Tories "work for benifits" scheme

[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by jambutty

What do you suggest the several thousand newly qualified doctors turn their hands to?

Anything they are capable of in preference to nothing. I really doubt very much that anyone who has spent years in study would be satisfied just to sit back, do nothing and draw JSA though. Several I know of have sought employment abroad.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Originally Posted by jambutty

I never said that it was a crime to be on the dole and so far it isn’t a crime not to look for a suitable job or train for a new skill.

Jambutty, I didn't say that you said it was a crime to be on the dole......and I know it isn't actually a criminal offence not to look for work instead of relying on benefits long term....it is a social crime....and just to add....I think you knew exactly what I meant, and are being pedantic in your response.

[jambutty]

Originally Posted by Cyfr

The doctors issue is down to obvious mismanagement. Its the same with Nurses, the NHS are training them then there's no job for them to go to once they have trained. However it is NOT the states role to make a job where it is not required on a permanent basis in order to artificially decrease unemployment levels. It is simply not sustainable.

To the 54 year old engineer, electrician, plumber, accountant, the workplace is crying out for them. There are lots of jobs available and if they don't like it, it is still not too late to retrain!

The benefits system should always be there as a safety net not a career choice.

People can afford to sit around doing nothing because we pay them to do it. Remove that choice. Tell people if they want those benefits they need to earn them. It is time people took responsibility for their own lives. It is not the role of the government to nurse you from cradle to grave, its there to protect our rights to Life, Liberty and Property of ones person.

You are evading the issue in trying to lay the blame on mismanagement.

The point is that the doctors and nurses have been trained to doctor and nurse by the state at enormous expense. Do you really expect any of them to take on a cleaning job whilst a post comes up somewhere?

It’s all very well glibly stating that “there are lots of jobs available”. The question is where? Would you as a 54 years old engineer be prepared to uproot your family, sell your house, disrupt your kids schooling and move half way across the country to get a job? Or travel 50 miles a day to get to the new job? And then get castigated for adding to the road congestion and atmospheric carbon.

There is no doubt that there is a hard core of work-shy people who exploit the system but there are ten times the number who are genuine and just cannot find a job that pays them more than they get on the dole. Why should they be tarred with the same brush as the work-shy?

Earn their benefits Cyfr? Most have by paying exorbitant taxes and NI during their working life until they were chucked on the scrap heap.

As I have stated before all you “go get any job” brigade would have a different view on the issue if it were YOU who was on the dole.

[jambutty]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

Anything they are capable of in preference to nothing. I really doubt very much that anyone who has spent years in study would be satisfied just to sit back, do nothing and draw JSA though. Several I know of have sought employment abroad.

And many times several have not.

[jambutty]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

Jambutty, I didn't say that you said it was a crime to be on the dole......and I know it isn't actually a criminal offence not to look for work instead of relying on benefits long term....it is a social crime....and just to add....I think you knew exactly what I meant, and are being pedantic in your response.

Take a look at your own signature and then apply it to “it is a social crime” and the final part of the sentence.

[WillowTheWhisp]

I have never personally been on the dole Jambutty but as I said earlier my later husband once was when he was made redundant following illness and he took a cleaning job. He applied for all kinds of jobs he could find not because he wanted to do that work but because they were there and he wanted to work. He even applied for potato peeling which has to be about the most boring thing ever.

Yes I do agree that it isn't always practical to uproot yourself to go and work in another part of the country especially if your spouse is already in work but I also have friends who have done precisely that. One family moved down south and subsequently abroad. One family moved to the Cambridgeshire fens where he had a job waiting and she later found one and another moved to Huntingdon to do a job he had absolutely no experience in but they were so impressed by his references in what he had done and he has made a successful career.

Yet another family have moved to France which meant not only uprooting the children but plunging them into a different culture with a different language.

I think it all depends on if you are looking at your glass as being half empty or half full. The ones who see it as half empty fear losing the half they have. The ones who see it as half full keep on trying until they can fill it up.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Originally Posted by jambutty

Take a look at your own signature and then apply it to “it is a social crime” and the final part of the sentence.

My signature has nothing to do with the post in question and you are being pedantic.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Cyfr

The doctors issue is down to obvious mismanagement. Its the same with Nurses, the NHS are training them then there's no job for them to go to once they have trained.

It looks like good management to me. You train more people than you need so you can pick the cream. It would be poor management to only train the number you need. Then you could be short of top quality Doctors and Nurses at the end of the training. Yes it does cost money to train people but for some of there training they are actively working and being useful. If you don't like the idea of being one of the ones left out then its simple, make sure you are one of the best.

That's been happening for years in engineering apprenticeships. The last few years I worked at Michelin they did not take on all the apprentices they trained. One year non of the 6 were taken on.

[park381]

Originally Posted by jambutty

No sillier than your response.

What's the phrase "on yer bike" and you

[andrewb]

Originally Posted by jambutty

You are evading the issue in trying to lay the blame on mismanagement.

The point is that the doctors and nurses have been trained to doctor and nurse by the state at enormous expense. Do you really expect any of them to take on a cleaning job whilst a post comes up somewhere?

It’s all very well glibly stating that “there are lots of jobs available”. The question is where? Would you as a 54 years old engineer be prepared to uproot your family, sell your house, disrupt your kids schooling and move half way across the country to get a job? Or travel 50 miles a day to get to the new job? And then get castigated for adding to the road congestion and atmospheric carbon.

There is no doubt that there is a hard core of work-shy people who exploit the system but there are ten times the number who are genuine and just cannot find a job that pays them more than they get on the dole. Why should they be tarred with the same brush as the work-shy?

Earn their benefits Cyfr? Most have by paying exorbitant taxes and NI during their working life until they were chucked on the scrap heap.

As I have stated before all you “go get any job” brigade would have a different view on the issue if it were YOU who was on the dole.

Doctors and Nurses have generally had huge amounts of their courses paid for so they're in nowhere near as much debt as the rest of students. If people decide to take on careers where they know there might not be a place for them, then its not the states role to make a job where it isn't available and it isn't the states role to tell them "Well its okay, We'll pay you to sit on your arse while we tax everyone elses hard work". Its exactly the same as the thousands of students studying media. They KNOW the market is way over saturated and they'll need to get other jobs. Just because you have a degree does NOT make you too good to be a cleaner or any other job that doesn't require specific qualifications!

I simply don't believe that somebody with 30 or 40 years of engineering experience would struggle to find a job that he/she can travel to easily. The market would snap them up.

Yes people are taxed a lot, but this money goes towards the NHS, Policing, Education, Defence and everything else the government provides. It isn't your God given right to have benefits without doing the jobs that the Conservatives are suggesting. Not to add that we wouldn't have to pay so much tax if there weren't so many people being paid to not work through their own choice!

I think your statement about the "go get a job brigade" is an awful argument. If for whatever reason I ended up on the dole, I would not expect honest working citizens to fund me sitting around. Working as a cleaner would be fine with me. I should have to work for the money until I can find a better job for myself.

I don't care if I have a Degree, Masters or PHD, if there is no work for me then I'd be grateful of a job offered to me by the state that allows me to have a basic income.

[andrewb]

Originally Posted by Neil

It looks like good management to me. You train more people than you need so you can pick the cream. It would be poor management to only train the number you need. Then you could be short of top quality Doctors and Nurses at the end of the training. Yes it does cost money to train people but for some of there training they are actively working and being useful. If you don't like the idea of being one of the ones left out then its simple, make sure you are one of the best.

That's been happening for years in engineering apprenticeships. The last few years I worked at Michelin they did not take on all the apprentices they trained. One year non of the 6 were taken on.

You have a good point. I called it mismanagement because when I heard about it being done in the NHS the student nurses had not been told they were only accepting x number of applicants. If they tell them then theres no problem.

[Margaret Pilkington]

I have only drawn dole once in my life and it was through the winter of discontent when there were power cuts....and weavers were laid off (though we had full order books).
I have never been unemployed, I have always figured it is easier to get a job when you have a job....so I have taken work that was not to my taste, as a stop gap, and to keep the wolf from the door, until I could find something that did suit me.
This to me makes good economic sense....or am I wrong in believing that too.

[shillelagh]

I notice how not one person has mentioned New Deal
Jobcentre Plus -

[jambutty]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

I have never personally been on the dole Jambutty but as I said earlier my later husband once was when he was made redundant following illness and he took a cleaning job. He applied for all kinds of jobs he could find not because he wanted to do that work but because they were there and he wanted to work. He even applied for potato peeling which has to be about the most boring thing ever.

Yes I do agree that it isn't always practical to uproot yourself to go and work in another part of the country especially if your spouse is already in work but I also have friends who have done precisely that. One family moved down south and subsequently abroad. One family moved to the Cambridgeshire fens where he had a job waiting and she later found one and another moved to Huntingdon to do a job he had absolutely no experience in but they were so impressed by his references in what he had done and he has made a successful career.

Yet another family have moved to France which meant not only uprooting the children but plunging them into a different culture with a different language.

I think it all depends on if you are looking at your glass as being half empty or half full. The ones who see it as half empty fear losing the half they have. The ones who see it as half full keep on trying until they can fill it up.

I have been on the dole, several times back in the eighties when businesses were going bust and chucking their work forces on the scrap heap every hour of every day. When I was lucky enough to get another job it was always a case of last in first out when cut backs came around – and they did with startling regularity. If it wasn’t that then there was the three months rule. “Sorry we don’t think that you are going to make the grade” or words that effect as they show you the door at the end of week 12. At week 14 they would have to pay the full going wage. Worst of all whilst tied up at work all day you got little or no chance to seek something better and even if you do find something you can’t attend an interview because your current employer won’t give you the time off or says “yes OK you can go but don’t come back.”

During that time, amongst other jobs, I was a Betterware salesman (up to 10 hours a day, 6 days a week), mobile ice cream salesman (up to 10 hours a day, 7 days a week), semi skilled upholsterer (paid when there was work to do), Debt collector, Manager of a newsagents on Roman Road Estate (up at 4:00am to open the shop at 4:30am to await the delivery of papers. Close at 6:00pm 7 days a week. Sunday closing at 1:00pm and Xmas Day off). Part time help for 3 hours morning and afternoon to give me time to go to the various Cash and Carry’s to buy stock. After 18 months the owners sold the shop from under me. Just as well really because I doubt if I could have carried on any longer. After that it was Private Hire driver and again 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

I tried the re-training schemes for £10 above the dole and it cost more than that just to get to work and back. But the end result was always either cheap labour or a skivvy for the rest. Those also lasted 12 weeks before they let you go. I can just see a qualified doctor doing that.

One swallow does not a summer make. Meaning that just because you can quote that a handful of families have uprooted it doesn’t automatically follow that the remaining hundreds of thousands can and should do the same. The greater majority do not have that option.

To all those offering advice to those on the dole – get on the dole yourself before spouting off. You will find out how hard it is to get a job at a living wage and keeping it for any length of time. Especially nowadays when hundreds of thousands of immigrants are crossing our shores and quite happy to work for the basic minimum or less. When a week’s basic wage over here is the equivalent to a month’s wage in their home country you can’t blame them for coming over but it does keep most unskilled and semi skilled jobs pay at the legal minimum and not what the job is really worth.

[jambutty]

I trust that you will never have to experience life on the dole but if you do manage it somehow you will find out how ‘easy’ it is.

Then again the younger you are the better your chances of bouncing back. It’s a different story for older folk.

Originally Posted by Cyfr

I simply don't believe that somebody with 30 or 40 years of engineering experience would struggle to find a job that he/she can travel to easily. The market would snap them up.

How wrong you are. The reason why so many engineering businesses went down was because of over saturation in that field. Meaning that other engineering firms were not taking on new employees.