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

UKJubilee_2

This is something I have been thinking about for some time and came up with a solution for. I think we should leave payments as they are but that to get the JSA you would need to do community work for 3 or 4 days a week, the remaining days are to be used to search for work and attend the job center to do your sign on. There are lots of ideas I have come up with for the community work
e.g doing old peoples gardening for them, litter picking in the local area, volunteering in charity shops, dog walking for the Dogs Home

If people refuse to do the community work then they don't get the JSA, it discourages people from getting benefits and 'going to the pub all day' and for honest out of work people gives them something useful to do (which I would have appreciated when I was out of work last year!)

mossy31

I was a teenage mum, 18 and living in a grotty council property that no-one else wanted. My ex-partner was bone idle and did not want to work. Therefore, my baby had second hand clothes and we had to get his milk from the clinic from milk tokens. It was a very depressing time for me especially as I had a full time job before I had my son. I therefore decided to swallow my pride, go home and signed up to college and spent two and a half years studying Accounting. I had my second son at 21 and had to move into another Council property. This time the ex did go to work and so we paid rent for a flat that was full of damp, had inadequate sound proofing and a danger to children living upstairs. (This is true, I was informed by police.) I returned to work and my children attended nursery. I got rid of the lazy ex and secured a nice house for me and my boys. Everyone told me I should pack in work as I was now a single parent and I probably would have had the same money if I had. But pride and dignity kept me working.

I have since met and married my husband, had another child and am expecting my fourth any day. We both work extremely hard and hardly see each other as we have to work back to back to cover child care in the school hols. My eldest son attends grammar school, I have a part degree and we own our own house. Not bad considering my past.

I think people should not be rewarded for not working and I think lots of people have quite a cushy life with nice new houses and plenty of benefit money. I had to get my act together and sort myself out so I don't see why others don't.

everybear

benefit should be generous to start with and then slowly reduce with time. Also i feel that if too many offers of work/training/voluntary work are refused then the benefit is lowered even more. Also taking lots of training/courses would require the person to attend work hard and pass not just attend courses to avoid losing benefit.

Cerisa

"No one has asked why nothing is said about people that spend all day in pubs drinking and smoking and gambling themselves silly with benefits money?"

On £45 a week? What planet are you on Rick

spiro

I have not read all 290 posts so apologies if this has already been posted.

What really annoys me about some people on benefits is they think they can keep bringing more children into this world and we will keep upping the amount we pay them. My view is that when someone is on benefits there should be no increase due to any new 'family members' 10 months after they start claiming benefits. The couple in the papers the other week that had about 6 kids (may have been more) who plan to have more should be told 'go ahead but you will get nothing more in benefits'. :mad:

donquine

On the assumption that an individual is able to work, that person should work. Benefits shouldn't pay an equivalent to a 'good' job, they should pay the equivalent of what is needed to get by, i.e. to buy all the essentials for everyday living, but not treats.

In addition to that basic amount, which should be calculated according to postcode (i.e. cost of living in that area - some cities are really expensive to live in and that should be reflected), jobseekers should be entitled to all reasonable expenses incurred in looking for a job. We could give them a bus pass, that had to be stamped each time they signed on or it wouldn't be valid. Maybe a stash of free pre-stamped envelopes and accompanying stationery?

I really do think we could do so much more with Job Centres - they could be an amazing resource but hardly anyone has a good word to say about them. That needs to change. In addition to making changes to the amount of benefit paid to job seekers, we need to improve the resources they use to look for work.

When it comes to parents - they should only be paid to stay at home until their children are one. How many parents do you know who would have loved to stay at home and raise their kids but who had to arrange childcare and go out to work for purely financial reasons? Staying at home to raise your kids is a luxury - most people have to work and those who don't, should be those with enough money behind them to support that choice. It's not a right - it's an ideal and a bit of a pipe dream for many.

The long term unemployed are people who have clearly had no luck bagging a job for whatever reason, so I think it makes sense to suspend the 'actively looking for a job' condition for, say, 2 months, and put them into a full time voluntary position for that period so they can rack up some solid recent work experience without looking for jobs at the same time and also update their practical skills. At the end of that period, they should then have to start looking for work again.

ceridwen

spiro wrote: »

I have not read all 290 posts so apologies if this has already been posted.

What really annoys me about some people on benefits is they think they can keep bringing more children into this world and we will keep upping the amount we pay them. My view is that when someone is on benefits there should be no increase due to any new 'family members' 10 months after they start claiming benefits. The couple in the papers the other week that had about 6 kids (may have been more) who plan to have more should be told 'go ahead but you will get nothing more in benefits'. :mad:

Yep...I've already made that point - but its worth reiterating. Someone will doubtless pop up any moment and go "But what about the children - you cant let the children suffer..." carefully forgetting that the parents didnt think of that before they conceived the post-redundancy child/ren....so why are the rest of us supposed to make up for their deficiencies as parents?:mad:

...but then "personal responsibility" isnt fashionable at the moment...:(

Ames

donquine, I agree with almost everything you say, apart from the parents going back to work when the kids are 1. that's fine, but only if there's sufficient investment in childcare, right through until the kids are old enough to be left on their own. at the moment once kids get to about 10 they're too old for activities in school holidays, but too young to be on their own and childcare for 40 hours a week would be horrendously expensive. Obviously it's a problem that many work around now, but it is a big barrier for others.

Cerisa

Cerridwen, i'm going to be that annoying person (again).

If someone can't cope, we should help them, as a caring, humane society. I'm perfectly happy to keep children fed, even if their parents are deficient or even scumbags. Kids shouldn't have to pay for their parents' mistakes. Yes the parents should have thought first. They didn't.

It's been proven that the more educated the population is, the fewer children they have. It's also been proven that decent sex education (rather than the 'just say no' policy, or the woefully inadequate information most receive) massively cuts unwanted pregnancies.

And if we're talking sheer economics, rather than starving the jobless we should do away with the house of lords, review parliament expenses and scrap Trident. Trident will cost £80 billion by the time it's done with. That could pay for education, training courses and benefits, a thousand times over.

Perhaps we should pick our targets better?

donquine

Ames wrote: »

donquine, I agree with almost everything you say, apart from the parents going back to work when the kids are 1. that's fine, but only if there's sufficient investment in childcare, right through until the kids are old enough to be left on their own. at the moment once kids get to about 10 they're too old for activities in school holidays, but too young to be on their own and childcare for 40 hours a week would be horrendously expensive. Obviously it's a problem that many work around now, but it is a big barrier for others.

If it's a choice between paying for the upkeep of a child or paying for the resources to enable a parent to go out and work and pay for their own child themself, I know which option I prefer. It's not just about getting people off benefits - it's about getting them to set a good example to their children and to break the cycle. Benefits for unemployed people should be a temporary stop gap, not a permanent solution - somehow we've let them become a way of life and that needs to change.

Whilst I don't think we should subsidise people to stay at home just because they'd prefer to do so, I do recognise it's not a change we should bring in overnight - yes, you're right, there should be better childcare.

Again, it comes back to my point about enabling people to work. Some of the facilities we provide them with - like the Job Centre and the Job Centre web site - are crap. If we want everyone who can work to actually work, we need to give them better help.

I heard one man complaining he had all the right experience, but after being made redundant, he couldn't get anywhere as he had no formal qualifications. It's not rocket science to suggest that we, as taxpayers, could pay for him to sit exams to formalise what he knows - we wouldn't need to pay for training, just the final exam. Wouldn't that make his job seeking much easier and more successful?

It frustrates me, because I think there are lots of simple things we could be doing and we should be doing, but aren't, because money is being spent on crap and not on useful projects like this.