Is this really what people want?

[mcmooncup]

I don't post much on the threads about benefits but here goes......I'm going to start.

I have a company that works in the Work Programme with long-term unemployed people. Over the last few weeks / month I have seen a dramatic shift in the provision of benefits.

Many many many many more people are being sanctioned (i.e. their benefits are being taken away from them) for missing an appointment, calling in sick for an appointment or not filling in forms correctly.

If you make a mistake with ANY of these 'obligations' under the Jobseekers allowance contract, you, from Monday, can have your benefits taken away for 3 months for the first offence, 6 months for the second and 3 years for the third.

So, I can recount a few stories for you:
Severely dyslexic man provides his job log sheet to the jobcentre and has filled out as much as he can. The jobcentre is not happy with this and sanctions him, probably for 3 months. His response....."I'm going to go homeless, I can't stand this anymore"

Man goes to an interview for a job instead of turning up for an appointment with his WP provider, called in to tell them this. Sanctioned for 2 weeks for not turning up for the appointment. Message was never passed on, and despite phone records showing he called, he was still sanctioned.

Man sanctioned for 6 months for missing an appointment because he was poorly. He is a single parent. He is thinking of suicide.

Is this really what people want?

Homelessness? Suicide?

Do people really think it motivates people to get a job? Because to believe that you have to believe that people like being on benefits, I guess?

What am I missing?

Xenia you seem to have a real bee in your bonnet about "hard" workers - i work very hard.
i work shifts.
i work long hours (tomorrow is a 12 hour day - given notice of that today)
i work very very hard.
i still think there should be a welfare state, funded from all of our hard working taxes- if you moved across the planet to find work then and, if you dont like the state of affairs you have moved into, it begs the question, why stay? you seem to think its so easy to upsticks and move - surely if you dont like what you moved into then its as easy to do it again?

The sad thing is the poor diet is real poverty, it's amazing how many people cannot cook a meal from scratch. Also when you look at special offers etc its rarely on fresh foods such as fruit and vegetables but on junk food.
I am fortunate enough to have a decent sized freezer so can cook in bulk and freeze meals, many don't have that luxury.

There are plenty of overweight non benefit claimers too, it's down to education and just sheer choice.

Xenia is the daughter of Norman Tebbit, I believe. But after she fell on her head, she has never been quite the same. He didn't put a bike helmet on her when they embarked on their famous 'Get On Your Bike' tour of Britain in the mid 80's.

We must be compassionate.

mignonette

Would you like us to pitch in so you can relocate to a tax haven Xenia? I can see that paying taxes is really stressing you.

quote from xenia " In fact your relative can pay for you to get the night bus to London from Hull for your hunt for work.

Someone stood in the City of London the other week with a sign saying he was looking for work and he got a good few offers. Sometimes you need literally to get on your bike."

your relative can pay for you to get the night bus....which relative is this then? and which london - that mythic place where hte streets are paved with gold....?

ive just realised that Xenia is joking. has to be...

Yes, demanding people who can't afford to eat maintain not more than 1800 calories a day shows Xenia has really grasped the problem here

The streets of London are paved with people Xenia has stamped on.

Next we will be told that if the poor can't find their way around their kitchens, why pay HB for them to have cooking facilities, it would be cheaper if they hung out with signs on them begging for soup.

I do wonder if Xenia is one of those people who has never left London but knows everything about the UK - except to go skiing or to her island of course

Soup is too expensive for the poor. What's wrong with them licking the dew off the pavements?

actually, xenia, are you from a different culture and background i wonder? - that would explain why your views are so very different, and family oriented - but i think its sad that you cannot understand, or try to grasp that some people do not have family, either to care for them, or that they would care for.

it would be lovely if every one had a family that they could rely on to help and look after them, but that is not the reality. i think in some cultures it is, and i admire that, but i do wonder what you would have suggested for me?

i have always worked. i have been lucky.
my DH has always worked, apart from one 3 month spell when he was made redundant about 20 years ago...

i do not resent that we pay tax, and that some of that tax provides a safety net for those who fall on hard times.

i do see, in my work, much hardship. i do see those who live on benefits and like it taht way
i see more that dont.
i would still prefer a welfare system than not.

Can't resist it. Breadandbutterfly posted a great link on her thread, all about how the poor work harder than the rich: socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, etc. You should check it out.

This is the link to the thread.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/1596171-We-must-stop-protecting-the-rich-from-market-forces

Hope that's OK Mcmooncup? (Bit late to ask, sorry.)

I am going to have a look at Breadandbutterfly's post, I had a read yesterday but wanted to read the article that she linked to and didn't have time. I just keep clicking in here because I have about 2 minutes while I wait for my uploads (work)

very good article, very interesting.

no one very right wing will read it sadly.

We may be opposites but we meet around the back - as a free market libertarian I think we should have let the banks fail as they did in the 20s or early 30s and also not interfere with the natural setting of interest rates.

Reminds me of Eddie Izzard's description of fashion as like a circle - the uber fashionable and the complete dork kind of meet round the back, as you put it, Xenia. :)

Glad others enjoyed the link on the other thread as much as I did.

XeniaFri 26-Oct-12 17:33:12

They are fed. 60% of us are over weight. We have nevre had such fat people particularly the lower earners. You cannot suggest the poor are not fed. they are massively over fed. If we got their calorie intake down to 1800 a day with less food they would be so much better.

Sorry i will be back in a mo with a post i spotted on another board which contradicts this.

AuscreemaAscareSun 28-Oct-12 00:18:38

It is shameful. When I worked in education, the children from large non-working families who were neglectful visibly lost weight during the summer holidays. They needed that one hot meal every day. They would raid other children's lunchboxes whenever they could and the H.T would berate them for stealing treats as if they were just greedy [anger]

This was ten years ago. A colleague of mine once shared the secret of his success in disciplining the half-starved children who couldn't pay attention. It was to ensure that they were last in the dinner queue. The choice was pitiful at the end, it really was. No protein on most days. Said colleague was also male and for the same money that the rest of us paid would get his plate piled high. And he was a really lovely man! He just had no clue, at all.

I used to ask one particular child who had a chemically-dependent mother and many siblings to tidy my desk at lunchtime and get rid of all the loose staples, elastic bands and coins. He did. That desk needed tidying every day to clear it of those pesky coppers and silvers. A bit Lady Bountiful of me I suppose but I couldn't think of anything else to do

Ausceemas post was supposed to come before the one at 01.59. Think ive just been caught by the clock change.

A post of Xenias from a previous thread.

XeniaThu 13-Sep-12 08:48:58
SOme people will always be poor and make up excuses and say impossible. Others get on with things and improve their lives. I hope we can remain a country where there are sufficient people with the personal values to make something better of themselves whatever it take. I accept and have said on iother threads that there is a problem once you start earning in a new business in coming off benefits althoug the new single benefit is going to make it easier - there was a letter in the Times about it last week - you can work for a year to get your self employed business going so things are imjproving thanks to this Government.

Just look at those who have moved here from abroad to see what is possible. I advise them all the time. They are wonderful, hard workers etc I hvae so much more in common with them than the fat lumpen negative white benefit claimants of the UK.

What is wrong with saying immigrants work hard? Many of them do. Where people move abroad and I include there British moving abroad too, they have made that huge effort so they tend to want to do very well there.

What is the contradiction. I said a lot of the less well off in the UK in particular are overweight. Those who say the poor in the UK are starving just need to look at the vast bulk of some of them.

If people are objecting to the fact that the poor are more overweight than the rich in the UK or that most immigrants work very hard they just need to look at the statistics.

The Tory right wing have an instinctive hatred of the welfare State and the role of the State, which is why they are doing what they are cutting.

These cuts have nothing to do with the economy, but everything to do with ideology.

Wake up people, even the middle classes pay taxes and NI contributions, they are entitled to child benefit.

The role of the State and the welfare State are being whittled away before your very eyes, and all you lot can do is fall into the divide and conquer trap.

Again, the demonisation of the unemployed by their own people.

This is how the Nazis took hold of Germany, by demonising the Jews.

And we know what happened there.

Is there no end to this descrimination ?????????