The former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Tebbit has said young unemployed people should be required to pull up ragwort from roadside verges in return for benefits.

The 83-year-old Tory grandee made the proposal in a letter to Matt Shardlow, chief executive of a charity called Buglife, which is concerned about the effect of declining ragwort on bees and rare insects.

In his reply to the charity, Tebbit said ragwort was a major problem in his part of East Anglia and proposed it could be weeded out by “Neets” – young people who are not in education, work or training – and “low level criminals”.

The Guardian: ‘Make young unemployed pull up ragwort for benefits,’ says Lord Tebbit

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  • PRO

    Difficult to know where to start with this one!

  • Well how about a man renowned for displaying his ignorance in public in the form of absurdly right wing reactionary statements on topics of which he knows at best very little what the hell do you expect from such an individual now in his dotage?

  • PRO

    Luckily today, as a society, we have a much more balanced (and dare I say younger) view of ecology and how to treat people convicted of crime than Mt Tebbit.

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