Kieran Lawrence looks at autonomous weapons and the effect they could have on modern warfare
Continuing a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Angela Merkel
Ben Bland examines the fallout from the Iowa caucuses and looks forward to the New Hampshire primaries.
In the first of a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Nicholas Sarkozy
Feeling pretty smug right now? Congratulations, you have managed to escape being one of the 1,163,000 ‘neets’ (16-24 year-olds Not in Education, Employment or Training) in England. That’s almost 1 in 5 young Britons. The applications for appearing on ‘Young, Dumb and Living off Mum’ must be through the roof.
This time last year, 137,000 more youths in England were in some form of education, employment or training than are now, leading to the highest youth unemployment level since records began (which was only in 2000 but that’s no excuse).
Regionally, the North seems to be the most affected. The North-West saw the largest increase from 162,000 neets to 204,000. And here in Yorkshire and Humber we saw the second biggest increase from 33,000 to 157,000.
A government spokeswoman has said “We are committed to raising the participation age so that all 16-17 year-olds are in education or training in 2015 and we’re reforming vocational education to ensure that there are high-quality opportunities for all young people to participate.” So long as businesses are encouraged to take on apprentices this seems a fairly good plan.
Since the scrapping of Education Maintenance Allowances this year, making unpaid education compulsory is simply not possible for many people, however apprenticeships seem a perfect compromise between employment and education.
Katja Hall, the CBI’s (Confederation of British Industry) chief policy director responded to these figures, saying “The CBI wants to see a ‘Young Britain Credit’ to give employers £1500 for taking on an unemployed 16- 24 year-old”. Unfair age discrimination? Technically, yes, it will encourage the employment of youths over mature adults; however it’s a necessary step.
Beginning your adult life unemployed and on benefits is only going to lead bad habits to form, whereas unemployment mid-way through a career is less worrying- youths have no past earnings to live on and haven’t got into a routine of employment so will perhaps try less hard to search for employment than mature adults.
What with EMA being scrapped, University fees going up and youth unemployment at its peak this hasn’t been the greatest year for us whippersnappers.
Incidentally, despite the Yorkshire and Humber region being one of the worst in the UK, York itself has one of the highest youth-employment rates, with only 10% unemployed. The only other towns with such low NEET rates are Oxford, Cambridge and Plymouth.
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