General Chat

About time i say

JOBLESS layabouts who refuse to take work face having ALL their benefits chopped, a minister will warn today. Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton plans to target a “hardcore” of 100,000 fit people who have spent six of the last seven years on benefits. He will argue that hard-working taxpayers should no longer have to support them. Britain’s bosses are battling to fill 600,000 vacancies — enough to take two in three claimants off the dole. Mr Hutton will contrast their attitude with the wave of eastern European immigrants who flock here hungry for work. In a speech Mr Hutton will ask: “If workers from Poland can take advantage of these vacancies in our major cities why can’t our own people do so as well?” Under existing rules, unemployed people who refuse to take a job can have Job Seekers’ Allowance cut. But official figures show action is taken against just one claimant in 50. After a drive to force them into training, Mr Hutton now believes it is time to go further and withhold benefits. He will say: “If we are to break the cycle of benefit dependency we need to ask whether we should expect something in return for the help we provide.” Under the shake-up, the jobless will be expected to take active steps to find work and to be better trained. Mr Hutton will tell the Institute for Public Policy Research: “For those who won’t do so, then there should be consequences, including less benefit or no benefit at all. Our reforms must confront the can work-won’t work culture. “We cannot ask hard-working families to pay for the unwillingness of some to engage in the labour market.” New figures show Manchester has two-and-a-half times as many vacancies per head than the average. Many of the claimants are low-skilled but there is no shortage of low-skilled jobs. Last month 950,000 were claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance.

Morning Lil I saw this too-if people are claiming for genuine reasons then no problem. It mentioned the same people have been on these benefits for like 6/7 years and show no intention of looking for employment. If there's nothing wrong with these people then yes something should be done, as there's no reason they can't go out to work. People find it easy and I think it almost becomes a routine that they get stuck into. catherine xx

Thats OK, providing the 'innocent' people don't get penalised. Some people can apply for a hundred jobs and get turned down for every single one of them. The Government should concentrate on those people receiving £100s in Incapacity or Disabled Benefits each week, who actually go out work. These are the people deliberately stealing money. Not those who just can't get a job because there face doesn't fit, or they have been passed over for school leavers etc.

Don't you think that they have left it so long that it is going to be a hard habit to break? I do so hope it works, but I hope it is the really work shy who are caught and it doesn't become easy for them to 'catch' some people and ignore the ones who deserve to be made to work. Ann Glos

Hi Catherine any news yet? I have alway's said that the Gov should open work place's just for people on unemployment benefits they should register daily for work, if they dont register stop the benefit, that way they would soon get out and find a well paid job or train to achieve such Lilx

Helen i think you will find as stated that is mainly for peeps takin the mick not cases where peeps are unable to work Lilx

Thanks Lil sorry!! i will delete my post!!

Helen no need to have deleted, Lilx

I know Lil, but i did'nt want it to turn into a heated argument!! it's nice to keep the threads light hearted!! But thanks for that!! Helenxx

I have lived off my savings for the past year because I was told by the Job Centre that I could not have any money in the bank - which I now realise was the wrong information. I am now skint and have been forced to apply for Job Seekers Allowance. Can you live on £57 per week - yes I have to pay my bills and live on this sum. I have worked for 35 years and paid full NI and this government claim I can live on £57. Have a file full of rejection letters and I get treated like a piece of sh*t when I visit the Job Centre. I.M.

I.M My Mum wrote this years ago it always sticks in my mind when i see how peeps have worked and payed there way to get what back nowt, i refuse to have a private pesion cos i want some of what i've contributed to this Country back The Dole Queue A place to go on Monday. It most times takes an hour. Then when I get my Giro I shudder and sink lower. With thoughts and hopes long gone of ever finding work, I realize just how it feels to be a British burk. My parents and their parents were British, born and bred. For myself and millions more I''m not sorry they are dead. For in this country England, a land that once was great, there''s nowt left for her people but bigotry and hate. The powers that be, are turning the clock back to the time of poverty and hunger of nineteen twenty nine. So come on all you English folk, let''s not be stricken down. Get up and rally to the flag, the country and the crown. Take up your pens and paper, insist upon your rights. Make the government take a U-turn, besiege them with your plight. Deluge them with your letters. Let them add up the tote, then if they do not listen demand another vote.

What about all the parasites who refuse to get a job because they get more in benefits,,and then continue to churn out more kids for us all to keep.

Claire true Lilxx

yep about time something was done. There are plenty up my street who have not done a days work in their life. One person who is in his 40's has never worked and got about 6 kids with 3 differnet women. He cant go to work as he cant leave the house by himslef. Some sort of medical condition but he is able to go fishing and bait digging to supplement his income.

The tax and benefits system is a shambles. It simply should not be possible to get more in benefits than one would earn in a full-time job commensurate with your skills. But it is also wrong to take tax and NIC from earnings of less than half the minimum wage and then employ an army of bureacrats to give it back.

In my mid-fifties, I walked out of a job I had held for ten years - crummy waitress, crummy pay, crummy conditions and unbelievably horrible working hours. My life was not my own. I just could not stand it any longer and I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I did not expect to get JSA as I had left my job, but was worried about my stamps. To my astonishment, the JC urged me to claim JSA and encouraged me to go to college to finish an accountancy qualification I had started many years previously. The JSA amounted to £11 per week (not enough stamps) but hey, better than nothing. I lived on my savings and went to college. After 6 months the JSA called me in for a special interview (I had been applying for jobs, but not service-based ones, I didnt want to waitress/clean etc, any more). They sent me for an interview as an Accounts Manager and despite the fact that I hadnt actually qualified, and I had very basic IT skills - I got offered the job. The contract was for 16 hours a week. I would have to be available 'when they needed me'. As the job was in a seasonal industry, there would be no accounts for me to do in the winter, so, for my 16 hours a week, I would have to help clean the caravans and rekit them for the following year. In my innocence, I turned the job down. I immediately lost not just my JSA (£11) but Housing Benefit (which I was claiming BEFORE I went on the dole - took 16 weeks to get this reinstated) AND my college fees. It turned out of course, that the job was being funded by an allowance of £75 per week to the employer, paid by the government, to take a 'mature' claimant off the dole lists. I was a very easy target for this reduction in the jobless figures - I had worked all my life, doing jobs few else want to do. I just don't know how to work the system and they knew it. I got myself several grotty jobs of course - I had to. It did stick in my throat though, that I was getting up at 6 am to clean, whilst kids half my age laid in bed on the dole and spent their days on the beach. Yes - if it gets the long term unemployed back to work, good for it, but how come these people have managed to get away with it for so long? I couldn't! OC

OC These parasites know how to 'work the system' it's what they do. The rest of us who work all our lives and then find ourselves out of work have no idea of how to do it because it's not in our nature. We have a work ethos - they don't. It sticks in my throat that they all get enough money to run cars - why??? They're not working, they don't need to be anywhere at a certain time, they should catch a bus! I've long thought that they should have all benefits stopped after 2 years. That's plenty long enough to get a job. And if they still haven't got a job and their benefits are stopped and they have kids, then the kids should be taken into care on the basis that they (the parents) are refusing to look after them. I know it sounds harsh, but tough! Thanks for letting me get that off my chest - I'll get off my soapbox now :-)) Mary

Mary There is a man in my town, my sort of age, who has never done a day's work in his life, not since he left school. He is 'disabled' - some kind of (invisible) skin disease. This disease which stops him working, doesnt stop him sailing (his own) boat around the bay every Saturday, nor does it stop him driving his one year old car (Motability - better than I shall EVER own) and going to visit relatives in the USA every year. Makes my blood boil. OC

Makes mine boil too OC. That is absolutely outragous! Got one across the road from me too - not quite as bad as your neighbour though - and it just makes me sick. Some years ago I knew some people who worked for DSS - doing home visits. One of them said to me 'how do you think I feel after going into those luxurious homes and then going home and tripping over my threadbare carpet'. I know how she felt! Mary