to think a well designed workfare for benefits would have helped avoid the riots?

[TheRealTillyMinto]

By well designed i mean:

• is only for people fit enough to work and those without caring responsibilites
• is for e.g. 2/3 days per week to allow time for job hunting
• is used to perform extra jobs not make more people redundant

The looters seem to want something for nothing. I know that many of the looters are too young to work and I have no idea what percentage are employed/students/unemployed but think it would help change from a culture of 'my rights' to a culture of 'my rights and my responsbilities'.

AIBU?

let us not forget, they can and do claim child tax credit, working tax credit AND child benefit for kids who have never set foot in the UK.

Why shouldn't they claim those things? When you work in the UK it entitles you to certain benefits for your family. Why does it matter where they live?

I'd much rather see people who come here to work receiving these things than those people who seem to think that being born here is an automatic ticket to everything on a plate. Especially those who find the jobs which are available to be beneath them.

It's luck, pure luck as to where you're born. Any of us could have been unlucky enough to have been born in Somalia or Sierra Leone, etc. But yet for some reason, an awful lot of people seem to be of the opinion that because someone wan't born here, they're somehow less worthy.

It's sad.

Anne It would be, guaranteed (and probably far more than double minimum wage). If they wanted people to work a full day for 50 in benefits I would complain.

The thing is, how many people are actually getting '50 in benefits'?

If you factor in housing benefit, council tax benefit, JSA, + whatever else, it's a hell of a lot more than £50/week.

The selective demonisation of bits of the welfare state is depressing. Benefits should be seen in the same light as NHS, education, OAPension etc. Benefits and council housing are demonised because poor people have needed them historically, and now here is a misguided call for means testing which will just cause ghettoisation. Agree w. ShellyB

'Why shouldn't they claim those things? When you work in the UK it entitles you to certain benefits for your family. Why does it matter where they live?'

Because when you don't live here, you're not part of the economy or society. And only EU/EEA nationals are entitled to benefits after working here a certain amount of time, non-EU/EEA nationals are not entitled until they achieve permanent residency.

That's why it matters where they live. And those things are benefits.

Tax credits, working tax credits, child benefit. Also benefits.

'Any of us could have been unlucky enough to have been born in Somalia or Sierra Leone, etc. But yet for some reason, an awful lot of people seem to be of the opinion that because someone wan't born here, they're somehow less worthy.'

Bullshit.

I'm foreign-born myself.

I wasn't born in Somalia or Sierra Leone, etc. Yes, that was luck. But it's not my fault I wasn't born in a place like that and am not to blame for the problems here. Nor is anyone who was born here.

And no one on this thread has said that makes one less worthy.

It is what it is.

yabu - many looters were employed anyway!

Bullshit.

I'm foreign-born myself.

I wasn't born in Somalia or Sierra Leone, etc. Yes, that was luck. But it's not my fault I wasn't born in a place like that and am not to blame for the problems here. Nor is anyone who was born here.

And no one on this thread has said that makes one less worthy."

"Bullshit" yourself. How rude.

You yourself pointed out that people from EU countries coming to work here are entitled to benefits for their children, as if to suggest they shouldn't be. So yes YOU, by inference, said they're less worthy.

Um, no, I didn't infer that at all, you inferred it.

I don't agree with giving out Winter Fuel Allowances to UK expats who've chosen to live abroad, either.

I don't agree with paying out benefits to people who don't live in the country, be they Brits or not.

Can't say I care one way or another whether you find me rude or not.

I've been told by someone that works in this field that if even if they return to their original country the CB goes on being paid plus there is no way of checking if the kids really exist so fraudelent claims could be made. I think it is the tip of the iceberg.

It really irks me when people who have lived here all their life are having their CB cut because someone in the family earns over 43K which does not go far in London. They have probably paid NI for years so I agree with Lachesis.

There was something like this running a few years ago, I don't know if it still is.

The person had a job placement for 6 months and received an extra £10 a week benefit.

after 6 months, you can either take them on as an employee or you have to close the workfare post and the organisation has to stop benefitting from the work being done.

What if the person is rubbish at the job or does the absolute minimum to get by. If it's a 'compulsory or lose benefit' type of scheme there will be plenty of work shy people forced into these placements.

We had a scheme to give people on JSA the opportunity to work. It was called the Future Jobs Fund, and was cut by the current government. www.futurejobsfund.org.uk/

news.sky.com/home/article/16048584

If you think these people want jobs then your as crazy as they are

'after 6 months, you can either take them on as an employee or you have to close the workfare post and the organisation has to stop benefitting from the work being done.'

They then close the post and re-issue a new one. Seen this happen a lot in my volunteer work. That was how it was under New Deal. The claimant had to do work placement after a certain period of time unemployed or lose benefits. He/she could select to either stay at benefit level and do the work for 3 months, or go for a 'wage option' of £10 more/week for 6 months.

I never saw anyone hired on permanently after any of these placements.

It's just a way for companies to get work for under minimum wage.

EXACTLY, Lachesis. That's all workfare is. A way for big businessmen that are in the politicians' pockets to increase their profits at the expense of poorer people.

The only way workfare would be FAIR is if you were paid minimum wage for every hour you worked. Which won't happen because a) It would wind up being MORE than you were currently given even with your HB, JSA & CTB added together (you can't include CTC or ChB because they are paid for CHILDREN, not the worker, and you can't include WTC because they wouldn't be entitled). And the country CANNOT afford to do that. And the companies aren't going to pay it either, or they'd have advertised for a 'proper' employee, surely?

The problem is, purely (and believe me, I'm NOT a wooly liberal OR a lefty, but have come to this decision anyway), that we live in a capitalist country, and Capitalism will only work (for the top xx%) if there are plenty of unemployed people to make the low-paid workers jobs so insecure that they will continue working harder and harder for less reward, because there's hundreds behind them queueing up for their job.

I just can't see a way in which this is fair. Fire the street cleaner, he claims benefits. Then get him to sweep the streets for £65 a week JSA instead of the £150 he was getting when he was employed by them? And leave him with no way of claiming TC's to help support his family to boot. Thus saving the government twice over -once on paying the (Local government employed) street cleaner, twice by no longer having to give his family tax credits. YAY! for the ConDems, and bollox to people like me, who would have been in precisly this sort of job to start with.

'A way for big businessmen that are in the politicians' pockets to increase their profits at the expense of poorer people. '

Oh, plenty of these placements were offered by the council.

It's a way to get out of paying minimum wage and benefits like sick pay and holiday.

Always has been, always will be.