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

minicooper272

Matari wrote: »

Sorry but this is completely wrong - those under 25 get 51.25 per week and people over 25 get 64.30 per week (with council tax and rent paid) but no help towards bills - in fact people on benefit have to pay their water rates and tv licence out of their benefit. So I am bemused as to where you got £96.00 per week from.

This is what my sister told me her flatmate gets, I'm just stating what I've been told.

DebtHater

Looks like Conservative are going to get in then, judging by Mr Browns comments today!

The sooner the better. Labour have done nothing but muck this country up.

Cookiepops

The benefits system in this country can be a joke at times (I am wording carefully because I know not all cases are the same) but I have a very dim view of the entire system. I am in my early thirties, have worked since I left school and scrimped and saved a deposit with my now husband to get on the propertly ladder. We have a nice semi detached house with garage in a nice estate - then last year the famil from hell moved in - 5 of them altogether (Mum, Dad, Son, Daughter and daughters boyf) and none of them work!!! Dad is an alcoholic, son is in and out of prison, daughters boyf has never worked since they moved in and daughter is now preg (she is 17).
Me and H both work full time, both have the threat of redundancy hanging over us and worried sick that we might lose our house, there are months when we struggle to make the mortgage payments but have never not met them and we can't afford to have children. We did try to sell up last year but after a few months got no offers, when we asked for feedback from the EA, it was bsically because of the neighbours (either the state of their house, garden or the noise from their or their dogs).
Sometimes life is very unfair.

redglass_2

It would be interesting to know which newspapers posters read. There are papers on sale in Britain whose sole purpose seems to be whipping people up into a state of rage about bogus asylum seekers, scroungers, etc and how much money they are supposedly getting. These papers seek out extreme cases and stick them on the front page so that the readers will froth at the mouth, and after that we are all supposed to vote Tory.
Where I live the local bigotry is all about 'hippies'. To listen to some locals you'd think 'hippies' only had to walk into the benefit office to be showered with cash which 'decent, normal' people can't get. If people calmed down the hatred a bit and used their common sense, they'd realise that benefits staff are not such an easy touch, nor do they have any warm fuzzy feelings about 'scroungers', if only for the reason that they are mostly recruited from the same local community that circulates all these hysterical rumours. In the past when people without work starved, the result was widespread crime. Prisons are more expensive than benefit.
Edited: Lisajh29, I was composing my post while yours went up. I am sorry about your situation and I've had neighbours from hell myself. My post wasn't directed at you.

cw18

bradders55 wrote: »

So many people young, middle aged and older just cannot be bothered or are too PROUD to get their hands dirty.

And if you do accept a "more menial job" than you used to have, people are astounded that you've done it - and don't seem to believe that you can possibly be happy in it as well.

I worked in a (well paid) full-time IT job from Sep 85 until Nov 08, when I was made redundant. In Nov 09 I was lucky enough to get another job, which is part-time in a supermarket bakery. I've lost count of the people - some I used to work with, some are friends from outside work, some are people I now work with - who make comments about the fact I've accepted the change..... and even more so when I make it clear I have no intention of looking at going back to IT.

Daisy_Bell

minerva_windsong wrote: »

I voted for £100/week, as that covers rent, food, utilities etc - what I would consider the basics - thereby allowing people to survive but at the same time encouraging them to work.

After all, this is around the same amount that Pensioners are expected to live on isn't it? :whistle:

schleswig

Successive goverments and the current one in particular have bred a class of people who will not work and make every effort to make themselves unemployable. Benefits have become a life style rather than a safety net. I worked for a number of years with unemployed people of all ages and the majority held the ethos "Why work?". The minority wanted work but were mostly infected with the philosophy that it was someone else's job to find them work rather than get off their backsides and find a job for themselves. A tiny number wanted work and struggled hard to get it.
My answer would be that if someone has been on benefits for more than two years then from a particular point they get three months more benefits and then the tap is stopped. I dealt with a man who had been on benefits for eleven years simply because he could not straighten one of his arms. Absolute balderdash.
Anyone on sickness benefit should be brought before a medical tribunal who should assess their degree of disability and then either prolong their benefit or stop their tap.

Immigrants who enter the country should not get ANY benefits before they have been in work for a continuous period of 12 months. If they have not got a job inside two years then back to where they came from. We are as soft as butter in this country and will become the midden of the EU if we have not already got there.
And NO I don't support the BNP and never would.

baz8755

I think the unemployed should not get any money so that they cannot buy any luxury items such as cigarettes,booze etc. Insted they should be given food/clothing/accomodation, hopefully this would provide them with an incentive to go out and find work.

I work in a town that is full of the long term unemployed and you see many of them smoking and drinking whilst I'm on my way to work, they also seem to have filled all their free time breeding. What kind of example are these people setting for their children as soon there will be generations that will just perpuate the same lifestyle.

greendollar

Hi all ,

Well I've been claiming JSA for over a year since losing my job , I've been replaced ( as have half of the blokes in my grade in my previous job ) by zero hour contract workers .
Normally I would have fallen back on my old trade ( machine/plant op ) but my licences lapsed as they need renewing every 5 years , the cost to renew these licences is about £500 - £700 each .
With hindsight I should have done this but as I had no intention of leaving my previous employment and with 2 young children doubt that I would have had the money anyway .
If I ever found myself without work for any period I would always turn my hand to a bit of window cleaning and know a few firms in my area , they won't employ me now as the Latvian workers are much cheaper .
JCP are little help , there's not much work about , according to them I have no qualifications and a criminal conviction makes me virtually unemployable .
Being on JSA is no bed of roses but we have a roof over our heads and we don't go hungry but it seems from most of the posts on here people would like to see people like me suffer ..... by the way , I'm not lazy , I do some part=time work but JCP take £5 of every £10 I earn .

ceridwen

Aunt_Harriet wrote: »

You people make me sick! :mad:

Why not go the full hog and line the jobless up against the wall and shoot them!!

:mad:

The thing is that most of the people taking the "give them even less - and/or make it in the form of a food voucher" clearly havent been in that position themselves. Hence they think they personally are immune to having to worry about this.

You and I know that they ARENT immune to ending up unemployed themselves - and hope it will be soon for them - so they are aware of how much nonsense they are talking.

Re the food vouchers - i was thinking further on this today and about the fact that food vouchers simply wouldnt do for me personally (or many others) because they wouldnt allow for us buying the type of food we ACTUALLY do buy (be it because of allergies/other health considerations/personal likes and dislikes/etc) and realising that if anyone expected me to have some of my money as a food voucher then I would soon be looking to set up a scheme whereby those on benefit could trade their food vouchers with those not on benefit (but who ate that way anyway) in order to get the "face value" of those vouchers in cash. This would then defeat the whole object of giving those on benefit some of their cash in the form of vouchers anyway:D.

It would be something that might come about as an accidental byproduct of me ensuring that I personally could swop my vouchers for equivalent cash - but it would then become quite a large scheme quite quickly anyway that a lot of people would take advantage of.

Meanwhile though - I DO hope that the posters who think its easy to live on benefit level income soon have this as their own personal experience - and then they (most of them anyway) will realise that it could indeed happen to anyone and how difficult/demeaning it is to try and live on that level of income - due to no fault of one's own.