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LRB blog

Home Enterprise

Thomas Jones

Perhaps one of the reasons (to be generous for a moment) the Tories are so unconcerned about all the job losses they're enacting is that they really do believe the private sector will take up the slack. And for anyone who can't find work at Marks and Spencer or Vodafone, the housing minister Grant Shapps has come up with a perfect solution: they can run their own businesses from home! He's disappointingly vague, though, about what such 'home enterprise' might actually involve. It sometimes seems as if the Tory front bench view of 'running your own business' – or indeed 'finding work' – is that it's a bit like having a trust fund.

employment housing

Comments

  • 3 November 2010 at 10:30am
    outofdate says:
    Onlinejobhunt.com, duh.
    • 3 November 2010 at 12:00pm
      outofdate says: @ outofdate
      Set up your own website, I mean...
    • 3 November 2010 at 1:59pm
      Guaranteedearners.com? The thing that foxes me about the celebrated Nigerian scam and suchlike is that spotty, balding, cauliflower-nosed people who live in their mothers' basements all over the world get paid, and quite well, to send this stuff out. I have a friend who 'increases traffic to sites', that's all he does, and it feeds him and his habits and the ex-wife and the kid... I wouldn't know where to start, but it's a scene.

      Meanwhile, Ann Widdecombe comments on the quality of politicians nowadays. They just read something in the papers and speak: you have to basically picture them as the sort of people who comment on blogs. I mean: 'Grant Shapps'...
  • 3 November 2010 at 4:07pm
    Phil Edwards says:
    The funny thing about this is that, based on interview evidence I've seen, there's a substantial group of people who are way ahead of Shapps: not only are they active in making money for themselves (and others), they see it as beneath them to take handouts from the state and therefore don't claim housing benefit or Job Seeker's Allowance. I didn't think the government wanted to encourage drug-dealing, though.
    • 4 November 2010 at 6:22am
      I wonder what the Tory front bench think most family's homes and lands consist of.

      "Surely they have a spare acre or two they can work..."