The benefits class

[Username1]

Ok here goes....

 

Having recently been job hunting due to being off uni for the summer hols I can honestly say that it is soooooo depressing. I have spent an age in the job centre trawling through a whole host of minimum wage jobs. I rang the jobs I had found and got through to answer machines or was told "the person you need to speak to isn't here, I'll get them to call you back" they never did. One job I found wanted £75 from me to deliver leaflets? I had to laugh I mean if I had money I wouldn't be looking for a bl00dy job!

 

Luckily for me I have some qualifications and have been able to register with some temping agencies (although they still haven't found me owt!), but I can't imagine what it would be like if I didn't have any qualifications . The job centre literally sucks the life out of you.

 

I know it must be annoying for people who work and want to do a course to see people getting them for free but it is SO important that people learn new skills and get educated otherwise they wont ever get out of the rut they are in.

 

I am kind if in the middle of this debate really. I see that there are some who do seem to making a living from the welfare system, although I have to take my hat off to them because I couldn't do it and then there are some who genuinely need a leg up and a helping hand.

 

I just think to myself that I am very fortunate that I have an education and I have choices in life. People on benefits live day to day and really what life choices do they have? How is their life going to ever improve whilst they are on benefits? When you earn your own living you are so much better off, maybe not always in a financial sense but in every other way.

[Mathom]

so obviously you haven't really read my posts.

 

as the JC doesn't open at nights, it's unlikely that those recieving free evening classes would ever be sent fo in the evening.

and can you seperate TRAINING from EDUCATION. a training course is exactly that training to do something, further education is simply education it could just be to experience the subject but it's still free for benefit recipients.

 

Yes we know that - but isn't being sent for jobs all part of what JobCentres do? And some jobs happen to be at night? It doesn't matter to the JobCentre that this person will be able to get a decent job maybe paying twice as much if they finish their course - they just want them off the books to satisfy the figures for the short-termist tub-thumpers like the Daily Heil - no matter if they're pushed into a dead end job which will mean them remaining on 'shadow benefits' like WFTC and will be back on the dole in 6 months! No matter that the costs of that training may as well have been flushed straight down the bog! So long as Brigadier Huffnpuff in Tunbridge Wells doesn't have another coronary over his morning paper it's OK...

 

You also do not know how difficult it is to get reluctant, frightened people into learning. 'Taster' sessions are a common method used to entice those in desperate need of an education back into the classroom. Training and education are all part of the same thing. How do you get someone who has no clue what their abilities are to train in something specific until you have taught them how to think???

[StarSparkle]

Ok here goes....

 

Having recently been job hunting due to being off uni for the summer hols I can honestly say that it is soooooo depressing. I have spent an age in the job centre trawling through a whole host of minimum wage jobs. I rang the jobs I had found and got through to answer machines or was told "the person you need to speak to isn't here, I'll get them to call you back" they never did. One job I found wanted £75 from me to deliver leaflets? I had to laugh I mean if I had money I wouldn't be looking for a bl00dy job!

 

Luckily for me I have some qualifications and have been able to register with some temping agencies (although they still haven't found me owt!), but I can't imagine what it would be like if I didn't have any qualifications . The job centre literally sucks the life out of you.

 

I know it must be annoying for people who work and want to do a course to see people getting them for free but it is SO important that people learn new skills and get educated otherwise they wont ever get out of the rut they are in.

 

I am kind if in the middle of this debate really. I see that there are some who do seem to making a living from the welfare system, although I have to take my hat off to them because I couldn't do it and then there are some who genuinely need a leg up and a helping hand.

 

I just think to myself that I am very fortunate that I have an education and I have choices in life. People on benefits live day to day and really what life choices do they have? How is their life going to ever improve whilst they are on benefits? When you earn your own living you are so much better off, maybe not always in a financial sense but in every other way.

 

Excellent post, Username1 - welcome to Sheffield Forum!

 

StarSparkle

[BorderReiver]

Perhaps the term "working class" can be consigned to the dustbin, to be replaced by a new group, the benefits class.

 

Six million Britons are living in households where nobody works - costing the taxpayer almost £13 billion a year in benefits alone, a spending watchdog report reveals today.

 

An astonishing one in six households across the country are officially classified as 'workless' - having adults of working age but none with a job - and almost 1.8 million children are now growing up in these homes.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=469369&in_page_id=1770&ito=1490

 

And every one a Labour voter, bought and paid for with taxpayer's money

[Bago]

May I add that, there is also a disparity between cities and the type of jobs on offer too. So sometimes it is a case of being in the right time, right place.

[CockneyMafia]

By that logic, such folk as Sir Alan Sugar or Bill Gates or errr....Me!....and...You!...... should also be told when, where and how to spend their money as that too comes from the mythical 'working mans pocket' as the 'working mans pocket', and indeed, the 'loser dossing around the house's pocket as funnily enough they also pay for goods and services. Or did you think the Money Fairies popped the cash into our bank accounts?

 

It matters fig all where the money comes from - nobody has any right to say what it is spent on. You only think that way because of snobbery.

 

Have you just finished reading a Friedrich Engels thesis?

 

I admire your altruism though. Why don’t you set up a standing order each month payable to the dregs of humanity, so they can gorge directly at your expense, not mine?

 

If not wanting to hand out money to workshy layabouts makes me a snob, then I am most definitely a snob.

[Mathom]

Have you just finished reading a Friedrich Engels thesis?

 

I admire your altruism though. Why don’t you set up a standing order each month payable to the dregs of humanity, so they can gorge directly at your expense, not mine?

 

If not wanting to hand out money to workshy layabouts makes me a snob, then I am most definitely a snob.

 

I've already got one - it's called tax

 

But the thing with this tax business is that if I lost my job then it means there'd be help for me, and help for you, too. Nobody must prove their 'moral fibre' to claim it, it's yours if you need it. It stops kids from starving and begging on the streets, prostituting themselves before puberty like they have to in places like Bogota or Sao Paulo, and that's a Good Thing.

 

Just remember you are only one person's merest whim or fancy away from being a workshy layabout yourself - never fool yourself that your work is indispensible - plenty of folk have done that and weeks later have found themselves contemplating their navels. To some employers, if the choice is between your services and the leather seats in the new Jag, then the leather seats will win out every time.

[Bago]

I've already got one - it's called tax

 

But the thing with this tax business is that if I lost my job then it means there'd be help for me, and help for you, too. Nobody must prove their 'moral fibre' to claim it, it's yours if you need it. It stops kids from starving and begging on the streets, prostituting themselves before puberty like they have to in places like Bogota or Sao Paulo, and that's a Good Thing.

 

Just remember you are only one person's merest whim or fancy away from being a workshy layabout yourself - never fool yourself that your work is indispensible - plenty of folk have done that and weeks later have found themselves contemplating their navels. To some employers, if the choice is between your services and the leather seats in the new Jag, then the leather seats will win out every time.

I would have believed that some people are indispensable, if you told me this when I first started my career as a young pleb. Yet, knowing that companies can't even save themselves never mind their employees, just makes me think that nobody is indispensable.

 

I remember meeting a lot of people who are so qualified but kind of slipped through the system and were homeless on the street of London. Some were Doctorates. Some were War Veterans. Some were divorcees. It is so strange to see stereotypes being shattered to realise how the world really is. I bet newspapers don't record and report such people, and how the breadline is quite thin from those who can eat, and those who can't eat. Once you get into a depressive state, it is harder to climb back up.

[SUPERTYKE]

My username was chosen carefully, as for the benefits class, maybe pride was too strong a word, but there is a generation who feel that benefits are their entitlement, and do make it a career, seeing how much they can claim is their version of a promotion.

 

I have never critisised those in genuine need of the safety net of benefits, which would be obvious if you were to read my earlier posts.

 

My neighbours are unemployed, 2 kids another on the way, and no prospects of ever working.

 

I understood that 'contrite' means to be 'feeling remorse or penitence; having affectation of guilt'. It is possibly an apt name come to think, for you really should be affected by guilt.

 

At least you admit that saying the unemployed are 'proud' of their circumstances is 'too strong' - how big of you.

Typically though, you go on to show your true colours, by accusing a whole GENERATION of making signing on a 'carreer'.

 

Your neighbours really do have problems don't they? But how fascinating - you can predict their future too. Pity you can't predict your own future - you never know, you might be signing on yourself one day.

 

 

I'd be interested to know how you distinguish between those who are genuinely and through no fault of their own, out of work and the rest.

[StarSparkle]

I would have believed that some people are indispensable, if you told me this when I first started my career as a young pleb. Yet, knowing that companies can't even save themselves never mind their employees, just makes me think that nobody is indispensable.

 

I remember meeting a lot of people who are so qualified but kind of slipped through the system and were homeless on the street of London. Some were Doctorates. Some were War Veterans. Some were divorcees. It is so strange to see stereotypes being shattered to realise how the world really is. I bet newspapers don't record and report such people, and how the breadline is quite thin from those who can eat, and those who can't eat. Once you get into a depressive state, it is harder to climb back up.

 

The Establishment and the media don't want people to think like this, to know that in the blink of an eye it could be them on the streets. The truth is, it can be a VERY quick descent from being a financially reasonably-ok, working person to a person who's lost their job, and hence their home, possibly their marriage as well, and who literally has nowhere to go.

 

The fact is, it can happen to anyone, however well-qualified or experienced they are. People shouldn't kid themselves, everyone is dispensable to the world of work.

 

The media encourages us to think the 'benefit scroungers' are a separate class, a class of people to which we'll never belong. Until we get ill, or have a run of bad luck, that is of course. But as long as it can be presented as a 'Them and Us' situation, your average working person won't give a monkeys about people on benefits - until it's them who's suddenly reliant on benefits, but by then no-one gives a monkeys about them or their opinion.

 

There but for the grace of God...

 

StarSparkle