. But then he also has in his sights the more numerous youths who sign on for short spells. He would require them to attend daily courses after just 12 weeks of claiming. When 85% get off benefits within just six months, this labour-intensive, costly monitoring would involve watching people get jobs they would have got anyway.

More sensible is Mr Grayling's suggestion that employment service providers should be paid not just for getting clients a job, but for keeping them there. The government recently proposed the same, so this is a new bipartisan consensus. The more established consensus on attaching strings to benefits was justified where it prompted claimants to think through their options and helped in realising them. But with regular signing-on, compulsory courses and an obligation to accept job offers, the conditions have grown out of all proportion to the meagre benefits received. Making people jump through more hoops will encourage some to disappear from the system and slide into destitution. Picking a fight with the undeserving poor may be good politics, but it ends up harming the truly vulnerable.'

Here we go, how many of us are old enough to remember the Thatcher years, the invention of income support to replace spp ben, the miracle of the social fund, Sir Patrick Mumford, working for your dole + £10.00 a week?

Now they want the poor downtrodden unfortunate kids who leave school to go to boot camp. That's outrageous!!

so what happened to hug a hoodie...?

David Cameron was widely misquoted. What he actually said was "round up the feckless and ship 'em off to forced labour camps". The poor misunderstood chap.

What's up witht the page width?

'What's up witht the page width?'

.. we're on to it !

From the Statute of Labourers 1351. Full text below.

“We, considering the grave inconveniences which might come from the lack especially of ploughmen and such labourers, have held deliberation and treaty concerning this with the prelates and nobles and other learned men sitting by us; by whose consentient counsel we have seen fit to ordain: that every man and woman of our kingdom of England, of whatever condition, whether bond or free, who is able bodied and below the age of sixty years, not living from trade nor carrying on a fixed craft, nor having of his own the means of living, or land of his own with regard to the cultivation of which he might occupy himself, and not serving another, if he, considering his station, be sought after to serve in a suitable service, he shall be bound to serve him who has seen fit so to seek after him; and he shall take only the wages liveries, mead or salary which, in the places where he sought to serve, were accustomed to be paid in the twentieth year of our reign of England, or the five or six common years next preceding…………………….and if any man or woman, being thus sought after in service, will not do this, the fact being proven by two faithful men before the sheriffs or the bailiffs of our lord the king, or the constables of the town where this happens to be done,-straightway through them, or some one of them, he shall be taken and sent to the next jail, and there he shall remain in strict custody until he shall find surety for serving in the aforesaid form”.

This had the effect of breaking the wage bargaining powers of workers due to a labour shortage caused by the black death and of circumventing the need for poor relief given by the church, paid for by a tithe on parishioners.

A sort of medieval version of conditionality.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/statlab.htm

Except at least you might have got mead for taking part. Obviously they didn't have the modern moral panic about binge drinking.

I love the arbitrary cut off age of 60. Some things never change eh! I guess there would be some clever legal argument put forward even then about having to draw a line somewhere. "Forsooth, I put it to you, etc, etc. Gadzooks! I propose the introduction of some sort of poor law minimum relief guarantee for those over 60, or even, dare I say it, some kind of pensione credite".

heh heh! medieval conditionality. also inflation and an early prices and income policy. plus ca change...