Autumn statement

No learning a trade in a floor cleaning apprenticeship , unless I have missed job adverts for - qualified floor cleaner required. Wonder which colleges run floor cleaning lectures , are they two, three or four years courses ?

At one time parents had to pay for their offspring to take up an apprenticeship.

Spelling!!!!!!

Not an apprentiship in the accepted sense though

I certaintly do not agree that anyone should work for apprentices pay to train to wash a floor
Well, I can't agree with that.
Learning how to wash a floor properly, make the tea for everyone, doing the menial tasks as well as learning a trade thoroughly is a good learning curve. Many a good top executive started at the bottom.

apprenticeships in shelf stacking
That was me when the DGC were small! Takes me back!
Hauling huge trolleys full of tins of dog meat was the worst, but as soon as the 'apprenticeship' was completed you could go on to biscuits or something light!

I worked alongside teachers, legal assistants, secretaries, sixth formers, people going through the ranks of the supermarket etc
Of course, most of us progressed on to something else when circumstances changed or jobs became available, which left the shelf stacking jobs vacant for the next 'apprentices'.

Continue to think that anniebach if it pleases you.Guilty muddle or guilty middle, a phrase made up by somebody you obviously admire, and now you use it in every other post .It's a bit cringeworthy actually.

But it brings down unemployment Jen, that people can't live on the wages isn't important , the guilty muddle read the headlines and are content

"Living Wage Week, an annual event coordinated by the charity and community organisers Citizens UK, is launched with new research on Sunday that reveals that almost six million people (23% of the working population) are paid less than the living wage. This is nearly half a million more than last year and an increase for the third year in a row – up from 21% in 2013 and 22% in 2014. The living wage is not to be confused with the lower-rate “national living wage” announced by Osborne in his summer budget."

There might be more people in work, but having nearly half a million more than last year earning less than the living wage is quite a startling statistic.

Perhaps, as Osborne has said he wants a living wage, we should bombard his office with statistics like that. I'm sure he's been told about the figures, but perhaps more people telling him it's not right would help.
As would signing the living wage foundation pledge.

fullfact.org/factcheck/crime/police_numbers_1970s-47636

It'll be fun if these cuts are made. Police chiefs are threatening to sue the home office if it happens.

www.livingwagemovement.org/pledge/

For anyone who wants to pledge to help the living wage movement.

The Living wage went up to £8.25 yesterday, but the chancellor who cares about the working people wants it to start at £7.20 next April. It's already £9.40 for those working in London.

Anniebach, I do not think the job losses for all those steel workers are included yet in the unemployment figures.

Who mentioned menial jobs ? I don't agree that working on a zero hour contract not knowing week after week if you will get four days work or four hours work is better than sitting at home on benefits and I certaintly do not agree that anyone should work for apprentices pay to train to wash a floor

substitute empathy for fair it amounts to the same thing. You must excuse me if I think Osborne's grasp of the economy is abysmal. He has not achieved a single objective he set himself.
The point is the pale Chancellor hits those hard working poor - it isn't about those whom he sees as shirkers any more he has ground them into the ground, now he has nowhere else to go so he has started on the poor workers - when he has finished with them where else? NHS? BBC? Police?
Care homes? Local authorities including Tories are telling him the cuts are unsustainable.

A job is better than sitting at home and being on benefits ( better for the country too!) Somebody has to do what are called 'menial' jobs, they are just as essential as any other.

Closing of steel works yet unemployment has gone down ?

Any reduction in unemployment is people forced to working on the minimum wage and zero hour contracts, apprenticeships in shelf stacking and floor cleaning

Unemployment has gone down, we have always had homeless people ( the reasons are complex) we have always had underfunded mental health( which should have been addressed in 'the good times' and never was) and doctors may take to the streets, but that is because they have a problem with working at weekends, their pay will not be cut, and their overall hours will not be affected.

I live in a flood area; the whole of my village nearly flooded a few years ago because something had been badly maintained [a valve or pump or something]. A couple more inches and the water would have been over the flood bank. I find the threat of cut backs in that area very worrying.

Unemployment, homelessness, massively under funded mental health services, some police chiefs threatening to sue over cut backs, doctors demonstrating on the streets, the widening devide between rich and poor are smaller pictures which he just needs reminding about !

Oh, I thought it was all your own work!
I don't worry if he spends time 'empathising' ( very over used word that) with the poor, just as long as he gets the message to be fair about the cuts.
I think he could well be a very good Chancellor, he already understands the big picture, economically, and just needs reminding sometimes about the smaller one.

The emergence of the pale Chancellor with his new slim line and hairstyle does nothing to give me any confidence. I still remember his past and try as I might to believe that he cares for the less fortunate when I look at

The party in Corfu with Rothschild, Mandlezxon and Deripaska
The Bullingdon club
The booing at the Paralympics
The omnishambles in 2012 and pasty tax
Flipping his home in the expences scandal-
The family firm has paid no corporation tax for the past 7 years.

How can the poor trust him? I hope I am wrong, that he really does empathise with the sick, inadequate, poor, burdensome, or cost-ineffective. Nothing in his past convinces me that is the case.
With thanks to Michele Hanson for content of this post.

Simply because the tax credits cuts were the wrong thing to do, does not mean that every cut is wrong, money has to come from somewhere( be nice if it grew on trees) so some services will have to be nipped and tucked .
I do realise that Labour has always chucked money at everything in the past ( even when it was the wrong thing to do) but even Labour, had it got into power last time around would have to make cuts.That was Labour under Miliband, who knows what wild stuff Corbyn would dream up for the future.