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Tories and unemployment benefits
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Edited Aug 18, 2008, 14:37
Re: Tories and unemployment benefits
Aug 18, 2008, 14:35
pooley wrote:
I must admit, I wasn't interested enough to look it up! but am glad that you did....

I think, and this may not be popular, that if you are on benefits for a long time - and are not a full time parent, disabled, whatever - then it is only right to put something back into the community.
It doesn't have to be a degrading job. Volunteer work - with OAP's, Children, Drug dependents, homeless are all worthwhile. As are sports programs for hard up children, counselling, samaritans - fuck the list is pretty much endless.
Get out there, help out, put down the PSP!!!!


I suspect our positions on this issue are actually so far apart as to make a middle-ground very difficult to find. But I don't disagree with much of what you just said there. So at least we can agree that "encouraging people to take a more active role in their community, rather than sitting at home playing video games" is a good thing.

The thing is. That's actually not what will actually happen if that gets run through the government mangle. And I assume we can, realistically, both agree on that too?

What will happen once this idea is implemented by New Labour or the Tories is that people will have their benefits withheld (essentially threatened with hunger and homelessness) if they don't submit to a regime of mind-numbing menial jobs.

This isn't a return to some bygone age of full employment where the few who were 'between jobs' helped out at the local OAP home or sports club. This is a million-strong army of below-minimum-wage labour entering the market under compulsion. It is a cast-iron guarantee that this will significantly lower the standard of living of those who are currently earning minimum wage for doing mind-numbing menial jobs.

Why? Because private contractors will be given the job of running the scheme. It will become profitable for them to expand their market. In fact, as corporations beholden to shareholders, they will be legally obliged to. Other private companies, eager to cut costs, will begin to farm out their low-skill jobs to Back-To-Work Contracts PLC who have a steady stream of cut-price workers.

And that's not even the half of it. But could you honestly say -- hand on heart -- that the Tories or Labour won't end up with something that looks suspiciously like that?

And still that doesn't even begin to address what I see as the fundamental wrong-headedness of this approach. As I've said before, I view society's obsession with economic activity, with getting people to work, as being completely deranged.
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Re: Tories and unemployment benefits (pooley)
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