'Should we starve the jobless back to work?' poll discussion

She wasn't declaring it, they are both claiming everything they can, they get a new car every 3 years on mobility (her husband is in a wheelchair for a bad back yet he manages to paint and decorate the house plus lay laminate flooring!).

When her father died she cleared out his flat, found his bank books and cleared his accounts of a couple of thousand pounds......none of which was done officially!

Yes she has been reported as I've reported her myself but for some reason she keeps getting away with it, hopefully she won't get away with it forever though. She told me was spotted coming out of a clients house but said she'd cut the old womans hair as a favour.....I think she already has her answers thought out for when she does get questioned.

I put £75 but thought about putting £100.

My observations were that the "average" was somewhat more than this amount but clearly rent mortgages this sort of thing are a factor that can't so easily be reckoned up.

My point .. we had in the last few years an influx of foreign migrant workers from places such as Poland and these people were more than happy to work for wages at the minimum level or less.
Now why doesn't this happen with people from Britain?

In short living costs.

What point is there taking a job a £100 per week if your rent is £100 per week?

The Poles and I know this as I have a friend who's had them in their block share a flat between up to 10 people. And their relative wage compared with the home country would at least 5 times more than it's worth here. eg £1 in england buys you a loaf of bread in Poland the same is 20p. So although they have to buy bread here it is done so very sparingly with the money being saved up for returning to home.

Starving the jobless won't work, all that will happen is that there will be more crime from muggings to builder cons this sort of stuff.

What the government needs to do is make work pay for low paid workers and I think that looking again at the housing benefit allowances and council tax concessions is the key.

I think there is a clear distiction between career unemployed and those who are unemployed as a result of redundancy etc through no fault of their own. I agree that something needs to be done about career unemployed, but I don't think that targeting their children is the way forward! All sounds very Victorian to me, and I certainly don't approve of workhouses for children of parents who can't afford to pay for them.

My earlier estimates may have been a bit out on council tax and bills because I live in shared accommodation where bills are included. The £10 per week food budget is actually what I set myself as a target, and is doable for a single person who choses not to be fussy, especially with the help of the forums on this site. Admittedly that doesn't include toiletries, but my budget for those is only around £10 per month at most (Over a two-monthly period I buy shampoo once £5, deodorant once £2.50, toothpaste once £2.50, showergel twice £2each, leaving £6 for luxuries like Simple facial wipes!). As for clothes, I also personally don't feel I need a weekly clothing budget, I generally get clothes or high street vouchers from family for birthdays and Christmas. Certainly if I were relying on State funding, I would expect to only buy new clothes when old ones wore out, and the supermarkets do fantastic, fashionable ranges for so cheap now.

However, personally I literally could not afford to live on JSA. Being under 25 and therefore entitled to less JSA, I have yet to see how my living costs are less that a person a year older than me! As I am currently working and not expecting to be made redundant I have financial committments that I would not be able to stop if I were on JSA. This poll has made me seriously consider what would happen if I were made redundant and, basically, without the support of my family I would probably end up in serious financial trouble.

Final note: migrant workers cannot claim JSA until they have worked and paid tax for a set time, and as long as they are here legally, they get paid minimum wage. Indeed, one of the local farms employes migrant workers at £8/hour because the local people won't do such hard work and long hours for that amount of money. Remember, the farmer employed migrant workers because he couldn't get anyone else to do the work. It is simply not true that people can't have the jobs because the migrants have taken them, its that the local workers refused the jobs so they were offered to migrant workers.

marko2002- you're right many kids brought up in that environment do turn out that way, though I know this isn't always the case.

The son from the family I've mentioned was about 19 and jobless so I got him an application form for the local McDonalds and his brother gave it to him while i was there. His mum saw it and her exact words were "Throw that in the bin, you're not working there!", I was gobsmacked that she saw her son who left school without a single qualification as being too good to work there. She even turned to my ex and said "well you wouldn't work there", so I piped up with "My sister worked for them for a couple of years" and this didn't go down well!
He's had numerous jobs (lasts a couple of weeks), apprenticeships (quit these as he didn't get paid enough.....didn't see the bigger picture at all) and college places but he's quite happy to get up mid afternoon and play on his x-box till evening when he goes out.