Confused re attitude to benefits and work experience

[catontheroof]

Your thoughts please - why has it become so politically incorrect to suggest that fit adults in this country should be expected to work for a living?

I believe that we need a safety net but cannot understand why people should not have to take jobs that they are qualified for if those jobs exist. I also cannot understand why people "deserve" tax credits etc.

If large chunks of our population do not work then our GDP is low. The only way that we can afford to have so many on benefits with a relatively high standard of living is by importing goods from other countries where the workers live and work in atrocious conditions.

Why do we think that it is right and proper that people in this country sit around being paid not to work whilst tens of thousands all over the world work in sweat shops to provide them with a lifestyle?

If our fit population all worked then we'd increase GDP and have money to help people in other countries where there is real poverty.

Well said rabbit and once. I can't decide if people are in denial or are too blinded by living in a better off area.

We are struggling big time, about to lose everything including our DC but have good enough view of the bigger picture to realise there are people in an even worse state.

hecuba - that must be really tough. i work with really closely with someone who was unemployed for 9 months before i hired him. he did not have large savings or any family help but had a very different experience than you. i dont have any answer as to why.

Also having to live the way once describes makes finding a job more difficult . That's even before you take the stigma of your address into account.

If money becomes tight but you still have the basics of your former life then you have the prospect of pulling yourself back up again. When circumstances hit you so hard you are thrown on the scrap heap your chances of pulling yourself back up again diminish rapidly both in practical terms and in terms of the stigma which then taints the way potential employers now view you.

I found using washable nappies saved me loads but I was in a house (admittedly a cold house) with a washing machine. It would not be so simple if you were in a hostel for example. I did use the local launderette a few times when the washing machine gave up the ghost but it was pricey and didn't really do the job effectively - not helped by women from the local stables washing horse blankets in the machines (I mean heaven forbid she should use HER machine for it - far better to pollute the local launderette machines which those without her cash have to use).

TheRealityTillyMinto - I wasn't referring to your eating habits when I referred to parsimony.

I think there is little else to add following OnceHomeless's post. That is the reality for thousands of families. Life in this country is only cheap if you can afford it to be.

that is an argument to pay those living in hostel or B&B accommodation more - that is 50,000 households www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN02110.pdf out of a told of 370,000 www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/sep/01/workless-households-rise

Not just the homeless. Life is far more expensive for the poor full stop.

which is why we have a benefits system for working & non working claimants.

but where i live in Central London, you would have to have to be able to pay about £2k per month to rent a 3 bed ex council flat, so i think any family paying not able to claim benefits would say that their life was expensive too.

To those that have more will be given. To those that have not it shall be taken away. Or some such thing. It holds true.

I'm not interested in competitive pooring. It is a travesty that utility companies get away with charging the poor more, that the poor can only get access to the exhorbitant interest rates of payday loans, that people living in remote, relatively deprived rural areas who are off grid pay up to 3 times as much to heat their homes as those in a town, that people who cannot afford to run a car are stuck shopping in expensive local convenience stores. Etc.

Forgive me if I feel little sympathy for the example you gave. Anyone who can even start to afford £2k a month for a central London ex-council flat has the ability, and the opportunity, to make a choice. If their choice is to waste that kind of money, more fool them in my book.

so should they give up work or spend 2hours a day commuting to central London?

Or perhaps move? Like other people do.

house or job?

Both

i thought there were no jobs, in your opinion?

& when moving house is suggested to someone on a low income, that is usually met with howls on MN. so why the different approach for this family?

Someone earning the significant amount you describe most certainly has a choice. If they choose to stick with the status quo then they need to swallow the consequences and realise just how fortunate they are.

For professional people already in employment, of course there are jobs. And professional people move around for work all the time - I have done it four times myself clocking up thousands of miles in the process. This is a totally different issue from the problem of people looking to enter the labour market from a position of unemployment.

It is hugely insulting to people who are genuinely struggling to even be having this conversation.

you see it is insulting to have this conversation - I see it as wrong to infantilize grown adults.

i am the first from in my family to stay at school beyond 16 & I am from one of the top 10 deprived areas of the country. DP is from another.

I have 5 close relatives working in NMW/NMW+ jobs. He had 3 unemployed relatives (2 long term one recent). Only 5 people earn above the average.

I don?t meet my cousin & think anything other than how alike & we are & she makes rational decisions for her & her family & lives the life she chooses. DP?s long term unemployed relatives are not the victims you have in mind.

I know this isn?t the only story but it is part of the story: I see relatives damaged by a system that supports choices not to work. The end result I see is low self esteem & lives spend at worst in their own lounge.

i see mine & DPs failing family members as very capable people - probably more capable than they see themselves.

but really i hope you have something better to do than this non debate! I do.

'i see mine & DPs failing family members as very capable people - probably more capable than they see themselves.'

That is because the system destroys you bit by bit. The job centre is the most humiliating place I have ever been. The harder you try to get work (i.e. the more applications) the more you get ignored (no replies) and the more you are rejected. Each blow knocks your confidence that little bit more.

If you try and be responsible and take any job available even if it's a short term contract the benefits system kicks you where it hurts. (I would still take any job btw). With a short term contract there isn't the time to start saving again yet benefits take time to kick in again when you're back out on your ear to the extent that some people end up homeless. So you are right to an extent that the system supports not working but that is not an argument against having benefits it's argument for them being more efficient.

Now there are people who chose not to work but really they are in the minority and today with more and more people being made redundant they make up a smaller percentage of the unemployed. What is insulting is the widely held belief that the unemployed are somehow lazy and irresponsible. It is not only damaging to their self esteem but to their job prospects as employers view them in this light and won't even consider them. Bad for employers too as they potentially miss out on very good employees. Attitudes of the whole of society need to change.

Hecuba - i said up thread i dont think all unemployed people are lazy etc. because i hired someone who had been out of work for 9 months.

however your experiences are really different than the experiences in my & DPs families where despite lots of family support, work has been turned down & easy short term choices made. in my family, the attitude is why put your self out if you have enough money for a few bevvies at the weekend?

Don't you think, though, Tilly, that the current system (as amended by the ConDems) inflicts an awful lot of collateral damage in order to get at people like your relatives? The entire focus seems to be on reducing benefits, not on making their administration any more efficient, so making the lives of those who try to get back on the job ladder by, eg, accepting temporary contracts when that's all that is on offer, immeasurably more difficult? There was an item on radio 4 this morning about the huge increase in the number of food banks, for example.

TBH I feel that the changes won't really hit people like tilly describes. It will be hard working people who have hit hard times who will suffer. What's more they will suffer in such a way that it will make it very difficult if not impossible to get out the situation. Career dolers will find a way round it and the rest will find themselves trapped in poverty with no real prospects.

The benefit system needs reformed to stop people taking advantage and to help lift people out of poverty and into work. However the current changes will have the opposite effect.

Rabbit - but if you start talking about colateral damage, it seems to become subjective as to whom is given that title.

you could say DPs DB & DUncle are colateral damage of the current system. or you can say they are grown ups & live their own lives & so must take the consequences of their own decisions.

i did hear the story on food banks. i noted there was no backstory on the people they interviewed but it appeared to address their immediate issue.

Hecuba - my cousin who works NMW jobs would consider herself hard working. she is a grafter in many ways but my auntie would say she is always hassling her for money & free childcare then spends it drinking. i think its gets very subject when you say 'hard working people who have hit hard times'.

the only way to get people working, is for business to create more jobs.

Not everyone on NMW jobs drink all their money. I don't drink, neither does DH. There are people who do waste their money and act irresponsibly, DH has a cousin like that. People like that existing does not justify punishing, genuinely, honest, hard working people who are in fact in the majority.

I can name many more genuinely hard working people than I can chancers. Here are some examples: My mum's neighbour, working full time, causing no trouble, she was struck down with MS and can now no longer go to the toilet herself so her husband has to stay at home to care for her. He will struggle to get back to work when the time comes. An old school friend who's husband died suddenly at only 35 and she had to cut her hours a lot as she couldn't afford childcare on her own. DH and I have always worked hard but are on the scrap heap, SIL went to night school then Uni as a mature student to train as a teacher while bringing up 2 children, despite applying for every job going she hasn't been able to get a teaching job so instead of doing nothing she took an office job, the company went bust she still couldn't get a teaching job ended up with a job in a new shop opening up, a couple of weeks ago she was laid off because business wasn't as good as the owners hoped. They are now struggling to pay rent ob her DH's NMW job. They have been spending their money on rent, CT, commuting, getting DC to school, food and utility bills.. Hardly irresponsible.

Hecuba, I was not saying she was undeserving of help or drinking all her money. I did say it was subjective to start saying who is deserving and who isn't. The problem is there are large numbers of people who believe they are deserving.

So is collateral damage irrelevant, then, because people can't agree on who counts? You could, of course, say that the days pre-the Welfare State were fair on that basis and just go back to that. Why pay anyone anything who hasn't got a job? And quite a few poor people in those days drank what money they had spare, too. Did that make them all automatically to blame for their entire situation?