mossdog Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 The Boss of Big Issue John Bird has heavily lambasted the welfare system in todays BBCs television news and also the Guardian,where he says lots of welfare claimants are being kept in poverty because of the socially engineered system,where people stop on benefits for years without any form of payback to society for their help! His answer is to make people earn their benefits instead of doing nothing in return for them.There might suddenly be a lot less claimants if people have to work for their support! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben_H Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 I've thought this for a while, that if people are on unemployment benifits, then they are obviously fit to work and should do. Could be anything really, comunity gardening, Litter picking, city ambassadors and any different seasonal work thats needed as well. It would give people a sence of purpose and probably would windle out thoses that are just living of hand outs. There would be teething problems (there is with anything new in govenment) but in the long run, I think it would be a massive boost to a society that is slipping down the drain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyofborg Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 There might suddenly be a lot less claimants if people have to work for their support! why? how would they live, if they stopped claiming? what would the claimants do? there are very few things that they could do without starting to force employees out of a job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyofborg Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 I've thought this for a while, that if people are on unemployment benifits, then they are obviously fit to work and should do. Could be anything really, comunity gardening, Litter picking, city ambassadors and any different seasonal work thats needed as well. but then what's to stop the employed city ambassadors being replaced with, presumably cheaper, unemployed people? on the other hand, if unemployed people are doing the same work as an employed person why shouldn't they just be employed and paid properly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben_H Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 why? how would they live, if they stopped claiming? what would the claimants do? there are very few things that they could do without starting to force employees out of a job. I think the point being made here is that it would start to find the people that are just playing the system and never have any intention of getting a job even if they can, not the ones who are trying to get one. but then what's to stop the employed city ambassadors being replaced with, presumably cheaper, unemployed people? on the other hand, if unemployed people are doing the same work as an employed person why shouldn't they just be employed and paid properly? At the moment, there is obviously a lot of extra work the council need to do and there funds are tight so can't employ extra bodies to help get the jobs done. The people in the full time payed jobs would have to be protected, I agree 100% with that otherwise it's a pointless thing to do. But if suddenly, the council got an extra 100 / 200 people to help maintain the city centre, improve roads etc, that would massivly improve the ity we live in. Once the economy starts to pick up, then these people whould have relevant work experience to get new paid jobs. I agree, it would need sorting properly so that the current employed people are not done over and that councils etc didn't use it to stop employing extra staff when they are needed as that is needed to take the economy forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kthebean Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 I've thought this for a while, that if people are on unemployment benifits, then they are obviously fit to work and should do. Could be anything really, comunity gardening, Litter picking, city ambassadors and any different seasonal work thats needed as well. It would give people a sence of purpose and probably would windle out thoses that are just living of hand outs. There would be teething problems (there is with anything new in govenment) but in the long run, I think it would be a massive boost to a society that is slipping down the drain. I would love to see this kind of scheme in practice. I think on the face of it its a brilliant idea but the 'teething problems' are massive. Even managing volunteers takes a lot of time and effort and they want to do the work. I cant even begin to imagine managing a team of depressed or demotivated jobseekers mixed with feckless wonders... Imagine you head a team of 'jobseekers' that are doing community gardening - litter picking and weeding the hedgerows for example. One of them rings in sick - "I fell over last night and hurt my back". What do you do? "No work no benefits" may be a good idea but a lot of time and effort has to go into making sure that if someone genuinely has a reason for not doing it then their family does not starve. Say on the other side of the fence - you work all your life in a manufacturing job making car parts, then you are made redundant and your job is shipped to China. You go on the dole but literally cannot find a job for a year - all your former colleagues are looking for work at the same time as you. So you are sent to litterpick. How do you go from litterpicking on the dole to a better job if there are no jobs, and your most recent item on your CV is 'litter picked for no money because I had to'? Believe me I am not saying its a bad idea - like I say I would love to see something like this in practice. I just think those calling for it need to go beyond the rabble rousing to provide some concrete policy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben_H Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 Kthebean, I hear everything you are saying. I worked as a manger in a call cnetre for 9 years at different levels of management and we had a massive issue with Sickness. We put in place where the number of days and occations of absence was tracked and after so many, the employee lost their right to sick pay for a certan number of months. Our sickness levels were reduced massivily very quickly. Some of the workers you get in door of call centres now, are only there because they have been told to go by the job centre and you face very similar problems with them as you would with people on the dole (lack of willing etc). I would like to add at this point before I get linched, that I also came accross some brilliant people in call centres and I am not for a second taring everyone with the same brush as the people mentioned above. The sickness policy could work in a similar way as if you didn't turn up, they could be docked etc. Regarding your second point, The scheme could be extended to incorporate a retraining scheme so if an entire industry is removed from the area, as long as people attended college / uni ect they would still get benifits. Also, if people were going for interviews, that would take priority. I'm not saying I have all the answers, I don't. But with some thought from the people in power at both a local and national level, it could work. I'd quite happly give my time to get such a project off the ground, but until people in power start the ball rolling, there isn't much more we can do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.A.N.D Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 well get ready for a very very very very big surge in crime just hope you all feel safe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mossdog Posted June 21, 2010 Author Share Posted June 21, 2010 well get ready for a very very very very big surge in crime just hope you all feel safe.And why do we need to get ready for a V V V Very big surge in crime,is that what Britain has sunk to..........If I can,t get benefits,I'll take up burgling!..........bearing in mind that the vast majority of the "goods extraction community" are probably already on benefits of some sort! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funky_Gibbon Posted June 21, 2010 Share Posted June 21, 2010 And why do we need to get ready for a V V V Very big surge in crime,is that what Britain has sunk to..........If I can,t get benefits,I'll take up burgling! It's funny the things people will do to put food in their mouths and keep roofs over their head. Increased poverty = increased crime. It's got nothing to do with Britain. It's human nature. Heard the Big Issues boss going on about this this morning. It's easy to say that people should work for their benefits but he didn't say what that work would be or where it would come from, nor how the ones who do want a real job are supposed to find one whilst their doing a 40 hour-a-week shift to access benefits they're entitled to, nor how employed people would be affected by a sudden influx of several million people presumable doing similar unskilled work to low-paid workers but for free. Sounds like a call for the return of workhouses, which as the historian Simon Fowler put it were "largely designed for a pool of able-bodied idlers and shirkers ... However this group hardly existed outside the imagination of a generation of political economists". No change there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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