To think being on benefits might be better than working

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Is there anyway being on benefits is better than working? So much of day is spent worrying about work, working and dealing with office politics. I dislike work, and get no pleasure or satisfaction other than my pay. It’s got nothing to do with my job or team; I just dislike working.

I was thinking that being on benefits might not be as bad as people once thought. The main benefit would be not having to stress about working. With council tax, housing benefit and a hole host of other benefits, you could life a fairly decent life.

A return bus journey is £8 where I live. You have to work 30 mins just to cover your trip to and from work. You’ll work all month, live in a HMO and have nothing at the end of each month.

Where do you think the dhss gets the money for benefits?

You might want to consider signing on so you get your NI paid, if you don’t have enough contributions come retirement you’ll have a meagre state pension

I feel the OP needs a reality check about claiming benefits at the current time.

1. you cannot make yourself willfully unemployed and claim benefits!
2. you cannot leave the country even for a day whilst claiming so forget any booked trips.
3. I am now back in work but had 4 months unemployment recently due to redundancy, I tried claiming job seekers and it wasn't worth the hassle.
4. you will get about £77 a week.
5. you will be told to job hunt 35 hours a week and document it and go in to the job centre weekly to prove it
6. Job seekers is temporary, you are only allowed it for a set number of months.
7. initially they will let you job hunt in your field of work but after a couple of months you'll be forced into other kinds of work.
8. you will be told to strip anything technical out of your CV, hide qualifications and basically use a fake C.V to pretend you are low or unskilled to aid getting into a job.
9. you will be told to hunt for jobs up to a three hour round commute away - doesn't work does especially for low paid work!
10. you may be assigned a job coach who will keep regular contact with you to get you into work.
11. apparently forcing you into training to be a security guard or door person / bouncer is popular with the job centres now.

There is no easy way to give up working on a whim and get everything paid for! You'll get a pittance that may just cover a weekly food shop and you'll be pushed to find work quickly.

The key in this world is to strive to get some way up a career ladder, my partner and I did and we have a nice home in a nice area and several holidays a year. You can't have any of that on benefits.

Thanks for the reminder. I've checked my NI record and I'm about 4 years short of the qualifying years so not too bad as I'm 49.

One thing I'm not sure about is my record shows NI credits from 1990-1991 and 1991-1992 when I would have been 15/16 and 16/17. I have no idea what these are or where they came from!

Child benefit

Go on. Try it. Come back in six months and let us know how you get on. That's if you can still afford the internet connection.

You can leave the country - certainly if you are on UC. Only after 28 days abroad would a claim close. Someone leaving work would be able to claim either JSA or UC I believe depending on their NI contributions on leaving work. Job seekers is temporary but if someone was still umployed after it ran out they could move onto UC.

I've never been told to use a fake CV or hide qualifications all I was ever asked to do was tailor the CV I had to the jobs I was applying for. I had some work coaches I liked and ones I liked less but a couple were hugely supportive of me - the biggest issue for the OP as you say is if they give up a job they'll face a potential sanction

Thank you, I didn't realise that counted towards NI contributions.

I went to the job centre in late October to my first jobcentre appointment following opening an online claim, the woman behind the desk asked me specifically if I had any holidays booked and as it happened I was going to Tangier for a long weekend in November for my birthday the following weekend, she told me I couldn't leave the country, I'd have to close my claim and start again on my return! She closed my claim for me there and then and I received only one weeks claim because I would have to apply again after my trip.

I am health and safety by trade, I was told to strip my c.v out of everything technical and make it just an admin based c.v! It was insulting enough at the time and I'm certainly not lying about it now! Ask your local job centre of you can travel on job seekers! You have to job hunt 35 hours a week without exception and attend weekly so of course you can't leave the country! They told me that and they closed my claim down for it!

It must vary by area. Some of the people I worked with have signed on and one has to have a meeting once a fortnight and they don't ask for any proof of what she's applied for and the other one has to go back in a month.

The not leaving the country thing is stupid if the holiday is already booked. Do they think people should just lose the money they've paid?

Also I don't get how you can always job hunt for 35 weeks - what if suitable jobs aren't there? Surely that's a waste of everyone's time. I have an issue with my foot, I have no diagnosis for it yet but some days it's painful to walk. Would they expect me to apply to be a postwoman?

1. you cannot make yourself willfully unemployed and claim benefits!

i agree with this

1. I am now back in work but had 4 months unemployment recently due to redundancy, I tried claiming job seekers and it wasn't worth the hassle.

apply online. You have take ID your first time but after that it’s pretty easy to do

1. you will get about £77 a week

£90.

1. you will be told to job hunt 35 hours a week and document it and go in to the job centre weekly to prove it

its Fortnightly. I don’t see anything wrong with them suggesting how many hours to spend?

1. Job seekers is temporary, you are only allowed it for a set number of months.

it’s a reasonably generous period, though should be longer

1. initially they will let you job hunt in your field of work but after a couple of months you'll be forced into other kinds of work

I haven’t got to this stage yet

1. you will be told to strip anything technical out of your CV, hide qualifications and basically use a fake C.V to pretend you are low or unskilled to aid getting into a job.

never been asked for my CV or given any advice about it. My professional industry association has similar advice

1. you will be told to hunt for jobs up to a three hour round commute away - doesn't work does especially for low paid work!

agree on this point

1. you may be assigned a job coach who will keep regular contact with you to get you into work.

regular = every two weeks. what’s wrong with that?

1. apparently forcing you into training to be a security guard or door person / bouncer is popular with the job centres now.

haven’t come across this yet.

my criticism of it, is that the job coach doesn’t do any coaching whatsoever. There’s no jobs at the job centre, no CV advice, no interview skills. It’s purely an admin job exercise.

You can go aboard on Uc - I assume that it's different on JSA. You can't go abroad if you get income based JSA - you can if you claim new style JSA.

I didn't suggest you were lying - I simply said that wasn't my experience.

I'm not on job seekers and I haven't been for well over a decade. But you absolutely can go abroad on UC for up to 28 days.

It can be weekly appointments to start with then it goes to every two weeks. I never once had to evidence to a work coach that I spent exactly 35 hours a week looking for work. As long as my journal was regularly updated and I was applying for anything I was qualified for - they had no issues.

Some people are on light touch because they work. There are a few different reasons why someone would have more appointments than others. Someone on lcw only needs to prepare for work and someone on lwcra has their commitments switched off entirely.

Maybe it varies by office. Mine has always been every two weeks.

Ive never had to account for how many hours I spent job hunting, though I take a list of all the jobs I’ve applied for with me when I go.
It seems to me that once they realise that you’re serious about job hunting and not taking the piss they are perfectly reasonable with you.

I have an issue with my foot, I have no diagnosis for it yet but some days it's painful to walk. Would they expect me to apply to be a postwoman?

when I’ve been recruiting for roles in the past, there would always be a huge percentage of people sending a generic CV who had no qualifications or experience to do the job.

Press send post too soon.

it was obvious that they were just sending them
out to keep the job centre happy.
if you applied a role and told them you’re not physically capable of walking very far or for long, you wouldn’t get the job.

I'm suspecting it varies too and I was expecting a fortnightly visit at most rather than weekly. And yes there's not a cat on hells chance of finding 35 hours worth of jobs to apply for - I think that's why job applications are always swamped with applicants and hiring managers having to sift through an awful lot of not unsuitable chaff.

I had no intention of ever creating a fake CV, that's a lie id have to live with if it got me a lie skilled job, could never talk about my entire past career and if any internal opportunities came up in health and safety it would crush me because I would have had to hide 15 years of H&S experience!

Are you calling me a liar?

How often you have up attend appointments/ how much help you get depends on your job coach as much as anything.
I'm on LCW and have a fortnightly appointment where my job coach wants evidence of what I've done. She's recently threatened me with sanctions even though I have no commitments listed. They've made me do things like research apprenticeships, or look for level 2 courses even though I'm qualified to a higher level. Actually, the amount of pressure my job coach is putting on me is making my MH issues far worse and setting my recovery back.

Someone else I know is desperate for a job, only has monthly appointments and was recently sent on a childcare recruitment morning. Only it wasn't childcare recruitment at all. It was 2 hours of being told what childcare was available and how to claim money to help pay for it. They don't have children. Total waste of 2 hours. They haven't been told where to find apprenticeships , or anything useful really.

And yes, the other person could have found apprenticeships by themselves, but the fact that I've been sent links etc to them and they haven't even though apprenticeships are more suitable for them than me, shows how patchy the help you get is.

Which is exactly what I said.

You saw what I posted. I didn't use the word liar. You said that it was easy to get PIP for alcoholism and that anyone could pretend to be an alcoholic. I don't agree. I have a different opinion - you're entitled to yours and I'm entitled to mine.

You said many many people get benefits to which they aren't entitled. How do you evidence that?

It's easy to fake alcoholism.
Alcoholism alone is enough to get PIP.

Both factual statements.

Are you aware of the evidence decision makers want to see when they are making a decision on whether someone gets PIP or not?
You don't get PIP or any other equivalent benefit because of your health conditions - you get them because of how they affect your daily life.

I have no idea how someone fakes alcoholism - I've only ever worked with people who were genuinely addicted.