…you are not alone, it isn’t just you, not by a long chalk. I turned out at midnight to do a job I absolutely detested on little more than minimum wage for just over a year to pay for feckless fuckers like this. You were right to let this man know how outraged you are. I’m fucking outraged, too.
H/T The Jewel thief.
I can remember back in the early eighties when I did lots of temporary jobs just to keep myself in work, some sponging twat on local radio pointing out that he couldn’t accept a job because he had no transport. As I was out of work at the time, I remember thinking that I would have been prepared to get up early and walk to work for the first week, so that I could buy a pushbike with my first wage packet.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that any of us could lose our jobs tomorrow, and so we are all in favour of some kind of safety net. But the fact that this safety net enables parasites without a shred of pride to live without working is a problem.
In that particular case, I would have been happy to have had public money spent on providing him with a helmet and a moped. The problem is, you just know that he would have found another excuse.
Maybe we could re-introduce slavery, but only for people who have actually turned down a viable job? The slaves could be allowed to surf the job market, and be released as soon as they have found work?
I have always said that the only way to solve the whole ‘Lazy people vs people genuinely in need of the safety net’ conundrum is to make benefits hard (or rather boring/annoying) to collect. Ie you can’t just turn up once a week to and get your giro and thats it. I think all benefit claimants should have to attend daily at local centres. Clock in and just sit there for 3-4 hours. Then get your money for the day and go home. Not required to do anything, no work. Just a plastic bucket chair to sit on in a large hall for a few hours. You can read, but no TV. There could be facilities onsite for job searching/cv writing etc as well for free use afterwards. This solves several problems – firstly you can’t be at the centre and working somewhere else (and your hours of attendance could be altered at random) so people working on the side have to decide whether to attend and get their days money, or do the job on the side. Secondly it would make people get up in the morning, get there on time, get used to the whole work routine.
This solves the problem: genuine claimants who desperately need the money will be happy to collect it in any way necessary, those who are already working will be weeded out, by their own choice not to attend. It also means that people can move from welfare to work more easily – you could work 3 days a week, and top up your salary with two days welfare. No complicated forms, just the simple decision to go or not. Plus as everyone is paid daily, no waiting for the system to kick in and pay you. You could be made redundant on the Friday, by Monday afternoon you’d have your first welfare payment in your hand.
You could tailor the system so there was a basic payment you could always get (like the JSA basically) then add extras on for kids, housing benefit, disability allowance etc etc. Everyone would have a card, for clocking in and out, and the amount of benefit to be paid per day would be recorded on the card. All the same benefits people get today, paid daily, but in return for a few hours of peoples time, which if you are not working, you should have plenty of.
Where’s the flaw?
I can see where you are coming from Jim, but one flaw would be the huge cost of providing the accommodation if everybody had to be there several hours per day. Much more space (and heating and light) would be needed surely. It might make sense if claimants could do some useful work there or elsewhere though. If it happened to me, I’d rather do something than just rot away on benefits, frankly, though plenty time for genuine job-seeking needs built in too. But that job-seeking can be rather pointless for the vast army of skilled fifty and sixty somethings made redundant through ageism, who need to join together and fight back with their own new business initiatives, perhaps (changing topic somewhat).
In the end, I went back into self-employment. Although the likes of Sainsburys will employ we fifty-somethings, the line of work I am in (learning and development) was nigh on impossible to find employed work. The few that the job centre came up with either didn’t respond or one, which sticks in my mind, turned out not to even exist.
During the first couple of months of 2011 I was job seeking, having returned to the UK following the loss of my work. Frankly, I’d have done anything to keep off benefits and would not have appreciated having to stay in the job-centre a moment longer than absolutely necessary. I did all that I could to get work – any work – while trying to turn my life around. The Sainsbury’s job came about because I found it, not the job-centre. I stuck it for just over a year before getting myself back into training.
No, I wouldn’t have like to be sitting about at the job-centre for several hours. The flaw in your idea is that it punishes the honest job seeker and I oppose mass punishment for the transgressions of the few. The solution here would be Julia’s – remove all benefits from this scrounger forthwith.
Why is it a punishment to have to sit around for a few hours, doing SFA, and get given money for nothing, compared with going to work, having to do stuff you’d rather not, and be ordered around by people you probably dislike, in order to get paid? Workers have to get up and do stuff for their money, why should welfare claimants not have to do the same? Maybe if they all had to get up at 7am in order to be at the dole centre for 9am they might appreciate the bus driver who got up at 6am to drive the bus they were taking, and paid taxes out of his wages that fund their benefits.
You are not being given money for nothing. I drew out a few hundred quid over three months compared to the tens of thousands I had paid in over the previous thirty years. The only expectation that the state should (and did) have of me is that I seek work. I held up my end of the bargain. I did not and do not need to have a sense of routine instilled into me, nor do I need the state to teach me how to get up in the morning.
The whole process is humiliating enough as it is without making it more so. Your plan treats all job seekers as if they are scamming the system as opposed to effectively targeting those who actually are.
The welfare system (pension + benefits) is NOT an insurance system. Its a tax system that pays out what it gets in in revenue straight away. There is no link between what you pay in NI, and what benefits you may get. If there was, vast swathes of the population would be getting nothing, because they have paid little or no NI over their life times, and it would in no way cover their welfare payments. For the majority of welfare claimants their NI contributions are vastly outweighed by their benefits, both during working life and in pensions.
If you want to make the system a pure insurance one, where benefits are defined in relation to contributions, be my guest. Because most people would get nothing as a result. As it is, its a free money system for people who have paid virtually nothing in, and are getting tens or even hundreds of thousands (over a lifetime) out of it. I do not think its unfair to expect some sort of reciprocal effort on their part.
I am just about to part with c.£35k in self assessment income tax + NI which I will never see again. I do not see why the person who gets that cash (which I worked for) shouldn’t have to do something in return. If they are a nurse, or a teacher, or a policeman, fine, they are working for it, and providing a service to the nation. I don’t however see why someone should get it for zero effort on their part.
I’m not arguing for insurance. I was pointing out that I am a net contributor to the system and used it as it is intended to be used; a safety net when everything goes wrong. There are plenty like me who have spent a lifetime working, so we do not need you or the state to tell us how to get up in the morning and punish us for having the temerity to lose our jobs.
As a taxpayer you get precisely what you pay for – the jobseeker is paid a pittance to exist on in exchange for seeking work. If, like Paul, they break that contract then you are perfectly right in wanting that payment to be stopped – and so it should be. However, mass punishment, which is precisely what you propose is highly unethical.
“There is no link between what you pay in NI, and what benefits you may get.If there was, vast swathes of the population would be getting nothing,…
There used to be. I shall ‘splain…
The very first time I claimed Unemployment Benefit…as it was so named then…I had to have worked for two years and paid full NI to qualify for it. I could only claim it for one year and if I was still unemployed would be moved onto Income Support.
As it was I signed off after three months.
Had I not have met the 2 year NI criteria from the off I still could have claimed Income Support. This was payable at about half the rate of UB at around £15 a week for a single childless person and no one could really survive on that alone.
So yes, there used to be a direct correlation between NI and benefits. This particular correlation for UB…to the best of my immediate recollection…ended in 1998 and tied in with various benefit reforms including the introduction of Working Families Tax Credits with it’s Childcare and Child Tax Credit components.
And so began the free-for-all we see today which, frankly, wouldn’t be too difficult to reverse back to the fairer system.
For anyone with the guts.
Here’s this Julia’s solution – remove his goolies too!
I like it.
I was unemployed a few years ago… for about 14 hours! The Job Centre was happy for me to stay unemployed as I was too qualified for the posts they had (I have a lot more letters after my name than in it – why does that make people nervous?) I took the first job the agency offered me, the money sucks but it is work and I have the respect of my colleagues. When I was a Maths Teacher (I left after being assaulted) I was told by the pupils that their ambition was to go on the dole and get stoned. They did not believe me when I warned them what real life was like.
I remember back in the early seventies, one of my holiday jobs as a student. I got up at four, on the bus at five, to be at my post in a works canteen at six, serving breakfasts. Nice breakfasts. Bacon, sausage, black pudding, fried potatoes, eggs, tomatoes, toast, tea, coffee, juice. Then we cleared the decks ready for morning brunch at 9:30 to 10:30. Then cleared the decks to serve lunch, noon till two. Then cleared the decks to serve afternoon tea, 3pm till 4pm. Then we cleared up, washed the floor, and finished at five.
I loved it. And because I was young, and though I say it myself, looked quite bonny in a navy blue frock and lace pinny, they taught me to do the silver service in the Directors’ dining room. I’m sure I was spoilt by the other canteen ladies. They always referred to me as “the bairn”.
But best of all was the way all of our customers relished their food, and told us how much they enjoyed it. They had worked hard too, and they were more than ready for a good meal. They were entitled to a nice clean table, sparkling cutlery, and well warmed plates, and seconds.
The pay was good, and I got lunch free every day. But what I really took away from that wasn’t easily quantifiable. Being the one who can be relied upon to be there, when you really need her to be there. At six in the morning.
I could live without a lot of things, but I could never let go of that.
@Monty.
Which prison canteen did you work in? 😀
I used to work on a milk round…up at 4am to down a quick cup of black coffee, then on with the show. I couldn’t even wear gloves in winter because of a tendency to drop the milk bottles (well, the pasteurized ones with the foil tops, at least – the sterilized ones with the jagged metal tops were a lot easier).
Feckless fucker. At least he’ll probably never find a decent woman willing to put up with him (one who thinks there’s more to life than beer vouchers).
No, it’s not simple:
Try being unemployed with an engineering MSc degree in the period 1995-2011, as I was, with occasional “full-time” jobs, none of which lasted more tha 3 years ….
Even after I passed 62, I was being hounded by the job-centre with useless non-jobs that I knew I wouldn’t last 5 minutes in, meanwhile, of course, the politicians & CBI & IoD were lying their bollocks off, by claiming “We can’t get the trained staff”.
No, it’s not simple.
OTOH, I now do a very interesting part-time job, with largely congenial people, which ofen involves getting the first train in the morniing [ 05.22 tube or 05.19 National Rail ] – & we’ve started to employ younger people – the good ones are the post-graduate students, who know the score.
BUT we had one, about weeks back, who WALKED OFF THE JOB half-way through his first shift, & others who just don’t show up.
What does one do?
No, it’s not simple.
Ye cats! I’m expected to be at my desk for 7am some shifts, regardless of Canadian weather (Hey, I’ve got snow tyres and an all wheel drive car). No ‘snow days’. 8am is a lie-in.
I have to be in at 08:00 for CBT training. Luxury…
I’m fucking outraged too…with browsers.
Tried Opera, Firefox and IE. Re-downloaded Flash Player even though I KNOW DAMN FUCKING WELL I already have Adobe just-about-everything-they make installed. Disabled Flashblock in FF etc etc etc and can NOT get the fucking audio to play for me.
Hooge bump now forming from banging my head off the desk so please, LR….save me from cutting my life short with a stroke and provide a transcript ?
Pretty please, just for me ? *kissy-face icon*
Have you tried loading it from either Dick Puddlecote’s or the original site?
Loading from the original site worked…with a simple right-click and “open link in new tab” to get there…thanks !
In the midst of a technical breakdown and resultant tantrum the simplest solution very often gets lost. 😆
I’ll provide a transcript soon.
Jolly good. Please provide a link when you do.
Here you go – full and complete transcript is here.
I take it the blog considers messages with a lot of HTML code in them as SPAM?
Thanks Paul 🙂
An excerpt:
“Paul: …I shouldn’t really say it, but I do a bit, now and then a bit of cash-in-hand–…”
DWP, take note.
Could we have what jim said in comment #2 but with excercise bikes with generators connected to the national grid?
The main problem is that the establishment, in the guise of successive governments since the late ’60’s, has been happy to accept a figure of 2 million unemployed. Therefore the dole culture is tacitly condoned, not to say encouraged. The official attitude was epitomised in the closing down of the coal mines under Thatcher, the rationale being that coal from Poland was ten quid cheaper on the ton. Never mind the laying to waste of whole communities and the social blighting of generations,a few bob saved on the national coal bill made it all worthwhile. Of course, the concommitant emasculation of the working class (the largest political bloc in any industrial society)was just a happy socio-political by-product. Just as is the desire of much modern yoof to do little with their lives than smoke weed, get drunk, and stab each other in pointless squabbles in the queues of kebab shops after closing time. Better that than thinking and organising politically. Innit?