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What do you make of them? Personally, cautiously, I think they sound quite sensible.
Have listed the main points below (taken from the BBC)
Hi 1984 ,
Sounds fair to me , if i end up unemployed and the state pays for my food and lodgings i think its only right i repay it back some how . And if by doing that i end up with a job then all well and good . I think it will be a big shock to some people that have been unemployed for a long time , but i think it will do them good .
My only worry is that at the moment councils are trying to save money , i hope they dont use this to lay off council workers and replace them with unemployed work force . As long as no one losses their job , so some council can make a quick saving then its all good .
Regards
Mungo
i thought it was benefit cuts for 3 years if you turn down 3 job offers?
i just hope it targets all the right people and not the wrong people, like single, hard working mothers. also, they should enforce the drug testing if you want your benefits too, it really angers me that some people spend taxpayer’s money on drugs, buy them in your own money, i don’t care. and maybe tokens should be given out instead of money, so people actually spend the money they’re given on the right things. but i know that no solution is ideal, we just have to settle which acts in favour of the majority.
and lower university fees >:/ it’s not right that it could cost my parents up to 62k+ if i get onto the course i want to do. it’s not really about benefits but it makes me mad.
@harr!et 406086 wrote:
i thought it was benefit cuts for 3 years if you turn down 3 job offers?
good point, the BBC bit I nicked it from must not be up to day I will change it
@harr!et 406086 wrote:
people spend taxpayer’s money on drugs, buy them in your own money, i don’t care. and maybe tokens should be given out instead of money, so people actually spend the money they’re given on the right things. but i know that no solution is ideal, we just have to settle which acts in favour of the majority.
and lower university fees >:/ it’s not right that it could cost my parents up to 62k+ if i get onto the course i want to do. it’s not really about benefits but it makes me mad.
are people on benefits not entitled to spend their money how they chose though? Personally I find the government telling people how to spend their money a bit scary, the token system you suggest even more. And who chooses the “right things”? why do people on benefits need to be punished?
totally agree with the university side, it runs a real risk of creating a class divide.
Haven’t read through it all yet, but I do think that the benefits system is currently a bit of a joke (speaking as someone who was on JSA for several months last year when I was looking for work). My main gripe with it is that it’s too much of a “one-size-fits-all” system, designed around the typical job-hunter (whatever that may mean), subject to too much centralised control and red tape.
For example, trying to communicate to the person at the job centre that there’s not much point looking in the newspaper for jobs for sound engineers was like talking to a wall. On a couple of occasions I had to go down to London and miss a sign-on day (once to do some voluntary work on a film set, once because I travelled down there to knock on doors, talk to people and blag a job (which resulted in me getting a job at Abbey Road the next week – wouldn’t have found that in a newspaper)). Anyway, missing a signing on because I was out doing something pro-active to find work resulted in my benefits being terminated, as I couldn’t supply a tax reference for the people I was working for (“but they’re just a group of mates making a film, and I’m not being paid – they’re not a business!”).
I found that if I wanted to stay on benefits, the simplest thing for me to do would be to sit on my arse at home all day, pop in every couple of weeks, make up some shit about looking in 3 different newspapers and not raise any alarm with the woman on the desk by saying anything out of the ordinary.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the idea of benefits in any way; it’s a vital safety net to support those with no income, and also supports people who are struggling to find a suitable job (so we don’t get loads of science graduates ending up as binmen and costing the public money in wasted uni funding). And I’m happy to pay taxes towards funding a system that will be there to support me if I ever need it again.
But so many times, its a case of “computer says no”, because some bureaucrat with no idea about my individual case is sifting through hundreds of forms and flagging up all those that don’t tick the right boxes.
IMO the benefits system could be made much more effective by giving job centre staff more individual decision-making power, instead of the power to hand out various over-complicated forms to claimants. This would also help reduce fraud (if you’ve ever been to a job centre, you can tell that half the people in there are taking the piss, and if you work there, it must be immediately obvious who the fraudsters are, and very frustrating). It just seems like the staff have their hands tied on a lot of things.
So if the new proposals are going to give individual case-workers more clout then I think it can only be a good thing. However, if consolidating all the various benefits payments into one department is just going to create more centralised control and red tape then it seems like a waste of time (even if it will save money on the balance sheet – cheaper is not necessarily more effective, and an ineffective benefits system could end up costing the country more in knock-on, secondary effects).
Just my two cents anyway, I should probably have read all the proposals before going on that massive rant!
@1984 406089 wrote:
are people on benefits not entitled to spend their money how they chose though? Personally I find the government telling people how to spend their money a bit scary, the token system you suggest even more. And who chooses the “right things”? why do people on benefits need to be punished?
totally agree with the university side, it runs a real risk of creating a class divide.
ohh no, spend your money how you like, you earnt it. but if you’re on benefits cos you can’t be fucked to work, the taxpayer gives you money to spend on putting dinner on your family’s table and a roof over their head. i know so many children who go without because their parents are out buying drugs with the money they’re given to look after their children. of course, if you work for your money, then spend it how you like.
@harr!et 406093 wrote:
ohh no, spend your money how you like, you earnt it. but if you’re on benefits cos you can’t be fucked to work, the taxpayer gives you money to spend on putting dinner on your family’s table and a roof over their head. i know so many children who go without because their parents are out buying drugs with the money they’re given to look after their children. of course, if you work for your money, then spend it how you like.
but if the government gives you money, it is your money. Althought I dont condone people who neglect their children due to drug problems but that seems like a different issue to me really.
Its just that the money given isnt just for a house and food its also meant to be enough to give you some kind of attempt at pleasure. If people get that pleasure from a joint rather than going to the cinema who are we to judge. I think it would be very unethical to say that people on benefits dont deserve to spend a few quid on themselves once and a while.
just my perspective though
@cheeseweasel 406091 wrote:
“one-size-fits-all” system, designed around the typical job-hunter (whatever that may mean), subject to too much centralised control and red tape.
judging from how ignorant and incompetent the job centre staff are giving them more power could be a bit scary. From my (limited) experance they dont even understand the system they are administering. Having one benefit rather than many different ones might well help this though.
@1984 406074 wrote:
What do you make of them? Personally, cautiously, I think they sound quite sensible.
Have listed the main points below (taken from the BBC)
- Replaces working tax credit, child tax credit, housing benefit, income support, jobseekers’ allowance and income related allowances
- Low paid workers to keep more of what they earn
- Benefits cut for three months if job offers refused
- People can move in and out of work without losing benefit
- Starts for new claimants in 2013
- Will take up to 10 years to come fully into effect
- 3 strike rule for people refusing to go attend interviews/take offered work/not attending the job centre appointments
- £2.1bn start up costs
- Meant to save money in the long run through reducing fraud and error
I’m all for stamping out benefit fraud and streamlining organizational efficiency, but think there’s also a danger with Cameron in disproportionately passing the buck to the benefit classes for current difficulties and characterizing them all as spongers, when quite alot -and maybe most- of these are just people down on their luck.
@1984 406097 wrote:
judging from how ignorant and incompetent the job centre staff are giving them more power could be a bit scary. From my (limited) experance they dont even understand the system they are administering. Having one benefit rather than many different ones might well help this though.
I can’t really blame the staff for not understanding the system. As a job-seeker I had a job to fill in the forms at the job centre, and I was more educated than most of the other job-seekers there.
That’s the problem, the system is just too big and over-complicated.
And yeah, if we were to give job centre staff more responsibility they would need some extra training and they would need to be assessed to check whether they could do their jobs well enough, but it’s the principle of having the important decisions made at a low-level and on a case-by-case basis that I’m suggesting.
@1984 406097 wrote:
judging from how ignorant and incompetent the job centre staff are giving them more power could be a bit scary. From my (limited) experance they dont even understand the system they are administering. Having one benefit rather than many different ones might well help this though.
Not to mention all the training agencies that administer various job centre training schemes that are about as useful as a handbrake as a canoe, there some big waste of money here and a culture of box ticking and going through the motions. Really like giving money to charity and it all being swallowed up in admin and not getting though to people who really need it..
to save money? there spending £2.1 billion. thats not saving money. i know the old saying spend money to make money, but this is retarded.
that money could be used else where, im not saying those on JSA aren’t worth the money, i was on JSA for like 2 years! But, 10 years to come in to effect? thats a rather long time, by then the condem nation could be gone from existance, new labour back in (F.S.M. forbid).
@cheeseweasel 406102 wrote:
I can’t really blame the staff for not understanding the system.
agreed, over worked and the system is too complex
@PhilKmorgan 406103 wrote:
Not to mention all the training agencies that administer various job centre training schemes that are about as useful as a handbrake as a canoe, there some big waste of money here and a culture of box ticking and going through the motions. Really like giving money to charity and it all being swallowed up in admin and not getting though to people who really need it..
herd a few people say this about some of the courses.
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