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how it works

for a time there I genuinely thought that iain Duncan smith was trying to do something positive for the poor and powerless of the country. That in some way he was going to change the outlook of the tory party.

He’d paid a visit to a housing estate in Scotland, easterhouse; there he was shocked and moved by what he had seen.

Setting up the centre for social justice, a right-wing think with the goal of looking for innovative ways of tackling poverty.

Pretty noble. Pretty laudable.

Fast forward a few years and well..best laid plans of mice and ministers and we see that iain Duncan smith isn’t a new face of toryism; in fact he is just the bumbling continuation of the nasty party.

When the coalition took power ids became secretary of state for work and pensions. His great idea was to simplify the benefit system. As ideas go this is a good one. Anyone trying to navigate the waters of the benefit system soon discovers this way be monsters.

Only problem with the universal credit is that it requires a large new computer system and as anyone knows government and large computer systems are a disaster. (i am sure there is a reason for this – and I suspect it has more to do with private companies promising the moon on a stick and not being able to deliver, but negotiating the contract so that they never lose money. Just guessing here.)

One of his other ideas was the universal jobmatch system, another computerised programme. This one aimed at the unemployed (though people in work can use it).

People might think that jobcentres are there to help you get back into work.

They are not.

If you are lucky you might get an advisor who is friendly and helpful.

More than likely you won’t.

When you go to sign on you have to show you have been looking for work.

The universal jobmatch computer system lists all available jobs, while that sounds pretty neat all it is doing is aggregating the information from various other job agency sites. that in itself is pretty impressive.

One of the other great features is that you can upload a cv to it and a selection of jobs that are suitable. Neato keeno.

My list of recommend jobs runs to over 64,000. Crikey I should be able to find one from among that lot.

Here are a few of the ones that are recommended for me.

05/12/2013   Executive Assistant and Operations Support Monster (Job Warehouse) HC-Reading  

11/11/2013   Customer Service Assistant Monster (Job Warehouse) HC-Barnet  

18/11/2013   Administrator solutions 2 recruitment Southern-Burgess Hill  

25/10/2013   Customer Service Representative - International E-Commerce Company Syncoms London-Ruislip  

03/12/2013   Business Administration Apprentice Nat. Apprenticeship Service HC-Hertford  

It is annoying that you can’t put parameters in for the recommended job search – say a geographical area. While it is nice know that there is a job I could do in Newcastle it isn’t practical.

It would also be nice if the jobs were listed in date order – perhaps: newest first. Rather than any job from the last three months or so popping up in a random order.

It would also be nice, and this is important, that the jobs listed were still active rather than that moment of ‘wow I could really nail this job, let’s apply…oh shit it has been filled.’

Ids and his pals want to get the feckless shirkers back into work but I have to say they are not helping as much as they could.

Universal jobmatch site is an example of that.

While ids and cameron’s constant victimisation of the unemployed is another.

No matter how much he pretends ids remains a key mover and shaker in the nasty party.