You might have thought a Jobcentre was there to find you a job – you’d be sadly mistaken.

A whistleblower said staff at his jobcentre were given targets of three people a week to refer for sanctions, where benefits are removed for up to six months. He said it was part of a “culture change” since last summer that had led to competition between advisers, teams and regional offices.

“Suddenly you’re not helping somebody into sustainable employment, which is what you’re employed to do,” he said. “You’re looking for ways to trick your customers into ‘not looking for work’. You come up with many ways. I’ve seen dyslexic customers given written job searches, and when they don’t produce them – what a surprise – they’re sanctioned. The only target that anyone seems to care about is stopping people’s money.

“‘Saving the public purse’ is the catchphrase that is used in our office … It is drummed home all the time – you’re saving the public purse. Feel good about stopping someone’s money, you’ve just saved your own pocket. Its a joke.”

The whistleblower says his office has been told there is no more money for back to work training from April. “From April, we offer no provision … nothing, no training course, nothing. The funding ends at the end of March.

“[Now] your office can shine through one of two targets. You can either shine through getting people into work, but that’s really difficult. Or you can stop their money, and that’s really easy.” John Domokos, The Guardian.

So if you’ve lost your job the last place you should look for help it seems is the Jobcentre.

Shares in retailers have come under pressure again after Laura Ashley and Mothercare both reported falling sales in recent weeks.

Laura Ashley said UK like-for-like sales were down 4.2% for the eight weeks to 26 March. Its shares fell 15%.

Mothercare shares fell 9.6% after it said UK like-for-like sales slid 2.4% in the first three months of the year.

The retail sector is preparing for a tough year, with consumers being hit by higher fuel and food prices.

Consumer confidence is also being affected by worries over government spending cuts, analysts say.

The figures from Laura Ashley and Mothercare come a day after electrical goods retailer Dixons issued a profit warning, with underlying sales down 7% in the past 11 weeks.

There was further gloomy news from the latest consumer confidence survey by GfK NOP Social Research.

It found that confidence among UK consumers had “stagnated at depths seldom seen outside of actual recession”. BBC.

George Osborne expects the private sector to be able to offer employment to government employees he’s put out of work – on these figures it won’t be the retail sector and it’s difficult to see another sector being able to offer work to the unemployed as long as the Tories continue with their draconian cuts.

Last year my employer put a stop to home working, at the time I thought oh well it was nice whilst it lasted, however what I didn’t realise is that if you’re a parent of a child under 17-years-old (18 in April) you have the right to flexible working including homeworking.

Your employer must consider your request on business grounds. They can only reject your application for one of the following business reasons:

burden of additional costs

detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand

inability to reorganise work among existing staff

inability to recruit additional staff

detrimental impact on quality

detrimental impact on performance

insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work

planned structural changes

Source: Directgov.

Seems like I need to find my bosses homeworking rejection letter as I’m sure it wasn’t based on any of these criteria and start again.

More details can be found at Directgov – Flexible Working.

Hat Tip: The Guardian.

A week after announcing their engagement, Prince William and Kate Middleton have decided on the date of their wedding.

It will take place on Friday 29 April at Westminster Abbey.

The Cabinet has agreed the day will be a bank holiday although in Scotland it is a matter for the Scottish Government to decide what happens but they are widely expected to follow suit. BBC.

Well one advantage of the twit’s marriage is we’re going to get an extra day off, 29th April 2011, which is also my daughter’s 10th birthday – so what shall we do that day? Well we won’t be watching the parasitic millionaires get married that’s for sure.

First came ‘easyCouncil’, a plan by Barnet, in north London, to model local authority services on the no-frills approach of budget airlines. Now Suffolk county council is taking an even more radical approach to public sector reform by proposing a “virtual” authority that outsources all but a handful of its services.

The Tory-controlled county’s “new strategic direction”, set for approval tomorrow, could see virtually every service outsourced to social enterprises or companies. The aim is to turn the authority from one which provides public services itself, to an “enabling” council, which only commissions them. The council hopes offloading services could shave 30% off its £1.1bn budget, as part of the government’s drive to reduce the fiscal deficit.

Although councils have outsourced chunks of their services before, these proposals are regarded by experts as the first time a local authority has considered not directly providing any services at all. Anna Bawden, The Guardian.

30% saving that’ll be made up of workers carrying out the same work for 30% less pay than they received when employed by the council. Actually it’ll be worse than that as the fat cats running the companies providing the services will want much more than that in profits and bonuses – how gullible we’ve become.

The government wants to change how some private sector pensions are calculated.

The proposals mean millions of people would be likely to see lower increases to their pensions in retirement.

Pensions minister Steve Webb said there were plans to link pension payments to the typically slower-growing Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation instead of using the RPI.

Accountants KPMG said this could reduce UK private sector pension liabilities by 10% or about £100bn.

People in dormant and occupational schemes would be affected.

The existing system ties pension increases to the Retail Prices Index (RPI) which includes housing costs such as mortgage interest payments.

The CPI is typically lower – and over the past 20 years it has been higher than the RPI only three times.

KPMG also said the changes could lead to a “smallprint lottery”, as individual schemes might have different legal rules. BBC.

How low will the Com-Dems sink they are taking money from pensioners and giving it to the rich – a thank you to his mates for supporting him at the General Election – how ever did we elect this scum?

The keep voting for a strike the Law keeps over ruling them on a technicality – this time it appears to be the failure of the union Unite to inform its members of the 12 or was it 11 spoilt ballot papers – so it’s off to appeal and then no doubt another ballot – the law’s no friend of workers.

Still I wonder how much money BA has spent on lawyers – probably enough to solve the dispute – the last I heard agreement had be reached all that was left was re-instatement of travel privileges for strikers – which seems very small beer in the scheme of BA’s troubles.

The only winners here are going to be lawyers and barristers as they collect their huge fees.

How petty can employers be? In the Netherlands a waitress at a McDonalds in the town of Lemmer sold a hamburger to a co-worker who then asked for cheese, which she added – the waitress was then fired. I wouldn’t say the waitress had the last laugh but Leeuwarden district court ordered McDonalds to pay the former employee more than 4,200 Euros ($5,900; £3,660) for the last five months of her contract, reasoning the dismissal was too severe a measure. It is just a slice of cheese.

Source: The BBC.

David Cumming, head of UK equities at Cadbury shareholder Standard Life, said that he would be backing the takeover.

“I won’t go against the view of Cadbury’s management,” he told the BBC.

“Kraft are getting a good deal. It’s sad that Cadbury is gone, but business is business.”

Kraft’s chairman and chief executive Irene Rosenfeld said the deal was good news for shareholders and staff. Source: BBC.

Bollocks – Job losses are”inevitability” at Cadbury after its takeover by US giant Kraft Foods, the UK firm’s chairman has confirmed to the BBC.

Good news for staff and shareholders – no it’s just good news for City Bankers and their fat bonuses and commissions.

What happened to going to work doing your job and getting paid your salary nothing else, maybe some overtime but that’s it? Does anybody do their job to the best of their ability without the need of a bonus? Well most of us don’t get bonuses the culture of bonuses is only rife amongst the well-off and well-paid whilst in this current financial climate the rest of us lesser mortals are expected to work at best for frozen or lower wages – look we should be thankful we’ve still got jobs is what we’re told, which appears all too true as we’ve watched numerous family, friends and colleagues thrown out on the dole queue – all the while they’ve been busy paying themselves bonuses -. Is it me but shouldn’t a bonus be something unexpected? I guess the only thing unexpected about bonuses these days is how much they’ll get.

Isn’t it time we got angry?