I have very little spare time to write my blog today so this will truly be brief. Amidst all the riots in Athens as the Eurozone farce descents further into the mire, the UK Labour Force data came out yesterday (June 15, 2011). There are some who are saying that the data presents good news. A closer examination reveals nothing of the sort. Others are claiming that there isn’t really a problem of unemployment in Britain because the unemployed are largely unemployable. That is a familiar refrain after a deep recession as the labour market struggles to keep pace with the underlying population growth. The conservatives always try to redefine what we might call full employment and claim that a much higher unemployment rate is now indicative of full capacity. The same game is being played out in Australia where despite unemployment and underemployment totally 12.2 per cent at present the Reserve Bank governor had the audacity to claim there were not that many spare labour resources (like 1.3 million odd workers don’t count any more).