More FakeCharity Fun

The Metro did a brief summary of this press release, but as ever, there's a lot more fun to be had with the BBC's version:

Hull is the British city with the highest rate of youth unemployment, a study has said, with 9.85% of under-25s claiming jobless benefits in May. Sunderland had the second worst rate of 9.45% with Barnsley third at 9.13%, the Centre for Cities research group(1) said...

The Centre for Cities predicted that the number of long-term unemployed young people would rise from 130,000 in May 2009 to 350,000 by December 2011. The figures for the number of long-term unemployed people are based on the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) figures(2), instead of the number of people claiming benefits...

It said that the government's Future Jobs Fund, which aims to create 150,000 jobs for young people by 2011, would not be enough... "So it will need to be targeted very carefully on those young people in cities that have seen a recent rise in unemployment due to the recession."(3)

The Future Jobs Fund is £1bn that local authorities, companies and other organisations can bid for to fund the creation of jobs for young people who have been out of work for a year or more. At least 50,000 of the jobs created are supposed to be in unemployment hotspots. The deadline for the first round of bids for the fund is 30 June.(4)

(1) And who are 'The Centre For Cities'? Ah ... an offshoot of everybody's fakecharity, the Institute for Public Policy Research.

They're not funded directly by the taxpayer, but by Sainsbury's, who seem to be exercising a lot of influence over government policy for relatively little cash cost, see e.g. point 2 here, and their involvement with other fakecharities such as We Need To Talk, scroll down to the footer of their website.

Remember also that "Sainsbury's came top overall for the second time in a row, gaining praise for its progress on labelling and nutrition, and scoring highly on customer information." in a survey carried out by yet another fakecharity, The National Consumer Council.

(2) "The figures for the number of long-term unemployed people are based on the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) figures". IIRC, the ILO are a pretty reliable lot, but what this means it that the CFC's research consisted of sticking a ruler on an existing chart and extrapolating a bit.

(3) The BBC being the BBC, their template is to start off an article by referring to some 'research' carried out by a 'charity', just to soften up the audience for a plu for some government scheme or other, in this case 'the Future Jobs Fund'. Note carefully the use of the word 'targetted'.

(4) As to the last paragraph, am I just being overly suspicious, or is Sainsbury's angling for some subsidies for 'creating' new jobs? Does Sainsbury's have a lot of supermarkets in the towns and cities highlighted in the report? As we well know, supermarkets are incredibly flexible employers and can create jobs at will, for example by splitting up a job into two part time ones, or taking on 'trainees' (funded by the FJF, no doubt) instead of replacing leavers in the normal course of business.

If we apply the patented DBC Reed Test, the report doesn't mention Northampton, so is probably completely made up.