Darren Johnson - Youth unemployment and Green jobs
05 January 2010
Darren Johnson, the Green Party's spokesperson on trade and industry, writes to the Guardian about the depth of youth unemployment and inaction by the establishment parties:
Two separate articles in today's Guardian (4.1.10) drew attention to two serious problems - the horrendous effects of unemployment on a million young people and their families, and the fact that Britain's growing green energy sector is basically exporting jobs worth bilions of pounds a year. Of course these problems are closely related, and the only solution to both lies in making the right political decisions.
The Green Party is arguing that if the UK government pumped £44bn into Britain's economy, we could create over a million UK jobs within 2-3 years. These included not just huge numbers of jobs for engineers and others in the green energy sector but 100,000 jobs in public transport, 80,000 jobs for plumbers and builders in retrofitting homes, schools and hospitals to cut their energy needs, thousands of new jobs for carers, and so on.
Last week Lord Turner said the next government must embark on some serious public spending to create jobs. But there's still only the Green Party offering this commitment to the electorate. The big three parties continue to offer more rhetoric than investment.
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