To think it won't be long before we have workhouses again?

[MrsTawdry]

I really know very little about politics but I know that there's a proportion of people who love benefits bashing and love abusing those who receive housing benefit etc.

It occurred to me recently that one "answer" to the housing crisis might be a sort of "Housing Centre" ....basic blocks of flats sort of thing...where occupants lose a portion of their JSA in return for a roof...and from there it's a step to being given food vouchers as part of benefits and working on a voluntary basis....litter picking etc.

Could this happen? Could a government legislate and make this happen?

You've only got to read accounts like Jack London's about London just over a hundred years ago, or Orwell about the north in the 30's to realise just what conditions were like. Many people worldwide still live like that. The Welfare State, although formally introduced post war, was foreseen by reformers and paternalistic Tories like the Chamberlains. It was seen as truly necessary for human dignity.
The media, for reasons of its own, likes to pick on extreme cases of piss taking by isolated benefit claimants, and then extrapolate this to society at large. As a result, people really suffer. The workhouses are now just a folk memory, and will not be introduced in that form again. The thinking behind them though, the notion of the derserving and undeserving poor, lives on.

Sally litter picking etc is used for community service for criminals too. So a potential employer who is driving by looking for a potential employee (because we all know this is what happens when you put yourself out there right how is potential employer going to tell the difference between someone on workfare and someone on community service?

YY Random Totally agree.

SallySolomon, and what happens to people employed as road sweepers? What do they do while your great army of the unemployed roam the dirty streets picking stuff up? Why should councils employ them if there are people being forced to do it for peanuts?

It wouldn't take much to extend the idea of welfare into foyers and supported housing. As per the PP whose DP works in a hostel.

Not so long ago several MNers were advocating something workhouse-sounding for 'young single mums'.

Would you be keen on living in a gulag then Sally?

Where did the OP say anything about living in a gulag?! It said a basic block of flats given to live in and from then on maybe some litter picking work.

Arsenic i remember that thread. Twas awful. And misogynistic. What about the fathers who walk away.

FFS, people need to think. Who benefits from the unemployed on workfare? Our ever flexible and insecure workforce, already on shitty zero hours contracts? Why should Tesco or Poundland actually pay someone to do a job if the DSS keeps sending super cheap/free labour their way?

At the moment, we (as taxpayers) are subsidising crappy wages through tax credits etc. A huge proportion of benefits go to the working poor.

Arsenic, I mean people on minimum wage/low wages/ part time workers with housing ben should be prioritised over the unemployed for low cost housing, given that there is so little 'social housing' (shudder, hate that phrase).

'A banker, a Daily Mail reader and a benefit claimant are sat at a table. On a plate in the middle are 12 biscuits. The banker takes 11 biscuits for himself, then turns to the Daily Mail reader and says – “watch out for that benefit claimant, he’s after your biscuit”'

Sally I can't be completely sure, because I've never tried it, but I don't imagine job searching is very easy while you are picking up litter with both hands. Presumably out of doors.

Arsenic, I mean people on minimum wage/low wages/ part time workers with housing ben should be prioritised over the unemployed for low cost housing, given that there is so little 'social housing' (shudder, hate that phrase)

What would you do about those who don't work due to disability, caring, MH? Recent DV escapees?

Joff the trouble with that is that you need an address to get a job.

I'll try it Derek, you can film it

We were wondering the other day why on earth they don't have something like the old Community Programme scheme, where unemployed people could actually learn new skills and do a project that helped the community? Like my old village had a new village hall built by the scheme. The local abandoned railway tracks were turned into trackways for cyclists/pedestrians, etc. The government won't spend money helping unemployed people develop new skills and/or benefit the community.

How can you spend 35 hours a week looking for a job if you're working in a charity shop/Poundland? And apparently people on Job Seeker's Allowance are sanctioned if they miss an appointment or are late due to circumstances beyond their control. How fucking Dickensian is that?

There seems to be no money or chances for training, either. When my husband found himself unemployed a few years back, he had the course fees paid to train as a TA. He got the job he has now as a result of that even though he doesn't work as a TA, exactly!) You can't lambast people for being unemployed and at the same time, not be prepared to spend money to train them to do something new, something needed.

We need a massive social/council housing building scheme in this country, to invest for the future. Too many people live in insecure private rental accommodation. Post WW2, this country was financially ruined. We did it then, because the political will was there. I wish we had such giants today, instead of the self serving privately educated, Oxford PPI graduate political class we seem to be saddled with at the moment.

• PPE obvs, not fucking PPI

Was the community building scheme the one in the depression years that also built tube stations?

Arsenic, carers are different.

DV escapees - there should be more provision and help made for this, in the first place but as the majority (not all) victims are female, I doubt the government gives a shiny shit.

I'm just going on what we have seen locally since bedroom tax forced out self-employed/low wage earning people and they were replaced with total twats.

EatShit, I heard of people sanctioned because their fecking bus broke down. Like they did it or something.