Work for benefits

antrobus

Tancred wrote: »

This could work - and I emphasize 'could' - as long as the minimum wage is increased to something more resembling a living wage, as in France and similar countries, and people are engaged on genuine jobs, not 'invented' jobs sweeping the streets or trimming hedges five times a day.

Would that explain why France has an unemployment rate of 11%?

Loughton_Monkey

andrewf75 wrote: »

Its a delicate balance we have to strike between not demonising the poor and ensuring that the incentives are always to look for a job rather than go on the dole. I think currently a shift towards getting tougher on benefits is right - and I'm certainly no Tory right winger. Its not about saving money, its about trying to instill a work ethic into people and improve society.

In my view this all comes down to one thing though. The way we live our lives is simply not sustainable. People moan about higher food and fuel prices, but that isn't the issue. Food and fuel and other essentials have always taken up the majority of incomes. The difference today is the things which used to be luxuries that people expect. And in my experience of people I know, the poorer people tend to be the most irresponsible with money. This is a fundamental change. Go back a few generations and the poor would be extremely frugal, knowing how to make a few pounds go as far as possible, walking rather than paying for the bus to save a few quid, eating in the most cost-efficient way. Now, its the middle classes who cycle to work to save money, grow their own veg etc while the poor eat takeaways and wouldn't dream of walking or cycling to save money. Bit of a generalisation here and going off ona bit of a tangent, but from what I see there is some truth in it and its relevant to the whole benefits/rich v poor issue. How to fix it I don't know, but this is what is wrong.

A very accurate response, in my opinion, and typical of quite a groundswell of popular public opinion these days. This type of thinking was quite rife even during the last election, and here's where Cameron missed a trick.

He lost 3 years 2010 to 2013 before he really started to tackle things [with capped household benefit, weak child allowance cutback, future 1% benefit growth rather than CPI, bedroom tax...] when he had the opportunity on day 1 to announce "we are all going to take the pain" and start better targeting of benefits as quickly as he tackled public sector pay/pensions.

I even think he could have got away with some temporary freeze on State Pension - with perhaps a means tested mechanism through pension credit or whatever to ensure that it only applied to the poorer segments.

But most of all I never seem to hear Cameron say much about it. Not in a way that captures the electorate's mind, anyway. Margaret Thatcher had the gift of just saying quite simple things, in a straight way, and generally carried the public with her. To be fair to Cameron, though, the "politically correct" totalitarian police force is much stronger these days and anything a politician says is going to be spun as if he's a racist, sexist, anti-poor, non sympathetic tyrant out of touch with reality.

grizzly1911

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Margaret Thatcher had the gift of just saying quite simple things, in a straight way, and generally carried the public with her. .

Carried some of the public with her.

Alienated many others.

Depends if you want to believe what any of them say.

billchecker1

I imagine their will be a whole lot of new appointments booked at GPS surgery.

Suddenly backs and shoulders will hurt and magically these people will not have to work.

Great system this country has

Loughton_Monkey

billchecker1 wrote: »

I imagine their will be a whole lot of new appointments booked at GPS surgery.

Luckily, my SatNav is working currently so I don't need to take it to the doctors.

In any case, I have backup. This consists of Mrs LM sitting in the back of the car with a map. I call it SatNag.