Lord Alan Sugar slams "cushy" benefits system

Lord Alan Sugar has slammed the "cushy" benefits system in the UK for discouraging people from work.



Speaking at the launch of Young Apprentice, the businessman criticised the previous Labour government for "the benefits systems and the so-called apprenticeship schemes" that he claimed were used to move people "out of the number crunching" of unemployment figures.

"There's too much of a culture that exists out there, what I call an expectancy culture, of things being provided," Sugar said.

"I'm afraid to say that the goody-goody benefits system we have in this system has made it a bit too cushy for people.

"Now it's a kind of wake-up call. Not everybody needs to go to university, they can get out and start working straight away."

He added: "We've gone through an era in the early '00s and late '90s where the young people have these targets and want to start up there... they're not interested in dirtying their hands down here.

"They want to be a dot com, they want to go to venture capitalists, they want someone to give them money, they want the bank to give them money because they have an idea.

"That's all gone. It's finished. That era is over. We've got to put that message across. You have got to start down there."

Sugar was offered a peerage and made an 'enterprise tsar' by former prime minister Gordon Brown in 2009, though he described the role as "politically neutral" at the time.



Karren Brady, one of Sugar's two aides on the show, said: "With a bit of energy, a spark of an idea, some absolute determination, you can start something from nothing.

"When we talk to young people, that's what they say they've taken from the first series [of Junior Apprentice]. It's certainly the message."

Sugar said: "We want to try and show that you can start something from nothing and get away from this culture of university, then go on a gap year for two years, then get a job at some consultancy and then go on the dole."

Just thought i'd mention here that Sugar has a criminal conviction for illegal importation and Karen Brady was the employee of a well-known pimp!

The trouble is that we only get the "head-line" cases from the likes of the Daily Wail. The cases where people scramble onto the outrage bus without actually finding out what's the truth. (Papers never let the truth get in the way of a story do they?)

I know plenty of people on benefits, and they're not having a great time of things.

Before anyone starts getting on their high horse about benefits, I reckon they ought to try surviving on them (properly, not playing at it) for 6 months. I guess there'd be a few eyes opened.

When the current recession started to bite in 2008, the first people to be hit were small businesses and the self-employed, publicans, shop-keepers, etc. BBC Panorama did a special on the subject at the time. It was amazing how many of those interviewed in the programme simply assumed that if their business failed they could sign on for benefits. The system doesn't quite work like that, the DWP decides who can and who can't receive benefits. It's a shame the BBC didn't do a follow-up programme to show us exactly what did happen to those whose businesses failed, it may have opened a few eyes.