How do you know if someone is short term employed?

This is an often repeated report. I contacted them weeks ago and am still waiting for them to get back to me!

I would like to know what they are doing to get the MEN OF THIS CITY back into work. Those who use their hands rather than their butts to sit in an office. My husband was offered forklift training to extend the licence he already has only to be told after waiting 3 months that they had lost the funding!

Alien in Orton,

You make an excellent point. As a city, and as a society, we no longer value the the traditional skills of working class men.

With the death of apprenticeships in the Eighties a whole generation was thrown onto the scrapheap. The training offered by many agencies is a joke, as you have pointed out. When people criticise the long-term unemployed for being work-shy scroungers perhaps they should also consider how much this often very poor training costs the Taxpayer.

Peterborough needs people- especially men- with skills in fitting renewable energy and rainwater harvesting systems to make our homes more environmentally friendly. Our city must also have people with agricultural and horticultural skills so that food and other products/materials (eg timber) may be cultivated locally. By adapting in these ways our city will begin to build a diverse and sustainable local economy necessary for the future.

This type of local economy, with the jobs it will create, is of maximum importance if the Environment Capital aspiration is to be turned from just being a PR exercise into reality.