OK, so how would YOU change the welfare system?

[MathsMadMummy]

just wondering following on from various threads lately. sorry it's probably been done before.

I guess it's more a question of how you'd change the culture really, where people feel it's their entitlement to never work etc.

I have no idea what the answer is, please tell me your bright ideas

agree with nattnoobies,no work round my way but 16 hours to suit single parents (its all they need to claim tax credits)with no dependent kids not eligible for those,need full time but none available.The best the woman at the job centre could come up with was to have a baby or try and get myself registered disabled,I am perfectly fit and healthy and want to work.On the subject of vouchers I was entitled to milk vouchers with ds 1 and can assure you a brisk trade was done in them being sold .

Doesn't surprise me wrt to milk vouchers; I was rempted (becuase you can only get cows and 4 / 6 of us are milk intolerant! Would ahve glladsly swappewd with someone for soya IYKWIM)

catwhiskers So if they were doing litter picking etc for free, what would happen to those who do the jobs for wages? You'd be creating more unemployment.

As for vouchers "for the childrens health", why is it assumed that only those on benefits don't look after their childrens health??

Another thing for vouchers, I've often found that it's cheaper to shop for veg etc at stalls rather than shops. Do you think they'd take vouchers?

YOu would not take jobs from workers with work fare. We could easily have 5x the num ber of litter pickers and graffiti removers without any problem. We could also have people going in to talk to old people in their homes for a few hours a dya. Those people are often very very lonely. There are all kinds of things workfarers will/would be obliged to do and it would be good for them too,

Maybe they could come and do your jobs for free as well ...

If we could easily have 5x the number of litter pickers/graffiti removers then let's employ people who want to work and pay them a wage to do it.

When my dp was unemployed and desperate for work,he would have gladly picked up litter for a wage

Err...... regards litter pickers (as in unemployed doing it alongside 'waged' pickers - 100% agree, Xenia) ..... err..... we are already paying them - they get money from the State / taxpayers =>why is it so unreasonable to expect them to do something by way of payback? That said, can't we come up with anything more imaginative, stimulating or constructive than litter picking? Jeez, there have to be thousands of socially useful things peeps could be doing - we just have to have the nous to sit on down & work something out. Hey, why don't we get some of those deep thinkers, wasting time & taxpayers' money on Quangos & subcommittees, to come up with some practical ideas?????

Heres an idea why don't people pick their own litter and dog shit up

Exactly wubbly

I would make all tax voluntary. This is partly based on the urban myth that if no one dodged any taxes, income tax would be 20%. There would be huge redundancies in accountancy, IR etc, and these people would have to be given retraining in an area that actually contributed to the GDP.

When you are broke, you can give yourself a tax holiday.

RuralLass, we do expect them to do something, we expect them to find jobs. Once again, you're assuming that everyone claiming JSA is actually avoiding work, which is total shite.

If people want to work the Government should be at least trying to make work available, work that can provide a decent wage and a way back into the job market.

Remember, the Government aren't doing their job for nowt, or in the spirit of community, we're all paying a bloody fortune for their services.

If work is available, pay people to do it and take them off benefits.

It also illustrates a total lack of respect towards the men and women who do these jobs week in and week out, in order to provide for their families, to suggest that we push them out of their paid employment to accomodate a few lazy arsed twats who have no interest in working.

No one was suggesting the council litter pickers would lose hteir jobs. We'd just have 5x cleaner streets than we have and man many fewer lonely old people as they've had someone to talk to on workfare.

But would we Xenia? Why would they continue to get paid work when someone else would be doing the work for free?

In theory you'd end up with paid and unpaid workers, in practise you'd end up with less paid workers. Especially if pay rises were wanted by the paid ones - then it'd be so easy for councils to think "hmm, well, we could hire one less paid worker, and hire two more unpaid" and on and on.

How about paying people to care for the elderly instead of cutting services? My local council has announced a 1000 job losses over the next 4 years ,oh and also announced its plans to buy Ipads for all councillors..ouch!

Xenia, there are registered charities who organise voluntary work, that is the route to take. The people we need to target are those who have no self respect, who are unable to appreicate the value of work, beyond the buck at the end of the day, those who have never experienced the boost of self esteem working brings.

These people are trained in providing a route into work, with the right support and encouragement.

The men and women who clean up our shit for a pittance of pay deserve respect for what they do. They do not need to be devalued further by classifying their work as a suitable punishment to the lazy and work shy. That is grossly unfair.

No, the whole point is no one would get benefits without doing compulsory work in return for their benefits.

DWP didn't seem to think much of it research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2007-2008/rrep533.pdf

I prefer the universal credit/one benefit only idea of IDS.

I like the universal credit idea, I think. I like the idea that it enables folk to take on contract work/temporary employment without it messing up their finances.

I think it could be a great way to encourage people back into work, any work, if you're not being penalised for doing so.

I simply do not share the view that everyone claiming JSA is lazy and unwilling to work.

Anyone who thinks there are jobs a plenty around, take a quick look at your Jobcentreplus jobsite. How many unskilled jobs are there available in your area?

People think its easy to get supermarket jobs etc ..its not, over 100 applicants for a recent catering assistants job at our local uni ..100s of applicants for a driver delivery jobs at our local tescos ..and the majority of local council jobs such as street cleaners etc are done by agency workers now

I always said I'd be okay if I lost my job, I'd get a job in a pub if nothing else.

I just checked out how many pub jobs there are adverstied in my local area - 5 in the last month.

Not vouchers. If you get them and live in a posh area like SIL did with her parents, you find that no shops in the town will take them, or have to get the manager every time you go to the one supermarket, and get tutted at. Huge waste of admin money.

The only feasible change I'd like is for any benefit claim that was stopped in the last year to get automatically reinstated within 24 hours on request, so that people can take temp work without fear of losing their complex web of benefits. My tenant lost their job some months back but claimed HB so within a couple months was paying rent again and making up the arrears. Then they did two weeks temping, and then back to JSA/HB. Three months on, HB are yet to pay a penny - now temping again but goodness knows when the HB will get sorted. If I needed that money to pay a mortgage I'd have had to evict them by now.

I'd like to see 3-day a week working become the norm and jobs that are more than 4-days-a-week taxed loads more, but that would take a huge societal change.

Can we all be realistic here and recognise that as Mums we are all 'working' I've just been forced to hold my hands up and stop work because of the lack of flexible affordable childcare over the holidays. If Mums/Mothers where valued more if those who worked with children where valued more in this society I think the pay may match but at the moment as Lone Mother working with children I am really stuck between a rock and a hard place. So all those clever enough to see how sexist and mysogynistic culture we live and then change the benefits according to new supportive measures for Women please start. Otherwise the women who are going on about who should have what when they are probably miserable and knackered all the time should just be grateful that they have - for now - found the point in the tightrope of living!

But it's not women who have to arrange childcare. It's parents.

All this talk of help for mothers is sxist to the core and must stop. Children have two parents who have to arrange their care. Any assumption otherwise is sexist and wrong.

On that very point I would m ake it compulsory for fathers to have children 50% of the time after divorce or spearation if unmarried parents. That would reduce sexism and ensure more fathers also tackled childcare issues. Then Child benefit and tax credits could be split 50.50 between the parents and it would be much easier for single mothers to work full time.

I agree ,who would dare go on the sahm with partners threads and say, you lazy fuckers get a job ...lone parents always the easy targets