Under Cameron’s plans the long term unemployed would be required to carry out 12 months community service. This is more than criminals get (I agree they should get more). I would like to know how many Tories have been long term unemployed? I have previously been unemployed and on the dole for 3 months. It is depressing, demoralising and I was given no help or encouragement to find a job. I had just left University and many students have difficulty finding their first job.

Under Cameron’s proposals, the two-year limit on job seekers’ allowance would apply to “continuous and cumulative periods of unemployment”. Therefore if I am on the dole for 1 year and 9 months, demoralised, depressed, rejected and I do not have enough to pay my rent or find a job, I would have to mop up after people committing criminal damage. All of this due to intermittent short periods of unemployment in my life.

I am an educated, hard working, tax-paying individual, with much to contribute to the world of work. Having people like me doing this is a waste.

I want the unemployed to have jobs, to have dignity and be something they, their family and society can be proud of. I do not want to return to a society where everyone is supposed to “know their place” and aspiration is rare. We are talking about not the breaking of an underclass, but visually galvanising it. It sounds to me like David Cameron is just planning for the day when under the Tories unemployment reaches 3 million again.

David Cameron, Mr nice guy? Sounds more like a return of the workhouse.

Councillor James Alexander
Prospective Labour MP for York Outer
www.time-4-change.org.uk