Voluntary work or lose benefits

[Marjoriew]

Government intend to cut benefits of claimants on JSA who refuse to do voluntary work of 30 hours a week over a 4-week period.
Benefits could be stopped for up to 3 months if claimants refuse to comply.

or be pissed off at the scrounging bankers

whose greedy scrounging created the crash

aye

House prices wouldn't be at such a stupid level without buy to let landlords pushing prices up.

Will people be paid expences? presumably not all the work offered will be in walking distance, and they may need boots or water proofs etc.

When I bought my flat, it was on around 2.5 times my single salary.

Prices went up slowly for around 10 years, nothing drastic, still a totally affordable area, almost all flats owner occupied.

In the 3 years before I sold buy to let landlords started snapping up the flats, they increased in value by a staggering 100% in that period. By the time I sold, I was the last owner occupier there, all the others were rented out, at a rent much higher than the mortgage I was paying.

or social housing in such short supply as stocks were sold off, pushing the poor into private rental sector.

lowercase - . Twas the seling of council housing that has never been replaced that has caused this problem. Poor (benfits or working) often have a stark choice - Homeless, B&B miles from their home town, for years at a time, or private rent. With demand for Private rentals so high, LL's CAN get plenty of tenants at whatever price. Simple supply and demand.

My mum lives in a 4-bed detached house in a seaside town. She bought her house brand new just under 8 yrs ago. For £154K. If she sold now, her house is worth £299K. And that's down on what she would have got for it 3/4 yrs ago - at one point it was worth £350K. Is that a normal rate of inflation when compared to wage rises in the same time period?

perhaps you can put pressure on the government to improve pension provision as anyone who wants to be a LL must be raving mad. its lack of suitable pension choices that makes people do it. And where i live its not as lucrative as you seem to suggest - there are fallow periods with no tennants and when the interest rates are normal you don't make a profit on a monthly basis - even assuming you didn't have any rip off tennants.

I am broadly in favour, as I said before, but agree that one definite problem with the existing system is that it appears, from comments above, not to be flexible enough re people who take up temp jobs and then have to wait months to get benefits reinstated when it finishes. That is clearly stupid - there are loads of short-term vacancies out there, esp this time of year, and it is in all our interests (unemployed person to improve earnings/skills/CV/self-respect/chance of getting a better job, and taxpayers to reduce the amount of taxes we need to pay).

Also agree that the overpaid and totally crap bankers who ruin our economic system and whomwe are all paying to bail out should not be getting higher bonuses this year despite falling profits!!

BUT that doesn't mean that those who abuse the benefits system (not those in genuine need, but those who could work but choose not to, or who do 'unofficial' work whilst claiming benefits on top, etc) are just as much parasites, and it is right and proper that at the very least they should be made to do something in exchange for their 'free' money.

I strongly dislike ALL parasites - I'm an old-fashioned socialist, & believe that everyone should be given according to their needs, BUT the other part of that equation is that they should also CONTRIBUTE according to their ability.

Sorry - should read are NOT just as much parasites

BTW, has everyone seen:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327623/Ministers-demand-earnings-figures-crackdown-welfare-fraud.html

-will make it harder for those currently cheating the system by claiming when they are not entitled to, to continue theirfraudulent claims.

i think the thing about the bankers is irrelevant
there are a LOT of peopel who haev no intenion of working
NONE
they get up at midday
they do NOTHING

I think it's a half decent idea though needs some working out by cleverer people than us/me. IDS is a good man and is genuinely trying to get people out of a poverty/dependency trap. Not surprising there's such outrage, it's such a knee jerk reaction. It IS to do with the work routine thing, and being part of society, rather than just taking, I'm sure of it. Nothing to do with volunteering or Big Soc or cheap labour. I think it's a real attempt at progression.

it's relevant because the bankers were shit at their job, worse than useless. We'd have been better off if some real benefits scroungers (wherever they are) had been given a bank to run by winging it.
And they are paid a shedload out of taxpayers' money, including unecessary bonuses.

In what planet is this okay?

Why are they not being labelled the scroungers that they are.

so the jsa claimants will be paid £1 an hour ON TOP of their jsa money!

interesting

sakura - actually you could argue that the bankers have been very good at their jobs in that they've come out of this very well.

i think its the gov thats been lacking by not policing the situation better and letting the bankers shaft the public (and i speak as a capatilast)

i think the gov has enabled them to come out of this well.

the taxpayers are the reason the bankers are not on benefits

There are good and bad sides to this proposal It is easy to be cynical of anything proposed by the Tories, or any government come to that, and some of them may well have all kinds of bad motives. I think it would be great to let people who really want to get some work experience to put on their CV volunteer for this and get some financial incentive - the real reward is that they will have the upper hand when looking for proper work. As for enforcing this with people who don't want to do it - I think that will be unworkable and costly to administrate. If someone has been dodging the system for years they will dodge this too. Why do we have a welfare state? We are actually better off keeping people (even 'scroungers') above the breadline than leaving them to fend for themselves by robbing, drug-dealing etc. Some people just won't ever make good employees, willing or not!

thats shocking because when I was considering doing that I was told it would be fraud because if i could do voluntary work I could be doing paid employment! cue me saying that actually no one will employ a pregnant woman anyway!

Sakura - the bankers have been living on benefits! £135 billion iirc, I cant think of a worse waste of money. They failed at their jobs and sank their companies, yet expect the state to fund their ridiculously lavish lifestyle far above what ordinary taxpayers could afford, and certainly far above anything those who lost their jobs because of the bankers can afford.

The conservative agenda doesnt change - exploit the poor as much as possible to add to your own millions. They try to cover it up with nice stories that are not based in reality (the private sector will magic back your job) or by blaming the powerless (single parent, calling people who have lost their jobs lazy).

Tbh, as a standalone thing it can almost seem like a good idea. So understand why some people are agreeing with it, but what you need to take into account is all the additional stuff.

Right now, what is concerning me is that they are trying to get more people off Incapacity Benefit/ESA. Which they are doing by having stricter guidelines on how disabled you need to be to get it. Which in turn means that more people who are disabled (but not disabled enough IYSWIM) will be put onto JSA. Unfortunately some of the illnesses that will be likely to be moved onto JSA will be the invisible ones. Stuff like ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, some back problems, mental illness.

Now even if these people can work, it's quite difficult for them to find work. They are limited by what they can do, a lot of them will also have large gaps in their employment history. And although there are new guidelines on asking about disabilities before being given a job, they still have to account for gaps in their history. Most employers will want someone able bodied rather than disabled, and things like mental health still have massive stigma attached.

So these people are likely to be on JSA long term.

It's not as simple as saying that all those on JSA long term are scroungers and using it as a lifestyle choice. There are valid reasons to be on JSA long term, and there are more of them than scroungers.

This proposal could be made worthwhile if it paid a proper wage. Long-term joblessness is a desperate situation to be in, scrapping by on the absolute minimum to stay alive.

If the long term unemployed were given a proper job for 4 weeks, it would help their self esteem, they would see that they are able to do a job, they would feel the benefit of a little extra money, perhaps a reference and meeting new people. It could be used as a positive worthwhile tool, and I think people would be motivated and would actively want the work.

Whereas if it is used as forced free/cheap labour to be exploited by employers it would have quite the opposite effect.