DASHED HOPES.

Byline: Tony Parsons 

WE complain endlessly about the young, even as we toss them on the scrapheap.

The 2.43 million unemployed includes 1.4m under the age of 24. Many have never worked. Some never will. Work is a habit and you need to learn it young.

If unemployment crests three million this autumn, it'll be because the 600,000 school and universityleavers who started looking for jobs this summer have become eligible to sign on the dole.

The Government proposes the idea of job clubs for unemployed teenagers, where they can learn about writing CVs and preparing for interviews. Great, but if it doesn't lead to jobs it's a recipe for frustration.

I signed on as a teenager. Nothing is more carefully designed to make a youngster feel like a complete waste of space. But I always felt that I'd find something in the end. I don't sense the same hope today.

The unemployed youth do not want to exist on state hand-outs. They want to work. But when there's no work, there will be wasted days and years of drugs, crime and listless entertainment.

Today's school leavers have done all they were told to do and it has done them no good. We told a generation of children that if they stayed in education there would be jobs waiting for them. We lied.