Here’s the latest brainwave from the thickies that form Brown’s cabinet. If you’re unemployed, on the dole and living in a council house and want to keep it, you’d better find a job:
Up to a million people in social housing, including those on council estates, should be expected to actively seek work as a condition of their tenancy, the new housing minister, Caroline Flint, proposes today.
In her first interview since becoming housing minister, Flint told the Guardian that unemployed tenants should also undertake skills audits.
The pockets of joblessness that exist in council house areas would also be tackled by opening up more jobcentres, some run by the private sector, on the estates themselves.
In one telling paragraph, Flint revealed that “she was surprised by figures showing that more than half of those of working age living in social housing are without paid work – twice the national average”. Until then, she had always thought most unemployed people had second homes in Devon or Cornwall.
Which might explain why she thinks it’s a good idea to make the unemployed homeless as well, because obviously that dramatically enhances your chances on the job market. Employers trust you so much more if you put “no fixed abode” on your cover lettre. And your children will certainly benefit from all that fresh air!
But perhaps Flint can be forgiven for this idiocity; after all she’s the latest in a long line of Nu Labour career politicians and hence cannot be expected to know how the real world works.
UPDATE: what a surprise: Downing Street “distances itself” from Flint’s brainwave.