About the Benefits program on BBC1

[bimbabirba]

It has made my blood boil! Especially that judgmental bitch, Debbie, who was telling the single parent that she shouldn't buy a whole chicken on tax payers' money to feed her children! Then she went all judgy and bitchy because the kids eat two cooked meals a day and she asked if that was really necessary!
I think the world has gone mad!

Angelos I work in the finance department of a call centre and a good proportion of call centre agents have a degree. They start off working there pt while at uni thinking they'll find something better when they graduate. But once they graduate they can't find anything else and end up working in the call centre long term. It's quite sad really. They want to do more and earn more but where are all these well paid jobs?

I would like to go to uni myself but I have rent and bills to pay. I've done all the sums and it would be virtually impossible. Students are not entitled to most benefits so where is the help for people to retrain, gain skills and get better jobs?

I wish I hadn't done a degree but when I was 18, even if you got just half-decent A-levels, that's what you did. As much as I don't agree with charging student fees, it will hopefully dissuade more young people from wasting time & money doing a degree that won't actually make any real difference to their prospects.

I would rather go back to 15 - 20% people doing degrees and not charging tuition fees.

My DS wants to work in the media: journalism, broadcasting, possibly advertising. Step one towards that: RG uni to read Classics. He's also joining the TA with a view to may be looking at a career later as a war correspondent. He also earns a few bob here and there by doing menial odd jobs. Chances of success in a media career are still pretty slim I think but he's a lot more driven than fellow my lad and knows that unemployment in the future is not an option his parents will support. Neither do we support designer trainers or i-phones.

There will always be room for our children in our home whatever happens to them but there will never be support for material frivolity.

My dp gets CVs at his work every day from graduates roughly 12 a week wanting to do the job he does and he as a handful of Gcses and no degree! That is how bad the job situation is. Most of them offer to work for nothing just to get experience I really don't know what is going to happen in this country as the years go on and more and more graduates are churned out with 40k debt and little chance of work

I would say 80% of my RL friends work in media very successful film makers writers etc. The most successful 2 or 3 didn't go to university. My closest friend is high flying producer and she says no one in her company went to uni either They employed one graduate about 2 years ago but he is a computer grad as they needed him and didn't even consider a media student . My son is off to do film and my brother is a film editor and he works but is nor early 30s and still doesn't earn much

Liam's role was actually an administrator for the role model programme. The £70 a week he gets is a lot less than we would pay someone to do that job. Pretty good value actually.

Not really. Not anywhere near as good as the value we get out of people who do both paid and voluntary work, like the majority of the many volunteers I know.

Well that argument can run and run can't it. How good value are you? What do you earn and pay in taxes?

You do realise, though, don't you that if you have any kind of health condition it's really, really hard to get a job? Employers don't want someone they perceive to be unreliable when they can go for someone healthy.
That is not necessarily the case. My DD was a teacher, and was diagnosed with MS. Gradually, teaching, even part time, became impossible for her,and her consultant told her she should stop work. However she has benefited from more recent drug treatment and although she will never return to teaching, she has been able to find a part time job with her local council. She was totally honest about her condition, but still got the job.
It would be easy to assume that the reason a person is turned down for a job is their disability, but in reality, with competion for jobs so high, it is just as likely that someone else came along who had a more appropriate skill set, had already got experience of the job, or had better qualifications.
My DS has just started an apprenticeship, on rubbish money, but it is giving him experience of work and giving something to put on his CV. He has AS, and again was totally honest about his disability. In his case he just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
I found the programme really interesting, although it was fairly predictable.

He is probably doing something that is needed and is fine while he is working for nothing but I doubt the job would become salaried if he left and so the people who benefit would be left high and dry.

Most voluntary work is needed and is still done by people who do paid work as well.

What I earn and pay in taxes is irrelevant, but if a person earns and pays taxes and does a necessary voluntary job, then it stands to reason that they are of higher value to society that someone who only does one of those things.

Media studies is a much derided degree in popular consciousness but it has pretty good employment prospects - not necessarily in media, but employers respect that it teaches critical thinking and the ability to sift through information etc. So I wouldn't write the guy off as a loser just out of hand because of the degree he did.

My comment was just a general comment like I said I did not watch the programme. I just feel for students going to uni amd all the coats that is incurred in doing so and to not be able to find a job.

I think self employment is the answer for many people. I have the American equivalent of a RG university degree, but my cv gathered dust for years and I will need to volunteer and maybe do a few courses if I want to be hired for a salary. But, I find cleaning works for now, and I am thinking about what to do next.

Wow Dayoldcheesecake, are you this nice in RL

I am on benefits and I make soup from chicken carcasses. ...you know fuck all about the woman on thepprogramme except what the editing team wanted you to see but hey, if you are not intelligent enough to work that out.... ..

The BBc were not looking for someone who shops in markets, batch cooks healthy food and freezes it and fills his/her time on benefits doing voluntary work,sending out Cvs and investing time in their children! They knew who they were after and they got them and exploited them

marriedinwhiteagain Fri 12-Jul-13 12:49:41

My DS wants to work in the media: journalism, broadcasting, possibly advertising. Step one towards that: RG uni to read Classics

that plan sounds very good. I have quite a few friends who work for the FT, the times, guardian, tel, etc and they are either Oxbridge or RG and no one studied media. generally law, ppe, traditional subjects etc.

as i am sure you know, newspapers are a declining area. the TA angle sounds very good.

Yes the TA thing is very good idea

Actually I completely disagree with that noddy. The BBC were clearly looking for a set of people who fitted a set of stereotypes, which they found in both sides of the debate.

I thought for eg Kelly did a good job of feeding her kids on £40 a week. I thought Luther made some good points about the value of childcare in society/seeing 'being at home with the kids' as a job. The grad, yep, I could have shaken him but I suspect he is one of thousands of young people who were sold a pup wrt further education. And the young couple were I think just two ordinary people who were struggling.

I didn't see anyone being exploited.

You are entitled to disagree.

Don't have a go at dayoldcheesecake she is right. That woman on the programme has never worked and pops babies out as and when, without a care, because she doesn't have to take responsibility for supporting them.
And as for the slob with the 2.1 in meeja studies ffs do something useful, train for something vocational, gobshite.

xylem8 Thu 11-Jul-13 22:45:43
"The trouble with the argument that workers should upskill themselves, is that the unskilled jobs still remain and will be done by somebody else who will still be in the same predicament."

Could we have a little function that sends this round to all benefit threads at regular intervals, say once a week?

amen.And I don't think any job should really be called unskilled we are full of snobbery in the UK that needs to go.

@aturtle I felt the issue was he should have been paid for his work as a youth worker. If he was good at it and there was demand for the tole, then he should be paid.

Full-time volunteering has turned from something retirees did to 'give something back', into something that undertrained (because no one will invest in them), debt-ridden graduates do as they are told there is no choice if they want a job.

That is what is criminal.

I agree ethel young people today are getting seriously hoodwinked all over the place.............