funadmentally necessary and must be pursued rigorously. I believe their are many Local Authorities up North with Council Estates that are unoccupied. This presents opportunity. Lets get rid of some more people ... Not Quite Stephen, I agree - but the issue is, since LAs are not jointly responsible for one anothers budgets or social/employment difficulties is, is it ok to push your problem onto someone else? LAs have the connectedness internally to work in a way that encourages various forms of business in their boroughs (or towns etc. outside large cities) that can help resolve employment and welfare dependancy issues - through identification of employment need, skills training, public/private partnering and job creation. One of the criticisms of the 'Job Centres' is that they do not find jobs for people, they simple monitor unemployment locally and process benefit payments. A more positive role that they could play is to partner or become in their own right public recruitment agencies, capable of identifying the above for unemployed people and place them. We presently have an inverted situation where the unemployed dictate whether they will 'accept' work depending upon whether it is more profitable than receiving free housing and income. That's obviously not right and is fundamentally anti-social since it places the burden on the working society who pay taxes on income, which increase as the unemployment figures do, to pick up the bill, or public services suffer through cuts, meaning everyone suffers consequently. Ironically, those not in work resent those