About a month ago I wrote a piece on the failure of yet another “helping people back into employment” initiative set up by the Welsh Government. This £36m scheme called Genesis was launched in 2010, and although declared officially deceased it seems to be taking a long time a-dying. With its death-throes still attracting morbid curiosity and asinine comment. Made painfully clear by the article in today’s Mule. (Click to enlarge.)

According to Deputy Minister for Skills and Employment Jeff Cuthbert: “While Genesis helped many people to develop their confidence and self-esteem to find work now or in the future, we cannot ignore the fact that the programme was continuing to underperform”. Listen, Cuthbert, do you know what really helps people with their confidence and self-esteem? A job. A decent bloody job. Not wasting time on some poxy ‘course’ designed solely to provide funding for Labour’s Estuary English-speaking cronies.

Cuthbert continued: “One of the key aims of the programme was to support hard-to-reach groups into employment and performance figures showed that this objective was simply not being met for the project as a whole and did not compare favourably with other programmes delivering to similar groups of participants”. “Other programmes delivering to similar groups of participants“. Think about that, readers. Might the fundamental problem with Genesis have been that it was trying to duplicate the work already being done by other agencies? Because in answer to an FoI request I submitted the Welsh Government confessed that it was funding no less than thirty “helping people back into employment” schemes across Wales. (See right, click to enlarge.)

We were then reminded that despite yet another Third Sector funding fiasco Jeff Cuthbert has at least retained his sense of humour, for he said: ” . . . we will ensure that we integrate the best practice from Genesis into the development of future programmes”. “Best practice“ be buggered! You’re pulling the plug on it becuse it was a total and utter bloody failure! What I find even more worrying is the reference to “future programmes”. For this suggests you’ve learnt nothing, and will continue to pour money into the funding black hole (sucks in everything, gives nothing back) that is the Third Sector.

What the Genesis fiasco has exposed, yet again, is that Labour’s antipathy to business and the employment that a healthy economy provides is one of the major reasons for Wales’ relative poverty. This is what “clear red water” really means – an anti-business Labour Government in Cardiff. Labour prefers to keep Wales poor so it can capitalise on the poverty for its own political ends and further use it to provide a cottage industry for its cronies and supporters.

For me, the big question now has to be, ‘For how much longer will the EU keep pouring money into the black hole of the Third Sector?’ The first two rounds of Structural Funds were wasted, and that’s why we now qualify for a third round. To avoid yet more wasted funding, shouldn’t the EU examine the possibility of allocating the money to Wales but have it disbursed by some agency independent of the Welsh Government? Why should ‘Welsh’ Labour be given so many chances to screw up?

UPDATE 17.04.2013:I recently came into possession of this document (Mutuals) telling us that the Welsh Management is keen to push Co-operative and mutual ventures. I have no insurmountable objections to these kind of undertakings, but I do have a few observations.

First, this seems to be further proof of ‘Welsh’ Labour’s irrational hostility to a real economy; you know, business, private enterprise, capitalism. The giveaway for me is in the use of the term, “the co-operative and mutual economy”. Second, shouldn’t co-operatives be spontaneous, grass-roots creations? Redundant workers saying, ‘Let’s have a buy-out and run the business as a co-operative’. But not in Wales. Here we see again ‘Welsh’ Labour’s top-down, Statist approach to everything – ‘You will have Co-operatives! Is that understood?’ A mentality not a lot different to Stalin imposing collective farms.

If the logo at the bottom of the page is anything to go by then it seems that the poor EU is also paying for this latest departure from reality. How much longer are our continental cousins going to fund Labour’s delusion that prosperity can be created without a healthy commercial economy?