People on benefits..

[Geometer]

99% of it is about chucking fakers (ooohhh my back) onto the dole instead.

I'd like to tell you a story.

Once a week I travel to town for a supervised "job search" session. Back in March, I struck up a conversation with one of my "colleagues"; what he told me left me utterly dumbfounded.

To look at, there's nothing exceptional about this young man; early 20s (I guess), presentable, intelligent, quietly-spoken; you wouldn't give him a second glance if he sat next to you on a bus. On the outside, he looks fit and healthy, but on the inside, it's a different story.

He suffers from a condition called "osteolysis".

I understand this is a rare auto-immune disorder that results in the calcium being leached from his bones - in short, his bones are dissolving inside him. He's in constant pain; every time he moves, the bones in his joints rub against, and abrade, each other. He's permanently dosed up with pain-killers, which make him drowsy and affect his sleep patterns, causing a sort of drug-induced narcolepsy which makes him fall asleep at unpredictable times. He has letters from his GP, his consultant, and his surgeon all saying that he's not fit for work; but it's an invisible disease, and when he goes for his ATOS exam, the examiner takes one look at him and says "you look fit, go and get a job" - for which read "eff off and die, you freeloader", because an early death from renal failure (due to a build up of calcium in his kidneys) is a real possibility he faces.

Like me, once a week he has to make a 30-mile round trip to attend the "job search" sessions. He can claim for the cost of the train journey to get there, but he can't claim the taxi fare for the 3/4 mile journey from the station to the venue, so he has to walk or bus it. He can't get a job, because no-one will employ him (he can't get a CAP placement for the same reasons), so every week he wastes an afternoon of what life is left to him staring at a computer screen (which he could do perfectly well at home, if there was any point) and then goes home again.

This young man has done nothing to deserve being treated like this. He deserves compassion, support and specialised help. With the right sort of help, he might even find a way of making a contribution to society that doesn't compromise his health, but it seems the best this government can offer him is to treat him like a naughty schoolboy, and make his health and stress levels worse by subjecting him to this empty, pointless and painful ritual every week, purely in the name of "deficit reduction". The sheer inhumanity of it beggars belief.

He has a plan, though. He's got some part-time bar work, and he's going to do that until he's ill enough to be hospitalised, just to get some peace and get off the treadmill. I haven't seen him since we talked, so I presume this is what he's doing. I wish him luck.

Are you suggesting he's a faker?

 

[AronSearle]

He has letters from his GP, his consultant, and his surgeon all saying that he's not fit for work; but it's an invisible disease, and when he goes for his ATOS exam, the examiner takes one look at him and says "you look fit, go and get a job

That's not a problem with cuts though is it?

That's the existing system not being applied properly, GP letters are required in medical assessments.

His examiner would be a medical professional as well, So I don't really believe your story here (or you have simplified it or been told it wrong).

And if it really really is true, there is an appeals process.

This is not about the cuts, this is just the nature of the bureaucratic beast.

If you want to blame someone, blame the drones of fakers, they are the ones that force all these hoops to be jumped through to be created.

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.

Can't afford it?

Under the current benefit system, if you have family, that makes moving difficult. it's been shown how families on benefits have the least flexibility to move, particularly as benefits may be locked to the county (housing), very difficult, but not impossible.

If you are a single male, don't really see why you can't. JBA would be enough (barely) to live in some crappy bedsit or hostel, like all those orrible immigrants manage to survive in.

It's not great, I wouldn't want to do it, but it's what people have done for hundreds of years.

 

[Geometer]

This daft **** 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.

I'm sorry, but this is out of order.

I think I can safely say that I have had much closer dealings with museums than you, Aron (I've worked for several over the years), and I know for a fact that many, particularly the smaller local or more specialised museums, could not survive without the support of dedicated volunteers. I've met, and worked with, many people like Ms Reilly, and I know just how hard they work, and how valuable their contribution is. To describe any of them as "selfish, daydreaming, hobbyists" is deeply insulting and, I have to say, deeply ignorant.

Unless, of course, you consider museums to be a frivolous, irrelevant indulgence that our society doesn't need and can't afford. Do you?

I must also point out that volunteering for museums is a well-recognised and long-established route to permanent employment in the field (and is acknowledged and encouraged as such by Job Centres), particularly for young people who may be academically qualified, but who lack the practical experience and, equally importantly, the personal contacts needed to get that work. I believe that description fits Ms Reilly.

Dragging her out of the museum and forcing her to spend four weeks stacking shelves in a supermarket, on the pretext that this gives her valuable "work experience", is a waste of her time, a pointless disruption to her work, and an insult to her intelligence. The only people who could possibly gain from it are the store where she worked, who get 4 weeks free labour; and the Work Programme provider who sent her there, who get paid by the government every time they do this.

If I were in Ms Reilly's shoes, I would be equally aggrieved at such treatment, and I dare say you would too.

 

[AronSearle]

I think I can safely say that I have had much closer dealings with museums than you, Aron (I've worked for several over the years), and I know for a fact that many, particularly the smaller local or more specialised museums, could not survive without the support of dedicated volunteers.

She can volunteer in her spare time.

Unless, of course, you consider museums to be a frivolous, irrelevant indulgence that our society doesn't need and can't afford. Do you?

We can't afford to fund them all publicly, sad but true, some will have to stand on their own feet through private funding/volunteers or fall.

I must also point out that volunteering for museums is a well-recognised and long-established route to permanent employment in the field

She must have known it was a field were work is scarce, and should have made financial plans for it.

If she is living at home, she doesn't likely need JSA, she should rely on family support, family support ethics being eroded by the state.

If not, then she has to find a way to support herself, in-between volunteer work.

I don't see why her "plan" should be to just assume she can not take paid work for possibly years on end, and just expect to be subsidised by JSA.

Millions of people are in jobs they would rather not do, millions of people don't just get to say "oh well, I will volunteer at a job I like until I get offered a paid position".

I know plenty of people that had to do night studies and weekend education/work, whilst holding down a normal job.

It sucked, it was hard, I wouldn't like to do it.

But what makes her so special that others that have done it, have to pay her not to.

To describe any of them as "selfish, daydreaming, hobbyists" is deeply insulting and, I have to say, deeply ignorant.

She wants to follow her dream, and have others pay for it.

An option not available to vast numbers of people, I don't see what makes her so special, she is being selfish and ignorant.

 

[AronSearle]

Dragging her out of the museum and forcing her to spend four weeks stacking shelves in a supermarket, on the pretext that this gives her valuable "work experience", is a waste of her time, a pointless disruption to her work, and an insult to her intelligence

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18627327

The number of new UK graduates working in jobs like cleaning or bar work has almost doubled to 10,000 in five years, according to government statistics.

Morons.

They should all quit there job, and live on JSA.

Or maybe these 10,000 are not as selfish and self entitled as a certain Ms Reilly.

I wonder how many of these 10,000 support their taxes (paid out of their meagre wage) going to fund her JSA, so that she doesn't have to do what they do.

 

[peaps2]

They don't, they rely on their family, or friends, like generations of people before them.

Families / friends are often no longer nuclear. So not an option for many like in days of yore.

Yea......

That's kind of the point, why do you think they are no longer proper families?

Could it be that years and years of a welfare state has destroyed the family unit, just like a number of "evil right wing nuts" said it would.

Damn those evil right wing nuts, clearly the solution is more benevolent lefty state.

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?

 

[AronSearle]

They don't, they rely on their family, or friends, like generations of people before them.

Families / friends are often no longer nuclear. So not an option for many like in days of yore.

Yea......

That's kind of the point, why do you think they are no longer proper families?

Could it be that years and years of a welfare state has destroyed the family unit, just like a number of "evil right wing nuts" said it would.

Damn those evil right wing nuts, clearly the solution is more benevolent lefty state.

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?

Don't try to be clever, you'll cut yourself.

Neither of those comments cancels out the other.

Firstly, those immigrants coming here don't get benefits (inb4 joe-90) until they work, they risk travelling to another country, our youth can't risk travelling to another town?

Secondly my partners company just hired someone from opp north, he was living up there when they interviewed him (come down for the interview, said he was going to move down when he found work).

Now ask yourself how many under 25s live in the same town as their parents but live in another property on HB?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, the good doesn't outweigh the bad with all benefits.

 

[joe-90]

Migrants get benefits straight away if they have children - or claim to be self employed (Big Issue, Busking etc). Wake up Aaron, mate.

 

[peaps2]

They don't, they rely on their family, or friends, like generations of people before them.

Families / friends are often no longer nuclear. So not an option for many like in days of yore.

Yea......

That's kind of the point, why do you think they are no longer proper families?

Could it be that years and years of a welfare state has destroyed the family unit, just like a number of "evil right wing nuts" said it would.

Damn those evil right wing nuts, clearly the solution is more benevolent lefty state.

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?

Don't try to be clever, you'll cut yourself.

Neither of those comments cancels out the other.

Firstly, those immigrants coming here don't get benefits (inb4 joe-90) until they work, they risk travelling to another country, our youth can't risk travelling to another town?

Secondly my partners company just hired someone from opp north, he was living up there when they interviewed him (come down for the interview, said he was going to move down when he found work).

Now ask yourself how many under 25s live in the same town as their parents but live in another property on HB?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, the good doesn't outweigh the bad with all benefits.

Family unit..?