MSE News: Benefits to rise by less than inflation: full breakdown

princessdon

KxMx wrote: »

I do this on a volunteer basis but have not been able to find anyone to hire me on a paid basis. Beyond dodgy "make £££s per day from home!" companies. Most "work from home" jobs go to established employees.



Genuinely would like to know how your friend goes about getting hired for jobs like this?

She started by doing some odd bit of work for her old boss (A consultant who did private work and this was for his private work) after she chose not to return to work following maternity leave, then she advertised on Linked In and other sites (and with agencies). She will never make mega bucks - but does enough to keep her active, get some pennies and most importantly for her, be there for her child.

Last time we spoke (which was about a month ago), she was doing approx 20 hours a week of work. One client now takes over 8 hours per week of her time. She books his travel, does his expenses and types his reports and responds to none urgent email. He can't afford a full time secretary, he works from his home too so logistically can't have someone in his office, so this arrangement suits them. Others book ad-hoc and use her when their secretaries are off ill etc.

She also has a regular business lady who takes every Friday off to be a mother and calls her "Lady Friday" and she does all her admin, phone calls (diverted to her home) and appointments. She claims 2 hours a week for this, but she is local and so she physically gets the work on a Thursday and drops it off over the weekend - its' not net based.

She is an Ex Medical Secretary though - so did have a good grounding but the majority of her new work is none medical. merely typing, doing powerpoints, excel / budgets, organising diaries etc.

She is turning down work regularly now too

Dunroamin

schrodie wrote: »

Well that's it then let's save the taxpayer a small fortune and get rid of ATOS and just use your criteria.

Job done!!

Why ask whether I know disabled people who work and then disparage the fact that I do?

I haven't suggested any "criteria" but just tried to dispel the idea that there aren't many disabled people who work.

Dunroamin

xXMessedUpXx wrote: »

I wonder if 30wpm is quick enoough for home typing?

I don't know the answer to that one but there would be no reason why you couldn't bring your typing speed up to an excellent level by learning/practising at home.:)

princessdon

BTW my friend isn't a trained typist. She was a medical secretary and so has an OK speed, but mine is about the same if honest.

She charges £10 ph - but it may take her 1.5 hours if all typing. Her strength is admin and organisation. A job may take her 2 hours and she charges for 3 for this area, so it's swings and roundabouts.

In her "lady Friday role" for £20 pw her client gets a whole day with her own baby, my friend does all her invoices, updates her spreadsheet and takes diverted calls (can call them back if busy). All she has to do is call back clients within 2 hours to arrange an appt.

For £20 pw (expenseable to the client) it's a bargain to have someone to do your invoices etc, and not loose potential clients.

I am sure there are MANY others out there who pay and work as the same.

regbrown

Sad to read the same old petty party politics on here from people who cant see past their own situations. Alas we have a family member who is incapable of working. If you think a 1% rise is fine because you haven't had a pay rise, you are incredibly lucky.

Their life on medical benefit is not one I would wish on my worst enemy. If you cannot work out that when your money is extremely limited then any rise in food or utilities takes even more out of an already squeezed pot , then your not that smart. I cannot believe he lives on what he does and in reality he needs food parcels already.

I really could not care less of others experiences or opinions, how dare you judge others without their full medical history. You may work and pay tax but are morally rotten to judge the sick and disabled this way, even if you assume they are not entitled. You don't know their history and I would suggest you should put effort into sorting out your own obvious issues before attacking others. Clearly not raised very well.

As for some facts, and I was a life long conservative voter, it was the banking bail out that put us in this mess, not the previous Labour government. I am tired of silly party politics being used as an excuse in these difficult times, it does not help our country. A world banking crash caused by insane greed and irresponsible lending the western world over. I was not living in this country in 2008, I was in the US and assure you it was not Labours fault their either. The ONS data will back this up, debt under Labour was actually pretty low as a % of GDP, better than the last conservative government in fact.

Labour takes no credit for this in the same way its not the conservative parties fault its continuing.

I know people cant do anything but petty party politics, but when its used to attack people en mass, be they the disabled or sick, then it starts to become something a little more unpleasant.

Do not allow this mess we are in allow us as people to turn into in fighting morons. Remember the genuine folk who cant find work and remember your situation is not directly mappable to anyone else, if you have the good grace to understand you are not the centre of the universe.

Dunroamin

regbrown wrote: »

Sad to read the same old petty party politics on here from people who cant see past their own situations. Alas we have a family member who is incapable of working. If you think a 1% rise is fine because you haven't had a pay rise, you are incredibly lucky.

Their life on medical benefit is not one I would wish on my worst enemy. If you cannot work out that when your money is extremely limited then any rise in food or utilities takes even more out of an already squeezed pot , then your not that smart. I cannot believe he lives on what he does and in reality he needs food parcels already.

I really could not care less of others experiences or opinions, how dare you judge others without their full medical history. You may work and pay tax but are morally rotten to judge the sick and disabled this way, even if you assume they are not entitled. You don't know their history and I would suggest you should put effort into sorting out your own obvious issues before attacking others. Clearly not raised very well.

As for some facts, and I was a life long conservative voter, it was the banking bail out that put us in this mess, not the previous Labour government. I am tired of silly party politics being used as an excuse in these difficult times, it does not help our country. A world banking crash caused by insane greed and irresponsible lending the western world over. I was not living in this country in 2008, I was in the US and assure you it was not Labours fault their either. The ONS data will back this up, debt under Labour was actually pretty low as a % of GDP, better than the last conservative government in fact.

Labour takes no credit for this in the same way its not the conservative parties fault its continuing.

I know people cant do anything but petty party politics, but when its used to attack people en mass, be they the disabled or sick, then it starts to become something a little more unpleasant.

Do not allow this mess we are in allow us as people to turn into in fighting morons. Remember the genuine folk who cant find work and remember your situation is not directly mappable to anyone else, if you have the good grace to understand you are not the centre of the universe.

You seem to be posting on a different thread from the rest of us.

regbrown

Dunroamin wrote: »

You seem to be posting on a different thread from the rest of us.

Go read it from the start, you may have missed a few mildly condescending posts

clemmatis

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

The idea of working form home is that go at your own speed. You are paid for the work you do; not the speed you do the work at.

But as we have already established, some people don't want to work.

What we have established is that there are insufficient vacancies, insufficient by a long way, for even the number of people on JSA. Additionally, there is massive underemployment; and no, that does not mean, "won't work enough", it means that too much available employment is part-time.

And as for "paid for the work you do, not the speed...", well, perhaps some people really don't want to work from home for 20p an hour. Naughty them.

And as for "everyone can work", well, given the right kind of work, and employers willing to make the right kind of adjustments, then, yes, more or less everyone can work, after a fashion. But who will give them work?

And those speak programmes

Gosh. An expert...

Muttleythefrog

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

Some people just don't want to work, even thought they could. Just look at all the people that spend a lot of time posting on these forums and others, who would be able to carry out secretarial work from home at the very least. Yet mention "work" and suddenly they continue typing reams and say they are too sick to do any work. Why is that?

It's true some people don't want to work. I'm probably one of them... (yet strangely seem immune to the criticisms usually associated with such thinking... maybe I don't 'sound' like the idle riff raff on council estates who aspire to benefit entitlements and a pit bull.) But then wanting to do anything at all is a problem... to be honest if you dumped a million pounds cash at the end of the street you might have to further coax me out of my current slumber. I'm only here because I can't be bothered to go to bed. I can't be bothered to go to bed because to get there seems overwhelmingly complex and difficult... I'll ride that out and ultimately will achieve something important tonight.

As a thread set up in this section earlier asked is why can't someone do admin work if they can sit and type all day long. Things are rarely that straightforward... if they're getting sickness benefit (like ESA) then they've not gotten it because they have convincing typing skills. Anyone can work at the end of the day.. the question is do they want to, is it sensible or appropriate to, and is anything suitable available. As the latter is likely to be the ultimate barrier to many I think the issue of wanting to work becomes redundant. Reality is there's not enough work for people who do want, and have great capability, to work.. hence many want to up their hours and jobs attract many applicants. Even back in 2008/9 when I was last jobseeking I was competing with around 100-200 other candidates. Working from home will be a possibility for some, but generally speaking I would think the low earning potential and competition for work will be deterrent factors. It would seem a waste of society's resources to try to batter and barge people into work that doesn't exist and they don't want to do.... as a former boss of mine once said (he said a lot of wise things as regular readers of my gibberish will testify) 'sometimes you've just got to cut your losses and accept some things ultimately lead to skull on brickwork contests where a draw is the best you can hope for'.

The dreadful irony in my own case is that back in 2008 when I was made 'redundant' I tried to get a job working from home as a chat moderator. Not just any chat moderator.. chat moderator for a well known bingo firm with whom I had connections under their previous guise. Further.. the person whom application had to be made to was someone who had previously tried to acquire me when the firm in question was actually her division within a larger organisation. Given my social skills, my diplomacy skills, my typing skills, english skills, love of games and personal exposure to the person recruiting.. plus my home office equipment.. you'd have thought I might have a chance. My ace card was to point out that the games that I would act as moderator in relation to were games I had actually taken part in designing years previously.. writing the software and designing the gameplay. I never received a reply to my application but my brother's girlfriend got one of the jobs....lol. That job paid poorly but I was prepared to do it... I knew the game was almost over... this was the type of job that could have left me hanging on in a while longer... a few months later of course I got a job totally unsuited to my rapidly declining mental health.

FBaby

Of course no one can judge on an individual basis whether they are genuinely capable of working, even when they do appear pretty clear minded here without knowing them.

What I don't understand though is the attitude of 'well, there are no jobs, no one would employ me, I wouldn't be able to do this or that etc..., so why bother'. It's that 'why bother' that I personally have a big issue with because EVERYONE needs to bother to get something. It's not a case that if you are none disabled, you just need to look at a job and it is yours, you have to battle for it too. So yes, being disabled might mean that your chances are even lower, but there is a difference between lower and non existant.

If you have 1 chance out of 10 to get a job, it might seem pointless to go for it. But if you apply to 50 jobs with a 1 in 10 chance, the probability that you get one starts to go up. One fact is certain, if you don't try, you certainly will never get that chance, and then it can only be blamed on the likelihood that you would never have got it in the first place rather than it being a fact.

I have beaten the odds so many times in my life, as a matter of fact, it feels like my accomplishments are an accumulations of odds being beaten. I am not a lucky person by nature, but I do work very hard to get what I have, and low likelihood of success doesn't stop me, maybe that's why deep inside, I do feel some sense of entitlement to what I have gained.

It does feel like we live more and more in a culture of 'why bother if I can't be certain of the outcome' with the unsaid that those who do get the outcome have done so just due to pure luck...