The interviewer is a cretin. You don't grow peanuts in greenhouses.

Assuming you don't count the millions who have become 'permanently disabled' in the last decade or so... or the couple of million time-wasters the government has hired since 1997 to ensure we follow all their stupid new rules.

As anyone who lives in the UK should be well aware of by now, it's much easier to fiddle the figures than to fix a problem.

Damn it, I wish i'd known then what I know now.

I wouldn't deny that long-term unemployed/permanently disabled is a problem but to label the UK as leading Europe in unemployment is down right misleading. I'd wager that employment in the UK has never been higher. Certainly if you want a job enough then you can get one. This can't be said in every country in Europe.

I'll agree with that. Most long term unemployed are now on DLA or carers allowence (I'm not having a go at those genuine people who need to claim this benefit, in my job I've filled in a few forms for people myself), but there are many more who see this as a way round the system, claim for cr***y reasons and could work if they wanted (I've met many more of these).

Now the government are trying to crack down of DLA, all they will do is force the genuine claimers into employment and the frauds will remain as they are.

Firstly, british people (by and large) are Citizens, not Subjects.
They can't even be bothered to do their research on something so basic. I simply can't believe that the UK is anywhere near leading Europe on unemployment.
what a load of garbage.

If the UK really did have an unemployment problem, salaries would not be rising at the rate they have been.

Which salaries are rising? Average salary increases have been around 3%.

If you're talking about specific skilled jobs, it's not as though Joe Chav is going to become a highly skilled worker overnight.

Why? If British unemployment was measured the same way as our competitors in Europe, the figures would be awful.

3% average!! That is per annum?
Methinks UK plc is doing just fine...

Yes, obviously.

Not when RPI is around 5%, real price inflation closer to 10%, taxes have grown substantially, and house prices have been increasing 20+% a year. We've had real wage deflation for the best part of a decade now, hidden by massive borrowing against overpriced houses.

After the housing bubble bursts, the British economy will be in the toilet for a decade or more... if it ever really recovers.

Ahh but that's the problem. House prices.
A 0% salary rise is what you get when there is unemployment problem.

French unemployment is much higher than Britain's - and more to the point so is Canada's.

What a load if crap. Why the hell are people emigrating to the UK from Eastern Europe then? This sort of stuff is written to sell magazines, it's what people want to read about. The problem with the UK is everyone likes to have a good old moan about how terrible everything is, but have no idea how lucky they really are.

So the solution is to leave the UK and head for Canada? Do you really think the employment rate in the UK is worse than the employment rate of immigrants in Canada?? Divorce seems just as common here. Vancouver has a much bigger drug problem than any part of the UK. And drink driving is fully accepted as a cultural norm...

If you're moving to Canada just to escape the UK - you're in for a rough ride...

did the article relate to england or UK as a whole ?

am sure things will catch up here in 20/30 yrs time

until then the grass does appear to be greener in those areas highlighted

I do wonder about this:

"Perhaps most worrying is the alienation of large sections of the country's young people. These are people detached from society, floating free of family, jobs, education and training. NEETs, or young people "not in education, employment or training," now comprise one-fifth (1.2 million) of British 16- to 24-year-olds. In the 16 to 19 age bracket, 11 per cent are classed as NEETS, double the proportion in Germany and France -- and this despite massive spending on "welfare to work" initiatives by Gordon Brown since he declared, on taking up the reins of power in 1997, that "staying home is not an option.

Commentators scratch their heads at how so many young people are able to get away with, literally, doing nothing, when there is apparently enough work for the hundreds of thousands of eastern Europeans who have entered the country since enlargement of the European Union a couple of years ago. One of the most watched shows on television employs police closed-circuit television-camera footage of drunken brawls each weekend in British towns and cities. It is normally the NEETS who are throwing the punches."

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?c..._106150_106150

In the 16-24 yo age group, 20% are not employed, at school or in training?! I wonder what the figures would look like for Canada or the States.

Who do these NEETS mooch off of? No way are my kids living at home past 18 without working or going to school.