Work For The Dole

grizzly1911

Mr._Pricklepants wrote: »

Totally agree.
And I would include general healthcare and care for the elderly also in that.
And that includes 'backoffice' tasks like stock management or producing food and drinks.
I don't want some dopey spotty millenial dealing with food and drink for those near and dear to me.

Take it you don't go to the Golden Arches often. (There are other drive throughs.)

Who is going to administer any system, what will it cost? What will be the actual benefit. It is not as though we have surplus jobs that we can't fill at a basic wage.

Will those chosen be reimbursed for their expenses of travelling out of immediate area, being provided with work wear, subsistence, tools etc?

John1993 wrote: »

If we try (and we should), and it doesn't wrk, then it's not pragmatic to keep trying, in effect, to push a piece of string uphill.

That is the point:- for basic JSA it is no doubt cheaper just to pay up than "fight it". The same probably goes for the majority of payouts where children are affected.

I wonder if their might be some work experience interest in auditing Ministers, MPSs and Bankers expenses,bonuses, secondary jobs and lobbying fees.

Loughton_Monkey

grizzly1911 wrote: »

I wonder if their might be some work experience interest in auditing Ministers, MPSs and Bankers expenses,bonuses, secondary jobs and lobbying fees.

Those with a bit of nous could do this well.

But I keep thinking about HS2. All the budget over-run. Probably an opportunity there....

N1AK

MacMickster wrote: »

I would say exactly the opposite.

If people planned ahead and had some rainy-day savings to allow them not to work whilst looking for their next permanent job then good for them.

Some of the responses seem to view the idea as some kind of punishment when it is, in fact, an opportunity for those temporarily between jobs to continue to support themselves and their families rather than the humiliation of having to seek charity from the taxpayer.

I'm not entirely against that opinion. My hesitation is more for pragmatic reasons: People don't save. We can blame them and punish them and do what we like but they still won't. It's cutting our noses off to spite our face to take a middle manager who can earn decent money (and pay 5 figures in tax) and hinder his efforts to get another decent job to punish him for it.

I claimed JSA when I was unemployed for three months and neither felt ashamed nor that I was receiving charity. I paid into a system and was entitled to the enhanced rate to help me while I searched. Obviously I don't think I have a god given right to JSA but if I am entitled to it then I'll take it

For me personally I found that JSA allowed me to search for a couple of months for another decent role without having to worry about my savings having to carry the full burden. I may have accepted a worse role (limiting my career) or a temporary role (limiting my job search) without it and that would have cost HMRC considerably more in last revenue than they paid me in JSA.

John1993_2

grizzly1911 wrote: »

I wonder if their might be some work experience interest in auditing Ministers, MPSs and Bankers expenses..es.

Bankers' expenses? Bankers' expenses?

What expenses are these then?

grizzly1911

John1993 wrote: »

Bankers' expenses? Bankers' expenses?

What expenses are these then?

MPs expenses...

John1993_2

grizzly1911 wrote: »

MPs expenses...

No, I asked about the bankers' expenses that you mentioned, not the MP's expenses. Being a reasonably senior banker myself, yet never, ever having come across an "expense account", I was just wondering what you were talking about, and whether you are one of those people who'll have a pop at bankers without really having much of a clue about the subject.

It's surprisingly common...

moneyistooshorttomention

MacMickster wrote: »

We have probably all experienced poor service from the public sector which is attributed to lack of manpower. I had the misfortune of having to contact HMRC just before the Self-Assessment deadline this year. Imagine no-one who wanted a job being completely unemployed, and the public sector having a pool of a million part-time floating workers able to be directed to deal with peaks of work throughout central and local government departments.

There are a couple of big snags to this idea.

One is that there simply isn't very much at all in the way of unskilled work available that an "outsider" could help with anyway.

The other one is much of the public sector has a deliberately obstructive attitude (boiling down to "Must follow procedure and be seen to do so to protect my own personal little back" absolutely regardless of commonsense). I was only on the receiving end of this yesterday, when I visited my local Council offices to do a couple of very quick, simple little tasks and was told to "take a ticket" and wait to be called and realised (after quite a long wait) that they had every intention of keeping me waiting and waiting and waiting. At that point I complained loudly to a floorwalker and she (most grudgingly) gave me a suitable form and phone-number in literally 1 minute. When I asked for an explanation as to just why I hadn't been given that at the outset (ie when I had explained my business at Reception) the answer boiled down to "That's not how our procedure is....we make customers wait and wait and wait instead (even if the receptionist could just reach into a nearby drawer and go "there you are then").

This Culture of Unhelpfulness is absolutely rife in the Public Sector and I could foresee outsiders having argument after argument with the staff there if they were drafted into help (certainly there would be if the outsiders were using commonsense and making genuine attempts to help the public). Helpful outsiders would soon have been told off numerous times by the staff there.

(Errrm...don't ask me which bit of the public sector I used to work for then....but I'm sure that would apply to most of us and I certainly used to get enough tellings-off for commonsense/helpfulness to feel quite sure that would happen).

There is an expression that I have only ever seen on the face of public sector workers trying to be unhelpful. I call it the Dumb Cow Look.

lvader

John1993 wrote: »

No, I asked about the bankers' expenses that you mentioned, not the MP's expenses. Being a reasonably senior banker myself, yet never, ever having come across an "expense account", I was just wondering what you were talking about, and whether you are one of those people who'll have a pop at bankers without really having much of a clue about the subject.

It's surprisingly common...

You don't have a company credit card?

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Suggesting these people should care for children is, IMO, frankly madness. You have to be a certain person to do those sort of things. I'd move my son quick sharp out of any nursery pulling people in from god knows anywhere to care for my child because they simply have no choice.

I was having a think about this and wondered if there would really be a problem.

Presumably 'these people' would be screened to ensure they weren't ex-offenders or child abusers and would be CRB checked like any other employee. Whilst you may need to be a 'certain sort of person' to work in nurseries or, say, care homes I'd be very surprised if many people worked in nurseries and especially care homes as a first choice.

My daughter worked in a nursery as part of a school careers week. It involved shadowing other employees and generally helping out without taking any real responsibility for the care of the children involved. A working for benefits scheme would likely be run the same way - baby steps - getting to work on time and dealing with basic employment structures, learning to talk to customers etc.

Given many of the long term unemployed will lack skills (or have lost them) it might make sense to target those sectors where they are most likely to gain employment anyway.

Turning up for a nursery or care home job with some experience of working in one has to be more advantageous that having experience of litter picking.

ruggedtoast

John1993 wrote: »

No, I asked about the bankers' expenses that you mentioned, not the MP's expenses. Being a reasonably senior banker myself, yet never, ever having come across an "expense account", I was just wondering what you were talking about, and whether you are one of those people who'll have a pop at bankers without really having much of a clue about the subject.

It's surprisingly common...

Please furnish those of us, who arent privileged to work in a protected industry whose mismanagement and incompetence sparked a six year recession resulting in countless job losses and immeasurable hardship while receiving unlimited state backing to continue doing exactly the same things you did in the first place, an example of your vital contribution to our world.

I am sure the the ignorant hoi polloi would find it most elevating.

Remember you will be judged against professions that can actually evidence doing something tangibly worthwhile, like nurses, cabinet makers and, people who chip potatoes.