People on benefits..

[AronSearle]

http://www.businessinsider.com/most-taxed-countries-in-the-world-2011-4#

Interesting link, but........

From your link "OECD data on statutory income tax rates. These taxes may not include local taxes, municipal taxes, city taxes, or VAT. They are, as stated, statutory income tax rates."

This is quite important.

Once you start including council tax, fuel, vat etc..........

 

[subman101]

This is quite important.

Once you start including council tax, fuel, vat etc..........

So why don't you do the research then?

 

[AronSearle]

Life history

Interesting, but you don't explain why you can't find menial low paid work, warehouse, tesco, etc.?

Are you saying you genuinely can't find such work?

I can't help but ponder over the inability of some posters on here to empathise with those who, through no real fault of their own, are stuck between a rock and a hard place. It shows a lack of imagination.

One cannot but wonder about how quickly their attitudes would change if they found themselves in your position, Geometer. Your longstanding profession involved measuring the world's past, theirs involves measuring their navel.

Who says I am not sympathetic?

But sympathy works two ways.

Whilst I am sympathetic for his position, I also sympathise with the millions of people working in menial jobs, McDonald, tesco, cleaners, warehouse packers.

All of who work and pay tax, so that others can live on benefits.

My girlfriend is highly educated and very intelligent, but when she needed money she went straight into shop work, not the benefits office.

 

[Geometer]

Interesting, but you don't explain why you can't find menial low paid work, warehouse, tesco, etc.?

Are you saying you genuinely can't find such work?

Yup.

I thought I'd answered this in my post on page 11. The key sentence being "The locals have pretty much got the job market sewn up".

It's not a big town, where I live, and everybody knows everybody else. It's been hit by the recession, just like everywhere else, and several shops on the High Street have closed in the two years or so that I've been here. It's a seaside town so there's seasonal work, but I suspect any vacancies get filled long before they reach the Job Centre. None of the supermarkets are recruiting.

I'm not proud, I've done "menial" work in the past. I've done temp work in supermarkets and as a kitchen assistant, and I once worked for a year picking up litter as "Temporary Parks Assistant", but in a place like this, it's not "what you'll do", its "who you know".

 

[subman101]

You have answered it already quite unequivocally. Unfortunately Searle seems incapable of realising that

 

[joe-90]

My girlfriend is highly educated and very intelligent, but when she needed money she went straight into shop work, not the benefits office.

My daughter too (1:1). She worked in a hotel to save money to travel Indochina (she's there now). When she started in the hotel half the workers were Brits - now they are all Poles - apart from the manager who is Indian.

If she hadn't been intelligent and educated she wouldn't have got the job. There is no work for ordinary people though.

 

[big-all]

what a lot off people dont realise is say sainsburys advertise 2000 jobs there will be no where near that around say 25 will be full time [mainly management] with say 500 full time contracts with variable hours and another group with no hours contract at there beck and call but no gteed hours

which would condence down to the equivilent off say 600 jobs of 35-40 hours

i am quite sure a lot off jobs are phantom to get you to join an agency usually at a fee but are still counted

 

[Geometer]

Geometer, your age alone is enough to deter any employer. .

How right you are...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...n-sees-older-workers-rejected-from-jobs.html#

My apologies for taking so long to get back to this thread. I've had a busy few weeks, and I've got two job applications to get out this weekend, so I'm not returning to it just yet, but I just wanted to say that I don't consider Aron Searle to be particularly "unsympathetic". He's asking some challenging questions, yes, but they're legitimate questions, and I don't mind being challenged.

I intend to answer them when I've got some free time. My placement finishes in a couple of weeks, and I believe I'll have a couple of months free before I'm sent on another scheme, so I'll address the issues he's raised then.

In the meantime, members may be interested in this bit of news:
http://www.publicinterestlawyers.co.uk/news_details.php?id=260
and I'd be interested in your opinions.

 

[joinerjohn]

Sounds just like the Youth Opportunities Scheme of the early 80's.(except it applies to every unemployed person) My employer at that time took full advantage of the YOPS scheme for almost 2 yrs. Eventually they were forced to give someone the opportunity of a full time job. The lad they chose was probably the worst one the company had every had on the scheme, and he turned down the job offer saying he'd rather work 60 hrs a week cleaning out pig sty's than be employed by them.

 

[Nige F]

.. plus the government might be able to put the mass gathering of people to good use?

Just be a Mass debate . I`m not reading 14 pages of vitriol to see if someone`s already said that

 

[Nige F]

In the meantime, members may be interested in this bit of news:
http://www.publicinterestlawyers.co.uk/news_details.php?id=260
and I'd be interested in your opinions.

Good for them - shame the disabled couldn`t get the same lawyers to challenge the benifit cuts - Maybe it was because they WERE disabled , tired and unable perhaps More Victorian Values from the Tories

 

[AronSearle]

It's not a big town, where I live

If immigrants can move hundreds or thousands of miles to live and work in the UK, why can't english people move a few dozen miles to find work where work exists?

There must be hundreds of small towns across the UK that suffer from lack of employment, they are either holiday resorts (so seasonal low paid limited work), not near any major ports or distribution areas. Maybe traditionally they were farming towns, but so much farming has become centralized and mechanized.

People have been moving away from such places to the cities for hundreds or more years, now they stay and live on benefits, can't really blame them though.

Large cities are a bit different, it's expected that all the money the government takes in is used to renovate these areas with new links and ports and such(but the government always fails to do so, as it can never stop taking in more and more tax, the big killer of business).

But the government can't be expected to inject cash into all the hundreds of little villages, and I can't see them turning around on their own.

shame the disabled couldn`t get the same lawyers to challenge the benifit cuts - Maybe it was because they WERE disabled icon_eek.gif , tired and unable perhaps icon_question.gif More Victorian Values from the Tories icon_rolleyes.gif

Can you provide a link please showing the benefit cuts to the disabled.

I also find it interesting that you want to pay someone to practice their hobby, as opposed to working for a living.

 

[Nige F]

[Can you provide a link please showing the benefit cuts to the disabled. ... Google disabled benefit cuts

I also find it interesting that you want to pay someone to practice their hobby, as opposed to working for a living.

It`s called retirement

 

[AronSearle]

Google disabled benefit cuts

= millions of pages of nashing of teeth about how the Tories will slash benefits.

No results found for actual benefit cuts to the disabled, it's all talk and 99% of it is about chucking fakers (ooohhh my back) onto the dole instead.

Seeing as you clearly know about them, why not provide the links?

It`s called retirement

Generally people who have retired have worked (and paid into the system).

This daft bitch you linked to wants to work in a hobby museum that can't pay her, plenty of people run/fund museums off their own back in their spare time. Plenty of people would love to do all sorts of work, but know it doesn't actually pay, and so get a real job and stop daydreaming.

She's a selfish little madam who thinks the world owes her a favour.

 

[Geometer]

It's not a big town, where I live

If immigrants can move hundreds or thousands of miles to live and work in the UK, why can't english people move a few dozen miles to find work where work exists?

.

Is that a rhetorical question or are you asking me why I don't move? If the latter, I think I answered it earlier - I can't afford to.