I Wouldn’t Either

November 3, 2014 Longrider General News, General Rants, Political 5

Work for nothing. Okay, so JSA isn’t quite nothing but it’s not much more. Besides, when you’ve spent a lifetime in employment and are then expected to work for the measly pittance you are given back when you find yourself unemployed, yes, forced labour is exactly what it is. This vile scheme is pernicious and plays into the hands of those who think that their taxes are paying for people on benefits, so the claimant should work for it. Well, those of us who have been paying taxes for a lifetime and then find ourselves having  to go cap in hand for a bit of it back have worked for it. In my case a few years back, I’d worked for over thirty years, so fuck the fuck off! No, we should not be expected to work for something we’ve spent our working lives paying for. That’s the whole point of national insurance contributions – not so that we can provide free labour to companies too fucking tight to pay a proper wage.

So, yes, John McArthur, you are right  to refuse. I would have done the same had the bastards tried it on with me. I don’t work for nothing and nor should anyone else. You want your business to benefit from my labour, you pay me. Otherwise, take a hike.

5 Comments

  1. If governments (of all hues) over the years had

    a) used the taxes extracted from us in a sensible manner (fat chance!)

    b) Ringfenced National Insurance for what it is supposed to provide

    none of this would have happened.

    Instead, they’ve operated one of the world’s biggest Ponzi schemes – if they’d tried that in the commercial world, they’d all be doing porridge.

  2. I have a simple attitude to volunteering which is the same as to this problem : If the job is worth doing then it is worth being paid for.

  3. After forty years of toil I ditched my job to look after my mum. Getting Carers’ Allowance for me meant that I needed to get her onto Attendance Allowance. Easier said than done, she had early stage dementia, so wasn’t exactly eager to admit to being in need of help. JSA was my only option until the above could be organised. I spoke truthfully to the chappies at the Labour Exchange by admitting that I could not comply with all of the rules. So they left me with no income. Not a problem really, forty years of earnings are bound to leave some savings. I’m lucky, many aren’t, how do they fare? Try to do the right thing by saving or looking after a member of the family, you will find that you are not the ideal client for government services. In fact you will be shit on. At my age (59) I won’t get another job at £15 ish an hour, so min wage and tax credits is my future.

    • Being self-employed made it even more difficult for me. We’d used our savings over the previous six months, so were at rock bottom. Claiming was incredibly difficult as we didn’t fit the profile. Between us we claimed JSA for around six weeks before taking the first minimum wage menial jobs we were offered. From then on, we worked our way back. But the idea of having to work for those measly benefits is a disgrace. We didn’t need work experience having had decades of it already and if those companies offering it have work to do, they can damned well pay those people a proper wage for doing it.

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