And this is a brilliant example...
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is offering money for university leavers to take trips to places such as Costa Rica, Borneo and India.
The first batch of graduates to take part in the scheme will spend the months up to Christmas living in remote communities and going on expeditions in projects that usually cost £3,000 per person.
The Government claims the schemes will help participants develop new skills which will make them more employable on their return.
In 1930's America they had a term for this sort of thing -- boondoggle. It means "a project that wastes time and money". I think we will be seeing a lot more boondoggles over the next few years.
Oh yes, and if you are a graduate who left uni with no skills, as I did. Try typing "HTML Tutorial" into Google and begin learning a new skill for free.
5 comments:
Rob I just saw this on the BBC site and was going to suggest it as a post.
This really is a joke, it doesn't even make sense from a Keynesian perspective!
Job seekers allowance at £51 a week, times that by 52 weeks (as this scheme pays the students to take a year out) and you come to £2,652. It would be cheaper to just have them stay in the UK!
Not to mention that whilst staying in the UK they might actually find a job over the 12 months...What are they to do after they come back from building schools in Costa Rica and they are still unemployed?
What a disgrace! The students get distracted for a year, the Costa Ricans get free schools from a country that cannot at present afford charity, and the British Taxpayer pays for it all!!!
It would be more useful to pay Costa Ricans £3000 a year to build our schools, at least then we would actually see some benefits from this scheme.
thing is by leaving the country they are not in the statistics...
Cynical? Moi?
Since when do you need a degree to ask "Do you want fries with that?".
You won't find me building schools in Costa Rica.
Instead, you'll find me sipping filter coffee and surfing the internet at the security desk of a building site in Merseyside.
If I'm out of a job once this particular edifice of malinvestment is finished I'll be signing on with all the media studies bods.
The ones who spent three years acculmulating a £15k debt for the privilege of watching Jeremy Kyle in the morning and writing Marxist critiques of the Teletubbies.
Henry I hope your right, and that is the primary reason...
But I fear that because this scheme is only for 500 students a year, someone in government actually believes this to be a good, productive measure rather than just a means of adjusting the figures.
A worrying development whatever the reason behind it.
Max and Henry, I presume the lucky winners of a taxpayer-funded gap year will all be from marginal Labour constituencies.
Rob, I shall act on that suggestion. I am still keen to learn new skills.
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