Gordon Brown's British jobs for British workers - Not in the EU Comrade.

Gordon Brown has repeated his call for British jobs for British workers. I want to know who is trying to kid. There are plenty of jobs for British workers, they just don't want to do them. According to his own figures there are 600,000 job vacancies, if you add to that the 1.5m jobs taken up by people born outside the UK in the past 10 years, you have got to wonder why these jobs have not been filled by our own unemployed. A total of 2.1m job vacancies and we have an unemployment problem? If 1.5m people have come here to work, a large number of which are unskilled, then I think we can safely say that getting a job in Britain is not that difficult.

We have even increased the minimum wage, increased family allowance and introduced family tax credits to make it easier to get back to work. Add to that increases in maternity leave, flexible hours, child care schemes, and back to work schemes, and still we have unemployment problems. The fact is the benefit system in this country means you would have to work long and hard to match the money you receive in government handouts. Why bother when you can sit at home?

It emerges that more than half of all jobs created since 1997 have gone to migrant workers who are willing to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to a strange land to earn a living (and good on them). Instead of wasting time and money trying cajole the long term unemployed into work with scheme after air brained scheme, spend the money rooting out the people who are able but not willing to work. Let's stop pussy footing about: if there is work that you can be reasonably expected to do, and you refuse, then you have given up your rights to benefits.

Gordon Brown's British jobs for British workers (which is apparently illegal under EU law) is nothing but a slogan stolen from the BNP. There are jobs available and we need to move away from the P.C position of asking the long term unemployed nicely if they would be so kind to get off their backsides, to a more forceful approach.