Lord Alan Sugar slams "cushy" benefits system
Published Oct 18 2011, 00:01 BST | By Mayer Nissim
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.
© BBC
© BBC
"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."
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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."
Watch some of Lord Alan Sugar's classic lines from The Apprentice below:
It seems to be the case that most people who didn't go to university resent those who do, or at least have this stereotyped opinion of students like Sugar does - he is very closed minded about the right way for people to go about making a life for themselves, ie his way.
October 27th 2011 at 11:05pm
Sugar seems to be forgetting that a lot of people work while they're in university - almost everyone I know who's in uni has a part time job doing something on the minimum wage, which is evidence to me that a lot of people with degrees aren't unwilling to do low paid jobs. There just aren't enough jobs out there for anyone at the moment - I've been to several interviews for minimum wage jobs where I've been told by the interviewer that the number of applications was staggeringly high.
October 27th 2011 at 11:01pm
Emmy Johnson And a lot of people who are working aren't much better off with rent as high as it is in most places - the minimum wage is so disgracefully low that a lot of people who are working still have to be on benefits just to have that 60 quid a week that they would get on the dole.
October 27th 2011 at 10:32pm
as they say, he's britains most berlidgerant boss and famously hard to please. But it is sad that backstabbing in the boardroom is applauded by Lord Sugar, not a good example to teenagers applauding it
October 26th 2011 at 11:05am
Many people on the dole will have to chose between heat and food this winter, as it is many can not afford to eat more than one meal a day and that is while buying the cheapest food. No money for clothes, shoes, going out either so people become isolated. ESA is not much better either...People that think it is cushy, have no clue and child allowance in that sitution will clothe and feed that child.
October 26th 2011 at 11:04am