Working things out

Thanks so much for the unexpected response to yesterday's. I was especially taken aback to find that blipcentral had tweeted and facebooked it. I can't possibly follow that so here's a downer:

'Today, Britons would work an extra 20m hours if they could only get them. That's equivalent to putting another half a million on last month's unemployment total, to take it over 3 million. Had this hidden unemployment been taken into account in the headline figures ... the jobless rate at the end of last year would have been not 8%, but 10%...

'The face of this depression (because that's what it really is, and we should stop fannying around with euphemisms) is the shopworker on a zero-hours contract, the part-timer who can't go full-time, the self-employed consultant whose phone hasn't rung for days. Nominally, these people are in work; in reality, they don't consider that they have a working income...

'Chronic joblessness leads to mental illness, broken marriages and even suicides; but what's striking ... is that the impact of forced underemployment is almost as corrosive of one's sense of wellbeing.'
From today's Guardian

On Friday I went to the leaving drinks for an ex-colleague. I thought he'd chosen to leave but discovered he'd been made redundant. I thought I might be able to pick up some leads for work I could do but found that two-thirds of the bright, hard-working, willing people there were either themselves applying for jobs or were 'working freelance' to hide CV gaps. I thought things were better in Oxford than elsewhere - and they are.

I spent some time in this place today and found out how much more punitive it is since last October's rule changes. I can't work out how punishing those who want to work creates more employment. Any idea?