It concerns a private sector that is not expected to provide good jobs, decent pay, its fair share of tax
…
One of the central issues in Britain – running through everything from Brexit to last week’s budget – is how to get businesses to earn the licence granted to them by the rest of society.
…
In desperation, Wilkes and Doherty texted everyone in their contacts book to help Colin – councillors, business people, charity groups. Within hours, Dawn Tolcher, an executive from local football team Tranmere Rovers, was in touch: she could apply for public funding for an apprenticeship for Colin, then put him on secondment to Neo.
…
And they all struck it lucky with Tolcher. Tranmere Rovers could have done what so many other companies do with the billions taxpayers spend on apprenticeship training: game the system and use it as a source of bargain-basement, publicly subsidised labour.
(Erm, isn’t that what they did?)
….
I wanted you to hear Colin’s story because it cheers me up. But also because it gives some idea of what can be done when businesses don’t rip off the public, bilk the tax collectors or exploit the staff – and actually pay their way as part of society.
You see the bit running through there about companies paying their tax?
Seems to make a loss and pay not tax most years, except when it does something like sell off the training ground.
Didn’t Chakrabortty bother to check?
It concerns a private sector that is not expected to provide good jobs, decent pay, its fair share of tax
All secondary or tertiary: does it provide a service that people want or need at a price they can afford? If so, then fuck the rest.
“Didn’t Chakrabortty bother to check?”
This is a guy who thinks that a company’s only contribution to society is through tax – to pay for the ‘license granted them’.
Not only does he confuse ‘government’ with ‘society’, he thinks trade is something you should have to ask permission for and that tax is all that companies are good for.
Someone that intellectually lightweight is not going to bother to do things like ‘check facts’ as that might hurt his narrative.
Nothing about what skills Colin had managed to acquire by the fairly ripe age of 25? He’s managed to come through at least 11 years, probably more, of the UK education system with what?
And never mind that that’s not the point of an apprenticeship. What’s it in? Where’s the education component? I’d like to see somebody getting an “Appenticeship in Charity Shop Assistantship” past the system.
I wonder what Tranmere’s legal obligations are and how much they are flouting them?
“He’s even back with his girlfriend, Ivett. She’s now working at a local Wetherspoon’s, and a couple of months ago they moved into their first proper home together, let out by a local housing association. Where the two once struggled to see past the end of the week, now they’re looking at staying here for a couple of years. Colin’s going to apply for a passport so they can visit Ivett’s folks in Hungary. Once the lack of money meant the couple constantly bickered over the tiniest of things; now there’s talk of starting a family.”
/facepalm
“what can be done when businesses don’t rip off the public, bilk the tax collectors or exploit the staff”
From the looks of it they have claimed a government apprenticeship subsidy, and (I think, someone correct me if this is wrong) are paying him less than the standard minimum wage because he’s an apprentice, which also reduces the tax due on his wages, and then they’ve got round the terms of that apprenticeship so that Colin can do something else.
It sounds he is praising this company for doing exactly what he condemns in others.
Richard +1.
Chkarobotty lays out a number of manipulations of the scheme, and donations to his chosen example person, and then suggests that this malpractice is the ideal way to work.
Idiot.
I particularly liked the bit Chakrabortty probably didn’t mean, about how government totally failed, while private enterprise succeeded in achieving his aims by fiddling the system.
Tranmere Rovers keep making a loss and getting relegated. Their fans ( paying customers) might feel the club’s social responsibility should include something to do with them.
Hey ho.
O/T, but still on the subject of idiots….
I fear Richard Murphy is going to be a “thing” in the unfolding car crash north of the border. I’m seeing a worrying number of DPWs quoting him admiringly, including many of our high-quality SNP elected members.
This will pose a dilemma for Tim. I know he’s keen for us to fuck off so letting Murph run riot will help that cause, but will he be able to let Murph’s insanity go unremarked on?
(Just checking in to say hello – been ill for a few months so have been staying away from commenting on blogs etc. Unlikely to be here much in the next few months as I’m going to be concentrating on trying to beat down the DPWs on other forums. Hope everyone’s doing ok and enjoying all the fun and games around the world)
‘a jobcentre that was just plain useless.’
He got that bit almost right, they are worse than just plain useless they are an expensive white elephant that have no jobs.
The ‘Employment Exchange’ used to personally help you find work, then came the Jobcentre where they had jobs on boards and you helped yourself.
Now they have Jobcentre Plus which is where the people who couldn’t get jobs as Hi-Vis airport nazis are employed.
Their only task is to stop people from getting a miserable pittance for not jumping through the correct (and ever changing) hoops in the (arbitrarily) correct order at the allotted times.
If ‘Something Must Be Done’ then close Jobcentre Plus and sack all the staff, that’s Something, Do That.
Welcome back GD and good to hear you beat the illness.
What are DPWs?
Demented Porridge Wogs.
That sounds like fraud. There’s some requirements when filling out the paperwork for an apprentice regarding what training will be provided to get the money.
The charity that helped Colin with food and got him his previous job has now given him his job looking after their storage and handing out flyers. All very well but he’s still reliant on charity isn’t he? Not my idea of an uplifting success story.
What the guessing that in 13 months time when Colin’s ‘apprenticeship’ comes to an end that he’ll have zero savings, quite possibly debts, probably a child, or one on the way, be no more employable than he is now, and facing destitution again? With added child support payments to boot most likely as his girlfriend will have left him again when the £££ runs out?
Glendorran
Greetings and good to hear you are getting better.
I too will probably largely disappear from here soon once more to spend time commenting against independence on the Scotsman.
So fucked off by this so soon after 2014. Also have to start making contingency plans
‘One of the central issues in Britain is how to get businesses to earn the licence granted to them by the rest of society.’
This is Elizabeth Warren’s schtick. “You didn’t make that!”
‘I want you to meet this 25-year-old because his tale shows you what can be done to fix both a life and an economy.’
Fix? ‘just above the minimum wage’ fixes what?
Chakrabortty is your basic communist. Everything would be just fine if the state ran everything. Like they run the jobcentre (‘which is useless’). In the face of government failure, he wants MORE government.
‘Colin was lodging nearby and bouncing between zero-hours work and benefits.’
Well, then, companies should stop giving ‘zero-hours’ work. Chakrabortty doesn’t get it that in the real world, if you fight zero-hours work, you end up with zero hours of work, not a full time job.
Welcome back, GlenDorran. You’ve been missed around here!
BraveFart – I feel your pain. If Mrs May is smart (ha ha ha, right?) she’ll do one of two things:
* Call an independence referendum in 6 weeks or whatever the minimum time period is. No fannying about with years of uncertainty casting a pall over the entire UK. Cameron made a mistake allowing the SNP to dictate the timing of the first referendum.
Or
* Rule it out completely and unequivocally.
It’s very cheeky of Wee Angela Krankel to demand a neverendum five minutes after the last one, but if they had self awareness or more restraint than the average toddler in a sweet shop, they wouldn’t be the SNP.
GlenDorran – keep your chin up, mate.
As an ethnic minority makeweight, and an intellectually lightweight one at that, the idiot pronouncements of Checkyourbotty can safely be ignored.
Hallowed Be,
“The charity that helped Colin with food and got him his previous job has now given him his job looking after their storage and handing out flyers. All very well but he’s still reliant on charity isn’t he? Not my idea of an uplifting success story.”
They’ve given him a job? No, we, the taxpayers have via some chicanery.
I rage against this stuff because it’s all bullshit. I’ve looked on the apprenticeships website and I’d say 3/4 of them are just low grade jobs. OK, you need some training to make a pizza in Domino’s but it’s hardly what we think of as an apprenticeship.
Making people better off, really better off is about marketable skills and experience. Subsidising crappy jobs is just burning money.
The Inimitable Steve,
“Call an independence referendum in 6 weeks or whatever the minimum time period is. No fannying about with years of uncertainty casting a pall over the entire UK. Cameron made a mistake allowing the SNP to dictate the timing of the first referendum.”
Actually, no.
The SNP are fucked. They’re crap in government, like all socialists. The longer they carry on, the more WJK will see her approval rating slide.
On the other hand, every day is more and more news that actually, Brexit’s going to be fine. Ruth Davidson’s approval rating keeps on rising.
If they couldn’t win last time, they have no hope this time. It’s actually a desperate way to hang on, and the longer they leave it, the worse the result. A crushing loss would bury the SNP.
BiW – good point, but I’d rather we didn’t have this hanging over our negotiators in Europe.
They’ll have enough temptation to backslide as it is. It’d also be a free gift to the EU, and they’d be mad not to capitalise on the uncertainty given it’s in the EU’s institutional interest to make exiting the Union look as painful as possible.
And in the meantime, it’s bad news for Scottish business and any UK business dealing with Scotland.
It’s usually better to take the initiative and make your opponents react to you, rather than the other way around. If there is to be another referendum, calling the SNP’s bluff would be my preference. Put a bit of stick about. Make em jump.
I’m with TIS. Give her what she wants, only now. Pass legislation enabling a referendum at some point in the next 3-6 months (whatever is practically and legally viable) and say ‘OK, now go and hold it if you want.’ Which the last thing Sturgeon wants. She wants to be able to blame Brexit and the Tories and Westminster for everything for another 2 years, hoping that something will turn up and switch the polls to OUT. Or indeed not hold the vote at all, and somehow put the blame for that on Westminster too.
No, call her bluff, and give it to her hard, now. She can’t bottle it, she’ll be toast if she does.
For a professional Chakrabortty is a tedious writer.
Calling this an apprenticeship is an insult to Colin and those doing genuine apprenticeships. I can see an apprenticeship in logistics being very useful, but that would cover a damn site more than managing a small warehouse, as logistics is the key to most of modern life.
As a subsidised make work scheme it may turn out useful as it gives Colin a chance to build up some work experience and show to future employers that he can get out of bed and dress himself. If Colin is a victim of anything it is the minimum wage which has prevented similar roles opening up in the unsubsidised economy.
Proper apprenticeships are what my plumber used to do – take a kid on, pay him to cut and bend pipes, crawl through holes and make the tea, and pay his college fees to get a City & Guilds and make sure he comes out at the other end as an engineer – not just a fitter. Every year I had my gas safety inspection done he had a different lad or lass with him being (gently) forced to understand what he/she was doing. Stuff like (made up) “we need to measure burn per minute, but we’re going to do it for 100 seconds, why is that a good idea?” “‘cos dividing by 100 is easier than dividing by 60”. etc.
So a 25 year old with limited / no experience gets given something to do – it does not sound like an apprenticeship, more like YTS – and when that finishes he’ll do what?
Temp agencies are great at getting you work you are skilled for. Not so many places want unskilled labour but there are some willing to take a chance.
Jobcentre – a bunch of temp agency jobs advertised there. Though does any company want an essentially unskilled 25 year old? Its a risk.
In 13 months time he’ll be accessing the same jobcentre, the same temp agencies etc.
Will he be better off then?
BiW and Martin
yes YTS. Not a bad thing just not a full apprenticeship. Being in work for a year improves significantly the liklihood of staying in full time afterwards, but not because it transforms you from unskilled to skilled. Its just that getting up and going to work each day becomes a habit and employers know that employees without that recent discipline are more hassle.
@ GlenDorran
Sorry to hear you’ve been ill – especially ‘cos if *you* can’t use your brain to achieve mind over matter, who can? Stay well.