A job's a job..

JodyBPM

LadyMissA wrote: »

I look for up to 10 hours a day. Laptop will burn out at this rate. I apply for everything and anything and spent 3 hours today looking at retail websites (I have an accounts background) for admin work as well as applying for jobs on Reed, Monster, Total Jobs CV library etc Job applications today are 20 and will probably go to bed in a hour and up again looking at 8am.

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Hearing stories like this restores my faith into why I pay so much of our household income in taxes.

I hope you find a job soon, it sounds like you certainly deserve one.

I don't begrudge benefits to people with your attitude, you deserve them, that is exactly what they are for, to support you while you are genuinely seeking employment.

Where in the UK are you BTW?

EdJRobinson

If I lived in an area that I could spend 8-9 + commuting time searching for jobs I would. I could cover the town I live and the large town down the hill in one day searching for jobs I can do. That is the unfortunate downside to living in an area that is feeling the economic downturn really hard. Shops in the main town centre are closing down too often. Currys.Digital being the next one which closes next week. I have no transport currently as I cannot afford to run my car with insurance and petrol costs rising.

It is hard not being able to socialise with friends. My friends are one of the most important things in my life as they've helped me through some difficult times in my life.

I do not discard anything I "didn't fancy". If I can do it, I apply for it. I want to work!

EdJRobinson

LadyMissA wrote: »

To get yourself sacked not once but three times is just like walking out. Some of us have lost our jobs due to no fault of our own and were made reduandant.

Like I explained on the other thread, the first one was due to immaturity. I had just left school and not grown up properly. The 2nd one, I regret the career move in the first place. The last one I was absolutely devastated about due to a silly little mistake that Im gonna regret for the rest of my life. I am really sympathetic towards people who get made redundant.

JodyBPM

EdJRobinson wrote: »

If I lived in an area that I could spend 8-9 + commuting time searching for jobs I would. I could cover the town I live and the large town down the hill in one day searching for jobs I can do. That is the unfortunate downside to living in an area that is feeling the economic downturn really hard. Shops in the main town centre are closing down too often. Currys.Digital being the next one which closes next week. I have no transport currently as I cannot afford to run my car with insurance and petrol costs rising.

It is hard not being able to socialise with friends. My friends are one of the most important things in my life as they've helped me through some difficult times in my life.

I do not discard anything I "didn't fancy". If I can do it, I apply for it. I want to work!

Then apply for jobs outside your area and relocate.

We have two young children and work f/t and p/t (0.5 fte) respectively. Including our commutes, we are out of the house for 90 hours a week between us, and yet we still cannot afford to socialise with our friends. Think you have it hard? Really? We are fairly the norm for workers, the people who are supporting you, can you not see why it ticks us off? You expect to be able to socialise with your friends, despite not earning, we accept that we cannot afford to socialise with our friends despite both working hard, and paying a fair chunk of our salaries to support people like you. Can you not see that?

EdJRobinson

Short of telling you all my life story, relocation isn't an option. If I could, I would. I'm not saying I have it hard. I'm paying for a mistake that I'm trying to correct and get my life back on track. You have your own space to invite friends round in whatever free time you have (I understand with with 2 young children, that is not a lot), whereas I'm still living at home, as are most of my friends. A strained family life necessitates that I see my friends to get social interaction and become more determined to get a job and get out of the house. I understand your frustrations but I'm an honest person. I don't fluff my JSA up the wall on drink and drugs like the people who shouldn't receive a single penny in benefits but keep popping kids out.

JodyBPM

EdJRobinson wrote: »

Short of telling you all my life story, relocation isn't an option. If I could, I would. I'm not saying I have it hard. I'm paying for a mistake that I'm trying to correct and get my life back on track. You have your own space to invite friends round in whatever free time you have (I understand with with 2 young children, that is not a lot), whereas I'm still living at home, as are most of my friends. A strained family life necessitates that I see my friends to get social interaction and become more determined to get a job and get out of the house. I understand your frustrations but I'm an honest person. I don't fluff my JSA up the wall on drink and drugs like the people who shouldn't receive a single penny in benefits but keep popping kids out.

OK, I get that you would like to work, I get that you're not a total waster, BUT... WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE... Life is hard, life is a struggle, most people have to work to make ends meet, to pay their way. We don't get the choice of whether or not we relocate,(despite all living together as a family, DH pretty much only gets to see the children at weekends due to his commute and working hours, perhaps if he's lucky, he might get to read a bedtime story to them once in the week) we don't get the choice as to whether or not we have social time or down time, we put up and get on with it.

DH & I earn apparently "high" salaries, but due to commuting costs (massive, c £4k pa out of taxed income, can't afford to live closer to London), childcare costs (that we don't get help with, due to our "high" salaries), and getting zilch help (apart from CB, which it looks like we will lose next year anyway) we end up worse off than families in our area on benefits in the amount of money we have to spend after expenses. Do I begrudge that? Sure I do. BUT, the work ethic instilled in us, and our sense of self worth dictates that we simply CANNOT lower ourselves to live off of others when we are able and capable of supporting ourselves. So when I hear the people that my taxes are supporting trying to say that they should be entitled to not take jobs because they will ruin their quality of life, I get pretty mad. DH and I aren't doing our dream jobs, we're doing what we need to do to pay our own way in life. Our jobs make us miserable much of the time, that's part and parcel of being a worker. Try the workers life for a few months, and realise how easy you have it...

EdJRobinson

JodyBPM wrote: »

OK, I get that you would like to work, I get that you're not a total waster, BUT... WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE... Life is hard, life is a struggle, most people have to work to make ends meet, to pay their way. We don't get the choice of whether or not we relocate, we don't get the choice as to whether or not we have social time or down time, we put up and get on with it.

DH & I earn apparently "high" salaries, but due to commuting costs (massive, c £4k pa out of taxed income, can't afford to live closer to London), childcare costs (that we don't get help with, due to our "high" salaries), and getting zilch help (apart from CB, which it looks like we will lose next year anyway) we end up worse off than families in our area on benefits in the amount of money we have to spend after expenses. Do I begrudge that? Sure I do. BUT, the work ethic instilled in us, and our sense of self worth dictates that we simply CANNOT lower ourselves to live off of others when we are able and capable of supporting ourselves. So when I hear the people that my taxes are supporting trying to say that they should be entitled to not take jobs because they will ruin their quality of life, I get pretty mad. DH and I aren't doing our dream jobs, we're doing what we need to do to pay our own way in life. Our jobs make us miserable much of the time, that's part and parcel of being a worker. Try the workers life for a few months, and realise how easy you have it...

I feel for you, I really do. I also admire the fact you work for everything you have. In my 12 years of employment I've spent around 9 months in total unemployed. I love working. I love meeting new people day in, day out. I want to work to sort my life out and start progressing in life (moving out, finding a partner, starting a family). I don't like being on benefits and when I was working, I hated paying tax to pay people benefits who don't want to work. The "system" in this country is broken and that is why immigrants want to come here. In an ideal world we would choose how our taxes are distributed but, unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. We have to play the cards that life has dealt us and do what we have to in order to survive.

JodyBPM

EdJRobinson wrote: »

I feel for you, I really do. I also admire the fact you work for everything you have. In my 12 years of employment I've spent around 9 months in total unemployed. I love working. I love meeting new people day in, day out. I want to work to sort my life out and start progressing in life (moving out, finding a partner, starting a family). I don't like being on benefits and when I was working, I hated paying tax to pay people benefits who don't want to work. The "system" in this country is broken and that is why immigrants want to come here. In an ideal world we would choose how our taxes are distributed but, unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. We have to play the cards that life has dealt us and do what we have to in order to survive.

I agree with you that the system is broken. I don't begrudge immigrants, though. Perhaps because we work in London, which is very multicultural, the immigrants we see daily are the workers (and generally hard workers at that) who came here to better their standard of life. How can one begrudge someone who is prepared to take the risk and move to another country and secure a job when apparently lots of British born can't, who works hard and contributes to our society?
I think the issues we have come from a lack of regional caps on benefit qualifying criteria. Take our income and assets and plonk us in Newcastle or another major city up North, with average for that area commuting costs and average for that area childcare costs, and we'd be laughing. Honestly, we'd be truly affluent. But living in an area where it costs £180K plus to by a 1 bed flat, £280K + to buy the smallest 3 bed family home, childcare at £1K per child per month, commuting at £4K ish pa, and our "high" salaries that preclude us from any help don't stretch too far. Basically, nationally, we're "high" earners, locally we're low earners, but with one national threshold we're far too "wealthy" for any help. What we are left with after expenses is frankly pitiful, certainly not enough for an active social life!

I get cross when a huge chunk of our incomes, that frankly we could do with ourselves, go to support people who think that "walking for an hour" to work is unreasonable (what's that? 4 miles?, try 10 times that distance at a cost of £4k pa for us, with far more than a 1 hr commute time!) or that a job that isn't at their preferred income level (gosh, yes, I'd rather earn more too!), or that doesn't fulfill them (its a job, not a hobby!) is below them.

And if you need to relocate to get a job, then you should. As I said DH hardly gets to see the children from Mon -Fri. Not ideal by any means, but part and parcel of working to support oneself.

falko89

EdJRobinson wrote: »

Thankfully if you visit some of the sites day after day they only show you the jobs since your last visit. 2 hours may not seem like a lot of time but the jobs market where I live is stagnant. Like I said on a different thread that its all for HGV licence holders and university graduates.



Fair point but I've paid my fair share of Income Tax and National Insurance over 12 years to claim. I didn't want to claim as I thought I'd be back in employment fairly quickly. Don't tar me with that brush!

Funny I have also found this, All these job sites 90% of the jobs seem to be for graduates, the only sites which have jobs for the average joe is the job centre site and take this week for example, I haven't applied for 1 job because there is nothing about locally so its not looking to great.

falko89

Esoog wrote: »

This probably isn't the thread to comment on this, but whilst on MSE I've seen a lot of people that seem to have problems/issues with panic attacks/social anxiety etc. I don't really even know what I'm trying to say with this post other than there seems to be a lot of people around nowadays that are not working due to these kind of issue, why is that do you think? No doubt some people that claim to suffer like this are just faking it to not work/claim DLA(?), but I've seen some pretty convincing accounts on here. And what can we do for these people? Shutting them up at home all day on benefits might solve a problem short term, but it's not really a long term solution to their issues or helping them get 'better' and into work; which I'm sure a lot of these people want to do.

Sure you'll have some fakers but until you've been through a serious anxiety issue its impossible to understand what its like, most people in this country think its a simple case of pulling yourself together, or its all in your head. I wouldn't wish generalised anxiety on my worst enemy, I don't think even doctors know much about it, throw some anti depressants at it and hope it goes away.

And whats worse is I think we are only going to see more cases of anxiety and depression with the job situation the way it is, both are brought on by constant negative thinking and feeling hopeless and well there isn't much hope in this country at the moment.