Work for dole

[ReallyTired]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7514513.stm

I think that proposals like these are long over due. Although I think that if you make people work full time for their benefits they won't have time to look for job.

Prehaps they should work three days a week and look for a job two days a week.

There are people who for good reasons cannot work full time, but certainly could do something part time.

(I'm talknig about the mental block people btw, not the people who can't usefully participate in the cash economy at present.)

Can't see the difference between community service work for dole and emptying the bins or cleaning the local school for pay in terms of discipline in turning up for work and doing work and getting pay for it. God and Marx don't decide what is reasonable pay. Market forces do.

I don't know what TV porogrammes they watch but my point was TV is a luxury - it uses electricity, you have to pay for a licence and for some people you also pay for Sky.

Well never say never folks.

I didn't think it would happen to me until ex-dh walked out on us last year and left us deep in debt (which I hadn't known he was doing.)

So for the moment, and for the first time in my life, I am on the buroo. And until I finish my degree with the Open University and get some better opportunities going then I don't see that changing.

Employers want flexibility in their employees only to suit them. Without family or friends nearby to help out then childcare becomes a huge issue, not just cost but hours as well. I had gotten a job (my only interview out of God-knows how many applications) but they started messing about with the hours and I just don't have the support for that.

And then I hear that the ex-Labour MP for Glasgow East left because of the £500,000 he took to run his office...from his house and seeing that kind of swindle. Well.

My situation won't last forever, and it has been an eye-opener - as I said before I do a lot of volunteer things to make myself feel less like the scrounger that everyone presumes I am.

"I just believe that the labourer is worthy of his hire... And that means if people are working, they should jolly well be paid wages, not bleeding benefits." I couldn't agree more LittleBella am I'm frankly staggered that it is even mildly contraversial!

And nobody picked up on my point about helping people to help themselves. How much more rewarding to receive money that you have actually earned by using your own initiative, than provide free labour to the Government and have f* all to show for it?

'Can't see the difference between community service work for dole and emptying the bins or cleaning the local school for pay in terms of discipline in turning up for work and doing work and getting pay for it.'

Then you don't see the difference between the job the binmen do and the forced labour of convicted criminals?

Wot, are we all just plebs in your eyes, Xenia?

So, in other words, the cleaner is just another serf who doesn't merit any more pay than a convicted criminal who is forced to do the job for the government for nothing as part of his punishment.

Oh, that's some real incentive for the working poor to get up in the morning!

Honestly, that is the most outlandish thing you've come out with in a long time.

And the results of the Glasgow bi-election was just another Jacquerie . . .

I think that's exactly how Xenia sees people Expat.

I earn little more than a bin man doing the job I do. I am lucky to have the choice, and I do my job because I happen to really enjoy it therefore it's easier for me to work out of the home. It's very intellectually challenging and rewarding. I choose to measure my own success and work satisfaction by something other than material gain and we accept having no spare money as a necessary consequence.

But to people who measure success by the size of one's pay packet, I'm just another pleb who obviously isn't very bright because I don't earn very much. It's a sickening attitude. Obviously I'd be just as happy picking litter for the dole if it came to it. And clearly I should be spending my evenings reading free library books about how to earn more money - that must be where I'm going wrong!

You're working and you're getting paid. Okay, there's a force element in there but no more forced than the fact I'm up at 6am working on a Saturday because I need to feed my children. We're all forced by the requirement to feed ourselves, surely. It's got nothing to do with being plebs.

"I believe in the principle of 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs'."

It's been a decade or two since I last heard anyone expressing a yearning for a system that redistributes wealth according to a needs standard. Most people have noticed that it didn't work too well for east of the former Iron Curtain.

In reality, determining ability is extremely difficult. especially since this 'principle' gives incentive to downplay one's abilities (less ability = less work). And the state determining your need with no regards to your utility function means you will be given a bike because it is decided you need one, although you would much prefer braces for your child, but can't because the state does not agree that is a 'need'.

"if people are working, they should jolly well be paid wages, not bleeding benefits."

My understanding is that the proposal to make people on benefits work is based on the same understanding - that if people are being paid a salary, that they should be expected to work for it.

"the deep systemic psychological help that these lazy gits need actually, to get back into work."

I am sure that all those 'psychological' issues will be solved fairly quickly when these 'lazy gits' realize that they will go hungry if they don't work.

well great idea about a library if you're local library hasn't closed, it's actually a half decent one (ours is total sh*te), and you have the means to be able to get to it!

Many people may choose to have a TV and sky as their only luxury for the month. No takeaways, no meals out, no buying anything for themselves (or their children) other than the bare necessities.

If you're on a low income, whether it's working poor, or on benefits, having just one "luxury" such as a TV can be the difference between keeping sane or going slowly insane.

Xenia - I'm afraid I do find it hard to have sympathy who in one post says their children have Sky+ and in the next says that they're forced to get up at 6am to work to feed their children...

"you don't see the difference between the job the binmen do and the forced labour of convicted criminals"

As explained before, expecting work for dole is not comparable to forced labour in prisons.

Benefit claimants are not incarcerated, the state has not assumed responsibility for their well-being by having locked them up, and hence cannot be expected to provide for them indefinitely.

Benefit claimants are free to refuse to work and forfeit their allowance from the state. This is exactly the choice everyone else has to make - work and earn money, or don't work and have no money.

Well said CoteDAzure. Couldn't agree more. I think that people believe their benefits comes from a magic never ending pot and the amount claimed has absolutely no effect on anyone whatsoever.

I also agree that the 'psychological issues' will quickly be resolved too if the safety net is removed for people who are able to work but choose not to.

As I've said earlier, I'm amazed that people feel that they can CHOOSE for someone else to support them.

As for the Sky TV - when my parents married and started from scratch they didn't have a television. They did discover however, that listening to the radio costs virtually nothing, and conversation between themselves was surprisingly free.

If somebody's psychological state is that having Sky TV 'can be the difference between keeping sane or going slowly insane', they should think about how families lived years ago. The assumption that we all should have a luxury (if we don't work) is yet another disappointing symptom of our society's modern ideologies that life owes our something.

well in those days sheryl a radio was often a luxury.......and before that having books was a luxury.........

I wasn't suggesting I was poor but I was saying I was up early (and it was ceratinly earlier than 6am as I was working at 6am) on a Saturday to feed my children. Now that is also in part because I choose to spend money on their university fees but we certainly don't eat out or have takeaways as they're too expensive. We do have Sky + and I never watch it but the children do. But then I can afford it. The radio can be just as fun as TV in fact when I get time it's the radio I listen to not watching TV but that's more to do with five children hogging the TV than anything else.

The library - we always walked to the library as children. It was quite a long walk but that exercise helps you lose weight. Obviously some villages just have mobile libraries but most big cities have brilliant free libraries with free internet access too.

some villages don't even have mobile libraries. And many smaller town libraries are closing.

The latest figure I read (a few months ago) was that libraries (combination of proper ones and mobile ones) are closing at the rate of one a week!

Paying university fees - something a lot of parents can only dream of doing!

LOL @ 5 children hogging the TV - I've only got 3 (and one isn't old enough to argue his case yet) - not looking forward to a few years time when they call all read the TV guide and want to watch their own things.

I'm yet to find a radio station that either doesn't play really cr*p music or having loads of extremely irritating adverts........but I live in hope of finding one

oh meant also to say - internet access at our local library is no longer free. Still fairly cheap - but with only 4 computers you'll be extremely lucky to be able to use one unless you want to stand and wait around for an hour or two.

Does this work for dole have a distinction bewteen scroungers and people who are genuinley between jobs?

In my area, hundreds of jobs have just been lost as a factory has closed. Do these people who have to sign on, as they are in bewteen jobs have to work for their dole?

"I'm yet to find a radio station that either doesn't play really cr*p music or having loads of extremely irritating adverts........but I live in hope of finding one"

Have you never heard of Radio 4!?

It's only people at the top who can look down on others.

Personally, I think they should count themselves lucky, and have more sympathy with the less fortunate.

You can buy books from car boot sales or from ebay.

Packs of cards are even cheaper. Board games can also be picked up rather cheaply second hand.

I've yet to hear an argument to support why people on benefits who are physically able to (ie,those who have children at school) should have the choice between whether to sit on their backsides at home or go out and retrain.

"Does this work for dole have a distinction bewteen scroungers and people who are genuinley between jobs?"

People aren't ususally genuinely between jobs for more than two years. No one will be forced to work for their benefits from day 1.

"It's only people at the top who can look down on others.
2

I don't think that any human being should look down on a fellow human being. We are all equal infront of God. However there is a difference between being compassionate by having a welfare state and frankly being taken advantage of.

As a society we need to get a little bit more assertive with those who do nothing but make excuses. The truely disabled those with caring responsibilites or those between jobs have nothing to fear.

sherly - you have to be able to get to a car boot sale - or have the internet (a luxury?) to be able to buy off ebay

There is only one real radio station and that is radio 4.

Yes but most people do live in reach of a library not that the library point is particularly relevant.

The poor will always be with us as will the feckless poor (and the feckless rich to an extent) but making people work for benefits is an idea that's been around and indeed was part of the English rules for a good few years and is common abroad.

I doubt it will be hard to avoid because the Government is in charge of it so that means poor enforcement. Those with nouse will just claim incapacity benefit instead and feign depression (which is hard to disprove).

Sherylshore, most of my neighbours are also on benefits - unlike myself this has been since they left school and not a recent development.

They buy their stuff from Bright House and other similar places and apparently I am a snob for not wanting to! I wonder how they do it as they can afford Sky, plus all the little extras such as ciggies, booze and trips to the bookies.

Also charity shops are a good place for books, their prices have really dropped recently. And most libraries have a stock sale once a year - ours were selling off really good books for 25p each, plus language cds etc.

Xenia - I have a friend who has suffered from depression for the past 15 years and has never been out of work. He has changed jobs a lot as employers are not always sympathetic when he has a bad episode (as he calls them.)

I worked with severe PND. Twice. My ex h has pretty bad clinical depression. Again, he's worked despite, because he felt it would make his even worse, particularly when he was suicidal.

It may not work for some people, I understand that.

For me, there wasn't much of a choice as DH has just been made redundant. We had bills to pay.

Also, after DD1, it helped me in the sense that I had to focus on something else other than how shit I felt because we needed the money to live. I had to get up and get moving.

Again, I understand this isn't the same for everyone.

We had Sky - back when we were both had steady work.

I admit, we enjoyed having it.

I'd have it again once I go back FT and he is also FT.

I would tell your pals the truth about Bright House, what a complete rip off they are!

DH does smoke, it's his one vice really because he has a beer maybe two or three times a year and doesn't really care for alcohol. But he does smoke rollies and he gets the baccy half price from an Eastern European colleague.