It’s a good thing to get the jobless back into a routine

Some argue it just takes jobs away from others but surely it will give a helping hand to the long term unemployed.

I’d be more interested in why they are out of work for more that 3 yrs TBH.

surely it will give a helping hand to the long term unemployed

how?

It’s a short term politically minded solution to a long term social problem. The Toerags are just trying to win votes and don’t really care what it does to people who wouldn’t vote for them if their life depended on it.

Chap on R4 this morning saying that studies on these style schemes in other countries show almost know benefit in helping the long term unemployed back to work.

This is about idealogy / vindication / vote winning, IMO.

by getting them off their arses and back into a routine.
A routine where they have no jeremy kyle.
It might just give them a bit of self respect.

I’m sure the interests of the long term unemployed is at the forefront of the Tories concerns. And not some cheap approving headlines in tomorrows Daily Mail. Plus its another excuse to berate poor people. So its a win/win!

If you think, as the Tories and the Mail would like us all to believe, that the 2.5 million unemployed are presently all sat around watching Jeremy Kyle in their underwear on a 52″ telly,and refusing the countless rewarding and well paid career opportunities coming their way, then you’ve clearly no experience of the spirit-crushingly depressing reality of looking for work in the current economic climate

And with this scheme they’ll be eying up how many street cleaners and the like they can lay off, and then make the unemployed do their jobs for £70 a week instead

depends on the work I suppse

however having spent the 1st 6mths of the year unemployed I can possibly see a benefit, maybe for the long term unemployed

most of the people I encountered- training courses etc- were all desperate to get some real work and seemed to put a lot of effort into it

Im not sure this will help them, there just arent enough real jobs to go round, zero hours contracts, underemployment, part time jobs, compulsory shelf stacking at poundland, this scheme, it just feels like
the job market is treading water
certainly the DWP were desperate to unload you from the books by whatever means they could, no matter how bad it may be for your personal situation or career

This just has the feel of a standard tory party policy favourite

edit:
(iolo you lost any validity with the brainless jeremy kyle quip)

I hope they don’t forget to include annual leave for the unemployed.

Doesn’t help with the undeniable fact that there simply aren’t enough jobs to go round though does it. Sounds like a rehash of the ‘work for Tesco for free’ policy.

yeah it’s not about helping people back to work it’s about winning votes BUT who else thought when they heard that ‘YES get the lazy bleeders off their arses watching jeremy kyle and picking up litter’ saying that, there’s no way I’d vote tory but 3 years on the dole you’ve got to wonder. If they are good upstanding citizens they probably wouldn’t mind going to pick up some litter, I know I wouldn’t. If they are feckless lazy individuals who are doing everything they can to avoid work then good, some excercise won’t do them any harm. I’m sure I heard on the radio that the number of people unemployed for over 3 years was something like 200k so not that many in the grand scheme of things but looks good for all the daily mail readers.

& yes perhaps there isn’t that much work around but there are some jobs. Might be in shops, restaurants, postal depots. Not the best work but speaking for myself I’d much rather do any job than none, my pride and my wife wouldn’t have it any other way. & People who think they’re too good to work in a shop deserve to pick up litter imo.

The scheme, devised by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, will cost around £300m – with the money likely to be found from departmental underspends.

Departmental underspend? Is this in the department that has just written off that very same amount for the failed Universal Benefit IT system?

I can see this saving vast amounts of money. Potentially billions. Or will that be ‘costing’……?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

It’ll either end up being make work along these lines;

or, as binners said, taking paid work away from other people.

I can’t see either being a desirable outcome.

It’s just back to the victorian workhouse mentality;

In early Victorian times (see Poor Law), poverty was seen as a dishonorable state. As depicted by Charles Dickens, a workhouse could resemble a reformatory, often housing whole families, or a penal labour regime giving manual work to the indigent and subjecting them to physical punishment.

blame the poor for being poor and having no job.

When they do get a job make sure it doesn’t pay enough to get them out of poverty.

The Tories love it, win win.

the poor house analogy is not a very good one, in the end poor house were actual closed because the middle classes didn’t like poor getting better health care than them for “free”. UK in politics of envy shocker 😉

by getting them off their arses and back into a routine.
A routine where they have no jeremy kyle.
It might just give them a bit of self respect.

With statements like that, I think you’re going to need a bigger broom.

middle classes didn’t like poor getting better health care than them for “free”

ironically, this is what the Republicans in the US are riled about with the whole ObhamaCare thing.

I think it’s a good thing, but……….

The ‘universal benifit’ should have been extended to actualy be universal to anyone unable to work or just not working. It should cover everyone from the unemployed, the dissabled and students. Give everyone not working a minimum amount of cash (comparable to the student loan ammount, so ~£6k, or whatever JSA ammounts to), then in return yo have to demonstrate you’re doing something productive with your time, e.g. full time education, voulentary work, if you’ve got a skill set that a charity copuld use then pro bono publico work, or menial council work litter picking, painting fences etc.

There’s a ridiculous catch22 situation in the system at the moment where the unemployed can’t afford to get qualifications which might help them get a job as as soon as they enroll on a course for more than a few hours a week they’re “unavailable for work”. Source: housemate who did admin for a collage over the summer breaks, the first question anyone asked was “how many hours/can I keep my JSA” not “will this help me find a job”.

I don’t think they’ll be taking jobs off anyone, they’ll either have to attend the job centre every day or do some sort of community work. & if that’s litter picking there’s plenty of litter about this fair isle. They could always get Jeremy Kyle streamed to their phone while they pick up litter!

As they’re effectively giving them a job shouldn’t they have to pay them minimum wage? Or are they only going to have to work enough hours to cover their dole at minimum wage?

If so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to say if you’ve been unemployed for 2 years we’ll guarantee you 10 hours/week of minimum wage work instead of your dole. If you don’t do the work obviously you won’t get paid anything. If we can’t find anything for you to do that week you get paid anyway

does spending the week litter picking mean that you’re not available for work and therefore they’ll stop your benefits?

wwaswas – Member
middle classes didn’t like poor getting better health care than them for “free”

ironically, this is what the Republicans in the US are riled about with the whole ObhamaCare thing.

and what the private sector have done to public sector workers pensions etc

For me the sad/frustrating thing is we are now at the end of the party conference season and 18-24 months (?) from the next election and the main parties seem bereft of either conviction or proper policies.

So the Tories lead with “propping up” the housing market followed by this while Labour focused on intervening in the energy market and b’fast clubs. The politics of focus groups – sad and depressing and FA use to most of us. I cant recall what the Lib Dems were saying other than, “we will get into bed with anyone, so dont worry what we say as independents.”

(Having said that, I can see some merit is parts of this proposal! 😉 but its a red herring in terms of tackling the UK economic issues).

Fine, if the Tories can find them full time work, then it can pay then a full time wage, right? With employment rights, annual leave…..all that shit

I won’t hold my breath

Surely if there’s work needing done (even if it’s litter picking) then the council should employ people to do it (thereby offering jobs to the unemployed).

Otherwise, this is just a cover for employing folk below the minimum wage and with no benefits.

I don’t think it’s about making them do full-time voluntary work, it’s about doing _something_ every day. I’d heard (possibly on the Home Service) that it was suggested that either voluntary work, _or_ attending a job centre every day.

To be honest, that doesn’t sound like a huge amount of hassle. I mean, if you are looking for work, surely you’ll be looking for work every day, right? Would a few hours of picking litter or working in a charity shop, or _something_ not be preferable to being subjected to Jeremy Kyle? If this is only targeted at those long term unemployed, then getting back into the mindset of doing something might be a good thing, but I agree that finding out why they have been out of work for that length of time might be a better idea.

This policy is also on shaky ground because if they’re actually going to stop someone’s money they won’t be able to buy food, pay the water/lecky/gas/sky bill. I’m all for getting people back to work but denying them food? I dunno. If these people have kids how are they gonna feed them? the child allowance won’t cover a kids meals 3 times a day for a week.

Making them do volountary work? This already happens. You see that sounds great, doesn’t it? In the alternatiev universe that is the Daily Mail editorial. There’s a slight problem. Mrs Binners is a charity fundraiser and has seen this first hand.

What happens is that if they’re your proper hardcore layabout popularly portayed in the Mail/Tory press? They turn up (possibly drunk, or off their heads) because they have too. They are more trouble than they’re worth, and somebody (a paid member of staff) then has to babysit them to stop them making off with the laptops.

Ask any charities if they fancy having the long term unemployed forced to come and ‘volounteer’ for them? I can tell you what answer you’ll get

Oh… and while we’re debunking rabid scaremongering,right-wing myths. The best, most willing (genuine) volounteers are asylum seekers who come and make themselves useful while they await their claim results, and are legally barred from working

They could get the unemployed to help Royal Mail deliver the post!

This policy is also on shaky ground because if they’re actually going to stop someone’s money they won’t be able to buy food, pay the water/lecky/gas/sky bill. I’m all for getting people back to work but denying them food? I dunno. If these people have kids how are they gonna feed them? the child allowance won’t cover a kids meals 3 times a day for a week.

They’re asking them to do something productive every day, it’s not exactly a moral dillema is it? It’s focusing on a subset of a minority, they’re not saying they’re going to take away everyones benifits, just giving a kick up the arse to the (hopefully I’d assume) minority of the long term unemployed who are in that situation because they are lazy scroungers, not the rest who are (again I assume hopefully) already actively looking for work and getting a bad name as a result of the minority.

I’m not sure about this one.

1)Workplace ethos.

As binners says: sad to say, but I know a few people who you would never want working beside you. They aren’t interested, are only there because they are told to be there and will get benefits docked otherwise, and can turn a fairly happy, positive workplace into a slough of despond. I have seen this happen first-hand. What’s surprising is how smart some of these folk are; you’d think it might be “lower-class” (yes, I know) layabouts, but the ones I’ve encountered are the smarter, lower-middle class ones, who are a)cheesed-off and disappointed in how life has turned out for them and b)clever. It takes brains to really work the system, not just low cunning.

2)Too much scope for YTS-style job stuffing, where genuine but low-paid workers get turfed out and the jobless ’employed’ instead. The genuine and hard-working lose out and end up on the dole- we all lose out as the indolent do the ‘job’ instead, with scant regard or pride.

3)Money. You know, I’ve never seen a single number of jut how many are up to this, and hence how much it will all save us. In actual fact, these schemes need monitored and policed, and we’ve seen how this can be abused- viz A4E, etc. I don’t think there’s money to be saved, somehow.

As others have said, interesting to note how many column-inches this is getting, versus the 300M lost in cocked-up IT programs. Hardly gets a mention.

Karen Brady;

says the Chancellor is “the only man I would be an Apprentice for”.

during warm up speech for him.

Well she’s just gone down in my estimation. By some distance.

Pathetic demonising of the most vulnerable in society yet again. This will achieve nothing except win a few more votes from vindictive Daily Mail readers. If they really want to tackle the benefits bill they could make hugely profitable companies pay their staff a living wage, seeing as the majority of benefits go to those in work.

But no let’s pick on the poor again and pretend we want to help them. Maybe hand out some more contracts to our buddies to not deliver on their promises, yet again.

GO – now on BBC with the little boy haircut. As I said on the Labour thread, he is sounding more Keynesian that ED Balls. Funny how positions swap around and end up so far from the rhetoric.

glupton1976 – Member
It’s a short term politically minded solution to a long term social problem. The Toerags are just trying to win votes and don’t really care what it does to people who wouldn’t vote for them if their life depended on it.

thekingisdead – Member
Chap on R4 this morning saying that studies on these style schemes in other countries show almost know benefit in helping the long term unemployed back to work.
This is about idealogy / vindication / vote winning, IMO.

^^ this

Gideon has said he want to get rid of the “something for nothing” culture. Well if I’ve paid into NI it’s not something for nothing is it Gideon… Most people on Jobseeker’s Allowance have worked! Gideon you are the worst kind of cretin.

It is, basically, this simple.

We have tons of people who want jobs, and don’t have them. We also have tons of people who have part-time jobs, who want full time jobs. We also have tons of people on zero-hours jobs who want real jobs.

So the focus is on getting people who don’t want jobs into work? I don’t care what end of the political spectrum you’re on, this is obviously idiocy. Oh, they’re going to work for free? Better still, that’ll help the people who want to do it for money.

**** **** ****.

*****

Gideon has said he want to get rid of the “something for nothing” culture

But doesn’t propose to do anything about corporate parasites avoiding paying any tax, the big, massively profitable companies paying such low wages that the taxpayer has to subsidise them (which is what the majority of the benefits bill actually is!), and business as usual in the still unregulated City, with the snouts well and truly back in the trough, like nothing ever happened

It boils my piss!!!!

Unregulated City – are you sure about that binners?

The budget surplus stuff was quite a revelation IMO – dont expect a relaxation of gov spending any time soon.

genuine question THM

how come we have to rely on the americans to prosecute dodgy bankers fixing LIBOR even i it was done in the UK?

Northwind has a pretty good point, concentrate on the 2.5 million or so who would get back into work faster with some help and have less disruption or concentrate on the 200k at the bottom who are basically unemployable at a time when we don’t have anything like full employment.

Much as I think we social attitudes have shifted too far towards a culture of ‘the vulnerable’ and ‘the poor’, doing anything with the real dole scum will actually cost us more with little benefit (zero) benefit.

Going back to the social attitudes, being poor shouldn’t be stigmatised, being prepared to live off others and feeling entitled to housing etc. when you’ve never contributed to society (economically) should. There’s a lot of people on low incomes who work very hard, earn little and still don’t make many demands on the state. I’d rather see the minimum wage rise properly so those in work can afford to live, maybe reduce business tax but force up wages?

Anyway it’s conference season and the policies trotted out are getting more transparent, populist and less useful each year.

Thm – do you think that the present regulatory framework, such as it is, could prevent another crash, without the need for another enormous taxpayer bailout? Or we could remove the taxpayer funded life support machine the banking system is presently on? From what I can see, not an awful lot has changed. The banks are all still ‘too big to fail’. And though they’re expected to keep more capital, they still look massively over-leveraged. Yet the culture hasn’t changed one bit, as other than ‘Sir’ Fred having to give his knighthood back, not one person has faced even the slightest sanction

Not to worry though. We can keep blaming the poor, the unemployed and the disabled.