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.

Are you meaning me, specifically, or just generally? Because if i expect to have it all, how come we don't have a car, landline, contract phones, central-heating on most of the winter, trips out, evenings out, holidays, cigarettes (not a luxury i would want, anyway), fashionable (ie, this seasons) clothes, several pairs of shoes, large LCD/Plasma tv, house big enough for our family, insurance policies, dental cover, unlimited water consumption, cats or dogs (very expensive), tumble drier, etc etc the list goes on.

Oh, and to top it all off, couldn't go to my brothers wedding because it was too far away and we couldn't afford to go.

But if we were both working, seeing as we'd be both on minimum wage and most likely shift working, we'd STILL be this bad off, but also we'd never see each other or our kids, and we'd have to pay prescription charges, dental/opticians fees etc, tax, rent etc as well.

Doesn't make sense whichever way you look at it, and i challenge anyone to say it does.

You don't any of those things but you have internet access?

Yes - was given laptop (very very basic model), and £10 a month broadband. I have such very high standads for mates (for a doley bum) that i don't see people much , and mumsnet is the only thing keeping me sane. (Just barely)

Besides which, DDs are in Secondary soon, we've kept it around for homework purposes too.

It's a point that's often made on these threads, but I do find it a little unfair hughjarss (I do love your name!)

We're really struggling at the moment, especially with heating bill rises on the horizon etc. My one luxury is paying £16 a month for unlimited internet access (dial-up, which is more expensive than broadband). As a WOHM I would really go mad if I had no contact with other mothers - Mumsnet is my only real way of doing this at the moment. Also we are pretty isolated in a rural community - nearest post office and bank are 16 miles away.

Internet access is pretty darned important for many people. I'd almost definitely give up our TV licence before internet access. If we could get broadband I'd have probably given up the TV licence already.

Some of us ni work don't have some of those things like trips out, evenings out, holidays, cigarettes (not a luxury i would want, anyway), fashionable (ie, this seasons) clothes, several pairs of shoes (I have one I wear heels and one flat I suppose but not a large selection like some women do), large LCD/Plasma tv (ours turns off every day or two and it's not large) .. dental cover, unlimited water consumption, (water meter so we're careful) cats or dogs (very expensive), tumble drier, - we try to hang things out to dry where possible (although I accept I live in a big house and have some of the other things you mentioned.

The answer is for women to work hard at school, get good A levels, pick jobs that will enable them to support their children and never give up work and then they will be able to afford to keep their children etc.

But I accept in some parts of the country it's hard to find work which is why some of us had to uproot ourselves in the usual way across half the country to find work.

It's not easy, but I agree with the principle that people may need to move to find work. No one has a god given right to remain in a particular area. I know a lot of people who have had to move to London/South East for work, and I was the opposite - brought up in London but moved away because i knew I'd never be able to afford to live there!

Xenia, i did say that if we were working we still wouldn't have these things! (Must ha' missed that bit )

Yes, you're right, i shouldn't have given up my A-Levels because i met DH, but as i was a stupid 17 year old at the time, well, that's just it really. We got married very young, and stupidly had children before realising that once we did we were stuck in this crappy town with no education and the prospect of an ever crappier future.

This is precisely the reason why i teach my kids good morals, and why when Work Placements come up (he is doing the lovely job of shelf-filling for three months) he works his best at them even though he knows he still will be claiming benefits at the end of it. Teaches work ethic i hope! Also we are never sat around on our arses so they do not get the impression that you can just sit around all day and do feck all, expecting life to revolve around you!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't read Godzilla's post that her family is not working. I understood that one of them works, and they other doesn't because they'd be worse off if they did.

It is so true that for many people their wages would barely cover the childcare, and they lose out on so many other fronts. Not to mention the effect on young children of being in full time childcare for no benefit to anyone. I don't think any family should be made to feel guilty in these circumstances, least of all by the Government.

Findtheriver - you need money to move town. You need money to move house at all, let alone town.

Costs about £1000 to move. And that's assuming you are able to rent from a private landlord.

Deposits, moving costs, first months' rent.

I have had to borrow from a relative to afford to move - but the money is sitting in the bank rotting, because there's nowhere to move to!

Also, what about the cost of checking out the area you're moving to? Otherwise you'll most likely move into the worst estate in the town/city! And then there might still be no work. Some people actually moved into our town expecting to find work, only to become benefit recipients.

Then there's the cost of decorating/carpets if it's a council property, or a cooker if you move from somewhere partly furnished (like we have now). For us it's an impossible dream - we desperately WANT to move town - but not to somewhere our future is just as bad but we have also said goodbye to our families to get there.

Twinklemegan - sorry but you are mistaken. We are the bad guys.

Xenia - I worked very hard at school, winning prizes every year. I got 9 A's at GCSE, 4 A's at A-level and a 2:1 at a top university. I found a job in my degree subject (a very difficult thing to do) but 9 years on I still earn below the average wage. Job evaluation in the public sector conspired against me earning more as professional staff tend to be regraded downwards. Plus in careers with very few jobs (like mine) you tend to have to wait around for a very long time for jobs further up the chain. You also have to move house to move job - we have moved three times already and we are not moving again, under any circumstances.

I'm just trying to make the point that working hard does not guarantee a good income. As pretty much the sole breadwinner at the moment (because DH had to give up his unstable contracting work to look after DS) I do struggle to support my family on my wage alone.

What was my alternative? Well I thought about law, but couldn't afford to get into so much debt to train. I could never ever work in a large commercial or city firm - I wouldn't fit in - so I would have had that debt around my neck for a long long time.

Money is not my driving factor - it never has been and it never will be. Not everyone can do a job they hate just because it pays good money - I know I couldn't. Happiness is important too, in fact it's essential to be able to bring up happy and well-adjusted children.

Yes I realised that after I posted Godzilla. There are very few true bad guys though, and I doubt you count among them. Some people find it very hard to negotiate the system to climb out of their situation. There but for the grace of God and all that.

Great post, Twinkle!

I could say the same, too. I also 'worked hard'.

We do work.

But I suppose some people don't have the luxury of work they love if they can't feed their children on it. I am lucky I have work I like. I have 3 children at univeristy stage and they and all their friends have lots of decisions to make at the moment about which jobs to do, which careers will they enjoy, whree they might work or move to, which jobs pay well, what kind of lives they think they want, do they give X up for a boy (it's rarely even in 2008 men sacrificing career for women at 22 (or 17 as in the poster above who had a baby instead and married young)).

Are we really saying perhaps people should do as my grandfather did - marry very late , many many people waited in the 1920s and 1930s because they could not "afford" to marry. I think he was 40 before he could afford it and had my father when he was about 50 and in tht way was able to have built up a business before he had those commitments to a family.

Presumably most women who earn a lot defer their babies (although not me).

I certainly agree working hard does not always mean higher waves. What I try to do withy the oldre children is talk about different jobs because at 21 you often really have no idea that XYZ job that you like because your friend wants to do it or you liked the talk by the careers office or whatever means you'll never be able to afford to buy a house or child care or skiing holidays and jobs ABC means you could. If they still chose job XYZ I genuinely don't mind at all as long as they are aware of the long term consequences.

The other problem is young people are often very nicely altruistic and what seems like huge fun at 21 is not perhaps how you will want to be at 30 with a family so if they do decide to go to Bhutan to pray and find themselves for 5 years I would prefer if it they did that after getting some kind of qualification to fall back on later.

I do think regional issues are important too, being in area of prosperity with lots of jobs ,even if it's just trickle down helps. One reason their faethr could have 30 pupils on top of his school job was not only because he's very hardworking but also because there are people around here with money they will spend on extra lessons for children. If we lived on a very poor council estate in the NE it would be very different.

But I suppose some people don't have the luxury of work they love if they can't feed their children on it. I am lucky I have work I like. I have 3 children at univeristy stage and they and all their friends have lots of decisions to make at the moment about which jobs to do, which careers will they enjoy, whree they might work or move to, which jobs pay well, what kind of lives they think they want, do they give X up for a boy (it's rarely even in 2008 men sacrificing career for women at 22 (or 17 as in the poster above who had a baby instead and married young)).

Are we really saying perhaps people should do as my grandfather did - marry very late , many many people waited in the 1920s and 1930s because they could not "afford" to marry. I think he was 40 before he could afford it and had my father when he was about 50 and in tht way was able to have built up a business before he had those commitments to a family.

Presumably most women who earn a lot defer their babies (although not me).

I certainly agree working hard does not always mean higher waves. What I try to do withy the oldre children is talk about different jobs because at 21 you often really have no idea that XYZ job that you like because your friend wants to do it or you liked the talk by the careers office or whatever means you'll never be able to afford to buy a house or child care or skiing holidays and jobs ABC means you could. If they still chose job XYZ I genuinely don't mind at all as long as they are aware of the long term consequences.

The other problem is young people are often very nicely altruistic and what seems like huge fun at 21 is not perhaps how you will want to be at 30 with a family so if they do decide to go to Bhutan to pray and find themselves for 5 years I would prefer if it they did that after getting some kind of qualification to fall back on later.

I do think regional issues are important too, being in area of prosperity with lots of jobs ,even if it's just trickle down helps. One reason their faethr could have 30 pupils on top of his school job was not only because he's very hardworking but also because there are people around here with money they will spend on extra lessons for children. If we lived on a very poor council estate in the NE it would be very different.

I think that young people have so much to think about, what with AS levels, A levels, degree subjects etc., that it's expecting a bit too much for them to consider all the possible long-term consequences of their decisions. Certainly at my school, the consequences for supporting a family were not even a factor in the guidance we were given. They'd pretty much given up on me anyway because I was set on going to music college (which I did for year before deciding it wasn't for me).

But I agree that it is perfectly OK to be aware of the consequences and go on to choose a career option because you really want to do it. That's the difference between a vocation and just a job. Vocations tend to be paid less because by definition the people doing those jobs are not usually driven by money. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy of course.

The implications of your posts though Xenia, are that only those with other means of support should have the luxury of doing jobs they enjoy, and only those with a lot of money should be able to live where they want to live. That's a pretty unfair state of affairs wouldn't you agree?

It's funny, but IME the high achievers at school (like myself) are often the ones who don't end up in high-flying careers. Part of it is probably burn out to an extent, but I also think that careers that earn you a lot of money often require quite a different skill set from the one which gets you success at school and university.

Most young people will know that they will have to support their families through their chosen profession, and choose accordingly. They will pursue music, arts, etc as hobbies (which they will be able to afford).

You must have had a very comfortable life in your teens not to have realized that your 'vocation' would have to support you and your future family. Most people don't need to be told this during career day at school.

I am not so such. A lot of teenagers can be pretty naive even from poor homes about the cost of things and will think Mr X is rich because he is provided with a company car or Y is well off because she gets free dresses from the clothing company she works for, yet she might just be someone with loads of perks on £16k a year. I think give them all the help you can but let them take their own choices ideally without burning too many boats.

I don't believe people should do things that means the state has to support them but if they can support themselves, live frugally or find a man or woman to keep them then that's fine, their choice etc.

Laughing out loud here at the idea of moving costing £1000, plus deposit for private renting, money to decorate etc. That would have been a luxury!
I'm talking about moving out of the family home, as soon as I'd finished University,which I did with a borrowed van of my meagre belongings, to an area where I was able to get work and pay rent for a very basic housing association property. In the line of work I was starting, there were certainly jobs available in the LOndon area where I was brought up, but I would never have been able to afford rents. This is what I mean by being flexible.

Once you have children it gets hard to move. Obviously in very poor countries families have to get used to one parent or both working abroad or hundreds of miles away whom they only see once a year but we have come to expect to be with our families and usually won't tolerate such separations unless it is a forces family. And if you lose your council house and cannot get another etc and don't have a job to go to then it's harder for people to move although not impossible.

Are the high achievers at school the ones who don't earn much? Hard to generalise. If you take the top 15% by IQ probably of all classes I suspect they do earn more than the bottom 15% whose IQ will be under 100 (100 being average). But to earn a lot you need a number of things - some element of brain or wit; capacity for hard work; some luck; and it helps a lot if your path was eased with a good schooling and parental help.

In my class at school which is probably not typical I got the best A levels in the school which wasn't very hard and I am pretty sure I earn the most. The second cleverst girl is a housewife married to a partner in an accountancy practice and they currently live with the children in Germany although they're all English. I earn more than my siblings who went to Oxbridge and that's partly because I work harder and because of what I chose to do.

It's obviously harder to move once you have children, which is why it makes sense to do all you can to secure your future before embarking on a family. Not easy for any of us, and it all involves compromise. I think it's about a mindset more than anything though. I come across people who will just not countenance moving. They have been born and brought up in a particular area, and they believe they have a god given right to remain in that area, whether there are jobs or not. For example, one young colleague I work with at the moment cannot afford rent easily in this area and moans about it constantly but won't do anything about it. She says that she doesnt want to move away because her mum is 10 minutes down the road at the moment! To me, that seems daft. Life is all about having to make decisions, things are rarely 100% good or 100% bad, it's a case of weighing up the options and then getting on with it.

'Once you have children it gets hard to move. Obviously in very poor countries families have to get used to one parent or both working abroad or hundreds of miles away whom they only see once a year but we have come to expect to be with our families and usually won't tolerate such separations unless it is a forces family. And if you lose your council house and cannot get another etc and don't have a job to go to then it's harder for people to move although not impossible.'

xenia-i am amazed.thank you.

Once again CoteDAzur you are making this personal and I don't particularly like the tone of your posts. I left school 14 years ago, and at that time it was not generally assumed that a woman would be the primary breadwinner - even now it is pretty unusual. It wasn't what I planned either, but sometimes things don't work out how you expect.

Obviously all professional musicians are loaded then . Or perhaps that's just how you think things should be - that only rich people have the luxury of pursuing their talents for a living. What a sad world you want to live in.

Twinkle - If you can't tolerate comments on your experiences, don't post them.