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.

This would infuriate me.

When I was made redundant about 12 years ago, I had to sign on in order to claim my redundancy insurance cover. It was no free ride I can tell you! I had to provide proof I was job searching, endure interviews with job centre staff who couldn’t turn on a computer (God only knows how they managed to get the job). I don’t understand how so many people are allegedly claiming and choosing not to work. It’s a hard enough when you are trying!

I think most people know someone who could work but doesn't so it's obviously pretty common. My BIL doesn't work, has lived off benefits for most of his life and he's 50 now so probably won't ever work. He goes to 3 pub quizzes a week, is intelligent, eats out all the time so is obese. Lives in a council property and just had a new kitchen. Even has the cheek to talk about being 'paid'. His Dad was the same, had a heart attack in his early 50s and never worked a day after that even though he recovered perfectly well.

My husband on the other hand knocks his pan in to provide for his family but was made redundant and found it very hard to access any benefits for the short time he was unemployed cause he had no experience of it and didn't know how to play the system unlike his brother. It's a way of life for some people and once you are on it then it doesn't seem like there is much benefit to coming off it.

Absolutely, but you empathise with the rest of us who are tired of carrying those who choose not to work, and to rely on the state, right?

Those who are deserving of, and in need of, state support, should continue to receive it, otherwise enough is enough.

Many of us are fed up with it.

Agree. I think there should be some element of 'work' to long term benefits that benefits society. Off the top of my head litter picking or graffiti cleaning.

I come from an area where everyone around me growing up was either on benefits with no intention to work or they were working but still claiming benefits fraudently. It was rife, in school, my friends would laugh at me when I said wanted to go to university.

Yes I remember the small paper booklets you had to fill out every week and they were completely on your back. I got made redundant (around time of financial crash) and had that experience with job seekers allowance, about 2 weeks later I got another job and thought wow I don’t know how people deal with that every week !
to give them credit I put in a lot of effort filling out the book, sending CVs from the job centre (I didn’t have a. Computer or internet access at that time etc) and in return I remember the lovely lady gave me a voucher for Topshop to get a new interview outfit. They could see I was genuine.
I find it strange now there doesn’t seem to be proper work coaches like that as far as I’m aware? Nowadays I think people just go in, sign and that’s that. Nobody checking what jobs they’ve applied for or anything.

Well, that would be me and a lot of other genuine PIP claimants completely fucked now, wouldn't it, because a great many of us can't get to the pub in order to be judged by a panel of drunken booze stench addled bigoted pissheads. I can't even get to my own front door. If there was a fire in my big block of flats, I'd have to wet my finger and shove it in the plug socket to save myself the horror of being burnt alive. If my DH loses his job, I'll have to do it anyway, to save myself from dying a slow painful (more than I'm in already) death of malnutrition and cold. It nearly happened once already and I don't fancy a repeat of that trauma nor a worsening of the permanent damage it left behind.

People with the mindset you appear to be displaying seem to want the ill and disabled to die in misery, just in case one faker gets away with £68 a week they deem them unworthy of. A judgement they feel they have the right to pass on behalf of everybody, in blind ignorance, and only until they're the one who is chronically ill.

Would you also suggest the death penalty for all accused with a crime just in case one guilty person gets off on a technicality.

Or, maybe a less expensive option. Anyone accused of a crime should have to prove themselves innocent in front of your panel of pissheads. Maybe the pissheads should be allowed to stomp to death anyone whose "shit" they don't buy. After all, it would save a lot of money for their taxpayer selves and what could go wrong.

And please don't try to pull the "that's not the same thing" argument, because it is. You obviously think the sick and disabled are more likely to be faking it than be genuine so hang 'em all.

"while keeping genuinely disabled people mostly intact?"
"MOSTLY INTACT"
What the fuck?

Just think...

All those hospitals, SMH, full of lying doctors, seeing perfectly healthy people and making up a bullshit diagnosis. Doctors, hauck-tua 💦, bunch of incompetents lying bastards.

Yes. Yes. Everybody who shows up in front of a doctor might be lying to get benefits. Should close down the entire medical industry. It's not needed. Just tell the lazy fuckers to "get back to work".

Here I am, lying my perfectly fit and healthy arse off, up in the middle of the night because I ate too little to stop my bile ejecting itself up my sinuses as I slept. While I'm up, I should hop up on my numb dead infected feet and crawl to the factory over the road, see if I can give them a hand while Dave and Steve sleep their taxpayer's drunken stupor off. Not sure if I will get much done inbetween bouts of vomiting and pissing myself with the force but I need to at least try in order to please the likes of some.

Are you ok? This is a bit much…

I would differentiate between people who don’t work in paid employment and are independent, and people who claim benefits.

Theres no problem with not working if you aren’t also pretending to be looking for work but you can’t find any, or you’re too poorly. You can sit at home or wander the fields as much as you like as long as you don’t expect me to pay for it.

I understand it’s difficult to find work, and some people physically will never manage a job, people with severe LD etc, and we should support those people.
I was unemployed for 4 months at one point, then I got a job in a shop and the benefits were very helpful for that time.

No one has to work, it is a choice, but I don't want pay your bills doing a job I don't really like so you can live happily ever after.

Absolute rubbish, I was on jsa in the summer ( contribution based) I absolutely was looking for work and found something eventually but JC+ staff didn't give a shit I was barely asked about my job search just hi how are you doing sign here every 2 weeks and that's when the JC wasn't closed due yo strike action in which case they just remote signed me, didn't speak to anyone for weeks.

It's lucky I'm not a lazy person or I could easily have spent 6 months on my backside

Even if she is attending interviews, she can present herself badly, be disinterested, turn up looking a mess so no one will employ her! Having friends looking for work, the job centre recommend jobs they’re either over qualified for or not qualified enough for! The whole system needs a shake up.

If benefits were not paid to able bodied people choosing not to work for no good reason, they’d soon start looking!

I have no problem with people choosing not to work as long as the tax payers (ie me)!are not keeping them

Best friend with terminal cancer has to work. She's on very strong pain meds and manages it.

We've had a neighbour who spends all day in her garden and visiting friends - definitely well enough to work but doesn't. DH has several family members who have had back pain/ mental health/ ME. All are over 45 and have never worked.

Most people I know get up prior to 6, home late, pay high taxes. Why are we putting in such long hours for others to do nothing? Other countries have limits for how many months you can claim which seems very reasonable to me. Taking away benefits isn't taking away someone's oxygen!

Lots of full time mums not working who are supported by their partner and they aren’t forced to work.

That's because they're not funded by the tax payer!

With some of the attitudes of entitlement on here, if this is how people behave at work, is it any wonder employers find these people to be a nightmare.

This thread is a good example of why the ever shrinking working, non- benefit claiming public is getting sick and tired of funding a welfare system where people feel that they are hard done by to be expected to look for work. It’s astonishing how some people feel that the world owes them a living. And should you have audacity to question their choices, you are heartless, evil and uncaring. Who is going to give these people a reality check.

Since you aren't funding this using benefits, I doubt anyone cares.

The employment market is really tough at the moment - for jobseekers if they dont provide evidence of looking for work and regularly attend the job centre the small job seekers allowance - which is only £90 a week to help with expenses but not enough to live on - the benefit is stopped immediately! Job seekers are probably firing off hundreds of job applications. I spoke to a recruiter recently and jobs in data are receiving over 500 CVs for each role making it impossible even to get an interview.

It’s funny because I remember the 7080/90’s where 1 wage families was so common then labour came along with the tax credit system setting it up so you were better off working, basically topping up low earners income . It seemed too good to be true. And it was, almost immediately cost of living/housing rose dramatically making the one wage household practically impossible. Then the cuts started, benefits for low income families have got lower and lower. Children are being raised in nurseries which hasn’t improved school readiness at all if anything children are starting school developmentally worse than ever. There’s no family villiage anymore because everyone has to work.

You’re wrong, OP. Some people DO choose not to work.

In my experience job centres are useless! they are no help at all !

Literally this. It was unheard of really in our town to send children to a nursery / pre school until 3ish years old. Pretty much everyone had a stay at home parent (usually mum) until school age in 80’s near me.

Don't agree with this. You seem to want fairness. The way to make your scenario fair

A. Richer partner also 'chooses' to stop work. Then who pays the tax for all?

B UBI is introduced for ALL no additional handouts housing benefit etc for anyone