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?

I think we tend to go a b it far when we make those kinds of analogies. Most of the unemployed int he UK would love to work. We have a huge shortage of jobs. 3 of my children have graduated in the last few years. I know how very hard it is, even to get bar work. We do though have a core of people who do not want to work and certainly immigrants whereever they are tend to be the ones who have sacrificed all to make a better life. I love it that my children are in schools with other children like that, where the family wants the chidlren to work hard and do well. It really helps the atmostpher in the classroom. It is one reason state schools in inner London have pushed ahead and indeed grades in them are now 2 grades ahead of say comps in Hull - a D in the latter tends to be a B in the former.

We do though have a core of people who do not want to work

No, 'we' have a tiny minority of people who do not want to work. The idea that there are large numbers of families who live a life of ease on benefits while refusing to work is a fantasy made up by Tories and the promoted by the right-wing press in order to gain public support for reducing welfare costs, regardless of whether it makes people homeless or destitute.

The highest estimated levels of fraud for welfare claims was, I believe, less than 5% for JSA. On the other hand, more money is 'saved' by people who legally can claim some form of benefit, but don't, than lost through fraud.

If you have any evidence to show that large numbers of families are claiming welfare in perpetuity through a refusal to work (which is fraudulent), then please do show the evidence.

Yes, it really is what people want.

Humans have a real problem identifying need in people they don't know.

There are people who give money to charities that pay for music lessons for children.

And they feel good about that charity. And they feel like they are supporting childhood by supporting that charity.

And yet you can show them a photograph of a child lying starved and alone at the side of a road, and they are sad, but NOT SAD ENOUGH TO STOP FUNDING POINTLESS FRIPPERIES AND PAY FOR SOME FOOD INSTEAD.

And it really is not because they are bad people. If that child had been at the side of their drive, they'd have rushed out there and called an ambulance, they'd have been appalled, it's because hearing about something is not the same as seeing it with your own eyes, it really isn't. As a race we have to force ourselves to care about something that isn't affecting us, and some people can't do it very effectively. They aren't bad, they just don't have the ability.

So when you tell rich childless lawyers, solicitors etc that there are real people going very cold and hungry in this country, they actually cannot believe you. If you were to show them the cold hungry person, then they would believe, but until then, they haven't seen it happen, so It Does Not Happen

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.

Err no Xenia they only need to look at Ken Clarke and Eric Pickles.

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.

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]

Obviously there are a few fat rich people and some poor thin people but every set of stats ever produced in recent history in the UK shows many more of the poor are fat than the risk. The lower your social class the fatter you are so to suggest benefits do not give you enough to eat really defies the evidence of the surveys and our own eyes.

Xenia you are living proof that brains and common sense are two different things!

Xenia has a lot of common sense.

Well the Guardian agrees with me illustrated with a photograph of the typical body shape of many benefits claimants.

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/23/class-divide-health-widens-thinktank

Xenia, you know full well that obesity may be caused by what is put into processed food - things like high-fructose corn syrup.

www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/

It's not that the poor are living it up, but that they are often being fed poor quality food which in itself is fattening.

Especially for you Xenia since you are the one who bangs on about "immigrants" working towards a better life.
This article proves that they are having it as badly as the rest of the country.

A large crowd in the Hope Centre are from Romania, and say they are waiting for food because collecting scrap metal and washing cars isn't enough to make ends meet. A bigger number is there because of benefit delays and cuts, or simply because they are no longer able to make their low wages stretch.

A local supermarket has delivered a load of stock just about to reach its sell-by date (it doesn't want to be named, to avoid getting caught up in discussion of the merits of giving food that is about to go off to the hungry) and today it is offloading industrial quantities of iced buns, which several families take home by the dozen.

The boom in Britain's food banks reflects a number of worrying and complicated trends. As well as rising unemployment, more people are seeing their hours cut at work. For the past couple of years, charities have been warning that a shift to a less generous way of uprating benefits in line with inflation, combined with rising food and fuel prices, would make life more difficult for people claiming benefits. Then there is the start of a new, harsher benefits regime, as a result of which it seems that more claimants are having their payments sanctioned ? cut or stopped entirely ? if they miss appointments. At the same time, the state system of a social fund and crisis loans is being wound down, so emergency cash payments from the welfare system for those deemed to be in extreme need are now exceptionally difficult to procure. Around 43% of visitors to Trussell Trust distribution centres nationwide come because of changes to their benefits or a crisis loan being refused.

And heres some more about those "non existent" food banks that arent needed according to Xenia because according to her the poor are over fed.

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/18/food-banks-on-hand-outs?INTCMP=SRCH

xenia its also the same body shape that Clarke and Pickles and they are not claimants of anything.......oh wait [hhmm]

In my old school there were waifs. The teachers used to joke when our school played football matches with the grammar schools because our lot were visibly shorter. 15 years on, I went back to teach at this school. No kids were waifs, obesity had replaced that.

I do think there are poor people in the UK but none are starving through lack of money. Eating crap actually costs a lot of money. Imagine the veg you can buy for the price of a McDonalds for four! I was always gobsmacked when I lived in another city - the bus used to go through the poorest district - at 6pm there were cues of people coming out of fast food places all along the road. Families buying their evening meal.

omg

At my very poorest [single parent income support level] no way could I afford to buy a meal for 4 in mcdonalds.

Never seen a queue coming out of a fast food place in my whole life. ever.

Excellent point Claig, I watched a documentary about junk foos a little while ago and the corn syrup used in foods was found to be extremely harmful and if I remember correctly quite addictive, so people got hooked on this sticky sweeter tasting junk good.

I hate to think what is going to happen when the changes take full effect. Are the Cons building more prisons? they'll need to.

foos......food of course.

MrsDeVere Thu 18-Oct-12 10:03:22
"I do not want someone who is forced into an apprenticeship, on less than nmw, looking after my loved ones.
Thanks"

Exactly.

The poor aren't thick. They could eat carrots and tinned sardines or do we think their IQs are too low to find cheap healthy foods? We could tax those unhealthy foods to the hilt to put people off buying them. We could put the price of alcohol and fizzy drinks up 10 times. If I only drink tap water I don't see why the poor can't. Fizzy drinks are one of the worst things people do drink. Tap water is free. I virtually never eat out. The poor seem to manage that a lot. Their one person's macdonald's could fee me for days.

The poor do not eat at mcdonalds...not unless they only eat twice a week.

'We could tax those unhealthy foods to the hilt to put people off buying them. We could put the price of alcohol and fizzy drinks up 10 times'

That is the point; we don't do those things. Why?
It is about education - not just the usual salt and sugar message, but other additives and chemicals that are more dangerous to health.

People trust regulators for financial products, they believe someone has approved them and that they will not be ripped off. Similarly, people trust the food we eat is not harmful.

I also knew a very poor family - cousin of a cousin. Their cupboards were just full of shit: packet and processed food. Not one potato in the house - tins of potatoes yes, but not one fresh piece of veg (certainly not fruit). Of course, I'm not saying all the poor eat like that. It is education after all. But I've heard this argument so many times that the poor in the UK can't afford to eat. I'm sorry but IME this is nonsense.

I remember seeing a programme once about the difference between teh food that the working class in Turin cook and the food that the working class in one of our Scottish cities cook. Both were working class and didn't have much spare cash, but the difference in the goodness of the food was noticeable.

The reason for that difference is education. It has not been a priority to pass down the knowledge of what is good and how to prepare it. It should be a priority in schools to teach these things up until the age of 16. It should be given more importance and there should be rigorous exams in it that are compulsory. this is a life skill that will improve health over the lifespan of every individual.

There is lots of talk about salt and sugar, but little about some of the other additives in food. Why?

Why do we not tax those foods to the hilt, same reason that in American Charter schools the kids only have access to certain foods, McDs and Coke out of machines. The coca Cola (doesn't even come up a spelling mistake on google what does that tell you!) pay these private schools a fee and expect no competition, it forms part of the schools income.

OK that is the states but just look at the Olympics here, we should have been using our own home grown businesses and healthy food providers, instead the corporates sqeezed everyone else out. Where did they pay their taxes off all the income made out of the olympics.

Agree that the profitability of the food processing industry seems to weigh high in this.