I Blame the Government

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“Ask not what the government can do for you. Ask why it doesn't.”
- Gerhard Kocher

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Today was the first day back on the scheme. Well, it would have been if there hadn't been some rule saying I have to sit through the week-long induction course for the third time before resuming. well, I would have done if my name hadn't been missing from the list.

Still, it's easy to add my name - you just have to phone up the jobcentre, wait half an hour for them to answer, and get them to add it. Well, it would be easy if their computer system hadn't gone down yet again. Still, at least I can walk to the jobcentre (in less than half an hour) and fill out the appropriate forms there. Well, I could, but with their computer system down, they couldn't make a record that I'd done it, so it wouldn't be "real".

Still, at least I can make an appointment to go back some other time to fill in the forms to get my name added to the list to do the induction course to restart the scheme I don't want to be on.

Well...

I would be able to, if the appointment making system wasn't part of the computer system which has gone down.

One small detail. I'm a computer engineer. They can't find me a job. Their computers don't work. Hmmm.

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Walking through the guildhall square on the way home, I saw a man carrying a placard saying "Welcome to Our Corrupt City Council" climb atop a miniature stepladder and address the passers by.

The details got complex and the speaker meandered, but the gist was: The company which plans to knock down our shopping precinct and build another one on the site got the contact by wining and dining councillors in expensive hotels. This led to allegations of corruption, investigated by the police and a "full internal inquiry", both of which inevitably found "no evidence of wrongdoing". Even though the councillors told a lot of easily exposed and contradictory lies to cover it up.

I looked at those who stopped to listen. There were the teenagers who don't know how to do anything but sneer, the married couples who nodded sagely but shrugged sadly, the middle mangers on three hour lunch breaks who complacently guffawed about "libel", and those who cringed in embarrassment that someone was being loud fifty metres away.

But there was no one who seemed to doubt the truth of what the man said. No one challenged him, no one heckled, and no one voiced disbelief.

Even among the most optimistic and apolitical, it's just obvious and common sense that politicians are corrupt, venal liars.

When did the public get so bleakly realistic and yet so apathetic?

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced his brilliant, innovative new scheme to reduce unemployment: Apprenticeships.

The idea is that companies take on jobseekers, give them lots of training, and then employ the ones who do well. Amazing no one's thought of it before.

If you were cynical, you might view it slightly differently: Jobless people are blackmailed into doing unpaid menial labour under the guise of "training". But let's not be cynical.

There was a scheme like it just after the second world war. In fact, it's how my father got trained as a printer after being demobbed from the army. It worked okay for a while but didn't produce the absurdly high results promised, and was eventually scrapped to save money.

There was another scheme a little like it in the 1980s - the country was in recession, workers were losing their jobs everywhere, and a load of government funded companies sprang up which gave them training to help them set up their own small businesses.

This was Margaret Thatcher's grand plan to revive Britain by filling it with tiny one-man industries serving each other. It wasn't a complete failure, but was eventually scrapped to save money.

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