NOW that there are now as many job vacancies as there are jobless, the government has decided that, in order for them to get and hold down a job in this age of jobs galore, out-of-work youngsters need coaching in getting up in the morning, looking smart and in how to relate to fellow workers and their superiors.

It is pathetic that, nowadays, young people need to be taught these skills when once punctuality, appearance and manners were fundamentals that every school-leaver knew were requirements of the world of work.

But we know the sort of person the government is pitching this initiative at since we see them everywhere.

They are the idle teenage yobs, with thuggish shaved-head haircuts, tattoos, multiple earrings, dirty-trainers, a churlish demeanour and a vocabulary limited largely to obscenities.

Yet why does the government imagine that these elements of the underclass can be coaxed or guided - at the expense of still more New Deal money from the taxpayers - into becoming eligible for employment? It is manifest from their appearance, attitude and behaviour that work is the last thing they want.

I note that, coupled with the carrot of these smartening-up courses that are to become part of a "soft skills" programme, there is to be the "three strikes and you're out" stick of six months' loss of benefits for young people who refuse three offers of work under the New Deal.

But is that sufficient incentive for the incorrigibly workshy to purposely set about working for a living?

How about permanently stopping the dole of the deliberate idlers, whose appearance and behaviour advertise their unwillingness to work when there's lots of work to be had and the minimum wage has done away with the excuse that the jobs that are going aren't worth having?

Why should the state - that is, the rest of us - in any way support those who can work, but simply won't?

Like a lot of others, I am still waiting for the government's much-vaunted welfare reforms to really begin, let alone bite.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.