Interesting..
The government has announced, that those who collect State benefits, must either Speak English, or provide proof that they are taking classes to learn it.
Some 40thousand jobless people say their poor English is a barrier to finding employment.. and £4.5m is spent on translators in job centres.
This money, says Welfare Minister Jim Murphy, could be put to better use teaching immigrants the Elglish language.
Now this comes into effect in April, and whether the government will be prepared to offer classes to those with difficulties with English in time, is moot..
However, Jim wants more focus put on English language tuition.
To quote.. "We must utilise the resources we have to redress the balance: to put the emphasis not just on translating language to claim a benefit, but to teaching language to get a job."
Yes. And this would tie in nicely with the government announced plans to make those who come here 'British' first, while allowing them the freedom to maintain their particular culture and customs..
Within the Law, of course.
From April, new guidelines will require job centres in England to consentrate on encouraging the take-up of English courses.
And a new programme, backed by £14m of state money, is offering 15,000 places on courses in basic skills and employability training - including language skills - with the Learning and Skills Council.
But, an educational think tank which recently produced a critical report into how the government provides English classes to immigrants, has attacked the proposals as risky.
The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) reports the English tuition system was struggling to meet demand from migrants who wanted to learn the language.
Alastair Thomson of Niace agreed that investing in tuition was better than translation... but added there are too few classes and teachers.
And there is criticisism for separate government proposals, to charge for some English classes from September.. that it was 'bizarre' for the government to expect those unemployed because of their lack of English skills, to come up with the money to pay for an education dealing with the language while they had no income, other than Social Benefits..
And we all thought things were getting better..
A study by the think-tank Civitas suggests a third of households in the UK rely on benefits for their main income.
"What has been happening in the last few years is unemployment has fallen but the number of people receiving incapacity benefits has been going up a little bit," according to the report's author, David Green .
"But there's also been a huge increase in people receiving what's now called working tax credit. So you've got a mixture of pure benefit dependency and what you might call in-work benefit dependency."
Now this may seem like economic babble, but it simply means that a third of the country's households contribute nothing to the overall tax-base, and an increase of those doing jobs that pay so little, that they must have a suppliment from the government to survive.
There will have to come a time, when Westminster recognises the fact, that we are losing the work ethic this country once had, due in the main, to the overall lack of education of this country's youth, and it's unskilled workforce.
It's not a bad idea Jim has there, to teach those who come here to speak the language. It would be expected in any country for any immigrant..
But it's slightly off the mark in it's target demographic. It's a microcosmic view of a macroscopic problem, for it's not only those who come here from other countries who are in need of even something as basic as the English needed to get a job, but those British kids who have given up on the entire educational process, and are now quite content to live off the State, must be included.
A third of British households on the dole, or on disability.
Amazing.
One wonders where these people fit in when the government reports on unemployment figures.