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Hmm, the three biggest cities in the North and you're surprised they can find jobs quickly? Take the Blackpool situation then (bit of a shithole, but by no means the worst place for employment), and then assume your friend has been on benefits for a while, left school with no GCSEs, attempted a college course but failed, did bits and bobs for temping agencies and mates, but nothing that could be described as real experience, worked on the New Deal scheme for a while, until it came to the end and the employer dropped him, because it would cost too much to keep him on at full wages, and let's see if he can break his 2 month record. Either way, in plenty of areas of the country your original prediction of a few weeks being "loads of time" to get a job is sounding a little off the mark.
You're a tard. You haven't actually been OFFERED any job and have looked within the parameters of the most easily employed (SWM available over 30 hrs).
And you're a potty mouth who's just detracting from the quality of this debate. If you disagree then fair play, but being a dick does nothing to make people take your opinion seriously.
You apply to enough jobs at Job centre, temp agency and in the paper, and you WILL find a job.
The people who can't/won't are the "tards".
You might not find the most desirable job in the world, but if it's a choice between a project forcing people to work for a living, or letting them sit on their arses for 2 years not working, I know which one I would like to support, and it isn't the one where they get to sit around all day doing fuck all.
All you've done is take a fringe case and attempted to pass it off as typical.
If i'd not finished school, not completed further attempts at education and not acquired myself a trade or a skill-set then, to be frank, it's pretty safe to assume that working - or attaining a career - isn't high on my list of priorities.
Now don't get me wrong, i don't think everyone can get a job at the drop of a hat, but there is a lot of excuse making going on. I'm just waiting for the first person to come out with "der derka jobs".
Anyone have any sources with stats on who is on long-term JSA courently, like their education/skills/gender/disabilities/age etc?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uORAyORWRAA
I actually said a person who hasn't got off their fat, lazy backside after 2 years on the dole was a work shy lazy person.
I simply said it was possible, and not exactly taxing to find a job after a few weeks of searching, IF you are prepared to lower your standards on a temporary basis.
Lots of people refuse to lower themselves because they think they have a divine right to start a job at the top. Doesn't work like that.
This whole proposal does confirm one thing though. No matter how bad NuLabour get, you can always rely on the Tories to grind the poor into the dirt that little bit more.
I think the whole idea is a disgrace, to be quite honest. In principle it sounds great- get people into the workplace, get them learning skills, get them employable. Fantastic. Except we already have that, its called New Deal, and that's a pile of shite as well. What it is really suggesting, though, is that the long-term unemployed are criminal scum. When the punishment for mugging someone is the same as the punishment for daring to be out of work something has gone completely tits-up in society. And that isn't a demand for the muggers to get hanged, either.
People who have been on JSA for a long time rarely are the scrounging dossers that people love to portray them as. Some are, just in any walk of life, and I won't deny that. But most people who have been out of work for that period of time are simply just not employable, for whatever reason. Some reasons will be their fault, some won't, but it isn't really the point.
There are a hard core of about 10,000 applicants who have been on JSA for more than five years, if I remember rightly. They cost about £500,000 a week in JSA. That sounds a lot, I know. But three Premiershit footballers earn that in a week, to put it into some sort of perspective.
I find it really quite amusing how Plastic Dave is seriously considering spending the thick end of £3 BILLION to make everyone on incapacity benefit have a personal capability assessment (the medical). The highest rate of incapacity benefit is £81 a week, and only those who have worked and paid full NI contributions in the last two years are allowed to claim it. Talk about picking on the wrong people.
Plastic Dave, of course, doesn't address the real issues here. I've advised two people today that if they left income support and returned to work full time at minimum wage that they would be about £20 a week worse off, even once they're getting working tax credit. That figure will only get higher in April once Red Gordon doubles the tax bill for those earning less than £10,000 a year. It's no wonder that people don't leave benefit, there's no incentive to. Make the housing benefit rules more generous and more people will return to work because the money they make will go in their pocket, not Red Gordon's. It will cost less money and make for happier people.
Instead Red Gordon decides to take the living fuck out of the poor to pay for shiny tax cuts for the rich. And then blames the poor for not working hard enough.
Still, there are 650 lazy bone-idle fuckers in Westminster who enjoy a £2 subsidy on every pint of beer they buy. Assuming 10000 pints get drunk in a week (which isn't that OTT) that would pay for the JSA of nearly 400 people.
When it comes to hypocrisy of the worst order, there's nowhere better to look than Westminster. I hope Al Qaeda blows every single one of those cunts to kingdom come.
You go and live on £48 per week, like my 50-year-old agoraphobic client is having to after some stupid fuck at the DWP stopped her incapacity benefit for no apparent reason. And I'll give your £400 a week to her.
Deal?
OT:
fat, lazy, ubiquitous? Good example for the victimised fat people thread. Whether you meant it or not, the word 'fat' carries stigma that is totally unrelated to the physical substance of fat. interesting.
On Topic:
You can't legally claim JSA if you're not actively looking for work, AFAIK, and so the recipent wouldn't really be entitled to it if they were really just sat on their 'lazy backside'. Correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to have a disdain for JSA recipients. I don't automatically assume people who don't work are lazy, is it all people who don't work that you think are lazy, or just those who get benefits?
*applauds*
What jobs would these be?
It wouldn't surprise me if they cut some government jobs to save paying people, so they can make people on JSA do it for crap money.
Not at all, JSA is there for a reason, to assist people looking for work.
I'm arguing that someone who has been on JSA for over 2 years hasn't made much of an effort looking for work and should be given the first job they can find.
And no, I DO NOT think people who claim benefits are scum.
wise words, it comes across as slavery to me
It's probably just worth dropping this thread now, dude. It's polarised, the insults have arrived and hyperbole is too rife for anything sensible to get debated.
No, it's there to stop people starving to death whilst they are unemployed.
If you think that then you are an idiot, plain and simple.
Firstly, when you sign on every two weeks you need to show what steps you have taken to find work. If you can't show that you've been looking your claim will end and you won't get paid that week. If you fail to take up a job opportunity your entitlement ends and you might not get paid for the next 26 weeks.
Secondly, once you have been on JSA for six months you are expected to attend training courses and the like through New Deal. If you don't go your benefit gets stopped. The New Deal is often a complete waste of time, but the long-term unemployed must have at least attended these courses otherwise they wouldn't get benefit.
Thirdly, it took me five months to find work when I left university, and I was on JSA for most of that time (until my wife's earnings went too high to be entitled to benefit). I'm well spoken and well educated. The work I did finally find was night work at a little over minimum wage. It was 20 miles from my house and it took me two hours to get there on the bus and metro.
If someone of my intelligence and ability struggles to find minimum wage work for five months, in one of the UK's biggest cities, what hope does someone who left school at 16 with no qualifications have?
The simple fact of the matter is that some people are not employable and they never will be. Treating them like criminals, making them scrape the dog shit off the pavement alongside the joyriders and the muggers in some chain gang, isn't going to change anything. The fact is that some people are too old for work, some people lack the intelligence to do even basic work and some people will never find work with a criminal record as long as your arm.
Given the tiny cost of these people, what on earth is wrong with just letting them plod along in their tiny little low-ceiling life. When 400 of them could be paid for just by making MPs and their hangers on pay a commercial price for their beer each week, I really think anger gets turned in the direction of the wrong people.
Aw, come on, what's a bit of jostelling between regulars? I'm still interested in other's points of view, including yours and whowhere's and have dropped the 'tard angle. To be honest, apart from the points we have disagreed on I think we might have similar views on other aspects. Like, I don't think it's good for anyone to be on JSA for two years, so a measure to address this is a good thing. I have little faith that the proposed steps would be implemented satisfactorily but there must be some positive way forward for the long term unemployed. Don't write the discussion off yet!
Well who the fuck do you think are the ones that are end up on benefits long term? It's not the "typical" people is it? So would you accept that since your (presumably) reasonably employable mate took 2 months to find a job, then there are plenty of people out there in certain areas of the country who will be looking for a good deal longer than that, even if they are willing to accept any job? It took me 3 months to find a full time job after my degree, so I can only imagine how hard it would be for someone just out of prison, or who's starting work for the first time after her kids have grown up, or any number of other situations people find themselves in.
That's one thing that irritates me. In order to get on half of these training courses, you have to be unemployed, or fork up the cash yourself. I think there should be more help for people on low incomes to gain more qualifications and improve their prospects. Because currently, it's almost as if once you accept a job stacking shelves, thats it, rather than allowing you to stack shelves, and attend an evening course in computing or whatever.
I'm not saying it's always that easy, but I've had friends moan about not being able to find jobs too (in Leicester where there is a demand for jobs so it's not that easy), but when you ask them they normally say stuff like 'handed CVs out'. Some jobs won't bother unless you pester them frequently. Though of course it does get demovitating.
I think what I'm trying to say is that if you try and have a determined attitude it's not as hard as some people let themselves believe - it becomes a mental barrier. I literally applied for every job in every sector local to me, and had quite a few people interested in me. Maybe my CV is deceptively exceptional.
You're probably right. Never mind, was good whilst it lasted.
No, I don't.:mad:
I'm not bothered so much about people saying i'm not a copper e.t.c. I know i'm not.
I'm more bothered about people saying that i think everyone is scum, when I bloody well don't.