[Closed] Feckless benefit claimants to be put to work - OR ELSE!

I just heard an announcement on the news about the most ridiculously ill-considered proposal to force the long term unemployed to do a month's worth of community service which would include what they described as "menial tasks" – painting, decorating, building work, cutting grass. To be administered by local authorities.

Iain Duncan Smith's "bright idea" has more holes than a colander! He was useless as Conservative party leader, he is still useless!

The long term unemployed have serious issues which need a tangible solution, not a vote winning “punishment”, doing something which the powers to be clearly regard as degrading.

It sickens me that many in society think of building work as menial. There are many highly skilled difficult trades, but the supercilious chattering classes who denigrate such difficult jobs wouldn’t know a day’s graft if it whacked them in the face, let alone how hard it would be to face the prospect of an unrelenting lifetime of health damaging, undervalued, under paid graft!

Painting for example is not easy. Many people think if you can hold a brush, you can paint – nonsense! Most people can’t and this includes a lot of tradesmen. If it wasn’t for the deep seated social hierarchy issues in the UK, if workers were shown some respect for doing difficult low paid jobs, we wouldn’t have this situation.

We now have deadlock with this problem because we have allowed a load of European immigrants to come and take on these tasks. I bet these people are disgusted with our attitude to them, but they’ll suffer it because the paltry sums they earn here go a very long way back where they come from. Most aren’t here to stay and I don’t blame them!

If you think about the practicalities of getting the long term unemployed working, they will need training and close supervision which will cost a lot of taxpayers’ money. If council’s are administering these schemes, you can be sure that they won’t make much money from selling these services (if any). Who would want to pay for this service anyway? It’s little more than a political stunt which will anger and alienate those finding it impossible to get a job. After a month, or two, or three, they will be back where they started.

What is needed is professional counselling and career development. Each individual needs to know their strengths and weaknesses and help in rebuilding their confidence. To find out what they realistically might be able to do for a job which would suit them and they would find bearable. They need a tangible route map out of the benefit trap they are in, which would involve getting retrained and/or qualified with people to mentor them and help them find work. There are enough workers sitting in jobcentres to do this, but I doubt if they have the skills, or the character for such challenging work. Getting claimants to sign their name once a fortnight is far easier! Do they do anything else?

If there weren’t such huge disparities in what people earned, those at the bottom of the ladder would feel they were in with a fighting chance of digging themselves out of the mire to live an adequately comfortable life. Whereas now, they are just looked down on as scum and will be struggling interminably, job or no job. They feel it’s a waste of time trying to get work as they will gain nothing from it and stand no chance of getting ahead when comparing themselves to those who are vastly more fortunate and privileged.

I conclude that the country needs a much more horizontal hierarchy, both financially and socially, but successive governments and banks have done much to exacerbate this problem. We have "sleepwalked" into unsustainable debt, living way beyond our means and have lost the value in many things. I can’t see the status quo changing, can you?

I don’t trust any politician, whatever their political persuasion. Their arrogance and incompetence knows no bounds. In light of this, our democratic system is a FAIL!