No Money, Mo' Problems

The Labour Party yesterday announced that they were proposing to axe unemployment benefits to the under-25s. A paper will soon be published by the Institute of Public Policy Research (fun guys) that suggests that only those who are in “purposeful” training or are “intensively” looking for work would be able to claim.

What’s more, those whose parents earn more than £25,000 will be unable to claim. This seemingly must mean if you have been orphaned or are estranged from your parents or just don’t like them and have been forced out of their home, you will not be able to apply for support from your government. Those in power obviously do not know or have felt the shame and discomfort of taking hand-outs from ones parents when others earn good money from the jobs. God forbid you would not want to grab with both hands off your mam and dad at the age of 25.

Rachel Reeves, shadow work and pensions secretary, is said to be considering the newly-suggested “youth allowance” to be means-tested. Firstly, the word “youth” is awful and should be eradicated from all official documents, visions of rat-faced hoodlums and Dickensian rickets-sufferers do not help matters. The people applying for this benefit are probably going to be new graduates or those who actually need it. No one is going to put themselves through means testing for funsies. Means testing is technically known to those who have experienced it before as an ‘utter ball-ache’, laden with bureaucratic inaccuracies, reductionist criteria and huge presumptions on the applicant. I mean how do you measure the "intensity" of your job search? Tallying up recurring stress dreams? Counting the number of ulcers? Noting how often the bailiffs get called?

This new proposal is ultimately going to protect Labour votes. The votes of the elderly who see the younger generation as a group that they do not empathise with and thus do not sympathise with. Universal Winter Fuel Allowance will undoubtedly be kept on, because Labour must keep those votes alive. Literally.

But they don’t really need to pull this stunt. What under-25 would vote for either branch of the coalition, who coldly increased university fees up to the point where people had to give up on their university dream to get a job that they didn’t want? A government who did not think of the generation who went out in search of a job, in a recession, where no mindful company would hire an inexperienced person albeit one with a tungsten-strength work ethic and an enthusiasm to make the best out of an unwelcome situation.

There seems to be no escape, however, as the Conservatives have also been discussing cutting all benefits to the under-25s , who should be either earning or learning and not taking money from the government. It’s very easy for these politicians to dole out these ideas when they have never been in the situation of not having the necessary contacts to get a job in the first place.

Ed Miliband’s first foray into employment was as a researcher for Channel 4’s A Week in Politics, an area that his famous Marxist father Ralph knew all about. Nick Clegg’s first internship after uni was at the United Trust Bank, where his father was chairman. David Cameron got his last job outside of politics at TV firm Carlton after his mother-in-law had a word with the boss. So why can’t your parents help out when times are hard? The answer is probably that times have never been that easy to begin with.