Actually I'd rather be on benefits

[Spudulika]

... than have to work 40 hours a week in a boring minimum wage job.

Not doing either myself thankfully (working DH, I have well-paid p/t job), but thoroughly resenting the line that the conservatives are taking that the reason many people have a terrible quality of life is because they're not working, and that they'll invariably have a better quality of life if they're not on benefits, because going to work somehow always makes your life better.

I suspect that the majority of mp's have never done these sorts of jobs, and have never had to live on the minimum wage, otherwise they wouldn't be saying this.

IMO what makes people's live shit is being educationally and culturally impoverished, poor housing and poor mental and physical health, none of which are likely to be alleviated by spending 40 hours doing repetitive manual labour.

If work doesn't leave you significantly better off financially, is in itself not interesting, and results in you becoming time poor, so you have fewer hours to read, stroll in the park, meet with friends or watch interesting films on TV (all of which activities are free and accessible to the unemployed), how on earth can you be said to be better off doing it?

And then there's the option of enriching your life by doing voluntary work while unemployed, or studying.

So - if you were an MP and I was an unemployed person, how would you persuade me that I would be much happier cleaning out buses for 40 hours a week, than sitting at home reading the newspaper and listening to the radio?

Aye Bronze I think people get frightened that they'll end up with no work and no benefits. So avoid choping and changing.

And when the governemnt just reduce your beenefits by everything you earn pound for pound there's not much cause for celebration if you do manage to gte a few hours work.

When the pits closed and my Dad and all his peers were made redundant, many many went on the sick. The doctor's were complicit. It was completely understandable because these men were frightened about the lack of stability.

My Dad however took a part time joob that paid him just over any benefit threshold. I'm sure some thought he was a mug getting up each day at four for not much more than twnty quid a week...but he had the last augh. Pretty soon those men on the sick had convinced themesleves that they were sick whereas my Dad cycled around posting letters. He took whatever overtime was going and often picked up work on the side which none of the bad back crew dare...

ZXEightymum - that certainly isnt our story - we have gotten into financial difficulties for personal reasons, had bad advice and remortgaged to try and get out of it and it has made things worse. I woudlnt want to live in a council house any more than i want to rent privately - i was simply saying that sometimes it feels like the easier option. Which of course it isn't, we would never qualify for a council place, and rightly so. Razzle is talking out of her arse

Xstictch, you could be me!! The red cross do pay expenses though - ooh, there i go again with my red cross hard sell!

I did used to be a member of the Red Cross :). Not sure if they do anything around here any more though.

lol you ARE me then!! good luck with the job search, im sure something will come along, thats what i keep telling myself.

Could you seek legal advice to talk to your MP about the restrictions that are based on you xstitch. It seems that your situation is very unfair and having a massive effect on your life.

Fair enough passive, must have misread it. DS has been shouting at me for the last hour

If anyone thinks being on benefits is an easy option then you are deluded.
I hate being on benefits I am on long term sick with bipolar, I've not worked in 12 months and I hate it, I can't wait to be better and be able to work and yes I'd probably do anything just so I can get out the house and feel sone self worth.

no worries ZXEightyMum, I was trying, not very well, to say that whilst for us, it would probably be much easier on benefits we dont do it, but on tough days like today, you wonder why you bother with it all.

Pumpernickel10 - i honestly don't think its the easy option, i was having a bit of a rant due to our financial cesspit, so please dont think that i would ever judge anyone like yourself to be taking the easy option because i know its not the case. Financially we would be without question, better off on benefits but i woudn't actually choose it. I really hope you start to feel better soon and get the support that you need, i've had mental health issues myself so i understand, to a small degree, how you feel x

I think work brings many more benefits than simply financial ones, not least is not having people tell you that you are lazy scrounging scum for living off benefits. (Nice to see the flat screen TV made it in there within a few posts.)

I think the OP raises some valid points though. Being poor is shit for everyone, whether you're on benefits or you're working poor. And yes, often the working poor are worse off because they may not qualify for additional extras that those on benefits do.

However, does making life even more terrible for those on benefits help? Is that going to put more money in the pockets of the working poor? No.

The real problem is the ridiculous cost of living in this country, particularly housing costs, and the fact that wages just do not meet those costs for most people.

I am not suggesting we all become communists but it does not seem fair to me that companies can be allowed to make billions and billions of profits, and even be given tax breaks (Vodafone anyone?) while not even awarding their staff pay rises in line with inflation.

I'd say fairness starts with redistribution of wealth, not redistribution of poverty.

Thanks passive it wasn't aimed at anyone I was just highlighting how I feel.
There are a lot of workshy people out there sadly but a hell of alot of determined folks too that are desperate to get back into work.
I've thought about working in a charity shop before I embark back to get my confidence up

I will have had two holidays this year (caravan and camping) but not out of my benefit money but because I have an incredibly generous family who want me and DS to go with them. I will never be able to repay their generosity but I'm extremely thankful that DS gets the chance to see all his cousins and play on the beach because he misses out on so much else the rest of the time. And that's all my fault.

And I agree with wordfactory that it would be easier to take up temp/bank work if it didn't screw the benefits claim up and the income threshold was raised. If the Universal Credit allows that then that would be a positive thing as long as they don't take it away again by other means.

My family sound likes yours tuna don't know what we would have done without them. I'm lucky I've a great family. Mom and dad have a caravan in Devon so we still get to have lovely holidays.

xstitch I've done a bit of voluntary work without leaving the house - I managed the mailing lists and typeset/proofread publications for a tiny local charity.

They were desperately overworked and many of their (otherwise v talented) volunteers had woeful computer skills, so even my tiny contribution and ordinary computer literacy were worth something to them.

Mind you, their office politics were frightening to behold, and exhausting to be in the middle of. Apparently this is common, so there's no guarantee volunteering will enhance your life (or even those of the people it's supposedly helping). But then again it might.

Ignorant of what exactly? Your situation? Yep, thank christ. As you are of mine. Funny that.

Tell you what passive I'll let you off this time for your complete overreaction and uncalled for patronising nonsense, not to mention rudeness, re. my bafflement at your initial assertion about council housing, as I'll put it down to you being touchy because you're dreading not being a home owner.

Life is so unfair. But you might want to get one anyway.

Yabvu. Very, very, very. It is always better to work at something than to claim benefits that are there to support this who can't work, not this who won't. Research on the deterioration of mental health when people sit around doing nothing, as you describe, are compelling.

"Add message | Report | Message poster Threelittleducks Thu 09-Jun-11 14:18:33
What's wrong then with a system where some people, perhaps educated to degree standard (or maybe not), live off a decent rate of benefits and do do volunteer work - surely a lot more would get done service-wise? Nice parks and gardens, charities helped, more school help = better education, better health service....
Families with younger children say. Both parents are at home raising them, they both stay on an equal footing, employers get a more even keel of workers, both parents have a chance to be educated, boost CV with voluntary work...everyone happy.

That sounds nice"

Whats wrong with it us that benefits are therefor for people who can't work not those who choose not to. And it sets a really bad example to children to choose to be on benefits.

tomhardy there is no right of appeal apparently. I can be 100% sure my MP would not support any lifting of the court order.

well I hope you dont have to long of this then xstitch

I think it's too easy to simplify the issues that are involved around the OP's post.

Yes, we all know the country would be fucked if everyone had this attitude.

Yes, we all know that people born into families with a lack of ambition tend to get trapped into a cycle of poverty / relying on the state.

Yes, we all know that it's better for kids to see mum/dad actively showing the link between "work" = "reward", and so on.

And for mum and dad to have self esteem, non-dependance on the state etc from working.

But the fact is that the OP raises some very important questions that we should be asking about the welfare state.

The simple fact is that I would definitely continue to work even if we broke even (say I got £100 from benefits each week vs. earning the same £100 by working - I would always personally choose to work).

But I can 100% understand why other people would choose not to.

I miss my kids when I'm at work; so does DH.

I might feel differently in my "work if I break even" attitude if I was out the hour 40hrs a week, commuting 1.5hrs a day like I do now, putting them in childcare, never being there for their medical appointments or school plays, having to juggle childcare arrangements on bank holidays, and so on.

There is no doubt that there comes good things from working. but there's also the bad things (missing out, stress, feeling the grind if it's a lowly respected, repetative job) - as I sit here in a professional working environment where I don't need to deal with a dead end job or manual labour, it's too easy for me to say there is always a benefit to working - it shows a total lack of understanding for the years of lowly paid, lowly respected crushingly boring jobs a lot of people are stuck with. I did enough of them as a student!

I once had a job in a radio factory where it was my job to twizzle the top buttons (only the top ones, mind - there was another girl doing the cassette buttons furhter down the line) and stick them back on if they broke. Alongside miserable colleagues and a shocking lack of employee facilities (i used to sit outside to eat lunch because it was cleaner to sit on the grass than use the "canteen").

After 3 months of doing that before uni I was ready to burst with boredom and wanting to break free. and I always had an escape plan!!!

The idea of doing that for 40 years, whilst missing my children's upbrining too... well there's no amount of "but it earns you self respect"/etc can make me blind to the little nuggets of truth in the OP.

I don't agree with it all, but I think it has more merit than some of the posters on here are comfortable to admit.

p.s. I'm not saying that all minimum wage jobs are mind numbing, boring, not respected. We need a variety of workers in society.

But to have the disadvantages of working in them, whilst missing out on your kids upbringing, etc.. i think the balance between advantages and disavantages of both situations is really screwed up if you are on NMW. It's like you get all the shit parts of working, with significantly less benefits (less disposable income to see where your hard work is going, etc).

Don't really care if that makes me unpopular here. tbh.

I just keep imaginging 40 years in the radio factory as I'm typing this!

I can kind of see your point OP. However, when I was made redundant two years ago I nearly cried the day I went to sort out my JSA. I couldn't believe my life had come to that. I found it so humiliating going to sign-on and the people at the desk treat you as though you're enjoying being on benefits. JSA was a tiny fraction of what I was earning. I was applying for anything and everything - the trouble was, so was everybody else.

I did some voluntary work in a school when I was claiming but there is a limit on the number of hours you can do because they don't believe that you can apply for jobs AND do other stuff during the day. How hard is it to write letters in the evening outside working hours? There was a course I wanted to do to help with job prospects but it clashed with my signing-on day so I wasn't allowed to do it. I hated that period of my life and I still shudder when I walk past the Job Centre.

I worked with a lady (not in a manual job so I guess you can't make a comparison) who would've been better off on benefits but she worked because she wanted to set a good example to her childrenI really admired her for that.

Thankfully now I am back at work so I don't feel as though people think I'm a lazy sponger. If you're on benefits for life then what's going to change? At least if you have a rubbish job there are prospects.

Before children I had a just above minimum wage job and I loved it.

Now all jobs that pay NMW are boring you know!

Unfortunately tomhardy barring any miracles 10 more years. By then I suspect I will be unemployable by everyone's standards by then.