Hazel Blears’ shocking double standards have been exposed again this week with two stories posted within hours of each other on the Manchester Gazette news website.
One of these is the results of her Kids Without Connections programme, a workfare scheme where young people are tricked into working without pay in the mistaken belief it may help them find a real job. Sadly for most of those who took part it was waste of time. Just 16 of the 42 people who worked for free on the scheme have since found jobs or apprentices.
This is a truly dire figure given the nature of the young people involved, who were not just so motivated they were prepared to work for free but had passed any selection procedure for their placements. They would almost certainly have found work just as quickly had they spent the time looking for a job. Despite that Blears once again calls her unpaid work scheme ‘fantastic’.
The gushing response from Blears to this shambles is made even more astonishing by a story posted just a few hours earlier on the same website. This features a report in which a large number of Manchester businesses state they believe unpaid internships for graduates are ‘wholly unacceptable’.
Hazel Blears agrees. Workfare for the middle classes is not fantastic. She thinks that “unpaid internships are unacceptable and that difficult economic conditions are no excuse for exploiting young people in the workplace.”
These quotes seem to have come from Blears’ office within days, if not hours of each other. That she did not even notice her breathtaking double standards tells us everything we need to know about the attitude to unemployed people in the modern Labour Party.
Blears will no doubt be welcoming the poverty pimp jamboree in her home town as annual convention of the welfare-to-work industry opens in Manchester today. Join in the Week of Action Against Workfare today by telling the exploiters what you think on the hashtag for the conference at #w2w2013.
And if you are in Manchester get down to the plush Beetham Tower Hilton Hotel tonight (Tues 9th July) at 7.30 and protest where the parasites will be enjoying a tax payer funded slap up meal.
