In unveiling this new plan Gordon Brown is hoping to abate the rising unemployment figures. Amidst the global recession, Britain is one of many countries facing huge scale unemployment. America too, is seeing escalating unemployment figures. The only way to stop this is to create jobs or make the unemployed employable again. This is what that scheme hopes to do by offering incentives to employers to take on new staff and train them.

This will only help a small number of the unemployed. It can not and will not help everyone and it would be foolish to think differently. Instead this money will be wasted and once the emploers can not afford to keep on the extra new staff they will clearly be made redundant again!

At the start of this ongoing fiasco, it was banks who were suffering and then large companies and popular long standing regional copanies like "Woolworths". Now however, smaller and mid size companies have started to enter administration. Only just today the "Land of Leather" company announced that it was experiencing difficulties and "wedgwood" announced that 367 employees are to become redundant. If local employers that employ entire numbers of local communities start to go into administration then we will be faced with aweful situations that have been experienced by this country before. As Gordon Brown admitted could be the case; "and that would mean lasting damage to tour economy and a bigger bill to pay in the future and that will not happen on my watch". How long would it take for us to recover from such die straights? Surely prevention is better than cure (even if the symptoms of illness have already begun to show!). The government realises it has to act before it is too late and should be supported.

"Prevention" being the operative word! Preventative measures clearly will not work now because we have gone past the point. Instead it must be considered whether this proposal is a potential "cure". Will companies be able to sustain the new work force that they wll take in? Only time will tell.

This new plan has many pro's. As well as initially helping businesses to receive much needed money, the "golden hello's" keep on rolling into the afternoon! The government have thought of this idea straight away, so that those unemployed can, if lucky enough, enter straight back into the job market and this should help not to dstupt their lifestyles so much. More than this, many workers who are taken on will be trained and this will not only make them more employable for others but if they prove to be beneficial workers an employer will not want to let them go (unless of course they have to, which may be inevtable during a recession). But anyway, this scheme aims to help the long term situation and thus is different and carries more advsntages than the other recently implemented plans which sees only a temporary cut in say V.A.T. cuts or interest rates.

But giving employers £2,500 is as far as it goes. Will this cover all induction costs and further wages? In order to do so will wage cuts infiltrate the system? If so what use is a larger work force if their demands can not ve met and their old wages wll not be met? Will this not produce a deterrent effect. May people prefer the dole because they get more of a benefit from that for no work, whereas if they go to work they may be doing menial tasks that are below their capabilities and well below their household income needs.

Whatever the new plan is, it will always be criticised. The ideas suggested opposite are equally if not even more flawed. Mr Brown is doing the best he can. More than this, if the government does sit by and allow unemployment figures to escalate then it will be even harder to tackle the problem later down the line. Meanwhile, at least while this plan is being implemented it should bide some time so a new plan can be thought up.

Gordon Brown remarked of his new plan; "the biggest cost of all would be the cost of doing nothing". Perhaps this is in justification of the huge £500M put aside to implement this new plan. However, Conservative leader David Cameron suggested that this is not the right approach. Adding to government spending will not help the economic situation. Indeed £500M is a lot of money to waste on a plan that may not work. Surely it could be used to support sustained tax cuts or just give the £2,500 to the poorer in society to help with bill payments.

This is true of course but the fact remains that even in the current economic environment some sectors do have job vacancies. This statement was supported today by "Secretary of state for work and pensions James Purnell [who]said: "There are still over half a million jobs available, and employers are still recruiting – we will do everything we can to get people into those jobs." It could be considered that giving money to these employers would undermine the purpose of the scheme bcause these employers want to employ anyway!

It could be considered that £2,500 is not adequate incentive for what the government is hoping to achieve. Indeed it is a lot of money for doing not much at all and would be gladly accepted by an employer who was actually looking to employ but for those who are finding it tough to meet ends, they will not want to add to the pay cheques an employee who arguably will cost them more than £2,500 to train and keep because it is not a lack of skilled workers that is the problem, it is a lack of funding for them.

This clearly is a useless idea. Laissez faire did not work and that is wy it is departed from. Letting the people sort out their own problems just is not an option for the government of the day in the light of international conventions to uphold human rights. Any neglect in looking afte rthe people will just result in bills not being paid and greater misery for all and will effect on the government when they do not receive their taxes.

OK. Arguably this is not feasible but there is a little proof that the old saying of "let them be" could work. If the government can only implement these schemes by borrowing more then this is arguably not good for the long term economic stability that is sought after! Thus, if companies are left to sort themselves out then wont there be a survival of the fittest? For example, Morrisons today announced that it will be taking on 5,000 more employees without need for government funding! So if businesses such as his are flourishing (used hesitantly) independently in the economic climate, then the new government scheme will be letting them benefit even more from the £2,500 pay outs for very new employee they take on who has been unemployed for over 6 months. Obviously this will work against the favour of those who have been unemployed for under 6 months and surely this is against the European Convention on Human Rights article 14? Due to discrimination of those who have not been unemployed for long enough!

It is of vital importance for economic recovery that the unemployment crisis is eased to minimise long term slowdown. Getting people back into jobs will encouage them to spend rather than save, which will aid the recovery of the retail sector. Combined with a low rate of interest there will be less obvious incentive to save money and more impetus to spend. The VAT cut is another strategy that has been employed for the same effect. Consumer spending makes up the largest portion of our GDP and thus is absolutely key in maintaining the health of our economy. With new figures from the British Retail Consortium stating that "like-for-like sales in December were down 3.3% on a year ago while total sales shrank 1.4%" (1),drastic measures are needed to improve the situation.

(1) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7825213.stm