BBC.
Unemployed people who lack basic English, maths and computing skills should be stripped of benefits unless they take up training, Labour will say.I suspect Labour are forgetting that under their rule, education was dumbed down to the worst levels since Victorian times with 1 in 5 pupils leaving school struggling to read and write back in 2010.
Under the plans, all new claimants of Jobseeker's Allowance would have to sit a basic skills test within six weeks.
The move is set to be unveiled by MP Rachel Reeves in her first major speech as shadow work and pensions secretary.
So, I reckon that any test will leave a lot of people unhappy, never mind immigrants or the test will be so useless that it will be almost impossible to fail. In fact I suspect that this measure will have to be quietly shelved as it attacks Labour's core demographics when it comes to getting votes in.
Still it makes for good headlines and as an attempt to capture the public mood, it's not a bad one. The problems start with anyone with a bit of common sense realising that the people it will hit won't be a lot of immigrants who speak, read and write English generally better than a good few English, but that it will hit those badly let down by our poor education system and its politically motivated curriculum which has failed a generation of kids and left them unable to progress any further than the benefits queue.
The foul results of political correctness (all must have prizes) modern teaching practices (rather than using what worked) and endless tinkering with the examinations and curriculum to get ever higher results (rather than actual ability) has left many out there simply unprepared to pass any meaningful test on English, maths or computer skills (I doubt text speak is a computer skill or indeed an English one)
Still it makes for good headlines... which sums up political thinking these days.
Truly we are doomed.
5 annotations:
I could not agree with you more QM. having had 3 children pass through Labours dumbed down schools system and 2 of them with Dyspraxia having been completely let down by the education system, I can't help but agree with you.
My eldest son has done ok for himself in the army and has passed his exams etc.
but my youngest son (still at college failed his English many times because he is dyslexic and dyspraxic and although the college were told this they did not put the requisite support in place, now in his second year he still struggles with reading and writing and his imminent departure from full time education fills me with dread at what will become of him once out in the big wide world of the dole office. I lay awake at night worrying.
Sadly that's the case for many children Kath, they've been let down by the system and the tinkering by politicians and unions hell bent on applying dogma rather than good sense and applying rigorously what actually works.
Had some brickwork done recently, the brickie had a Romanian Labourer. He spoke better English than many English, and had a university degree. He was not prepared to sit on his backside doing nothing like many of our graduates because he couldn't get a job in his speciality.
My daughter worked with a few Poles a couple of years ago. There were people there who were doctors and university lecturers all packing cards on minimum wage.
Why were they doing this type of work when they were so qualified? Simple, they were earning twice as much doing this than working in Poland in their field.
If the Peoples Republic of Fantasia became a fully fledged EU state, and British nationals could go there to work, earning the equivalent of £120k+ on minimum wage, do you think they would be too lazy to go?
Do you also think that once over there, work being a bit thin on the ground, a employer offered to pay them only £80k, they would turn it down? I think it highly unlikely.
Do you think that Brits wouldn't share 10 to a house double bunking to cut overheads for 6 months to earn enough money to buy a house with cash back home?
If Brits will work for 2/3s the money local Fantasians will work for, owing to their increased costs of living etc, does that make Fantasians a bunch of lazy illiterates who wont have work?
Labour promises this. Labour promises that. The only promise that really mattered to the British people, was over the Lisbon Treaty, and they reneged on that.
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