[Margaret Pilkington]

They don't live on the quoted £65 a week, they claim other benefits......Housing benefit, child tax credits......there are a whole raft of them which encourage the idle to sit at home and watch daytime TV........they will tell you it isn't worth their while to go out to work because they will lose these benefits.

I don't know whether the Tory government of the 80's lost any sleep over the unemployment figures...and really it is irrelevant. It doesn't alter what is happening in the here and now.