Unemployed Youth

John Key this week announced his grand plans to solve the youth unemployment issue. not much there really apart from the normal "blame the young people". The real issue is that in times of reasonably high unemployment young people always fair worst. And so at such times there is always a big push to keep young people in education so that they are more employable. And so that they do not appear on the unemployment statistics.

I am not blaming National or Labour for this current recession. I laugh at people who do. We have done reasonably well in this crisis, and that is due to both the previous and current governments. This crisis was caused overseas by poor government (thanks George W and others) and greed. WE are not immune to the greed however.

However, I have never thought we needed tax cuts. They were a bad idea. What we needed was expenditure to keep jobs going and to create new jobs. We needed big jobs being given to New Zealand companies and not being shipped offshore to Chinese companies. We needed to find ways of ensuring our young people were offered real employment opportunities, and not just fobbed off as this current policy announcement does, or just ignored. Too many young people are leaving this country for Australia, and many will not come back.

In addressing the House of Lords Archbishop Rowan Williams reminded his peers that young people deserve our best. The fact is we are not offering young people our best, and they know it. We have seen the rage of young people let loose across the Middle East, Europe and now the UK. How long will we take our young people for granted, offer them second best. What will be our response when their rage is let loose on our shores?

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