"And for those with underlying problems, like drug addiction and illiteracy, there will be an intensive regime of help."
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Ahh yes - the "intensive regime of help"
How long does it take to get counselling just now? six months was what someone I know was told. what about support from Mental health services or psychological support? What about Addiction services? How many of those exist in Caithness and in the Highlands? NO doubt more private companies making money off the misery of others. Just another way to line the pockets of the shareholders and chief executives of private companies who will do half a job, cause more misery and resolve nothing.
Mandatory Work programmes do not help people find jobs. The only way to reduce unemployment is to create growth and jobs. Having unemployed people (dressed in pink overalls possibly?) doing menial work in full sight of the rest of society does not help people to find work. Targetted support, wages subsidies and quality training does.
I think most people missed or just ignored the point I made earlier that a large chunk of the benefits bill is PAID OUT TO PEOPLE ALREADY IN WORK and instead choose to recite their usual mantras on issues like this.
Iain Duncan Smith's - Realistic Unemployment Simulator
The only thing I think it's missing is a big red suicide button that ends the game and flashes up "You finally did something useful!".
I sometimes wonder why the Conservatives don't just offer voluntary euthanasia. It's becoming increasingly clear that it's all peoples own fault and they should feel guilty for their own existence.
There are tons of jobs available because George Osborne said so, and they should all just look harder.
I worked on a Government scheme in 1989 whilst unemployed. I did eight months in a job placement, forty hours a week and had to work every Saturday, all for the princely sum of £10 per week, or 25p an hour. Nobody can tell me I wasn't exploited but if it helps the "Hang the scroungers" brigade sleep easier in their beds at night then my efforts were not in vain.
If anyone is wondering how the amount is so low, I wasn't claiming any benefits and only got paid the generous £10 top up. £0 + £10 = £10 (Thank you Mrs Thatcher, you're so kind)
I mind the days well. You lot got £2.50 more per week for your first year than we did the year before you. We got a lovely £25 a week, when all my mates were making £80-£100 a week. Sometimes you have to make do as best as you can for the greater-good in the long run.
I was on the pilot Y.O.P. scheme in 1981 and for a 40 hour week i got £27.50. I think my bus fares cost me £4 a week but i got an extra couple of quid to "cover" the outlay. It beat being on the dole for £17.50 a week and I learned a lot! photography, video recording and editing and we also made a presentation for Livingston Development Corp to entice people to live there when Livingston began to expand from the village into the beginnings of what it is now. It gave me experience that i could have used to gain a job in the future but there just wasn't anything around at that time that required the skills. Main thing though was i made a load of friends and enjoyed myself whilst all the ones that left school with me just sat on their arse and soaked up dole money.
I don't agree with this policy at all for the longterm but it might serve to give the serial scroungers a nice kick-up-the-bum. Perhaps an alternating policy of working for benefits will be a better catch all strategy to get more into work.
Is this what it's come too, that in the 21st century those who are going through tough times are being kicked when they are down? We shouldn't have food banks and soup kitchens, or a glut of charity shops in every town, but we do. As usual, it's the elite few and corporate greed that dictates policy in this country, not the needs of the people. Regardless of your political leanings, it's the rich who run this country and there's no way they are going to give up some of their wealth to help the less well off. They want to keep people down, don't believe the bollocks being spouted about a fairer society or opportunities for all, whatever background they come from. For every person from humble beginnings that makes it to the top, you can be sure there's 10 privileged people who got there because of wealth or knowing the right people.
David Cameron said today that the Tories are a party of low taxes, that help businesses, so where are all the jobs then? Why is there ghost towns up and down the country with so many unemployed? Capitalism isn't working, the last few years have shown that the rich have stayed rich and the poor got poorer by paying the price for the greed of those at the top. It's been proven that the welfare state doesn't lose as much money as is lost on tax avoidance, yet damn all is being done to close those loopholes. And why? Because when the pigs finally get away from the trough they want to walk in to jobs as directors or consultants with the big businesses they helped.
It's time the elite stopped being the rule makers, rules made to suit the few, not the many. I'm sick of those that can't see beyond the end of their nose, that there are other people out there who are genuinely suffering through no fault of their own. I don't have the answers but this country needs a vast overhaul, and the sooner the better.
I agree absolutely. You know what - reading the comments about sterilisation also make me shake my head. I would really like to think that they are "joking" and I could laugh it off with a "ho ho ho that poster is such a CARD" but I have an uneasy feeling that they actually MEAN it.
Workfare does not work. It does not move people into employment. Full Stop. It just demotivates and prevents people carrying out meaningful jobsearch. If there are community jobs like graffiti removal that need doing then pay them a real wage to do it. Community Programme did that in the 80s for a while and was very popular, certainly in the north of England - I dont know how it was received up here. 6 months on - six months on the broo then back on the programme if you didnt manage to get a job. In the 80s there were three million unemployed and few jobs in the industrial north west but people did get work and if you didnt you could get back on - we had people queuing to start these programmes. Meaningful often community based work, caring, development work, labouring, all sorts of stuff, mostly run by charities and the council for the benefit of communities not shareholders. Real references and access to in work benefits. It wasnt perfect and I would change many aspects of it but it was not slave labour either.
Open your eyes folks, go see what it means to be long term unemployed, go see foodbanks and listen to the stories of people needing help, go speak to carers and see how hard their lives are and how they have to fight for every mortal thing often at a time when they are worried and struggling with a difficult situation anyway. Most of all go talk to those who have been found fit for work despite having cancer, being seriously unwell and with chronic and painful disabilities and illnesses.I dont mean in the pub, or down the bookies or in Tesco. You wont get the truth there you will get the public face. Go to the agencies dealing with people in these situations and then come back and tell me that they are undeserving of support and help and only need shaming into work.
Then think about how this government treats these people and how the papers vilify them and how the general population laps it up and be ashamed of how we treat people when they are at their lowest.
Today, I learned that Tory MP Paul Maynard wants to stop people getting food parcels because they could become too reliant on it. Those pigs are so out of touch, with their draconian policies aimed at destroying the poor. It wasn't the poor who bankrupted country, but they are the ones paying the price for it. I really do despair of what society has become, that the elite are managing to divide us, picking on the weakest and defenceless, all the while averting our attention from their own thefts from the public purse. And that is what it is, blatant theft. They introduce all the perks and payments to themselves in the belief that they are entitled to them, because they are in public office. Whatever happened to doing your civic duty for little reward.
You may have seen the picture of Guy Fawkes doing the rounds on social media, with the tag line that he was the last person to enter Parliament with honest intentions. Tragically, it's true. There's very few MP's who are in office to represent the people, they are there for themselves and their cronies, for what they can get out of the job, not what they can give to the country. A 1p tax rise wouldn't make much difference to me, but it makes a whole world of difference to the poor. I'd gladly take a rise if it means people aren't having to make the choice between heating their home or starving. And so this latest attack on the jobless is yet one more way for them to divide society. The haves and the have nots.
It's easy to suggest that people should move to another area for work, but there really isn't enough jobs out there. I live in the affluent South East, but even here there isn't the work available anymore. The local paper used to have about 20 to 30 pages of jobs in it, not anymore; last time I bought it there was 2 pages! That is how much the recession has hit. So many business have gone to the wall that there are no jobs available to those who are told to move to another area.
I was on the dole back in the 80's and was fortunate to be able to move to where there was work, because I was single. I can't imagine how it must be to have a family and be out of work, to be slowly stripped of your dignity by those born in to wealth, having to go to a food bank, a place that this Government should be ashamed even exists. It's going to take a revolution for the elite to learn the error of their ways, otherwise they'll keep getting voted in to rob the poor.