A number of years ago we hit a record of around 3 million unemployed. After 7 years of labour government the official number is a low of 1.43 million.
BUT the people on sick benefits is now more than doubled at about 2.8 million, and the number of students has doubled (at the expense of standards, we hear) and they now have to pay, which they didn't before labour got in.

Therefore, the total (I haven't all the details) of people of working age not working is, I think, roughly the same. But the 'wonderful government', by shifting people from one 'embarrasing' benefit to others, plus widening the degree openings (and making sure they were paid for doing so) have managed to make the official figure the majority of UK punters see look very impressive indeed. Even when the newspapers publish the truth (as I quoted from the Daily Mail on Monday) people still forget and say 'Hasn't the labour party done well on unemployment!'
How many sheep do we have here? The figures show all they did was move people around, and now the details are out in the open no one says a word! The Green party offer a solution I see as a stroke of genius (OK, their only one, but a goodie!) and that is to have a choice not to work and get a living wage, roughly what we get now on benefits. The calculations showed the UK could afford this as the genuine seekers of work would suddenly find a bunch of vacancies as others decided to earn less and have a better quality of life. In fact, in Ireland it was actually put in front of parliament, the first time I am aware of it being officially considered.

In reality, there will probably never be many more jobs than there are now in the west. Many employed people now only work 15-20 hours a week, which is the amount required to stop claiming unemployment benefits, so really they should be counted as sharing jobs between two people, than proper long term solutions to unemployment.

Does anyone else agree that making it easier to claim incapacity and simply move numbers to the side it shows a basic element of dishonesty that probably goes across many other areas?