Though, how to be aspirational without looking like Tony Bl*ir is a potential problem.

Me I am planning to move to Australia and live with my brother who has achieved Citizenship after 10 years…Why stay in the UK it will be broke whoever gets in?

OK so maybe I am being dramatic (I often am)…But I am desperate to see some campaign issues that talk about change, rather than vote winning and marginal seat winning. Here is a real example for you:

As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows a clear decline in the functional and basic skills of the UK work force, it is interesting to see election discussions polarised around schools spending and the schools curriculum. 

You see, investment in the schools curriculum and school leaver programmes will do little to impact the real and immediate challenges facing UK employers and their employees in both the Public and Private sectors…Indeed schools programmes will take two to three years to even reach employers…

But schools spending will win over the MILF vote.

(That is Mothers In Labour Feifdoms, TBB you rude boy!)

HOWEVER

Adult Skills will play a vital and crucial role in the UK’s recovery and specifically in the restructuring and modernisation of public services. 

All true right?

This is all set against the backdrop of Lord Mandleson’s published plan to cut £340 Million from the Further Education & Skills Budget in 2010/11 and further cuts of £135 million from Higher Education Budgets.

LETS BE CLEAR, this is NOT cutting public spending on services to balance the deficit!

This is the cutting of best-practice programmes like Train to Gain that fund training in small and medium sized business. 

This is cutting skills training for those who are unemployed, who need to retrain to be redeployed!

Yet we have nothing from either opposition party on any of this this. 

WORSE.

We are being expected to believe that Tory Public Spending plans will be achieved by “Modernising and transforming public services”…

How? We have no plan from the Tory Party on ICT skills development to address the modernisation agenda…Only some crap about Open Source…UK staff do not have ICT Skills, how will they use new software?

Will we be implementing new systems that will run themselves? Or will we need to provide vocational skills programmes to support the changes?

This is frankly INCOMPETENCE ON THE PART OF TORIES when the current Government is so blatantly failing employers and employees.

Labour commits to cut Skills training in a recession and we say nothing about it!

IN ITSELF THIS IS BAD…BUT IT IS FAR WORSE.

According to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) 2009 report, despite over £5 Billion spent on skills improvement, the number of UK Adults unable to read or write remains “unacceptably high”. 

The PAC goes on to point out that even if current Learning & Skills Council (LSC) targets for 2010 are met, the country’s basic skills will still not match the best in the world. 

Small comfort for UK employers, as the UK already resides well down the OECD International League Tables for literacy and numeracy. All very far from a competitive world leader fighting itself out of the recession!

This should be a HUGE target for TORY big hitters…Here is why:

The Leitch Review of Skills 2006, commissioned by HM Treasury, showed that the UK needed to urgently raise achievements at all levels of skills. It recommends and commits to becoming a world leader in skills by 2020, benchmarked against the upper quartile of the OECD.

Commissioned by Gordon Brown personally, the Leitch Review of Skills estimated a possible net benefit of at least £80 BILLION  to the UK over 30 years. (Hows that for a meaty figure to balance the spending defecit?)

This £80 BILLION financial benefit comes from a boost in the productivity growth rate of up to 15 per cent and an increase in the employment growth rate by around 10 per cent. Social deprivation, poverty and inequality will diminish…AS PUBLISHED BY TREASURY !!!

The report was also pretty damning on our skills prospects:

“It is clear from my analysis that, despite substantial investment and reform plans already in place, by 2020, we will have managed only to ‘run to stand still’. On our current trajectory, the UK’s comparative position will not have improved significantly. In the meantime, the world will have continued to change and the global environment will be even harsher. The scale of the challenge is daunting.” Lord Leitch, 2006.

YET MANDLESON CAN SWINGINGLY CUT INVESTMENT IN SKILLS?

On education and skills it would seem that the Tory party can’t even hit a barn door with a shotgun !

Here are the simple questions to sink Labour Economic Policy and highlight the incompetence of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills…Who if you remember headed up Labour’s Recovery Plan Action Group and got cheers at conference!

1. Why is the £80 Billion “prize” detailed in the Treasury’s Leitch Report not forming the cornerstone of the UK’s plan for economic recovery?

2. Why is Adult and Work Skills investment (such as the best practice programme, Train to Gain) being slashed at a time when Industry needs to be more competitive and unemployment figures are so high?

TORY POLICY MAKERS THIS IS CHILDS PLAY!

A lack of investment in skills will seriously hinder an economic recovery 

A lack of investment in skills will lengthen the time that people stay unemployed, costing the UK tax payer MILLIONS in benefits payments

A lack of investment in skills is a backward step in the UK’s ability to meet the challenges detailed by the UK Treasury’s Leitch Report and wastes a potential £80 BILLION Benefit to UK plc.

For my next piece…egg sucking and how the Tory Party seems not to be able to do it…

Come on Cameron…Start some debate for god sake…

The real reason voters are slipping away.

Labour is crap and we can all see it…Yet the Tory Party can’t seem to show us that Labour are crap…So will they be any better?

My solution:

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda…the Mummy Sheila’s there all drink beer, not Costa Coffee and they are all MILFs.

Also another great article can be found here at the Spectator:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/5797488/the-tory-situation-is-now-verging-on-critical.thtml

A poor campaign thus far.