No one in our house works?

[silentstriker]

What the hell?


How is this possible? She is in her forties and has never had a job?

[cover drive man]

We have loads of people like that here. Laziness, lack of initiative, and generally not motivated.

[cover drive man]

People need to learn that " Work" In the sense of doing something backbreaking for someone who gets 10 times as much and does 10 times as little isn't the only way to make money, be your own boss I say.

[PhoenixFire]

It's the problem with the ****ed up benefit system and the vast quantity of lazy people.

[sledger]

People need to learn that " Work" In the sense of doing something backbreaking for someone who gets 10 times as much and does 10 times as little isn't the only way to make money, be your own bass I say.

[cover drive man]

Haha, love those fish things.

[Goughy]

What the hell?


How is this possible? She is in her forties and has never had a job?

As someone that as lived in both the USA and UK, the British attitude on topics like this is impossible to explain in a way that is understood to an American.

[Matteh]

Have a 'friend' that's 23 and has never had a job. Did give him the 'sort your life out ffs' talk, his response was along the lines of 'oh but i sent out like 30 applications for stuff and got rejected for them all'.

Aside from the fact he's got a seriously dire attitude in general, the longer he goes without working, the harder it'll be to get anything other than binman due to people looking at an empty CV bar an English degree and thinking naah, would rather have the one with no qualifications but worked in Somerfield for years.

[BoyBrumby]

As someone who works in the provision of benefits I can confirm that the case study SS linked to is not that uncommon. Unfortunately one of the by-products of universal welfare provision is the quote-unquote "professional" claimant.

As a good liberal until I started working in a Job Centre I found it hard to believe people would seriously get themselves pregnant for the easy ride a bin-lid gives them, but it's unfortunately one of the Daily Mail stereotypes that is all too true: leave school with no qualifications, sign on for a few months, get impregnated by some spotty little skag-head & move into the flat provided by the local authority a few months later.

HM Govt is currently trying to get more single mothers looking for work (previously any single parent with a child under 16 was exempt from job seeking, this had now been reduced to 12 and will ultimately become 7), but it's lip service. We don't have the staff to make it stick and, with the collapse of the western financial system as we know it, things are going to get a sight worse over the next 12 months. Just to give you an idea of how dire things are, since september our signing-on register has gone up from about 520 to just over 700. That's an increase of over a third in three months.

[PhoenixFire]

Forgive me Brumby, this must sound a bit insensitive, but..

What the hell is a clearly very intelligent bloke like you doing working in a benefits office or whatever??

[silentstriker]

I would hate to wish misfortune on anyone, but the welfare system should not be designed for people like this. It should help working people, or those actively looking for work, or if you are somehow disabled. If you can work, and choose not to, it seems ludicrous to get paid anything. I don't understand this at all. You can't just subsidize people who can work but choose not to!

Let me get this straight, she wanted to work, but never got around to looking for a job. She wanted to join the army, but never got around to the recruitment office. I bet she got around to filling out welfare forms though.

Now, my family owns a business in the US, and believe me, we get deadbeats just living off the government too, but I don't think it's this bad!

[silentstriker]

I don't think that level of subsidy is sustainable in the long term.

[BoyBrumby]

Forgive me Brumby, this must sound a bit insensitive, but..

What the hell is a clearly very intelligent bloke like you doing working in a benefits office or whatever??

Indolence, basically. It's a fairly cushy job (has its moments, but I'm a large bloke so don't get much grief) and it's literally ten minutes walk from my front door.

Keep thinking about changing, but honestly doubt I'll find something as convenient and such a doss.

[BoyBrumby]

I would hate to wish misfortune on anyone, but the welfare system should not be designed for people like this. It should help working people, or those actively looking for work, or if you are somehow disabled. If you can work, and choose not to, it seems ludicrous to get paid anything. I don't understand this at all. You can't just subsidize people who can work but choose not to!

Let me get this straight, she wanted to work, but never got around to looking for a job. She wanted to join the army, but never got around to the recruitment office. I bet she got around to filling out welfare forms though.

Now, my family owns a business in the US, and believe me, we get deadbeats just living off the government too, but I don't think it's this bad!

The philosophy behind it is not visiting the sins of the parents on the children. The idea is to provide a decent standard of living for children even in the poorest households.

As I mentioned in my first post tho, this unfortunately has the knock-on effect of children themselves becoming desireable for the work-shy. An 18 year old girl with a sprog will get more money and a much easier ride from the social than one without.

This, of course, becomes a cycle of abuse: children grow up in an environmnent where no-one works and work isn't valued, so very probably end up going down the same route.

If we were given carte blanche we could get about 95% of these ****ers back to work, but the civil liberties and human rights brigade would have a field day, so we're largely stuck with it.

[Goughy]

The philosophy behind it is not visiting the sins of the parents on the children. The idea is to provide a decent standard of living for children even in the poorest households.

One of my sisters (a Cambridge Grad, ex-Home Office Whitehall civil servant and now a very well paid employee of a top accountancy firm) believes that people that dont want to work should be paid not to work in order to provide a decent standard of living for their children. She would pay extra tax to pay for this 'child protection'

Its absolute madness of course but that line of thinking is quite strong in upper-level British educated liberal elite.

Apart from the economic consequences, the fairness issues and the tax burden falling massively on the productive members of society, rather than protect the children it actually teaches them all the wrong lessons about life.