Monday 5 October 2009

Cameron's calls for more unemployment

Unemployment has doubled in Maidstone in the past 12 months so what does David Cameron propose? To take 500,000 people off of disability benefit and make them unemployed. This will not create more jobs, will not tackle unemployment and will not address the reason these people were on disability benefit.

Simply increasing unemployment from 2.47 million (Sept 09) to 2.97 million will benefit no-one. There are three good steps that government can take to increase employment.

Firstly, create jobs that society needs. This requires money to be pumped into the economy - not by making cuts.

Then tackle the built-in benefits trap by introducing citizen's income. Allow people to live on CI without shame if they want to, allow people to feel good about contributing to society in other ways such as volunteering or caring.

Finally, tackle the barriers to employment that society calls disability.

1 comment:

Jo Simmonds said...

And also look more at provision for mentally and physically disabled people in the workplace instead of just introducing legislation - acceptance has to come from the bottom - from managers and colleagues - as well as the top level of govt. Rethink's Time to Change has been good for this and also positive attitudes to what disabled people CAN do instead of what they can't.