Workfare, or 'Work Unfair'

You know that the Tory ministers - they of the rolling Oxfordshire estates, of trust funds and the Bullingdon Club - are getting desperate about flagship policy when they resort to calling those who oppose them 'snobs'.

The JobHits website posted an ad last week that showed that Tesco are in the process of taking advantage of that same government policy, which is known as Workfare. Under the terms of the policy, people are asked to work for six weeks at Tesco or other similar employers 'to gain work experience', but without being paid or with any guarantee of a job at the end.

The irony of the situation should not be lost on the British public. Until a change of law under the coalition government, taking unpaid work experience could actually result in you losing your benefits. Employment minister Chris Grayling was quick to accuse as 'hypocritical' those same organisations who were attacking the policy, such as the Guardian newspaper and the BBC, who were themselves signing people up for unpaid work experience.

Now, there are a number of problems here.

Yes, the scheme is supposedly voluntary, but a number of people have supposedly been told that unless they participate in the government's Mandatory Work Activity programme, they will lose their right to benefits entirely.

This is hardly the supportive approach that will be required to help those who have been out of work for long periods to regain their self-confidence. Also, it must be a terrifying prospect for those disabled people who face virtually-discredited ATOS disability evaluations to think that as well as being accused of being malingerers, they might be forced from their sick beds to work for three months in a work placement without pay or left to starve.

Tesco are trying to fly below the radar of angry opposition, claiming they never would have become involved with the scheme if it had been mandatory. The question I would ask them is: why get involved at all? Tesco face flak regularly from a number of quarters; they are supposedly anti-union, their contracts ban workers from discussing their terms and conditions with others and their minimum wage contracts mean that workers regularly require state benefit top-ups just to allow them to survive.

Regardless of your feelings about them, it should be remembered that Tesco are a fabulously successful business and a UK business success story on the world stage. They are reputedly the second biggest supermarket chain in the world based on total profits earned but they cannot avoid the negative PR that comes with their position.

Tesco are seeing falling market share in the UK and that is affecting their profit figures, but there is no reason why they cannot afford to pay the Workfare staff an equivalent wage to their other workers. More to the point, there is no reason why they cannot pay their current staff a living wage, and seeing as their position on the matter of their low wages is uniformly 'we comply with minimum wage legislation', it is clear that this will have to be the route by which a responsible government forces their hand. Of course, to do so would see unemployment jump again, and we know that this will not be a position that our government adopts. What is clear that is the taxpayer should certainly not be subsidising a successful business by paying people benefits so Tesco gets their labour for free.

And I'm sick of making this point, but only because nothing ever moves on the issue - why oh why is the coalition government not attacking financial sector speculators with the same iron fist it reserves exclusively for the poor and downtrodden? Whey are we not pushing for the financial transaction tax that seemingly everyone else in Europe wants to put in place but us? The only reason that our government is against it can surely be that those same irresponsible millionaires who were shored up by successive failing governments now stand ready to defend the government that looks after their interests.

That same government also has to accept responsibility for the unemployment figures in the first place. The private sector has not stood up and filled the gap left by hundreds of thousands of public sector redundancies. Regardless of your feelings about the public sector, would you rather they were working for you or being paid benefits for doing nothing? Perhaps the decision to force them to do non-jobs for free in Tesco is a logical continuation of the government's chronic dislike of public sector employment. Regardless, that doesn't mean that it's a policy that makes sense.

Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

I'm going to be a dissenting voice today. It's okay to have a blog and give people my opinions, but realistically if I don't want this page to become a pro-Labourite Tory-bashing page, I have to present an alternative viewpoint where I see one.

Today, the point I will be considering is this: I frequently get upset by the half-truths and absolute garbage that is fed to the British people by such execrable rags as the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. However, it is reasonable to expect that the liberal press will take every opportunity to push forward their own agenda and it stands to reason that their tactics will be the same as those newspapers I mentioned before. By separating fact from conjecture on the anti-government side of the debate, we benefit from strengthening our arguments.

The story that prompted this thought process was written by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian and can be found here. I won't discuss the story at length, except to say that it focuses on the many ways in which projected growth in the economy has failed to meet expectations. However, if I blindly accept this as the truth, I am no better than those Daily Mail readers who accept that immigration is the cause of all the problems in the UK.

How does one person measure the true story of fiscal strength in the UK? Commodity prices have certainly increased, based on the increased price of my weekly shop. But inflation will do that, and we have become so used to inflation at ridiculously- low levels in the UK that this could just be part of the normal rise-and-fall of the economic cycle. Yes, consumer confidence certainly appears to be low and spending on luxury items has decreased. But is this just good sense on the part of the informed consumer, who responds warily to the word 'recession' by paying off debts rather than seeking to incur more?

There are many different viewpoints on the above and based on my experience of those so-called experts that you see on the television and read in the news, they are no better informed than most of the rest of us. This may not even be such a bad thing. More power to your elbow if you take the time to learn about your own crisis, because you are better prepared to deal with it when you are working from a position of genuine knowledge and understanding.

When the government first proposed cuts to public sector jobs, I was the first person on my feet opposing the move. Now, you can argue that public sector cuts are necessary or not, but the pertinent fact for me is that I am a public sector worker and my first instinct is to defend my job. David Cameron then said that people who had lost their jobs in the public sector would be easily re-employed as a result of the thousands of jobs that would be created by the private sector. Rubbish, scores of voices boomed, my own among them. I'm working from a gut instinct that the private sector is suffering terribly from the cuts in the same way that the public sector is. But how do I know? I see no evidence to suggest the economic growth that would be necessary for such job creation to begin, but how can I be sure which way the wind will blow tomorrow? Who would I work for if I didn't work for the public? Tesco? Would that even be such a bad thing? I might have more responsibility, earn more, make them a better supermarket for my being there.

So, there are simply too many unknowns, and watching George Osborne with his hand on the tiller of the HMS Future Prosperity, I am hoping that his view is clearer than mine. Sadly, I suspect that that is not the case. Gambling with your own future is fine, especially when if everything goes wrong, you will have millions in a trust fund to fall back on. For those of us who do not have such a safety net, we may become ever more reliant upon our quick wits and fate dealing us a good hand.

Food for Thought

Ah, so many things to write about...a general election campaign thrown wide open by a stylish podium performance from a liberal, the entire UK airspace frozen for days by an Icelandic volcano, the country's first case of corporate manslaughter which could see directors being imprisoned for negligence. I wonder how I ever coped without a blog. Presumably I just used to read about these things and have private thoughts.

No, it's no good. I want to talk about all those things but the sky is blue, the sun is shining and I just feel too good to wax lyrical about something so thoroughly indigestable on a Saturday morning. Instead, I'm going to talk about something very close to my heart. I refer, of course, to TV chefs.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the UK is obsessed with celebrity chefs. It goes far beyond simply watching their television programmes and buying their cookbooks. These days they can be seen dating models, backing political figures and fronting national campaigns about healthy eating. The most famous and loudmouthed ones are even exported so they can be famous and loudmouthed in other countries.

I am no different from anyone else in this regard. Indeed, such is my love of cooking and food in general that I am far more interested in the regular comings and goings of TV chefs than I am in, say, Premiership footballers. I recently came up with the idea of filming myself in my kitchen, a ten minute skit of me messing around with chicken breasts and chili flakes, and posting it on FoodTube. After suggesting the idea on Facebook, I received 15 comments (some complimentary, some less so) in as many minutes.

Regular readers of this blog will know my fondness for the Hairy Bikers, but I regard them (perhaps unfairly) as enthusiastic amateurs, much like myself. I like to watch Nigella Lawson and Sophie Dahl for obvious reasons, and while I like their programmes I do not regard them as chefs in the truest sense. Who then, are the UK's finest for me?

Four names come to mind...I have a favourite, but I'm not going to say which. Rankings are for football teams and schools under Labour governments. Here then are the UK's four best TV chefs and why...



Love him or hate him, I'm a huge fan of Gordon Ramsey. He is a talented and passionate chef with an excellent grasp of fundamentals. It's this grasp of detail that makes Kitchen Nightmares such a compelling show. Gordon is the only chef who could march through a menu of goujons and jus and yell, 'WHERE'S THE FUCKING PIE?!' It's a shame, all considered, that he is more famous for being rude than for his ability as a chef - but perhaps he's happy with that...

Padstow's Rick Stein has made his name primarily as a seafood chef, and his enthusiasm for the genre is intriguing at a time when the UK seems to be very much out of love with fish. As a sushi fan, I was always going to love the multi-course sushi meal that he cooked for the Japanese Ambassador but perhaps what attracts me most to his shows is the way that they always make me think of blue skies and warm evenings, simple dishes cooked to perfection and enjoyed in good company. At his best, Rick reminds me why I like food so much.

Finding a category all of his own, Heston Blumenthal is more food scientist than chef, but anyone who can charge people to eat snail porridge and egg'n'bacon ice cream has got to have something about them. Having survived rumours that his Fat Duck restaurant poisoned as many as 400 people in 2009, Heston remains charismatic, innovative and totally bonkers. The thing I love most about him is the way that he looks for influences for his show and pushes borders at every opportunity. The Christmas idea was excellent, the Hansel & Gretel house was inspired, but for me the edible garden was the pinnacle. Genius.

Heading the list of lifestyles I would love to emulate, the entirely self-sufficient Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is another chef who has become synonymous with the part of the world in which he lives. He is the owner of River Cottage in a small corner of Devon and as well as growing his own fruit and veg, making his own cheese and cider, he is probably Britain's most famous smallholder, champion of the allotment and organically-grown produce. He even single-handedly stormed a Tesco AGM and tried to get shareholders to change the company's chicken farming processes. If I had a few million behind me, I would be Hugh.

Who's your favourite?