Work For Your Dole | Page 2 | Vital Football

Work For Your Dole

Anybody on the dole for more than a month should be shot. Bloody tories these days are just a bunch of namby pamby liberals at heart.


 
BodyButter - 30/9/2013 14:28

The reality is that the low end jobs have been given to Eastern Europe and China. Those jobs aren't coming back any time soon so you can do whatever you want to the unemployed, there aren't jobs there for them to do.
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It seems amazing now to think that not so long ago a guy could spend his days as a labourer and still afford to raise a family.

He might work fifty hours a week and ride to work on his bike but it was still a viable if meagre living.

Such jobs necessitated the provision of council houses.

I don't think it takes much imagination to see how these jobs were destroyed, and how we arrived where we are today where such people with few skills are excluded from the workforce.

But no one wants to face up to identifying the choices which were made which destroyed these jobs and created the class of the permanently unemployed.

 
There is no surprise that when you create a benefits system that makes sitting at home more profitable than going out to work that people will exploit that system and use it as a template for future generations. There is one political party who has been bribing the electorate for decades to achieve power with more and more benefits knowing that they caused great strain on the economy. If Red Ed wants to know why we have an underclass he needs only look at the shameful history of his own party.
 
Wurzel - 30/9/2013 15:55

There is no surprise that when you create a benefits system that makes sitting at home more profitable than going out to work that people will exploit that system and use it as a template for future generations. There is one political party who has been bribing the electorate for decades to achieve power with more and more benefits knowing that they caused great strain on the economy. If Red Ed wants to know why we have an underclass he needs only look at the shameful history of his own party.
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Even if that was true and I don't think that it is, no true Tory could object to it because according to Tory doctrine, when people follow their own self-interest the aggregate of those choices produces the best possible outcome, a process Adam Smith termed the 'invisible hand'.

People should always vote out of self-interest.

Trying to persuade the electorate that their own self-interest should be superseded by a greater good - the interests of the super-rich - is the purpose of the billions spent on propaganda we are subjected to every day.

If the economic system is inherently unfair then you can't blame people for voting in parties who promise to redress some of that unfairness.



 
Certainly there are some who get more not to work when you take into account housing benefit etc.

The programme I highlighted above showed a few examples and you could understand why the one household didn't want to take a drop in living standards to work.
 
OnMeHeadFred - 30/9/2013 15:12

There is no doubting it, it is only about punishment.

In the old days they used to publicly whip "sturdy beggars" outside the workhouse to warn the proletariat of the consequences of laziness and this is motivated by the same thinking.

For people who are long-term unemployed there is no way picking litter for slave-wages is going to introduce them to the joys and satisfactions of work, or in any way create any sort of work-ethic.

No business is going to want to employ these people because they just lack the basic skills of turning up every day on time and a willingness do the job with enthusiasm.

So if there is no prospect of a positive outcome, then it is just another stupid political gimmick, which distracts the electorate from the structural problems of the economy: a shortage of low-skilled jobs in the right areas, which add enough value to provide a living wage.
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Your vitriol in this matter leads me to question if you are one of those targeted and indeed don't like the idea of doing an honest day's work.
 
It is true that Labour have actively pursued and encouraged a benefits culture to cultivate votes in the same way they have abused the immigration issue for the same ends. They are a morally bankrupt organisation.

There is no doubt also that a large percentage of Tories believe that supporting a free market and aiding people to create wealth without limits. Which again can have the same accusation of moral bankruptcy levelled at it.

The big question is "is benefiting from a benefits system to a degree that working becomes unnecessary in a person's self-interest". I would say obviously no, not only because that system has to be paid for by the rest of the population, most of whom are not multi-millionaires, but also because the person taking the benefits is missing out on the many positive effects that working brings such as a sense of purpose, higher self-esteem, increased social circle etc.
 
The Fear - 30/9/2013 17:39

Certainly there are some who get more not to work when you take into account housing benefit etc.
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Without doubt there are many who are better off not working but there are not enough of them to keep a Labour government in power, which is claimed in the Tory rant I was questioning.

But it has to be said that there is a huge amount of irony and hypocrisy in the Tories complaining about having to pay high rents to private landlords due to a private market system they made inevitable in the first place.

 
Wurzel - 30/9/2013 18:08

It is true that Labour have actively pursued and encouraged a benefits culture to cultivate votes in the same way they have abused the immigration issue for the same ends. They are a morally bankrupt organisation.

There is no doubt also that a large percentage of Tories believe that supporting a free market and aiding people to create wealth without limits. Which again can have the same accusation of moral bankruptcy levelled at it.

The big question is "is benefiting from a benefits system to a degree that working becomes unnecessary in a person's self-interest". I would say obviously no, not only because that system has to be paid for by the rest of the population, most of whom are not multi-millionaires, but also because the person taking the benefits is missing out on the many positive effects that working brings such as a sense of purpose, higher self-esteem, increased social circle etc.
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As Chomsky points out, politics is all about parties marketing themselves to appeal to the self-interest of different sectors of the electorate.

They use the same slogans and employ the same advertising agencies, appealing to the self-interest of different groups. Tories offer tax-cuts for the rich and Labour offer benefits to the poor.

The outcome creates a point of equilibrium where one group's self-interest cancels out the other and we end up with a democratic synthesis.

So we end up with benefits for the poor (working and non-working) and enough loopholes to ensure the super-rich don't have to pay their taxes.

But more importantly the Tory mantra that benefits discourage work is false because through decades of benefits handed out by all parties, the workforce has increased dramatically. In 1970 the UK workforce was 20 million and now it is 30 million.

Which suggests the claims of the Tory mantra are specious nonsense.

 
Not really, because there is an entire substrata of society that claim benefits generation after generation with no inclination of changing this. Now it is true that this group is not everybody who claims benefits, it is a minority, but they do exist and they are a product of the benefits explosion that has happened in the last forty years.



 
LOL, just read the Tory rant comment, I am of no political affiliation, certainly not Conservative. I was actually enjoying discussing the subject, but obviously my discussion has been taken as a rant.

This is part of the reason I post less these days.
 
Wurzel - 30/9/2013 19:15

Not really, because there is an entire substrata of society that claim benefits generation after generation with no inclination of changing this. Now it is true that this group is not everybody who claims benefits, it is a minority, but they do exist and they are a product of the benefits explosion that has happened in the last forty years.
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The multi-generational unemployment which persists, can be traced back to the closure of old industries in the 1980s, which, as pointed out by Norman Tebbit with his "on your bike" metaphor, caused structural unemployment, which meant that any new jobs created were not where the unemployed lived.

I don't think cutting people's benefits is likely to create aspirational people of those who have been on the scrapheap for that long.



 
Welfare reform is always popular with the electorate which is why all governments consistently engage in welfare reform politics regardless if it is needed, representative or even counter-productive. New Labour reformed invalidity quite stringently already.

My sister, Debbie, is a Paranoid Schizophrenic with comorbid alcoholism. The amount of times she has been ordered, via a letter she did not understand, to attend a hearing about her benefits, when a variety of psychiatric consultants have attested to her inability to work in any capacity, is unacceptable. It is distressing for people who are very ill and vulnerable who have a right to basic standard of life in a 1st world country. It makes me mad. She now thinks people hate her for not being able to work.


The minority of those who misuse the welfare state do not justify the amount of media focus and parliamentary time that it is given though it fills the 'scapegoat' agenda and detracts from the causes of our economic austerity and decline. The difference now is that attitudes have repealed to something Victorian where to be jobless is to be stigmatised. Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs in the economic collapse of 2008 onwards and now they are stigmatised for unemployed, which is fast becoming a dirty word.

The key battle ground seems to be the moral coding of the terms 'unemployed' and 'jobless'. For the mass majority being out of work is not about a lack of morality or moral thinking; it is about economic circumstances and human consequences way beyond their control. Welfare support is their right- ensuring they don;t end up using food banks or losing their homes. Such rights were bitterly fought for and established by working generations who have suffered before.

If you remove those rights what are you saying- that someone should be cast into the street, with no support or social safety net? That they should go and get a job that doesn't exist; that they have no chance in getting because of the stigma that already exists or because they didn't get a 12k a year admin job that 300 people went for - and all because of some minute minority of generation benefit mis-users?

In the environment I work in we have had post-graduate professionala applying for low key admin jobs of 12-15k a year, jobs for which they are vastly over qualified, because they are desperate for work. The jobs they want no longer exist but they have no chance of getting the jobs they are applying for either because there 200 people in the cue before them.

I work with countless people who have succumbed to clinical mental health conditions, who have lost everything -homes businesses relationships- because of the collusive greed and financial negligence in our banking and financial industry and the impact it brought to their lives. Imagine if that was you, on your 40mg of Floroxetine, going for some job at your local supermarket, not getting it again, despite 10 years working in business and then you pick up the papers and see that the chancellor, who is in bed with finance, if now going to attack the jobless 'scroungers'.

Wake up people
 
Wurzel - 30/9/2013 19:21

LOL, just read the Tory rant comment, I am of no political affiliation, certainly not Conservative. I was actually enjoying discussing the subject, but obviously my discussion has been taken as a rant.

This is part of the reason I post less these days.
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I am afraid any opinion which contains the line "They are a morally bankrupt organisation.." might be mistaken for a rant.

Not as though there is anything wrong with a rant.

Better out than in, as they say. :9:
 
I don't get the hoo ha on this. My girlfriend gets minimum wage in a job she hates because she'd rather work than claim benefits. Why should she be willing to do that and others get a hell of a lot more for doing nothing?
The work the unemployed are going to be made to do shouldn't be cheap labour for companies, but what's wrong with tidying up communities, recycling projects, helping out charities etc?
The suggestion that the idea is to make them do demeaning work as a form of punishment is very ugly in my opinion. Who are you to decide any job is demeaning? Don't know about anyone else, but I don't look at bin men, road sweepers, litter up pickers, sewage workers, or any one in any job and judge them in a negative way for the job they do. Personally working down a sewer,working on the bins, or any job where I would come across a rat (huge phobia) is probably the last thing I'd want to do, but I have nothing but respect for those that do.
Done correctly, (and I'm not sure any political party could), it could have a very positive effect on society.
 
I have been lining up some special courses ready to help me back into work to compensate for my eye problems as at this minute im literally unemployable as soon as i tell them i need time off for hospital treatments and my eye conditions as they have to take out some sort of special insurance or something an old gaffer told me when he laid me off the git,

But the thing that annoys me a little is when i have gone down the job centre there are the same ones with beer and cider cans in there hands looking pizzed up these are the ones that need to be sent out on community service etc not the ones that actively seek work and try hard imo,

When i had a chat to a job centre officer he said to me ''i try and get you some help into work cos you have always worked and have a working history whereas the ones that come here drunk or not bothered and never really worked we turn a blind eye and label them no hopers'' lol this is true btw maybe the job centres should be doing more and not letting these drunks cause good folk to get catagorised?
 
ClivetheVillan - 30/9/2013 22:06

I have been lining up some special courses ready to help me back into work to compensate for my eye problems as at this minute im literally unemployable as soon as i tell them i need time off for hospital treatments and my eye conditions as they have to take out some sort of special insurance or something an old gaffer told me when he laid me off the git,

But the thing that annoys me a little is when i have gone down the job centre there are the same ones with beer and cider cans in there hands looking pizzed up these are the ones that need to be sent out on community service etc not the ones that actively seek work and try hard imo,

When i had a chat to a job centre officer he said to me ''i try and get you some help into work cos you have always worked and have a working history whereas the ones that come here drunk or not bothered and never really worked we turn a blind eye and label them no hopers'' lol this is true btw maybe the job centres should be doing more and not letting these drunks cause good folk to get catagorised?
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You will find they are on the sick not on job seekers Clive. The problem you have with trying to get them work is no one would want to employ them.

I am in the middle with this 1 as of being in recovery I see both sides of the coin. Most don't. Why would you/they? I totally get why.
 
KK i don't care if people who are old enough ans choose to pizz there lifes up the wall don't want to work its there choice but i mean good people get catirgarised by this government in there ever so brilliant ''statistics'' as the same people as the pizz heads just cos they have been out of work for a while,

My dad is 60 and been sctively seeking work for a few years, he has said he would rather sweep the streets for a bit of job seekers he does get to make him feel better but the point is we keep hearing how everyone unemployed for a while are lazy barstool when in truth some am yes but many are not, when the jobs are there then we can all see which ones can't be arsed i say until then we have to be fair not to catirgarise all unemployed long term people imo
 
ClivetheVillan - 1/10/2013 00:59

KK i don't care if people who are old enough ans choose to pizz there lifes up the wall don't want to work its there choice but i mean good people get catirgarised by this government in there ever so brilliant ''statistics'' as the same people as the pizz heads just cos they have been out of work for a while,

My dad is 60 and been sctively seeking work for a few years, he has said he would rather sweep the streets for a bit of job seekers he does get to make him feel better but the point is we keep hearing how everyone unemployed for a while are lazy barstool when in truth some am yes but many are not, when the jobs are there then we can all see which ones can't be arsed i say until then we have to be fair not to catirgarise all unemployed long term people imo
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It is true: The successive governments want to make out it is everyone has they know alot of people fall for it, because then they know they can get away with it.

Biggest scroungers are in The House of Commons and Lords: Eh they aren't scroungers. They are just people claiming there entitlements. LOL yeah right
 
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