Nobody is allowed to choose not to work. Fed up of hearing this expression.

[girlfriend44]

I keep hearing people say people who choose not to work. Target them.
Nobody is allowed to choose not to work. I wonder if some people actually know what they are talking about?

Nobody is allowed to just lounge around and not look for work.

Able bodied people on UC who don't have a paid job are harassed all the time.
They will probably be attending interviews at the jobcentre once a week, where they have to provide evidence they are jobsearching 35 hours a week.

They can be sanctioned over any little thing.
They have to attend any courses they are sent on, even if they are useless courses. Non attendance will end in a sanction.

The staff can arrange interviews on their behalf if the employer has a tie up with the jobcentre which some do.
If it's deemed you didn't try hard enough at the interview, the employer can discuss this with the staff,and you'll be hauled up and sanctioned for not trying.

Those who think people choose not to work please be educated.
It's a hostile environment for anyone out of work.
Not every able bodied person can find employment.
Your not just allowed to sit at home and choose not to work though.

You'll have a claimant commitment and you have to provide evidence of jobsearching. 35 hours too.

I think alot of people who comment don't really know. Everyone is under pressure.
The days of just signing on once a fortnight and not having to.prove your doing everything you can have long gone.

Yes.

Bloody hell. Thanks.

I can't wait to see how many people who have been scrounging and too lazy to work get their benefits stopped.
Nasty SIL mum I'm looking at you 👀

You sound awful. You would like to see someone in poverty?

I agree. I’m currently looking at my neighbour who has claimed PIP for the past 4 years for fibromyalgia. She used to work but decided she’d had enough so went on the sick until her sick pay was exhausted then developed fibro.

She roped her daughters into washing, dressing her and doing all the housework. Dramatically collapsed and made sure the whole street could see her being bundled into a car to go to the doctor. A few weeks later she told me her daughters were helping her with the forms to claim PIP.
It was awarded and within weeks her and two daughters were going to Turkey for gastric sleeves with the back payment.

They’ve all lost significant weight now and spend their well earned benefits on new dogs, clothes, sunbed sessions. She looks after young grandchildren, cooks for all the family, summer Sundays are spent getting drunk in the sun outside pubs or at large family BBQs where she has the strength to dance and party all day.
She goes on foreign holidays, went to NY last year where she walked miles every day and is away at the moment.
It makes me sick.

Surely literally anyone who puts down "fibro" on their PIP claim at all should be scrutinised with a very suspicious eye... Let alone the convenient diagnosis timings you're talking about!

One person, out of however many people you know? That doesn't mean everyone is the same. As @girlfriend44 has said, it's not easy in the slightest not to work. I was made redundant and out of work for around a year. You have to apply for the minimum of 7 jobs a day, go to randomly arranged work coach meetings with minimum notice. Apart from that, trying to pay utilities, buy food and other necessities, travel to interviews and short notice meetings, all off £80.00 a week is impossible. I have never met anyone who is not being subsided in someway, who chooses not to work.

If it's so easy, why don't you do it?

If it wasn’t a widespread issue, the government would not need to be clamping down on the benefits system.

You have to do those things if you actually want a job and want to follow the rules. The majority of career benefits cheats don't claim JSA.

Stealing is easy.
Vandalism is easy.
There are a whole host of crimes that are “easy”. We don’t commit them because we know it’s wrong.

Yes I said this

or jury service

I don't actually. We support our DC25 who is finding their path by paying their rent in the South east, and looking for work in the field they want, Until they find it, we help. But there's no claiming benefit.

I really hope the changes advantage people who are in work. I am sick of working full time and seeing no reward for my work. I don't claim anything, I work long tiring weeks in a professional role i need multiple qualifications for and I have virtually nothing to show for it.

Jury service? You can be excused if you have a mental illness.

I don't understand this post really. Are you signing on and are pissed off because you're expected to do these things and people think it's easy but it's not?

I've worked within the benefit system for years and know all about UC and what's required and I can promise you some people do choose not to work and easily work the system as did their parents before them.

If you're doing all these things and actively searching them I'm sure you won't be unemployed for long so I don't know why you care so much what people think.

She’s saving the taxpayer a lot then in nursery fees ?

I too have several members within our family who choose not to work… legally anyway. …..They’re able to do the £10 per hour cash jobs tho..
It makes me equally sad for the waste of their lives, and also angry that they are taking advantage playng the system when so many are trying their hardest to get by.

There aren’t enough checks and balances in the benefits system. It’s not about disadvantaging genuinely disabled people, it’s about getting the reticent back into work.
The UK cannot sustain the escalating benefits bill.

So what magic benefits are these people claiming?

PIP, UC, Carers allowance etc etc not magic not sure why that came as such a shock to you. jSA is not very much and as discussed can be a pain to claim if you happen to be in an area where they actually check you are doing what you are meant to be doing.

Er, just such a silly post

Because it’s not morally right and I have more self respect.

I don’t know why people think it’s so difficult to get benefits. If you’ve got a thick skin, are brazen and are happy to lie and embellish and have family who are happy to go along with the embellishment too it’s easy. A lot of the things people claim for are cannot be diagnosed.

The thing is so many of us know people where this is not the case. Or where people have cited poor mental health when it's a lie. I knew someone who literally boasted about the fact that they claimed they had anxiety to claim benefits. It's terrible as there are people who are genuinely suffering and cannot work, but the system seems unable to differentiate them from those who just seek to abuse the system.

Not having empathy is not morally right, yet here we are.

This!