The Tories are utter scoundrels.

Their adherence to failed economics will be their undoing.

Utter fools. Ditto their followers.

Remember this statement, Mr Cameron:

“Unemployment will fall this year, it will fall next year it will fall every year of this parliament” – David Cameron PM Questions 30 June 2010.

During the past year the number of British nationals working in the UK contracted by around 280k.

During the same period the number of overseas workers working in the UK increased by around 150k.

So 150,000 jobs that could have gone to Britain’s jobless youth went instead to foreigners.

Why?

1. Because the victims of Labour’s education system turn up with (at best) a BITEC in Health & Social Care, but cannot read, write or count properly. Percentages and decimals are Greek to them. They are unemployable.

2. Because workers from abroad turn up to interview smartly dressed and on time. Meanwhile, the victims of Labour’s social and cultural policies turn up late, with rings through their noses and tattoos on their knuckles and haven’t washed their hair for a month. The foreigners speak better, clearer standard English.

Who would you hire?

Labour wrecked the life-chances of a generation by promising MacJobs in the public services to holders of meaningless Health & Social Care qualifications. But that promise was unsustainable.

Now reality bites and employers are looking for a good Maths GCSE as a basic criterion for interview, the kids are screwed.

Thanks, Labour.

@ 3 Flowerpower

“Because the victims of Labour’s education system turn up with (at best) a BITEC in Health & Social Care, but cannot read, write or count properly. Percentages and decimals are Greek to them. They are unemployable. ”

Labour oversaw much of my education, and I learned all about percentages and decimals. I think you have your facts wrong.

“Because workers from abroad turn up to interview smartly dressed and on time. Meanwhile, the victims of Labour’s social and cultural policies turn up late, with rings through their noses and tattoos on their knuckles and haven’t washed their hair for a month. The foreigners speak better, clearer standard English.”

Yeah, because Labour invented people who make bad employees, right? Incidentally, nice work comparing the “best” foreigners to the “worst” locals. I’m sure nobody will notice your clever trick!

Incidentally, falling numbers of native people in the workforce could be explained at least in part by emigration, not immigration.

@ Chaise

Labour oversaw much of my education, and I learned all about percentages and decimals.

Lucky you. Half your contemporaries weren’t so lucky.

Half…FFS… how can you even begin to defend a system that failed so many?

Yesterday the BBC asked an employer what was the best piece of advice he could offer to a young person looking for a job….. Answer: Get a good GCSE in Maths.

Too late for half a generation.

@3

Are they also prone to making bold pronouncements without any kind of supporting evidence?

The worthless bastards.

@ 5 Flowerpower

“Lucky you. Half your contemporaries weren’t so lucky.

Half…FFS… how can you even begin to defend a system that failed so many?”

Have you got a source showing that 50% of people educated under Labour (I presume you mean New Labour) don’t know what percentages and decimals are? I find it hard to believe. If you do, I’d also like a figure for the number of people educated during the Thatcher/Major years who have the same problem.

(Come to think of it, there’ll be a lot of crossover, so a graph of some kind would be better than two data points.)

Chaise

Leftists took over the education system in the 60s/70s, so sure they wreaked havoc under Thatcher/Major too.

Baker began the fightback under Thatcher. To be fair, Blair & Adonis fought back too but eventually their efforts were scuppered by Brown/Balls and the teacher unions.

Even after Labour increased education spending 22% left school functionally illiterate and functionally innumerate and half didn’t get a good Maths GCSE.

a recent paper of youth unemployment (about US, may have relevance for UK)

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201141/201141abs.html

Just like 1979 when the tories ran ” labours not working” posters with 1 million unemployed. Then after they had won quickly ran unemplyment up to 3.5 million.

Tory elites love high unemployment. Keeps the little people in their place. And is great news for Tesco and poundshop who get slave labour.

Good to see Flowerpower (#3) helping to maintain the idiot to normal person on the internet ratio for the idiot team.

I can tell he’s an idiot because he seems blissfully unaware of the nuances of the data and will wield it as a blunt instrument. Namely that the inemployed young people includes those in higher education (most of whom are British) and the “foreign born” individuals include British citizens born in army bases in Germany, Cyprus and so on.

He really must try harder next term. He can’t worm the present incompetent Government out of the situation no matter how hard he tries. It’s their fault.

@ 8 Flowerpower

Soooo…. you’ve changed the comparison from Labour v Tory to lefties v righties, and you haven’t got any sources anyway? Righto…

@3 – Not you, you’re a raving bigot. Simple enough.

Oh, and a maths GCE can be taken in a year quite easily, by an adult. Hardly “too late”, despite your fantasies of a useless generation. I’d suggest you go ahead and do yours.

@ 11 Chris

I can tell he’s an idiot because he seems blissfully unaware of the nuances of the data

Oh dear. Pot calling kettle black, eh?

The data I quoted were from the dataset of the Labour Force Survey published this week on Employment Levels by Nationality.

These look at the numbers of people in-work, not ‘unemployed young people’, so your point about the data including students is irrelevant.

Second, your point that

the “foreign born” individuals include British citizens born in army bases in Germany, Cyprus and so on

might well apply to figures in a table on ‘employment by country of birth’.

But it does NOT apply to the table on ‘employment by nationality’, where the distinction is based on what passport the worker holds.

So, I’m afraid your attempt to be a smartass was an all-round epic FAIL this time, Chris.

Chaise @ 12

you’ve changed the comparison from Labour v Tory to lefties v righties

You’re making a distinction without a difference as far as I’m concerned.

As for sources, Labour’s dismal legacy is made perfectly apparent at the DfE’s performance tables site. Thanks, that is, to the incoming Coalition government which published the figures for those passing/not passing Maths & English for the tail end of the Labour cohort – data Labour suppressed throughout its time in government.

Re: Flowerpower

“But it does NOT apply to the table on ‘employment by nationality’, where the distinction is based on what passport the worker holds.”

So no-one has ever held a passport for a different country to the one they were born in, right?

You really are a tool.

@15 – Well yes, to a raving bigot I’m sure there isn’t. Don’t bother applying here, we have a police of reporting the insane to the local mental health hospital.

And no, what’s being published is massaged worthless “data”. As usual.

@Flowerpower

I think you’ll find that the failed education policies that you ascribe to New Labour are in fact an outgrowth of continuing the policies that started with Kenneth (now Lord) Baker in 1988, which basically boiled education down into a format that would please accountants – box-ticking, bureaucracy and the incredibly destructive “league tables”. True to most Thatcherite policies it was following the “cost of everything, value of nothing” paradigm in that all of a sudden exam results became the end in themselves as opposed to the means to an end (i.e. assessing how much had been learned) they were supposed to be. The temptation to “juke the stats” – to borrow a phrase from The Wire – became irresistable, and was well underway even before Blair ascended to the Labour Party leadership.

The question I’m compelled to ask about your “jobs going to foreigners” angle is “How many of those jobs are of the agricultural work-gang persuasion?”. You know, the ones that include room and board for the duration of their stay and a pay packet that cannot support a single person domiciled in the UK, much less a family.

@ Flowerpower

“You’re making a distinction without a difference as far as I’m concerned.”

I’m not prepared to accept that you can’t tell the difference between a vaguely defined political leaning and a political party. Nope, you’re playing No True Scotsman.

“As for sources, Labour’s dismal legacy is made perfectly apparent at the DfE’s performance tables site. Thanks, that is, to the incoming Coalition government which published the figures for those passing/not passing Maths & English for the tail end of the Labour cohort – data Labour suppressed throughout its time in government.”

I’m not going hunting for YOUR data. Just show me proof of your claim that 50% of people educated under Labour don’t know what a fraction or decimal is. Every time you refuse to post it, it looks more like you’re just lying.

So no-one has ever held a passport for a different country to the one they were born in, right?

If they have a UK passport (regardless of whether they also hold others) then they aren’t considered foreign nationals for the puroses of that table. Fail.

Fuck the Tories on education and all their supporters coming online to tell us how shite Labour where yet never telling us how fucking bad the system was before 1997. You cunts started it. I went to school under a tory education system and it followed the laws of chaos. They hate state education, and the benefits it brings. That’s why they enjoy giving teachers a good whacking.

@Flowerpot

Just checking the facts but aren’t the Conservatives in power with their LibDem chums at the moment.

And aren’t cutting the jobs of the public sector

which in turn cuts the jobs of the suppliers of public service

which in turn cut the jobs of those supply the people employed in the above two categories

So your Eton Blue friends Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne have destroyed potential jobs for hundreds of thousands of young people

and then your friend, ‘make it a large portion’ Pickles, has effectively destroyed the voluntary sector, youth support services etc with his 25% cuts on local authorites – schemes such as Home Start and Sure Start tackling the early years of the kids in the poorest areas are being starved of funds and centres are closing – this is exactly the sort of support that these foreigners that are annoying you get in their home countries.

and the nice Mr Gove is cutting back and cutting educational services and yet at the same time is coming up with one wizard idea after another – each one will cost the taxpayer millions and bog down heads of schools from doing their jobs.

@flowerpot

what is a BITEC? Is it similar to a BTEC, but with the addition of some of your Imagination?

I must say I simply do not recognise any of your assertion, and you cite a curiously narrow example, which might be your own personal experience.

@flowerpot

number of Maths GCSE entrants in June 2011 = 772,944. Pass rate at Grade C or above: 58.8%. I will let you work out the number, as I don’t understand percentages, especially decimal ones. 2010 figures similar ball park

number of Health and Social Care GCSE entrants in June 2011 = 9,187. Pass rate at Grade C or above 51.6%. There was no such exam in 2010.

I regret I could not dig out pass rates on BTEC in Health and Social Care, but you do not distinguish whether it is Level 3, Level 4 or advance diploma. I don’t expect I will need to do this:

Your figures simply do not stack up. Maybe better for you to build a position from evidence, than have a position and look for data that reinforces it?

GCSE data from:
http://www.jcq.org.uk/attachments/published/1589/GCSE%20RESULTS.pdf

BTEC data will be somewhere in:
http://www.edexcel.com/Pages/Home.aspx

@Flowerpower

Troll much?

Paul Odtaa @ 22

And aren’t {Conservatives etc.} cutting the jobs of the public sector ?

There are more people employed in the public sector now (despite the cuts) than were employed in the public sector in every year under Labour from 1997 to…….2008.

Funny, I don’t recall you kicking off about it then.

Your rhetoric makes it seem that the Coalition has taken the public sector back to the stone age. It hasn’t. It’s just taken it back to 2008 levels, which Labour boosters seemed to think was fine and dandy at the time.

@19 Chaise

Just show me proof of your claim that 50% of people educated under Labour don’t know what a fraction or decimal is.

I didn’t make that claim.

Let me clarify:

I said that that for many young UK nationals failing to find work that ‘percentages and decimals were Greek to them.’ (Fractions weren’t mentioned.)

These would most likely be drawn from the 22% I subsequently identified as ‘functionally innumerate’, according to the Sheffield Study.

The 50% figure related to the number who left school without a good Maths GCSE.

You had claimed that you had learned “all about” percentages and decimals, which I took to be your modest and understated way of signaling that you got a respectable qualification in the subject. I said that 50% were not so lucky.

I did not mean to imply, however, that you had been lucky to pass. Merely lucky that the bastards hadn’t screwed up your life chances in the way they screwed up 50% of your contemporaries’ chances. Because without a good Maths GCSE, jobs in the future will be few and poorly paid.

As to the proportion unable to do percentages, decimals, fractions ….whatever – I think we can agree that the 22% functionally innumerate can’t. But not all the 50% would be that challenged. So the true figure is somewhere in between. My best guess – c. 30%.

10 sally wells aid

@ 27 Flowerpower

“Let me clarify [...] The 50% figure related to the number who left school without a good Maths GCSE.”

Fair enough. We got our wires crossed slightly. I find the idea that only 50% of people get a good maths degree believable (although it depends what “good” means… C and above?)

“I did not mean to imply, however, that you had been lucky to pass.”

Wasn’t taken that way, so don’t worry!

“As to the proportion unable to do percentages, decimals, fractions ….whatever – I think we can agree that the 22% functionally innumerate can’t. But not all the 50% would be that challenged. So the true figure is somewhere in between. My best guess – c. 30%.”

Fair enough. But you’d still need to compare that to previous years (or possibly other countries that provide comprehensive education, as you’d hope basic maths would be pretty universal). It all depends on the shape of the bellcurve in this particular area – could 30% naturally be expected to find fractions etc. really difficult, or would this number be a lot smaller with a reasonably competent teacher? I honestly don’t know, and one figure on it’s own doesn’t help much.

Chaise @ 29

The OECD’s PISA study in 2010 had the UK in 28th place in a table of (I think) 65 countries/regions for Maths at age 15 and reported a slippage in the UK’s relative position since 2006.

In terms of point score in Maths, the UK was just under average.

Perhaps significantly, in terms of this thread, Poland was higher.

More worrying in the longer run, maybe, we are way, way behind China and Singapore.