Brown's off-balance unemployed

The jobless figures seem to be either at the start of having some kind of public/media impact but this writer has only seen one article that spotted the real kicker - the "employment narrative" (©Lord First Secretary of State etc. Mandelson Inc).


To summarise - the last ten years have seen No 10's press office focus on "more employment than ever before", whilst moving "off balance-sheet" the total claimants of, for example, incapacity-benefit - a staggering 2.7million. For anyone who cared to notice, UK PLC's "unemployment" problem wasn't being properly accounted for.

This "off-balance sheet" mentality is an accountant's ostrich - leg's straight, spread 'em, bend over, head in the sand. A male stripper did this on a Blackpool beach hen night - it didn't end well.

The ostrich stance is pernicious in this government. The Ministry had the pleasure of spending some time in a privatised prison last week with several hundred employees. Once upon a time they'd have been civil servants on our payroll, now they're a statistic proving employment's up, public spending on crime is up and that the civil service payroll is down. Couple that with the private company doing a better job of running the show than the government ever did and everybody's smiling - except all we've really done is shuffle figures into different columns and proven the inability of our government to run a prison - let alone a country.

It also bolsters another thought that's been percolating...

This writer suspects many of the lies spun out over the years are actually only designed to cover up what turns out to be an extremely banal reality. Something so dull the press can't be arsed to report it (and even if they did we couldn't be bothered to read it)...

This government, and pretty much every government post-WW2, are simply crap at the nuts and bolts of management.

Not really a headline is it ? Best stick with "Brown's employment stat lies return to bite him in the arse".