£53-a-week Iain Duncan Smith

[Wyrdlight]

Benifits are a tricky thing.

I have worked since I was 15, always had at least a part time job, paid my own way though Uni, never asked anyone for a penny.

When I came out of university the rescession had just hit, there was no work, literally none. I applied for hundreds and hundreds of jobs, everything from entry level corperate jobs to scrubbing toilets at the local bus station. I was deemed "too inexperianced" to work in anything above base minimum wage and "over-qualified" to work anything else due to my degree. I was flat out told by employers during interviews that I would be a "problem employee" due to my qualifitcations, one man told me I would "likely push for higher pay and make things difficult for less well educated members of staff".

Now, I was fortunate enough to have enough savings to tide me over, and a supportive family who kept a roof over my head for a 9 months it took to find a job, but had that not been the case I would have been on benifits. Not through me being lazy, but through the job market being so appalling that it was virtually impossible to get work.

I was competeing with recently fired city people with 10+ years experiance in a given field and hand tailored suits from the Savoy Tailors Guild, in short you cant compete with that.

[stevewinn]

out of the 7 million people out of work only 300,000 fit into the scrounger bracket .me as a reasonable person would

happily ignore this minority to make sure needy kids dont starve

the figure is just over one million. who have been claiming benefits consecutively for ten years. - the figure is higher if we include 5 to 10 years. so you can go on happily ignoring this majority of the minority making sure the kids dont starve, so not only are you happy funding the work-shy you now want take responsibility for their children. another issue - of child support.

Benifits are a tricky thing.

I have worked since I was 15, always had at least a part time job, paid my own way though Uni, never asked anyone for a penny.

When I came out of university the rescession had just hit, there was no work, literally none. I applied for hundreds and hundreds of jobs, everything from entry level corperate jobs to scrubbing toilets at the local bus station. I was deemed "too inexperianced" to work in anything above base minimum wage and "over-qualified" to work anything else due to my degree. I was flat out told by employers during interviews that I would be a "problem employee" due to my qualifitcations, one man told me I would "likely push for higher pay and make things difficult for less well educated members of staff".

Now, I was fortunate enough to have enough savings to tide me over, and a supportive family who kept a roof over my head for a 9 months it took to find a job, but had that not been the case I would have been on benifits. Not through me being lazy, but through the job market being so appalling that it was virtually impossible to get work.

I was competeing with recently fired city people with 10+ years experiance in a given field and hand tailored suits from the Savoy Tailors Guild, in short you cant compete with that.

'problem employee' i've heard of this people being over qualified - the question is why on earth when applying for a lower skilled job do people put down qualifications irrelevant for the position applied for?. making them over qualified and making their chances of gaining employment limited.

Edited April 9, 2013 by stevewinn

[Wyrdlight]

'problem employee' i've heard of this people being over qualified - the question is why on earth when applying for a lower skilled job do people put down qualifications irrelevant for the position applied for?. making them over qualified and making their chances of gaining employment limited.

Because as and when you get an interview, you would be forced to lie in the interview, as a basis for a career, lying to your future boss on day one is a bad idea. If you work somwhere full time, people would find out that you, for example, have a degree and you get the "problem" label and are "managed out of the business". I also resent the idea that I should be ashamed/hide the fact that I have worked dam hard for 8 years and forked out 30k to get one of the best educations the nation can offer.

[Coffey]

There will always be these problems. The truth is the poor/unemployed are there for the working class to **** on so the rich get away with what they do. lol This is just adding more fuel to that fire.

Let's blame the people who claim benefits and generally cannot work why we let MP's have 3 houses, holidays, fancy cars and set up private money in offshore accounts completely avoiding paying all their taxes. These are the types of people making these cuts. lol

[TSS]

There will always be these problems. The truth is the poor/unemployed are there for the working class to **** on so the rich get away with what they do. lol This is just adding more fuel to that fire.

Let's blame the people who claim benefits and generally cannot work why we let MP's have 3 houses, holidays, fancy cars and set up private money in offshore accounts completely avoiding paying all their taxes. These are the types of people making these cuts. lol

I'm not sticking up for politicians here (i'm not political tbh, and can't stand most of them)....lets say we implement all you have suggested, would you then go into politics then? (cause being honest I sure as hell wouldn't).

Edited April 9, 2013 by Sky Scanner

[Coffey]

I'm not sticking up for politicians here (i'm not political tbh, and can't stand most of them)....lets say with implement all you have suggested, would you then go into politics then? (cause being honest I sure as hell wouldn't).

Haha, I couldn't do that for a living. Very stressful job and it has to be boring. I know they need perks and a decent salary. But they are taking the **** and pushing the attention to the lower end of the scale so they can get away with their con artistry.

They should be representing what the people want, not telling them what is happening. They aren't even a proper government if you go by the definition. I jsut want them to do what the people want and what is best for the people. They do what is best for their rich friends and what money they can gain from it for themselves.

The whole system is a mess from top to bottom.

Here's one of the stupidest things the job centre does:

When you sign on every 2 weeks you have to have applied for at least 3 or 4 jobs per week I think it is. So that's 6 to 8 jobs in total. If you do not do this you lose your money.

Right so now they do it online so they can monitor you, so if you apply for that amount it's not really going to get you a job is it? But if you applied for every job they had advertised in 1 week... Then the next time after you sign there is nothing new added... you wouldn't get benefit for not applying. That is just stupid. lol My friend just applies for 4 per week on their online service then goes on reed etc and goes crazy on them. It's a horrible system, they never try to help people get qualifications. Try going to college and they cut your benefit, can't any get sort of benefit to go to college. (which would get loads of people employed)

The system needs a huge overhaul. People should get benefit to attend college. (Obviously limited to 1 full time course to avoid people abusing it)

They aren't helping people get employed the actual system helps people just be lazy. The system is the problem not the people.

Edited April 9, 2013 by Coffey

[TSS]

Haha, I couldn't do that for a living. Very stressful job and it has to be boring. I know they need perks and a decent salary. But they are taking the **** and pushing the attention to the lower end of the scale so they can get away with their con artistry.

They should be representing what the people want, not telling them what is happening. They aren't even a proper government if you go by the definition. I jsut want them to do what the people want and what is best for the people. They do what is best for their rich friends and what money they can gain from it for themselves.

The whole system is a mess from top to bottom.

Here's one of the stupidest things the job centre does:

When you sign on every 2 weeks you have to have applied for at least 3 or 4 jobs per week I think it is. So that's 6 to 8 jobs in total. If you do not do this you lose your money.

Right so now they do it online so they can monitor you, so if you apply for that amount it's not really going to get you a job is it? But if you applied for every job they had advertised in 1 week... Then the next time after you sign there is nothing new added... you wouldn't get benefit for not applying. That is just stupid. lol My friend just applies for 4 per week on their online service then goes on reed etc and goes crazy on them. It's a horrible system, they never try to help people get qualifications. Try going to college and they cut your benefit, can't any get sort of benefit to go to college. (which would get loads of people employed)

The system needs a huge overhaul. People should get benefit to attend college. (Obviously limited to 1 full time course to avoid people abusing it)

They aren't helping people get employed the actual system helps people just be lazy. The system is the problem not the people.

I hear ya Coffey

I don't know how old you are, but i'm 38, I grew up in the last conservative governement (and on one of the toughest council estates in mid kent - medway towns)....this is how it used to work, how the system was played:

Say you had 10 friends all living on the same estate, the parents of each child would write to the dole office to say they had kicked there child out (even though they hadn't) the parents of their mate would say they have offered a room to them, so you would get housing benefits which each family would split evenly, then the child of the second family would write and say they have kicked their troublesome kid out, in comes the next family to 'offer them a room'.....so on and so forth.....you could do this ten fold and cream the money in....add on top of that that job seekers allowance wasn't checked back then, also, you would leave it 6 - 8 weeks, claim your bed had broken in your new digs or your cooker and given up and claim 200 - 300 in a 'crisis loan' which never got paid back as you didn't ever earn enough......(i'm not including my own family in this, I had working parents - but all my mates and their parents were at it)......massive scams like that were common place....

Now whilst i've had times of no work in the 20yrs since then I haven't claimed anything...but I would bet my house that the same or similiar scams are still working, so something has to be done, unfortunately people like you get tarred with that brush and have to jump through hoops to get your benefit.........maybe the current system is wrong, but something needs changing...

Edited April 9, 2013 by Sky Scanner

[ciriuslea]

the figure is just over one million. who have been claiming benefits consecutively for ten years. - the figure is higher if we include 5 to 10 years. so you can go on happily ignoring this majority of the minority making sure the kids dont starve, so not only are you happy funding the work-shy you now want take responsibility for their children. another issue - of child support.

Majority of the minority lol that's nice, but I think and this applies to us all that quoting statistics should have a link back to the source, its too easy to just quote them to help an agenda and them being wrong, misleading or doctored, and before this is taken the wrong way, that means us all.

I suspect the statistic quoted is for people claiming sickness or disability and not JSA, considering the recent scandal with A4e back to work program that was basically putting huge numbers of long term unemployed into any old job.

But I think we can all agree that there are work shy and they need a kick up the backside, and perhaps its not as many as the Gov would have us believe

[JC2]

The way I see it, the problem has to be addressed from the top down. When we have a culture were politicians are expected to fail as this causes the loop effect of always being needed, from here on in it is a tumble down effect.

Think about it if we actually had a political culture that worked, that in effect did what they are being asked to do there would be a dramatic reduction in first of all politicians and subsequently the whole bureaucratic system would be thinned down to a more realistic position. It is based upon the idea that in order to be the solution you first have to cause the problem, I know, I know how that sounds but when you actually look at it it is pretty much how the whole culture of career politics is defined.

An Eaton education doesn't come cheap so when your schooling is all about how to rule, how to be a leader the first rule in the proverbial hand book is if it isn't broke then brake it! so now it has to be fixed. An age old schooling that is the problem because that is what it has to do, be the problem!

Just my thoughts.

[Coffey]

I hear ya Coffey

I don't know how old you are, but i'm 38, I grew up in the last conservative governement (and on one of the toughest council estates in mid kent - medway towns)....this is how it used to work, how the system was played:

Say you had 10 friends all living on the same estate, the parents of each child would write to the dole office to say they had kicked there child out (even though they hadn't) the parents of their mate would say they have offered a room to them, so you would get housing benefits which each family would split evenly, then the child of the second family would write and say they have kicked their troublesome kid out, in comes the next family to 'offer them a room'.....so on and so forth.....you could do this ten fold and cream the money in....add on top of that that job seekers allowance wasn't checked back then, also, you would leave it 6 - 8 weeks, claim your bed had broken in your new digs or your cooker and given up and claim 200 - 300 in a 'crisis loan' which never got paid back as you didn't ever earn enough......(i'm not including my own family in this, I had working parents - but all my mates and their parents were at it)......massive scams like that were common place....

Now whilst i've had times of no work in the 20yrs since then I haven't claimed anything...but I would bet my house that the same or similiar scams are still working, so something has to be done, unfortunately people like you get tarred with that brush and have to jump through hoops to get your benefit.........maybe the current system is wrong, but something needs changing...

That's crazy. lol I heard of stuff like that where I'm from, a friend of mine used to rinse the crisis loans I know that. (grew up in bad area as well in Scotland)

I personally don't claim benefit, I have a job. Been on it a fair few times though, never once got a job through the Job centre or had any help from them. I went to college while my best friend/housemate supported me. Which we are both now in debt because of.

I know most of this stuff because one of my closest friends is on it and he struggles really badly. They constantly mess him around, even gets missed payments, less money than others but hardly has time to sort it because he's actually doing something. He is constantly trying for work, he works week days volunteering at a dog shelter. So he's not work shy at all.

I could see a system where you get rewarded for doing more. Like people who do voluntary work should get a bonus or something as it gives them a higher employment rate.

It's a hard subject to cover, there is no easy way. It needs a collection of people who actually know what they are talking about to sit down and discuss it. Instead we have rich morons sorting it, what do they know about poverty?! lol

[ciriuslea]

Probably worthy of a thread of its own...lie detectors to catch benefit cheats !!

http://metro.co.uk/2007/04/04/lie-detectors-to-catch-benefit-cheats-256614/

[Setton]

I have to admit I don't know much about British benefits but if they are fair now why do they need reformed?

Generally they are and when people obey the spirit rather than the letter, it's fair. The trouble is that there are loopholes allowing (a very small number of) people to make a huge profit being on benefits.

As for £53 a week. I'm a student but lucky enough to have money to spare. A friend of mine isn't so lucky and budgets £40 a week. It's more than doable. Leaves £13 a week for fun too. Or £676 a year. Not bad really. Certainly enough to live on.

Always have to laugh when you see the family on the news:

"Well we got back from Florida, bought a 42" plasma TV on the way, which we leave on even while being interviewed on the news, and we can't afford to pay our electricity bill. It's too much, we're being punished for being poor!"

No. You're being punished for not understanding how money works. If you spend it all on non-essentials, you cannot be spending it on other things.

[smurf0852]

the figure is just over one million. who have been claiming benefits consecutively for ten years. - the figure is higher if we include 5 to 10 years. so you can go on happily ignoring this majority of the minority making sure the kids dont starve, so not only are you happy funding the work-shy you now want take responsibility for their children. another issue - of child support.

'problem employee' i've heard of this people being over qualified - the question is why on earth when applying for a lower skilled job do people put down qualifications irrelevant for the position applied for?. making them over qualified and making their chances of gaining employment limited.

so to save yourself a penny or two in tax would you like to see kids starve .its not childrens faults there parents have been exposed to a feckless society so let emm starve.i never thought i would see a tory from liverpool the city thatcher said should be left to a managed decline and then leveled .i bet you ancestors would be so proud.