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.

I know someone who fraudulently claims carer's allowance for someone. As a result, the duty to look for work doesn't apply. They also keep having kids so they always have one under the threshold for their partner to not have a duty to look for work either. So yes, some people do choose not to work. (Yes I know all of this for a fact before someone tells me I don't know this for sure... they recently told me when discussing how unfair it felt to me that my partner can't claim carers allowance because they earn over the meagre threshold despite legitimately doing the caring! They were shocked this was the case due to their set up!)

That’s not necessarily true. My 21 old old relative lived in London claiming universal credit that paid his rent. He wasn’t looking for work as for two years spent months with family abroad. No disability either.

Training on things they can already do - and do better than the training will teach? Why? It's a waste of time that could be spent on actually useful training or, you know, job seeking.

I'll be looking for a job this year, I'm being made redundant. If I get sent on a computer skills course it's a waste of my time, I can use a computer, I spend all day using a computer, I can use Office, I can use a range of DTP software, photo editing software - I've trained other people in work and provide support to them, what would be the point in sending me off to do training on basic Word skills? I've prepared books for print in Word (though I'd prefer to do it in DTP software), I'd prefer to do something that is actually helpful to me. If there's a gap it's probably Excel because I've only needed to do the basics in it, so a moderate to advanced course would be more useful.

People have been sanctioned for that sort of thing. Sanctions don't have to be reasonable if you make things so difficult a percentage of people don't appeal against unfair decisions - as far as the system is concerned that's money saved.

I'm sorry you've been made redundant.

There are some awesome free skills council programming courses available that are run by universities. They take you from zero to career in 3-6 months.

This one is run by the University of Nottingham.

https://coding-bootcamps.nottingham.ac.uk/software-engineering/

There are other courses for things like cyber security.

@EilonwyWithRedGoldHair when I first saw the bootcamps they were government funded. I'm not sure if that's changed. I think it's something to consider.

Yes the lack of inspiration, the anger of being left behind. Often in areas with very little investment, and meaningful investment that add to peoples lives long term, real jobs, good training not just a nice green area and some poncey art work that makes a deprived shopping centre look a bit brighter

I can understand why people think fuck it why should I bother working when I shall earn so little but we can't allow this to be acceptable. I have done jobs I have been truly miserable in and they have made me depressed but I could not take the option to just not work (I know for many depression becomes too overwhelming and they can not work again this thread is not about these people). I am a single parent and it has been a real struggle at times but I have been bought up believing you have to work, I teach this to ds its important to be a consciousness worker, sadly I see this lacking far too often.

My family is working class, pride in paying your way was always considered very important I am not sure where things went so wrong for so many people. Of course I am aware that for many it was the destruction of the communities livelihood but this isn't the case for all and it absolutely has to be tackled

Some points from government report out this week

• Those who are out of work for less than a year are five times more likely to return to work compared to those who are out of work longer
• 1 in 4 people under 35 unemployed due to sickness

How the hell has it got to this, but its where we are and things have to drastically change. how benefits are assessed and restrictions on people who are long term unemployed when they can work (pip in particular so many have to fight for pip when they absolutely do not need this extra stress), real jobs created, investment in smaller cities not just the main cities, more support workers to get people back into work again and stringent attendance to these appointments/courses. I signed on about 8 years ago for two months, there was nothing hard about it (stress was difficult as had to wait for money) compared to actually working and why should it be easy

Labour always said that will have to make some difficult choices and I am glad they are doing so even if i do not agree with all their proposed policies

I know someone who does this, too. He’s 50 and he has NEVER worked. It seems to me that everyone knows somebody who milks the system. It’s not the claimants who are at fault - it’s the system.

It can and is like that I know...., maybe not everywhere but I know 100% it's that lapse. You are right about all the restrictions and things you have to do on paper but in real life it is not that strict at all.

I know what you mean. Maybe freeze benefits and increase wages? My grasp on national finance isn’t brilliant tbh 😀 but I do recognise injustice when I see it. And we do see it around us.
Personal and anecdotal I know but, a couple in our extended family: she has genuine disabilities but he has been hanging on to her benefits coat tails for 20+ years: new HA flat, new motability car every 3 years which he has commandeered as his own, carer’s allowance but does virtually nothing for her or around the house, hasn’t worked during that time. He turned down cash in hand job ( yes I know that’s not legal) which would pay £60 a day from Easter to September but refused because it wasn’t enough, which means he was too lazy to do it. It infuriates me but he gets away with it. And all he does is MOAN and COMPLAIN!
Sorry about the rant 😀.
However, I am aware that there are people living in poor circumstances and using food banks and I would not want to tar everyone with the same brush.

I’m disabled myself, i suffer and I don’t get the support I need. I WANT to work but I physically cannot.

I know multiple people who brag about lying to not work. My ex’s mum claimed on her pip forms that her anxiety is so severe she cannot leave her house and she doesn’t leave her home for months at a time. This same woman is out at raves ever single Friday and Saturday night and during the weekday she sits in cafe Nero all day everyday. She doesn’t have ‘bad days’ and this is her on good weeks - she openly brags about conning the system. I’m physically disabled and I myself don’t have any kind of life because my disability yet this woman gets more support than me because of her lies.

so yes, you do need the supporting benefit to not be able to work- but there are many people lying to receive those benefits. I’m tired of people saying ‘you need evidence’ - it’s about how the condition affects you, not the condition itself so you don’t always need the evidence especially in mental health conditions

@HRTQueen I agree with all that. I think one thing that has come back to bite too is that a lot of the investment that did come to that area ( and there was some) had EU funding and of course that isn’t happening now and any large companies with an international presence and not a big enough on its own UK market are going elsewhere- you aren’t going to create loads of decently paying jobs from Jim’s gym or another chicken takeaway - sorry to sound harsh but it’s a fact.
People presume because I’m a centre left voter (sometimes Labour sometimes Lib Dem depending where we’ve been living) that you are ‘woke/soft’ on everything and I don’t see things that way- my view is to be able to give ‘all’ people better services , infrastructure, opportunities and investment then public money has to be quite tightly controlled , however not to the point where everything is let go to shit , nor to be spent as you say on fripperies that only scratch the surface-

I come from a similar place and also know loads of people 'milking the system' usually with, impossible to disprove, depression/anxiety.

Think is, I don't blame them. If I was faced with the option for 40 hours per week in a miserable, shit job, which, let's face it is the only choice for many, or getting signed off sick and not only, have all that free time, but also be significantly better off financially than doing the shit job, I'd absolutely choose the benefits. This constant lie about people being better off in work simply isn't true. People aren't stupid and they can see right through it.

This thread is deeply depressing reading.

I think ultimately it comes down to benefits being too high and PIP being too easy to access for invisible conditions.

The combination of the two, with so little willingness to stop people's benefits, means that work just isn't worth it for people living very comfortable lives for zero effort.

People need to be going without nice things and some of the basics so that they want to get jobs. The malingerers need to be put in a situation where they sink or swim and we need to be willing to let them sink.

If you're a kid growing up in a home that can't afford nice trainers, Xbox, pocket money, etc, because your parents don't work it's an important life lesson. It isn't nice, but it might help break the cycle.

There's simply too much tolerance from the government.

How we sort this out without genuine claimants being caught up in it, I'm not sure. Maybe we need a two tier system for those that lose their jobs vs subsistence benefits for those that avoid work?

Maybe ‘all the luxuries’ come from elsewhere…

It is not easy to claim PIP. Of course genuine claimants have been affected by how hard it is to claim.

Except, if you do low paid work, you can't afford the posh trainers or xbox. These jobs have to pay and offer people a better life than benefits. I think maybe people in work should have priority access to council housing. At the moment it's the other way around. We also need massively more social housing full stop.

@Kendodd yep I said that earlier - we need a few more carrots rather than just relying on sticks- it shouldn’t be like that but it seems it is- at the moment those with children, living in rented ( especially if private rented) on low or modest incomes and particularly if only 1 works are very little better off if working full time or lots of part time if you factor in childcare or wrap around care - especially given that child maintenance is separate and can be taken in full and not affect a UC claim at all - even if someone gets £800 a month maintenance consistently ( lady I know is in this position) and does next to no work and no she isn’t constantly hassled either and both kids are over 7 - it’s shit for her CV but the thing is people’s mentality on this has changed and those without ‘careers’ seem to feel they will just drop back into low paid work when all allowances for children stop - and they may well be right- in the meantime they get by nicely so can’t be arsed- hence I think it’s going to take a radical approach - personally I’m not pro this approach with maintenance either - I think a lot of women are going to have a very radical drop in income at that point and it would be better for all for them to have built up something for a CV - not all women have got the different situation with SEN or disabled kids, although it sometimes feels like it on mumsnet

DD went to a primary school where a large number of the parents didn’t work and often had never worked. I was told I was a ‘mug’ on a few occasions. They would then ask how we could afford cars and holidays though - I think they assume they will be better off claiming.

One of DDs primary friends mums had never really worked, for 30 years because she ‘didn’t like it’. She came across as chronically bored. She had nothing to talk about, all she did was go shopping and watch tv. Her children are grown up, she’d be much much better off working financially. She had no life, they all just go to town everyday.

Im a carer just now, it’s boring, so bloody boring. I miss work and having a laugh and a gossip, having work friends. I do think there are people who choose not to work, I think a lot of them would be better off but deny it.

what’s Strange as well is the woman working and letting her partner stay at home for no reason. 😱

Is the woman 'letting' him or is the woman being forced to work while he sits in his arse?

I choose not to work. I happily live on my private pension, DH's private and state pension. No other benefits.

Well I assume you have worked to pay into your pension

vast majority want to retire at sown point

Agreed! My job is quite physical & I can’t retire till 67 so realistically I will have to change jobs at some point in my early 60s. It seems to have become quite normal for people in their 60s to just go off sick & claim benefits in the years leading up to retirement. Not sustainable, we need to adapt & do jobs suited to our health & capabilities. With mortgage paid & kids likely grown a lower paid job is probably financially viable for many.