Mr Grayling!

Mr Grayling...(to paraphrase Ozzy Osbourne!) has written in the Guardian. Here's my response to thsi awful individual's free piece of propaganda.

But your evaluation of the work experience scheme is a great injustice to the young people who are benefiting from it.

This is grandstanding; a far greater injustice is forcing people, in lieu of withdrawal of their only source of income, to work somewhere they have no say in for no wage. How is that acceptable? You have substituted opportunity for competition; forcing people to fight like hungry jackals over increasingly scarce scraps thrown by deign of the master's will from the capitalist's banquet table. Money for you and the welfare provider pimps, such as A4E, nothing for the worker. How is forcing a graduate to work at Poundland anything other than a scandalous waste of their education (and thus taxpayer money)? How is forcing increasing numbers of the unemployed into the same merry go round of menial drudgery ever going to help them? Will you give them work experience in the House of Parliament, sir? Or are such jobs only for the scions of the rich who get to bid on positions in the city? (Warning link to the Daily Fail).

The scheme is designed to get young, unemployed people into the workplace for up to eight weeks of work experience.

Why does a position of low skill such as shelf stacking require eight weeks worth of unpaid experience? How will that give them an edge against their peers who are forced into the same situation? You are simply lowering the standards for competition and thus profit. Disgraceful.

The early results have been encouraging. More than half of those who enter the scheme are off benefits within three months, and many are staying on with the same employers.

So the ends justify the means? If this is true, why aren't these positions advertised as proper jobs in the first place for people to apply and start work in without the charade of what is simply indentured servitude. Why the facade, they the jumping through hoops for the sole benefit of employers?

Of course these people are off benefits, because they are not considered unemployed while on these schemes.

What if someone doesn't want to go to POundland for no wage? What alternative is offered to them?

And let's not be snobbish about this – plenty of people have started on the bottom rung and climbed their way to the top. I met someone recently who had been unemployed for years, got a job on the checkouts and quickly moved into running a staff of 20. A branch manager for a big store is often running a multimillion-pound business.

Really that's the norm is it? What about someone that doesn't want to be running a business, or supervising other checkout staff? What is the point of pushing people into a category they don't desire or want to belong in? What are their alternatives other than benefit sanctions and a punitive culture of scrutiny from the DWP? This veneration of business people is ridiculous; life isn't the Apprentice and the people of this country don't all want life to be an episode thereof. Where is your support to science and the arts?

I find you to be a disingenuous individual, representative of an odious coalition of liars besotted by an outdated work ethic and a belief in scarcity economics. You are nasty and divisive and you shall never ever get my vote.

“Mr. Grayling, benefits cheats in your head
Oh Mr. Grayling, get them up out of bed
Your lifestyle to me seems so tragic
With the thrill of it all
You fooled all the people with statistics
(Yeah)You waited on Duncan’s call

Mr. Grayling, won't you sign my income support?
Mr. Grayling, it's symbolic of course
Approaching a time that is classic
I hear that single mums call
Approaching a time that is drastic
Standing with their backs to the wall”