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.

just for clarity - i am offering £35k+. i cannot retain someone for £50k.

David Cameron's Big Society really is working, isn't it ?

We're all in this together.

He forgot to add, "unless you are unemployed, just made redundant, claim any form of benefits and earn x amount, are disabled in any way"....

Big Society ? What Big Society ?

I hate it when these threads end up with people trying to prove that they're not quaffing champagne on someone elses Hard Earned Money.

How awful and how ashamed that would make me if I were the sort of person who like to berate and belittle those more vulnerable than myself.

ick.

You're always saying about this job that you can't fill Tilly. I genuinely wonder why that would be.

What's it to do again? Isn't it something rather specialised?

caton, did you miss my offer to help you pay for fresh water in a developing country?

You can pay for school fees, too, if you like. And antimalarials and basic healthcare.

We're all in this together.

if we were all in this together we'd be more willing to work harder in the UK in order to help those who are really badly off. Why does it not matter so much if a foreign child dies? A dead African baby is still a dead baby yet we still feel that we deserve laptops.

did you miss my offer to help you pay for fresh water in a developing country I do pay my way - as I explained we (childrens father and I) have paid far more in tax than we have taken. The thing is thought that as individuals we couldn't make much difference but if everyone in this country pulled their weight then we could.

How come all the health indicators are showing that the UK is gettign healthier and healthier whilst the number on sickness benefits goes up?

yes it is specialised. & hit by migration changes.

Actually insisting people work ft would make things worse. If everyone worked pt then there would be lots of job shares and therefore lots of jobs. Apparently, though, most jobs are impossible to job share thus keeping unemployment high and some people's pockets full while others' pockets are empty.

Not that ft working has anyng to do with wanting more, of course, it's all to do with need.

Dear old Wilson started building all those leisure in the 70s so that we'd all have other things to do than work, as he knew we'd never see full employment again. He expected to get everyone on a 3 or 4 day weel eventually, giving us all a much better work/life balance. Of course, everyone objected massively to his plans, and voted him out. Heralding the, er, delightful Thatcher and all that went with her.

Haha, change of subject? You really are only here for the larfs, aintchoo?

Aw, you're all heart OP. It's all sounds a bit like Communism to me, but without any of the taxation of the richest. ..

so let me understand this...

Everyone in the UK gets a job, and the 2.2M who are adrift without a job live in a hostel - or something and forrage for food?

and then with the tax we save as a country in benefits we can give that to the poorest people in the developing world. Is that correct?

Cat, couldn't your family live in a hostel on food stamps, then all the extra money you earn and spend on computers etc could be sent to Africa to pay for vaccinations and clean drinking water.

This would save a lot more money than your proposal to put disabled people on ESA into hostels, as it costs a lot more to equip hostels for disabled people.

there are hardlyany low paid jobs available, that's the bloody problem. Some of you haven't got a clue

Except the "giving it to the poorest people in the developing world bit", Shirl.

They're there for window dressing, they don't actually get anything.

Yeah Serial.

knows

Dunno why I'm bothering really, it's all very provocative and without very much sense behind it.

What is obsession with benefit claimants not working, or at least not working full time?

Tax credits are designed to support people who do work but for a low income.

My DH and I rely on tax credits to keep our heads above water, we both work bloody hard. He does 40-45 hours per week and I do 20 whilst my kids are at school.

Why should we have to live in poverty when we work so hard? Not everybody is able to have a top job with a top wage but the jobs we do are still valuable.

Why should we have to live in poverty when we work so hard? because you are not living in poverty - no one in this country is.

"the whole point of the economic crisis is that NI no where nears covers the amount we are now paying out. That is what "deficit" means."

People who work pay TAX in addition to NI. The very point of the welfare state, as brought in after the 2nd world war was to give people a better standard of living, based on NI and tax contributions.
Because in those days, and after the horror of the great depression, most right thinking people could see the need for a fairer system where the poor could still have a decent life.
Because they had seen the alternative.

Pendeen-yes, housing costs were allowed to get so insanely high.
What I mean by this is that interest rates were kept low, banks were lending irresponsibly, thus pushing up house prices massively.
Add to that the buy to let frenzy, and the total absence of any fair rent legislation and you have an artificially overheated housing market.

I wouldn't panic about state intervention. The state has been intervening pretty heavily lately bailing out the fuckers that go us into this mess in the first place.
And as for fair rent-New York has way more laws to protect tenants than the UK does, and that is a pretty capitalist place.
Here, people who couldnt get on the housing ladder are essentially fucked.

don't be so ridiculous catontheroof

So the 1,900 people who were admitted to hospital with hypothermia last winter, some of whom died, were they not poor then? Were they just too thick to turn the heating on?

Serial and Shir - I'm assuming that you are implying that I do not really think that we, in the UK, should be doing more to help those in developing countries. Why do you think this? Why is it so hard to believe that someone may prefer to help the really desparately poor rather than maintain an artificially high standard of living for people in the west?

It is very interesting that you find this so hard to believe - is it because you do not see people in Africa as "people"? I do not know you so why would I feel sorrier for you than for them?

I just do not "get" this idea that I should feel sorrier for someone just because they are born in the same country as I am and that I should not care one iota for someone in a foreign country.

Why does that, in your eyes, make me a bad person?

And my point is that we are not in poverty because we get tax credits. If we couldn't claim such financial support then we certainly would be living in poverty despite working hard.

You sound like you would like it much better here if people really were living in Dickensian squalor catontheroof.
What you dont realise is that as the cuts start to bite thousands of families will be living in B and Bs, in one room, and thousands more people will be on the streets.
That harsh enough for you? Will that satisfy whatever craving it is that you have to see people as humiliated as possible?

Oh and about Pret-
The majority of foreign people working at Pret are young, with no kids, and are here living in shared houses to make a bit of cash before they go home to Poland/Turkey/wherever.
They can work crazy shifts that I , for example, can't, and they can live 3 to a room, because it is a temporary situation for them.
I know, I did it too when I was young.

I have applied for so many jobs that are well below my education level, but I can't work evenings and weekends, so I cant take them. And companies wont be flexible anymore because they don't need to be.