For almost two years the government has watched as the number of young people not in training , education of work has risen worryingly. Yesterday Alan Milburn published a report telling us this has been happening, and expressing justified moral outrage that it is happening. HIs Report did not set out what the government should do about his. The lack of urgency continues, so we have to await a second report to tell us what might change this alarming trend.
The government wants people to believe that this has been a long standing and deep rooted set of problems. It is true the previous Labour government left office with young people unemployment far too high and rising. From 2012 to 2021 the Coalition and Conservative governments got it well down. It has been rising since 2022 when higher energy costs, higher interest rates and post covid recovery issues affected the figures. The rise has got worse under this government. No-one should be surprised, as their National Insurance hike has hit young people’s job opportunities hard. Higher business rates for High Street shops, entertainment and hospitality has hit those jobs for young people. The new Employee Rights Act has put more employers off offering a job to a young person to see how it works out.
The government should as the Opposition proposes, urgently reverse some of these mistakes and get behind business so they can create more jobs and want to recruit again. There is a growing gap between what the market needs and what jobs are on offer. People would like more choice of services to their home, but the hostile atmosphere hitting the self employed and small businesses means fewer are prepared to venture to meet those needs. The country is short of builders, digital technicians, medics and other trained people. This government likes to intervene substantially in the labour market, so why can’t its interventions deliver better results for both consumers of services and the young people who would like jobs in those areas?
Ministers are often telling us they do things at pace. Instead they do not even get their reviews to run to a tight timetable. What a pity they did not think these big issues out in Opposition before the election.
May 29, 2026
Youth unemployment is probably one of the most evil outcomes (& entirely predictable outcomes) of this government’s deluded doom loop, tax to death policies.
Mr Milburn insisted there is “no evidence” of a link between migration and joblessness among young people, and also appeared to defend Chancellor Rachel Reeves when asked about whether the Government’s increase in national insurance was a mistake for its impact on business.
I assume Miliband also insists that there is no evidence that mass immigration has any effect on making the housing shortages worse!
May 29, 2026
“The government should as the Opposition proposes, urgently reverse some of these mistakes and get behind business so they can create more jobs and want to recruit again.”
Well surely reverse ALL of these mistakes, scrap net zero, frack, drill, mine, cut taxes and NI, halve the size of the state, scrap minimum wage laws (a law that make it illegal for poorer paid people to work even if they want to do so, cut red tape, scrap the tenants & worker rights laws and scrap vat on school fees both totally counterproductive. Stop the wars on motorists & NonDoms, scrap HS2, relax planning and OTT building controls, halve the size of the state. Deter rather than encourage & augment crime & low skilled immigration, Make work pay relative to benefit payments. Restore free speech, scrap digital ID, scrap Chagos and EU alignment, and the French Fishing in UK waters lunacy, invest more in defence, sort out the largely basket case NHS system, scrap loans for diff degrees about 75% of them are.
May 29, 2026
Amazing isn’t it: yesterday it was reported that only 1 in 27 job vacancies go to a young British person …. the rest go to immigrants. Yet we’re supposed to believe that mass immigration has had no impact on job opportunities for young Brits.
They really do think we’re stupid.
May 29, 2026
+1 doubtless they claim they have nothing to do with housing shortages too. They must all bring them on their backs like snails I suppose!
May 29, 2026
@Lifelogic – in eduction there is also no link between economics and the maths of a budget. Economics is the art of political manipulation by taxation
May 29, 2026
Big problem though is that our native population:
1. Isn’t nearly procreating enough so A) who’s going to work in the jobs to drive our economy? B) Who is going to pay for all the oldies?
2. We’re procreating in the wrong way. With women having children by different men and/or by men not working and so huge social security bills. Or increasingly, women not procreating at all – not even marrying at all (and the huge damaging effect of this on mental health and how this affects NHS bills hugely).
3. Low productivity from native population. A % of whom don’t have the work ethic and/or skills and abilities needed for the economy.
So another topic way bigger than something politicians can solve but something that must be addressed. Pronto.
May 30, 2026
AI is not the problem; it is a saviour. AI does the donkey work. Why have people employed to cart postal letters by donkey from Land’s End to John O’Groats when technology can deliver the solution in seconds?
Early this morning a phoner called LBC to complain that coin-operated parking meter attendants were losing their jobs because payment was accepted by phone instead. What’s the point of people labouring through worthless work?
It would be better if they did something valuable instead or even accepted a modest payment for doing nothing.
May 30, 2026
Hi, I agree with you (more-a-less).
But I was talking about procreation!
May 31, 2026
Apols Ed M. My post was placed as if in reply to one of yours, but was oblique in content.
I fully agree with the points you made in yours.
May 29, 2026
Also, another big topic, what does it mean to be British anymore?
Take the average British man or woman in 1945. If you could travel-time them to now, what would they think of life in the UK today (forgetting high immigration and NET Zero and EU – I agree they’re all terrible things)?
Would they even recognise it?
Sure, they’d recognise Big Ben and Stonehenge or the Thames. But would they recognise their own native population and way of life from their own day: the humour, charm, friendliness, homeliness, family life, looking after the old, neighbourliness, patriotism, masculinity in men, femininity in women and so on. Or would UK today be pretty alien to them. And the same question for countries across the Western World.
It’s GREAT that we now have loos, access to hospitals, and no slums and … actually what now is vastly better now than back then? I’m sure there are a few / a lot of things. But have we not exaggerated how GDP is central to the HAPPINESS and WELLBEING of a country. Clearly, this nonsense. A strong GDP is great. But we need to be careful not to put it on a pedestal and to exaggerate it. And we need to admit there is clearly a big COST and loss of many great things to our modern way of life as well. And I think this is becoming a lot clearer now in the last few years as sooo many people I know say they are actually quite SCARED of the future that you didn’t hear people say nearly so much 10 or 25 or more years ago.
May 29, 2026
One of the most evil things the dire Cameron/Clegg (No so Liberal or Democratic) government did was the appalling changes that made it almost impossible for wrongly convicted innocent people to get proper compensation for this. See the Paul Foot awards Private Eye Podcast. Plus we has the dire Sir Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, serving as Postal Affairs Minister from 2010 to 2012, overseeing the Post Office during the Horizon IT scandal. He even refused to meet with campaigner Alan Bates. Most of these people have also still not been compensated.
May 29, 2026
@Lifelogic – ah.. but the honours that used to be for altruistic contributions to society were still handed out. The Post Office compensation ordered to be taken from the taxpayer is now looking at £2billion, yet the honours, rewards still roll in for failure. The them and us culture knows no bounds in this UK Parliament
May 29, 2026
A good videos by Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday too “Why Burnham is Wrong”. (As are Starmer, Reeves, Lammy, Philipson, Cooper-Balls, Ed Miliband, Steeting, James Murray and that Scum, Scum, Scum lass!)
Socialism is always evil, wrong and entirely counter productive.
May 29, 2026
Welfare system ‘gives young people a cheque but not a plan for life’. Alan Milburn, the former health minister the other day.
Indeed, but these cheque actively discourage them from making any plans to provided for themselves.
May 29, 2026
@Lifelogic – from the Telegraph ‘Burnham opens door to pact with Greens’ such is the egotistical confidence dancing with the devil rather than let the people decide is the order of the day.
May 29, 2026
But we don’t want the type of capitalism we see in the USA either. It’s a dog eat dog world. So many people there seem fairly crazy and hate each other or indifferent to each other. And you can be middle class with health insurance and lose all your money and get a serious illness that doesn’t cover it. And also a lack of charm, humour and culture compared to the USA.
In Scandinavia they have relatively high tax but get much better return for their money than us in UK.
NO to socialism and WOKE (and EU bureaucracy and loss of sovereignty etc). But also no to the crazy, self-interested, grasping, greedy, Scrooge-like, and fairly ruthless capitalism we often see in the USA.
The UK the best nation in the world (despite our problems)!
May 29, 2026
@Ed M – i note you said ‘seem’. Your view of the USA and its people I would suggest is the same as saying that people in London, thier ethnicity, their attitude, etc is a reflection of the how the people of the whole of the UK should be seen. I have been living in the USA for part of the year regularily for the last 20years or more. Take Chigago not a great image here in the UK, but I dont see the dog eat dog, I see commercialisation yes, but even competitors, are working together. I see generaly people taking responsibility for themselves, their families, their communities. The community spirit and ‘can do’ by pulling together to make the community you live in the best of the best, something you would never see in todays London. Walking the streets of Chicago at night feels infinatly safer than London and by comparrison its a clean smart City well kept as are the majority of US Cities are. Then again London is not even England, let alone the UK.
The UK is close to getting there, once it hives of socialisium and entitlement. As highlighted by todays ‘diary’ socialisum and the indoctrination of entitlement has destroyed the future of the UK’s youth – maliciously destroyed by numpties that ‘hate’ the UK and its people
May 30, 2026
Good comment.
I worked in the USA during university vacation and loved it.
My fave book of all time is Lonesome Dove!
And lots of other things about USA I think are great – including many people I met out there.
However there is an ugly side to the USA too. An ugly side of capitalism (as we see in Dickens’ Christmas Carol – Scrooge before and after his haunting).
And don’t bring in socialism – that’s a red herring / straw man! We all agree socialism is a strangling, ugly, social/political weed. The issue here is how capitalism – a good thing – can also turn into a beast if not observed / regulated (fuelled both by greed – as opposed to work ethic – and/or mindless, boring utilitarianism as opposed to imagination/creativity). And we see that at its extreme in the USA. Oscar Wilde’s comment, ‘America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between.’
I know it’s a pain in the a– when people bring up thorny issues like this. But if you see your country as a beautiful garden, then you have to be aware of how something good can over-take the garden and turn into a weed. Or is a weed from the beginning. Something like that.
May 30, 2026
@Ed M ‘An ugly side of capitalism’? are not the alternatives uglier? Is not the EU’s protectionism ugly capitalism? i.e. By not having free and open markets you get manipulation distortion, they call it capitalism but essentially it is Socialism by the back door.
Look what is now the Worlds largest economies outside of the USA, they protect and reward home grown industry but want other markets to let them in on a free ride basis.
Isn’t the situation accredited to ‘Trump’ on wanting reasonable reciprocation seen as some dark gangster operation. The last time he was in Office he wanted a more reciprocal trade arrangement with the EU. After all the EU demand 400% more duties on US goods than the US demanded on the EU’s. But the EU being the EU wanted talks about talks knowing the USA as a Democracy would have a change of leader, so nothing was done. So this time in Office he used a sledge hammer approach and they yielded. That is also were we at at with NATO the USA had been paying 80% of the bills to essential defend the larger than the US population EU – there now seems to be movement there as well.
As I don’t see London as even reflecting the people of Surrey. And London has some pretty nasty people I cant see as how the odd runaway ego any where should reflect the whole
May 31, 2026
Ian,
‘Is not the EU’s protectionism ugly capitalism’ – that’s a red herring. Straw man! Because we both agree the EU’s protectionism is ugly capitalism.
Your argument is like, well isn’t it better to have one weed growing in the garden than having a worse weed growing in its place. No. You dig up ALL the weeds in the garden! Don’t cherry-pick. That’s being a lazy gardener! (I want my country looking like The Chelsea Flower Show! I’m ambitious for my great nation – you should be too!).
‘Trump’ – You’re not very ambitious for our country! He’s nothing, no way near, Queen Elizabeth I, Mrs Thatcher or Cyrus the Great. All his non-property businesses have gone bust. He inherited his fortune from his father and would have probably made more money if he had invested it in shares. And, what’s more, he was taught his business – property – by his father. And a very niche type of business at that. You’ve allowed yourself to be gaslighted / tricked / conned by someone who’s pretty phoney to say the least when it comes to being a properly successful capitalist and politician.
May 29, 2026
STARMER today “we will not allow a lost generation” you are not only allowing Sir Two Tier you Reeves, Rayner, Ed Miliband… are all the direct causes !
May 29, 2026
@Lifelogic. They have destroyed a generation to appease thier personal ego and force their ideolagy on a notion and a people they hate
May 30, 2026
Even if they qualify ,jobs are scarce.A few go on agencies but without experience it’s too hard to jump into with a few years academic study.
May 29, 2026
For almost two years the government has watched as the number of young people not in training , education of work has risen worryingly.
This as been going on for years because employers found that it’s cheaper to employ foreigners than train our young people to do the work and that isn’t going to change over night , the bottom line is it’s all about saving money and without fundamentally change that’s going to continually happen
May 29, 2026
Johnson legislated so that job vacancies didn’t have to even be advertised in the UK before being thrown open to the world. It is hardly surprising that he imported another 4 million from the 3rd world in just 3 years.
Labour are “considering” reinstating a requirement for jobs to be advertised here first … for 28 days. Even IF they do it, potential employers will find it very easy to “advertise” in the UK – before importing a low-wage immigrant.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/21/labour-jobs-british-workers-overseas-staff-recruitment/
May 29, 2026
The government have idiotically tried to buck the market by forcing employer to pay more with minimum wages, NI increases and vast employment risks than most younger employees can justify to pay. So they choose not to employ or employ ones who do not need so much training and supervision.
Milton Friedman “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
In the UK from John ERM Major onwards serial governments did not even so much as try to do the right things quite the reverse! Truss tried for a few days but was rapidly decapitated by Sunak’s fake Tory MPs.
May 29, 2026
as you know the governments of recent years have been printing visas like confetti to flood the country with cheap (foreign ed) workers, given them massive tax perks to undercut locals, encouraged them to steal the best British intellectual property and ship it home where it is used to undercut this country. this and other immigration abuses have destroyed this country. and even you are not calling it out.
May 29, 2026
@iaian gill – in the UK parlance it has only been around 4.1million people dragged in
May 29, 2026
Further and faster as Starmergeddon keeps repeating. Only he means destruction not growth. Milibrain says net stupid will create 600,000 jobs when in fact it’s destroying up to 20 000 every month.
Whole industries are closing because of his insane Marxist policies.
I find it incredible that no one is able to stop his ruinous actions.
It’s good to see 2TK being sued by Brussels for banning an MEP from attending a rally. Perhaps it was against international law.
May 29, 2026
Net zero may well create 600,000 jobs in compliance, subsidy collection and monitoring. That will not be a net figure though and will be offset by many other jobs in manufacturing and gas and oil production as the costs of gas and electricity rises.
I doubt many of the 600,000 will be entry level jobs.
May 29, 2026
@Ian Wragg – ‘I find it incredible that no one is able to stop his ruinous actions’ one, we have a Socialist Parliament and Government all overwhelmingly agreeing with the direction taken. two, the UK Parliament doesn’t do elections, they don’t like the idea that mere Minions should approve their directions, should vindicate what they are doing. The good old comparison of democracy versus evil, since Starmer took power and before, if it happens, he needs to go to the people the USA will have had 3 General Elections to test the approval and satisfaction of the directions its government is taking. Then some in this Parliament still can’t understand why 250 years ago a rabble on the other-side of the pond kicked back on the refusal of democracy. The UK Parliament doesn’t do Democracy
May 29, 2026
Once again, South East Water has failed to supply drinking water to thousands of it’s customers in Kent and East Sussex. Yesterday there were two mile queues at one of it’s bottled water distribution points near Ashford
South East Water is owned by Utilities Trust of Australia, who own a 50% stake, NatWest Pension Fund (25%) and the Canadian pensions company Desjardins Group (25%). Last month they forced the resignation of the much criticised CEO David Hinton. Yesterday the company admitted that it’s reservoirs were “empty”
The company carries huge debts. A significant portion of it’s financial pressure stems from £276 million in high-interest shareholder loans managed by its parent holding company. These internal loans have faced intense political and regulatory backlash for racking up interest at rates near 10% – amounting to roughly £3,000 an hour
South East Water is paying so much in debt interest that it cannot undertake the infrastructure investments that Hinton committed it to last year. The company is clearly (struggling ed) and should be taken under government control immediately. In this weather, people need clean water to drink
May 29, 2026
You are @lifelogic and I claim my £5
May 29, 2026
SE Water has to provide for millions of “new consumers” – who were imported by the Uni-Party over the last 28 years with nary a thought about basic infrastructure or public services.
Instead of wasting £billions on the HS2 White Elephant, a water transfer system would have been a good idea. But that was beyond the brain-power of successive governments.
May 29, 2026
You think it’s bad now, just wait till the government takes over!
The answer is a better regulator with statutory powers to dictate to water companies how much they must spend on running costs and investment, with debt interest payments taking its place in the queue after that. The regulator would have the power to scrutinise loan deals and order a haircut on the creditors if they believe the terms are too onerous.
May 29, 2026
Totally correct Dave. All the regulators have failed in one way or another and rarely seem to fully understand the businesses they are regulating, especially the financial side.
May 29, 2026
I assume ‘Sakara’ you live within theSE water area, as do I. I don’t pretend to understand all that financial jargon you’ve typed, it’s never been my world (engineering was) But I’m inclined to agree something needs to change. I believe water needs to be re-nationalised under a single English body.
Lord JR doesn’t agree.
May 29, 2026
I think foreigners should be entitled to invest and make profit from most of our economy. And good for us. But not things like water. Water is British. Part of our SOVEREIGNTY. Like the sea. It is not for sale. Or shouldn’t be. And all we get is lazy fat cats trying to make a lazy living out of water like a monopoly with most of profits flooding abroad.
May 29, 2026
In good news for the RN, Navantia UK confirms production is now underway across all UK sites supporting the new Fleet Solid Support ships.
Work is running concurrently at shipyards in Belfast, Appledore and Methil, alongside construction at Navantia’s facilities in Spain. Test blocks are being built in Belfast, bow sections are under construction at Appledore in Devon, and blocks are progressing at the Spanish yards. Methil is contributing through specialist fabrication and logistics work, including the completion of a new transport barge “Navantia UK Seahorse” which will move ship blocks between UK sites.
In Belfast, the former Harland and Wolff yard is being upgraded with mechanised panel lines, robotic plasma cutting systems and automated quality control processes, due to become fully operational in July.
Engineers, project teams and apprentices from across the UK business have undergone placements alongside colleagues in Spain as part of a knowledge transfer arrangement covering manufacturing techniques, digital programme management and naval shipbuilding practice. Navantia UK currently employs 222 apprentices across its sites, with a further 121 set to join later this year.
Such a shame that no frigate orders were placed between 1997 and 2017 – meaning we lost the skills needed to build them
Source: UKdefencejournal
May 29, 2026
I think this post should start with “Surely Alister Heath is right when he writes about Navantia UK”
May 29, 2026
SG. How have we lost the skills to build Frigates. There are currently 3 classes of war canoes being built around the UK. H&W US Spanish owned ans the Spanish are doing the majority of hull fabrication. Only in the UK would a government prioritise foreign companies over our own. Mainly due to the insane net stupid policies making it prohibitively expensive to produce anything.
May 29, 2026
@Sakara Gold – its hard to see how that is good news, when the UK Taxpayer is sending money out of the Country to prop up a Spainish Government owned Nationalised Industry. Whats wrong with UK Taxpayer money going into UK Industry, UK Taxpayer money would then circulate the UK economy and not the Spainish
May 29, 2026
One of big problems in UK is that we’re so obsessed by services that you forget you actually need to MANUFACTURE stuff so you have a broad economy.
Human nature being what is it we get bored by just numbers, facts and figures, we need to MAKE stuff. It’s in our DNA. Not talking about crude, smoke-belching manufacturing like in India. But high quality, sophisticated manufacturing like in USA and Germany. So high tech, satellites, high quality but mainstream cars such as Mercedes and BMW. And so on.
Lastly, if you look at a company such as IBM, they’re famous for their hardware. But in fact make more money from their services around the hardware. A great example of hardware and services working together and where you need both. Instead of just being obsessed by the finance sector alone (a decision made, basically, by the Old-Etonian ruling classes and others from the middle classes – after the war and up to the 1980’s – that the power house behind the British economy should be mainly focused on The City of London).
May 29, 2026
(And the consumer sector. When it should have been focused on the 1. Finance sector. 2. Consumer sector. AND 3. High Tech / car manufacturing sectors – instead of overly focused on the finance and consumer sectors)
May 29, 2026
John, The government tall us they are working at pace, yes. Unfortunately they are running around in circles at great and increasing pace, is it any wonder they never move forward?
The loss of jobs and simple job experience which used to happen to all teenagers wishing to engage in paper rounds and Saturday jobs has finished. Newspapers being delivered is a rare thing and mine is delivered by a car driver at 0600 hrs no paper boy anymore.
The Saturday jobs my children did have gone along with so many high street casual opportunities for work.
The small workshops that used to provide early engineering experiences for mostly boys are also gone.
Where exactly are young people going to find early work experiences? This government and previous administrations have been actively deindustrialising Britain.
Where are the actual places these young people can look to find jobs?
May 29, 2026
Health and safety has as much responsibility for the loss of early engineering experiences as cost.
We had two work experience attendees last year and the risk assessment I had to go through was ridiculous for the environment and work they would be engaged in.
Two questions needed to be asked. Will they be operating dangerous machinery and will there always be at least two adults present.
May 29, 2026
Blair, and his former Ministers, don’t give a 4X about the British working class. The Prime Liar doesn’t give a 4X about the UK; he would rather be in Davos or Brussels.
But they do care a great deal about the Labour Party and retaining power and they are very belatedly recognising that their policies are going to destroy it, hence the attempted screeching U-Turn coming from the Blair Foundation.
That’s all it is about.
May 29, 2026
Donna
Yes amazing isn’t it that Blaire outlines all that has gone wrong with the UK, and he sounds like a ratrher old fashion Conservative.
Just shows how far we as a Country have been governed by lefty thinkers and policies for the last 20 years.
May 29, 2026
The abandonment of our youth has been going on for decades. It is a stain on this country and a direct cause of the deteriorating behaviour of young people.
The numbers of course have inflated due to the massive rise in immigration that also has gone on for decades. Politicians pretend otherwise.
May 29, 2026
+1
May 29, 2026
OA
Sadly this is what happens when increasing legislation and taxation makes employing anyone more expensive risky, and difficult.
The fact that many younger people now have a huge over expectation of their value in the real World, when they have little or no experience of work or life, and can still get an income/Benefits for doing nothing, does not help.
May 29, 2026
Most notably under the Tories and the Boris Wave being the biggest.
May 29, 2026
I have only been half following this and was aware there was a report which confirmed that those leaving school and university (many of whom expect to be managers from day one and most of whom have concerns about their mental health if asked to undertake challenging work) found getting employment difficult.
I was unaware that a report into the fact that many youngsters have no jobs has not made recommendations as to how to rectify it.
My two children found getting a Saturday job incredibly difficult due to the rules “protecting” them from exploitation. If others aren’t so persistent then they won’t have a track record to demonstrate to prospective employers.
If you have to pay a part timer the same money as a full timer then there will be fewer entry opportunities for youngsters. With the withdrawal of the under minimum wage it is the same cost to employ a seasoned immigrant than a fresh youngster.
It’s not rocket science but it will be beyond the ken of a left wing PPE graduate with no real life experience beyond local government and unions.
May 29, 2026
The Conservatives did a good job getting unemployment down – the number fell by 1 million people 2010-24. but on the other hand left office with a big rise in people on benefits – that number rose by 5 million people. I assume a large part of this was the catastrophic left-blob inspired policy of lockdown. But it was a massive failure.
May 29, 2026
4m if you exclude pensioners
May 29, 2026
Yes the very people who were 99.99% immune from Covid-under 40s- were denied work or education for a year or more by Sunak/Johnson and Co. Batstaring crazy. Never again.
May 29, 2026
Good morning.
The answer to today’s question is simple.
Because it is easier and cheaper to employ people, usually from abroad (the NHS is a prime example of this) than to train our own.
May 29, 2026
The Labour solution to this will involve more state intervention, more state subsidy, more state-imposed rules. But what is needed is less of all those and less tax.
May 29, 2026
What does the government need to do about it?
Employer’s national insurance – scrap it.
Business rates – put them on a downward trajectory.
National minimum wage – scrap it and let the market finds its level.
Employee rights – let the authorities take the responsibility off self-employed and small business.
Enterprise – convince entrepreneurs they won’t be hit with punitive taxation if successful.
With these measures the British people will feel it’s worth starting businesses and developing them, employing young and old along the way. It won’t happen with the current government and nothing will improve until they are removed.
May 29, 2026
Government getting the wind up because youth unemployment is getting above even EU rates. But youth unemployment rates are going up all over, even in China. Not so much (yet) in Germany where they have a well organised youth training and apprenticeship system – something the UK has never had.
The bottom line is that we don’t have a use for young unskilled labour and our legalistic busybody culture discourages employing the young. This is not just a ‘Labour’ problem, the Tories are just as useless. This is a natural result of our deindustrialisation, automation, migration to a service economy and global competition.
Add to this the HR culture – fitting 10.567012mm round pegs into 10.567013mm round holes – no room for deviation from the specification whatever the talent.
This is the sort of thing the House of Lords should and would have seen coming – but has failed. As have all governments, there really are too many people chasing too few real jobs. So we have to make do with consultants and advisers detailing ever more complex processes and procedures to do anything – it keeps folk off the streets – for a while.
A very very long time ago I had a Saturday job in a clockmenders shop. All kinds of interesting and unsafe machinery and chemicals to play with – all for 10 bob. That entire infrastructure has gone and not been replaced. Whatever happened to joined-up government?
May 29, 2026
Stop immigration. Make it easier for businesses to hire and fire young people. Encourage old-style apprenticeships and on-the-job training for real, practical skills. For instance for nurses as it used to be before the bad idea that they all needed degrees first. Cut by at least half the parasitic university sector removing all the useless degrees leaving young people in enormous debt. Call a halt to the idea that everyone should attend university and those that do not are failures. Bring back technical schools for those not either not academically gifted and/or prefer to go into skilled jobs. Basically, go back to where we were before the Fabian Marxists took over. Socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor.
May 29, 2026
PS : And stop the Net Zero de-industrialisation causing the loss of hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs as these jobs move to China to take advantage of cheap coal energy, slave labour and almost non-existent environmental legislation.
May 29, 2026
I agree 100% this government has betrayed the young with their damaging taxes on business coupled with the highest energy costs
We do not need a report and delay
We need action to unburden businesses SME’s are struggling
This government has failed to crest a business friendly environment for the economy to grow
May 29, 2026
Meddling, manipulating and indoctrination always finishes creating the complete opposite of what was intended. The ‘one size fits all’ socialist psyche of the UK Parliament also does the opposite of what at face value may have been good intentions. The UK Parliament doesn’t ‘think’ and their output in their socialist top to bottom ideology instead of lifting standards and people up, drag the majority down to a shabby low baseline. But the UK Parliament gets to ‘pat themselves on the back’ for a job well done, ego appeased.
As asked yesterday – is the so-called UK Education system that goes out of its way to teach & indoctrinate predominantly Socialism and Entitlement, letting the next generation down? Its not indoctrination, WOKE style schooling that is needed, it’s the ability to think and analyse and that is being drummed out of society by Parliament’s control freakery Socialism. A lot of people, they see the UK Parliament as the leader of attitudes and examples, because they were told they were. The objective appears to bring Society down to the same level as the UK Parliament, the failing at every level Parliament.
As with most things letting the market decide is the only long-term solution.
‘Why have young people been kept waiting for jobs and training?’ Simples the UK Parliament, its education of the masses, its educators, have taught it is about entitlement at some one else’s expense is how things should be run. The basics, therefore the employability is sidelined as is the affordability of bring in the ‘young’ then giving them the education they missed out on so as the can usefully contribute.
May 29, 2026
I occasionally come across some under 30s in Weatherspoons where they work to pay off their student loans. Most of them are tattooed from head to foot and even otherwise quite beautiful young women have huge pieces of metal stuck through their faces. One had a silver pin through her middle nose with balls on it which made me feel queasy. I think this is as a result of brainwashing by subversive teachers. Would anyone working in industry want to take on somewhere look like they had come out of the jungle from some primitive tribe?
May 29, 2026
Someone who.
Phone alteration
May 29, 2026
Risible that Milburn moans about government when he was instrumental in introducing disastrous NHS PFI contracts which kept debts off the balance sheet and was part of the government/party that destroyed the economy in the 2000s.
But surely even he must realise that government cannot possibly create productive jobs as all they can do is create the conditions that will naturally lead to productive jobs, which they currently fail to provide in spades. Vacuous Labour.
May 29, 2026
Take a leaf from the book of National Socialism and set up a work corps and invite them to spend thirty hours per week working on community projects or in educational training – whatever it takes, including the army, only to shake them up on the basis that if you’re forever looking out the same window then you’ll only see the same things. If you don’t agree with this suggestion then don’t ask me anymore.
May 29, 2026
The BBC news was full of statistics showing UK youth unemployment virtually the same as the worst, Romania and noted in passing this accelerated in the last 2 years (crucially bypassing Labour’s direct involvement in creating this crisis through anti growth and restrictive employment law s).
May 29, 2026
when entering into post infants education we entered the primary system which took us through to the
11+ England or Qualifying in Scotland.That decided whether one went into the senior education system
or the junior one.The latter was based on “technical” learning.The upside of this was the feedstock
for apprentice learning.I cannot speak about the girls.
Comprehensive school education is today’s end product