1. John O'Sullivan remembers David Hart.2. Dizzy Thinks doesn't sneeze on people. How kind.
3. Sally Thompson won't be paying her interns.
4. John Redwood declares that he will be voting against the government.
5. Sunder Katwala looks at how to expel an MP.
6. Mark Wallace does not want to hear Labour's violent language.
7. Neil O'Brien worries about the rise of the "street Left".
8. Jim Jepps has no sympathy for the fire extinguisher boy.
9. Harry's Place report that the support for AV is falling.
10. James Cleverly doesn't think Palin had any effect on the Tucson shootings.
11. Mike Smithson on the effect of a "local" candidate.
12. The TFA wants you to tune into Channel 4 this evening.
That piece on internships was utter nonsense (Iain, or whoever does this blog now, you should have included my blog entry on Brian Coleman [http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2011/01/11/brian-coleman-wants-to-sack-all-londons-firefighters/]).
ReplyDeleteHere's what I think of internships (lets have some real comment on this blog again):
Sally Thompson is looking at this situation through rose tinted glasses. Two things:
1) Just, for a second, consider interns who do not in any way profit from their time as unpaid interns. To be sure, not all employers offer internships on the basis that there will be a job at the end of it, and with the exceeding amount of places that offer them, it may not profit the intern at all - but that's the only choice they have sometimes.
2) You could, and probably do, argue that paying employees at all will be less profitable for a company, and whether you like it or not employers have to be paid.
I've been an intern, and I did bits and bobs that no one else wanted to, or things that others were doing for full pay. I'm not sure all places offering internships are as noble in their gestures as you'd like them to be Ms Thompson. People undertaking jobs that other people are being paid for deserve pay; interns who will benefit from the experience should at least be paid a living wage so such experience is not limited to richer graduates.
Mark Wallace said:
ReplyDelete"That all sounds very nice, but perhaps Kevin should have given some thought to his own record before jumping on this bandwagon. He has used some pretty violent language himself:"
I bet you can guess what I would say about this argument, Iain. Tip: fallacy.
I am more concerned about the language of hatred being put about by the friends of the taxpayers alliance - describing disabled people who claim benefits as "work-shy" "scroungers" etc. Here is one of the main reasons disabled people have to live on benefits:
http://www.humanresourcesmagazine.com/news/1045131/Employers-ill-prepared-Incapacity-Benefit-review/
So I suggest that the right-wingers direct their language of wrath at these employers.
BTW I asked Mr Wallace how many disabled people the Taxpayers Alliance employ, but he declined to volunteer this information on "privacy" grounds. I would guess that it is a nice round figure of about 0.