Occupy Mumnset - Mumsnet, i know you are P(p)olitical. Seriously, can't you tell your advertisers to fuck off if they are workfaring?

[Tortington]

i got an e-mail telling me i had % of retailers that are involved in the workfare scheme and it occured to me that Mumsnet is usually on the side of good

oh staff of MN you know me well, whilst i was disappointed that the Maccy D advertising question was even asked, i wasn't arsed tbh. i've always shouted 'its a business not a charity' ...

but this is different - It is very very wrong, and you are perpetuating the wrongness by advertising them.

Theya re not tailored Kitchen, the companies accessing teh scheme are too narrow to be tailored.

And a great many Workfare people are formerstudents struggling to find work after graduating; only 3 of DH's cohort due to graduate in June have work so far (well he does also but he ahd his business BEFORE he started).

And when it extends to carers I know people who are Lawyers, have PHds etc who will be on the scheme.

(And no I am not everyone; neither am I particularly special, or nobody- I am a not uncommon case in a large group)

But if people think DH having to stop work to care for our disabled boys so I can do workfare is sensible then I pity them tbh!

Tapsel, that's very interesting where did you find that?

Mrs Kitchen Roll, I'm torn between respoding to you and doing somthing more useful

You are right, sure start wasn't around then and my point is that the Torries have pulled the plug on funding sure start. So just when we had a very valuable scheme that would bear fruit and actually start to work with children from disadvantaged homes and prevent this cycle of waste and deprivation, working with families to instill skills and attitudes conducive to work, we now pull the plug and make people unemployed. We cut social work budgets and cut the scope of social work activity and we return to shrinking the social and welfare state.

Torries don't like the working classes they are hysterically driven by fear (remember Dave's Hug a Hoodie stunt) so rather than have valuable schemes where we encourage the attitudes of hard work, aspiration and social cohesion we need to make this country fair and just, they resort to punishing regimes of finger pointing, divide and rule politics, disability discrimination and free labour.

Mn used to give the illusion of being on the side of good.

Now they are all about the money.

McDs was the nail in the coffin.

They'd happily take Nestle's money if there wasn't such strong feeling about it. Justine has said so.

Mn is a company like any other, sadly.

I spend little time here now - only when I am really, really bored!

IUseTooMuchKitchenRoll Fri 24-Feb-12 10:03:24
Its not hard work-in relation to stacking shelves at night.

I have a medium sized DH after 7 months of doing shelf filling in one of the major 3 he had lost 3 stone and was clinically depressed. Another graduate here who during the last Torry tenancy was forced to take what ever crappy work he could.

Mrs Kitchen Roll have you stacked shelves 5 nights a week?

I think IUseTooMuchKitchenRoll makes the typical mistake of getting confused about the difference between hard work and skilled work. The hardest work of all is the least skilled work. If you have a skill that others don't have, you don't have to work as hard - you can afford to pay others to do the hard work, so that you can get on with the interesting and rewarding stuff.

Me too Nethuns, only come ehre if I have housework to do

Now have SLT to get to so adieu

Oh and night work can be awful; GP puts it down to why DH became seriously ill. Thank goodness he no longer does that.

I am rapidly going off mn, have unfollowed them on twitter now and will not be getting involved in their sponsored links.

I also won't link to any companies that use unpaid forced labour. I think Mumsnet are shooting themselves in the foot by not coming out against this.

I have worked since I was 7 years old - I am not a job snob, picked tatties/berries through the school holidays, have always done voluntary work - I do think it is fundamentally unfair to allow the Government to continue with these schemes without being checked. Back to work schemes should support the unemployed not victimise and vilify them.

Did you all see this>

[[http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/latest-news/1530-no-esa-for-claimants-who-want-to-appeal?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Benefits+and+Work&utm_content=23+Feb+2012 here[

Bear in mind the appeal success rate with appropriate help is 70%, but they are pulling the help so that will drop.

Fuckwits.

Those whoa gree to take JSA whilst waiitng will have to do workfare.

I am currently fuming.

here

No, I haven't stacked shelves at night. But I do regularly do voluntary work on night shifts, since you ask. I sleep after taking the dc to school the next day. Sorry, but I really can't see how sticking shelves at night is worse than doing nothing.

kitchenroll that is totally not the point - you have missed the point

if here is a job of work to be done - pay a wage for it.

thats the only point really.

this isn;t in addition to existing jobs, it is replacing them.

The biggest complacency in this argument is that the unemployed are compared to feckless lazy nobs who dont get up til lunchtime

they are never compared to the thousands of skilled people who are being made redundant on a daily basis.

so what skills will they learn, these people who have lost their jobs?

they certainly wont learn the soft skills being refered to here - about getting to work on time and working as a team.....all very noble

if you can sort the undeserving from the deserving.

heres hoping my desk job doesn't go up in smoke, having only worked there for a short amount of time in a niche area - i am not entitled to any redundancy and the likelyhood of another job coming up is slim.

so, i could find myself stacking shelves, for 60pw

that will only teach me that the government want to royally fuck me up the arse with a chili covered phallus whilst your taxes pay for it

that isn't right

the unemployed are not all feckless bums - they are you and me caught up in a shite economy

There are a lot of stories of young graduates taking up "voluntary" work experience because they were given the impression from the start it wasn't actually voluntary at all, and then doing the sort of work most students probably did in their spare time to earn money for university. Are these Job Centre Plus advisers who are telling a few porkies/failing to pass on the "voluntary" aspect given some kind of bonus for pushing as many people onto these schemes as possible????? Or for getting these people to remain on the schemes for as long as possible (which would incentivise the recruitment of the most capable job seekers for the schemes, rather than those most in need of work experience)????? Or are they too badly trained or confused to remember the differences between the voluntary and mandatory schemes and at which point the voluntary schemes start to introduce an element of coercion?

Is this actually the Government's method of reducing immigration: take all the shelf stacking and cleaning jobs away from the immigrants, because even they can't work for less than nothing?

And why is the Government keeping so quiet on its Mandatory Work Experience scheme(s)? Isn't it exceptionally duplicitous to pretend the furore is all about young people doing voluntary work experience??????? It certainly got me confused in the last few days, as people seemed to be talking at cross purposes a lot of the time (I now find out that is because they were thinking of different schemes).

Has anyone written up a report on a work experience scheme that was actually well co-ordinated, rather than a report on job seekers being left to get on with cleaning and stacking shelves all day whilst the paid staff get on with their work?????

Kitchen roll what the fuck are people paying National Insurance for then??!!!
According To boycott workfare Poundland have only suspended involvement in this not quit it completely.

Brilliant post Custardo!

You said it Custardo, I wish I could get my points across so bloody well!

Rabbbit, Rabbit Rabbit
And why is the Government keeping so quiet on its Mandatory Work Experience scheme(s)? Isn't it exceptionally duplicitous to pretend the furore is all about young people doing voluntary work experience??????? It certainly got me confused in the last few days,

I don't have the ability to say it as well as you, I've been trying for days to make just that point.

Grayling is being obtuse and deliberately misleading and trying to deflect the argument away from the "mandatory" work programme because this covers all people, low working income where one partner doesn't maximise their time and therefore their joint income, single parents with children under 5, carers, people with disabilities, people with drug/alcohol problems and the terminally ill.

Custard you may have frightened kitchen roll away, not so tough after all, never use it myself, think it's bad for the environment. But then I also think breaking the link between work and pay is wrong, animals are all lovely and I'm concerned that more children will end up in poverty, too soft............

In the states (you don't need to listen mrsK if you don't want to) children from homes that are on workfare are 30% more likely to be hospitalised, 50% more likely to suffer from hunger and 50% more likely to suffer conditions relating to malnutrition.

Greatest country in the world though MrsK, one of the last to abolish slave labour, home of rabid neo-capitalism and great for imperialistic ideas. Do we really wish to inherit everything they invent from the fridge to starving children.

i cant believe this thread only has one facebook recommendatio it's aces!

I tweeted a link to this thread, there should be a twitter counter as well as an fb one, but I think you reach a bigger audience on twitter, even if I can't quite get the hang of it.