Thursday 2 October 2014

"Securing a better future"

Whoever chose the slogans for the backdrop at the Tory party conference really was reaching out for the votes of people who are prejudiced, terrible at numbers, facts and logic, and who have long forgotten what the Tories actually promised four years ago when they got into government.

The main list was:

* 1.8 million new apprenticeships
* 50,000 families with a home thanks to Help To Buy
* State pension increased by £800
* Net immigration down since its peak under Labour
* A referendum on Europe in 2017


Other pictures show these slogans as well:

* Benefits capped to make work pay
* The deficit cut by over a third


That's almost as cretinous as UKIP's current manifesto: "If you don't want your tax money to be spent on concreting over the Green Belt with social housing to accommodate twenty million Romanians, vote UKIP!"

Rather irritatingly, these slogans seem to work. At least Labour had the decency to just use a completely vacuous slogan on their backdrop ("Labour's plan for Britain's future", WTF?), which everybody can just politely ignore.

7 comments:

Tim Almond said...

One thing they've got right is this apprenticeship thing.

I worked with someone who was on the scheme. Employers get a small payment, plus training paid for (which is one of the things that puts employers off hiring apprentice programmers).

It deals with the whole problem that no-one wants to pay big money for training (because people will go elsewhere with it), so how do you deal with that problem? And even at the cost of professional training, it's still much cheaper than sending people off to do history degrees.

Lola said...

I've tried claiming for our trainee. Because she is a graduate - nil. That is despite the fact that she won't make us any money for at least a year, and she can she bugger off when trained.

Tim Almond said...

Lola,

Oh, there had to be some idiocy in there, didn't there?

But the fundamental idea is sound. I used to reckon it cost about £12K to do serious programmer training. That's a big upfront cost, that most people aren't going to pay.

That said, someone learning C# and then doing their Microsoft certs (cost of exam: £99) would be looked on favourably.

Furor Teutonicus said...

" apprenticeship"" my arse!

They mean YOPS programmes? Where after 9 months dodging the course tutor and hiding in the pub, you get a certificate to say you are a "Qualified welder" when the course does not even MENTION MIG/TIG?

THEN you go to the job center in a queue with 500 welders that have worked for 20 years and more, with upgrade certificates, in the likes of Glasgow dock yards, or whatever, and THEY can not fins a job?

Aye fucking GREAT.

Kj said...

Lola: I'm a new graduate, working for a small firm, and I'm sure I'm a net cost for a while. They partially solve this by the way of quarantine in the employment contract, but other than that it's actually a big risk on their side (which is why I intend to stay loyal as long as it's a good place to work). But I actually agree that it'd be beneficial with a post-graduate apprenticeship grant/deduction as well as for regular trades.

Lola said...

Hj. It was the same when I was in Civil Engineering. Taking on a Graduate Engineer was guaranteed to cost money for the first 6 months and for most of those taken on, for about a year. But, hopefully, you could make a profit from them from then on.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Thanks for all the comments, it appears that there is hot disagreement about the one item on the list where TS raised my hopes a bit.