Close to one million youngsters without work, education or training.

Hundred’s of thousands young people aged 16 to 24 years appear to have little to look forward to as there are now 979,000 of them not in education, employment and training [Neet’s].

That’s a leap of 107,000 on the second quarter of last year and yet when the figures were released last week all the skills minister John Hayes could say was about “doing more to get young people who lack basic skills up to speed.”

Vacuous nonsense and with jobs in many areas in very short supply, further education courses closing down, the educational maintenance allowance being removed for all but the very poorest, not forgetting a catastrophic cut back in youth facilities, then it’s a no substitute at all for a publicly funded, from higher taxes, plan designed to give young people work and prospects for the future.

Support Jarrow March for jobs in October 

Kicking off on Saturday October 1^st this follows the route taken by 200 marchers in 1936. It passes through County Durham, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Northants and Bedfordshire before ending up with a rally on November 5^th in Trafalgar Square, London. It’s organised by Youth Fight for Jobs and you can bet your bottom $ that when it gets to London the government will, like in 1936, do its best to ignore it. That’s because they are intent on using the current world economic crisis to decimate the social gains made after 1945. Unemployment is, for them, a price worth paying.