Nothing wrong with a group interview to be honest - because they'll then be followed up by the one-to-ones, once the candidate pool has been thinned down. Arguably, having 50+ candidates means they may not have been as restrictive as they could have been on the requirements, but equally is a sign of the times. I've never been on benefits, partially because I've always been in education or a £20k+ secure job. My future career has employment rates from university of over 99%, so I'm really not worried about my earnings - but I do agree with the sentiment above that benefits are too generous. Why should a tax payer be paying for somebody else's Sky package, holidays or flat screen TVs? The incentive to work has been removed in many cases - the posters above are absolutely correct when they say that benefits are worth as much as the job they could do, and to earn more would require a skillset in which the claimant is totally lacking. To me, benefits should pay for the roof over your head, the food your family needs, the transport you need to be looking for work (which is unlikely to be a car) and then a small surplus at the end for luxuries that can be spent as wished. Not Sky TV at £50+ a month, a TV at over £500 and multiple holidays. In some ways, I think control should be removed from the claimant - rent goes straight to the landlord, food money is provided in vouchers (valid in any supermarket and a wide range of butchers etc) and the rest is cash. Yes, it remove control from the claimant, but it also removes the ability to fiddle the figures.
There are lot of people who's parents have not worked and they have grown up in an environment of benefits and playing the system, they have no concept of supporting themselves or any kind of work ethic, they couldn't care less what anyone thinks of them and will take all they can get.
I've often suggested the concept of food vouchers and direct rent for benefit claimants. Oddly enough there was another programme on after the benefits one about landlords, and although I've always known it I still find it incredible how long bad tenants can remain in a property despite never having paid any rent.
A lot of local council money goes on paying for B+B accommodation for families that have made themselves homeless because of antisocial behavior etc, a friend with a bar has a few empty rooms so he registered as a landlord with the local council and was getting paid £45 a day for B+B, that's just for one room. The council are very reluctant to evict people as they often then have to house them if they have kids, which they invariably do and as there are not enough properties they put them in B+B, again, another example of people playing the system.
The lack of social housing is another issue entirely - stemming from when Thatcher created Right to Buy, but failed to ensure that for each house purchased by tenants another was built in its place. Decades later, we now have a crippling housing shortage that can only be solved by constructing thousands of homes, all in one go, at immense cost and red tape (ie: where to build? Green belt?). The new bedroom tax is a bizarre attempt to solve this problem, forcing people to give up their larger homes when no longer needed, but doesn't consider the lack of smaller properties for them to move in to.
Many different reasons why people are unemployed, not just lack of want of a job as some seem to think on here. Having worked since leaving college but still stuck at home due to house costs its not really the expectations anyone has. ( that's earning a decent wage) I know people who are applying for 30-40 jobs a week and are still unemployed. The biggest issue I have with the uk government is lack of help for those that want a job. The schemes they run are useless and unproductive, making people sit in a room for 30 hrs a week is not helping, they should run courses to improve job skills, interview skills Along with key skills and help people find relivent experience. As a recruiter for my company I've seen some awful interviews by people, the government should be helping those who could do a good job get better at the basics. People can only be told how to apply for a job so many times before they don't want to know anymore. Benifits systems been abused for a long time but it has its flaws, friend of our family has terminal cancer got told he can not claim employment and support allowance which I thought was freaking mental. No company is going to employ him. Also know people who have done the 3-4 year apprentice schemes only to be laid off as soon as they finished, for the exact reason somebody mensioned people want a cheaper employee who they can pay £2.15 an hr instead of £7 ish. Not just benifit claimants who play the system, ask yourself this does the company you work for take on young people then fire them once they reach a age of decent wage. Happens in more companies than I'd be happy to list. ( big retailers, garages, it company's, big business ) are the guilty party in this mostly.
Try living in Cornwall, they want to build a lot of houses but many people are against it saying it will spoil the image of Cornwall that people come here on holiday to enjoy, talk about catch22. Tourism is obviously very important to Cornwall but many people like myself who are born here can't a afford a house here, the wages are some of the lowest in the country, a lot of the work is seasonal, the house prices are off the scale and the water rates are often the highest in the country because Cornwall has the longest coastline of any county and we have to pay to keep it clean for the tourists, doesn't help that there are many houses sitting empty because they are second holiday homes The hospitals are also in meltdown because a large part of the Cornish population have come here to retire and when they get ill they often need expensive intensive healthcare, come to Cornwall on holiday, it's great, just don't try and live here
Funny you mention this. In Bolton 11,000 people in larger homes have requested to be put into 1 bed properties. There are 91 vacant social housing one bedroom properties available in Bolton.
It's f***ing scandalous that companies can do this, it should be part of any indentured apprenticeship that at the end of it you get at least one full years employment from the company who have had the benefit of your cheap labour for years, apprenticeships seem to mean nothing to employers and I'm sure if I had even one years post apprenticeship experience it would have made a big difference.
When I was recently looking for jobs I saw an absolute bucketload for "Apprentive Customer Service Advisor". Basically a way to get someone to man your phones for two years for tuppance a week and then sack them when they qualify and get a load more in. The above story about the mechanic apprentice job is really horrible .
Personally I'm happy to let people game the system if it does what it's supposed to do and if stopping them would cost more than they cheat out of it. I want whatever reforms make the service most effective as a whole. There's more to life than money anyway.
I used to be in the same office as a company that used to bring in 10-20 uni graduates at a time under the guise of an "internship" and just get free labour out of them - flyering and suchlike. The company would get them to 'work out' where to go and flyer ("marketing strategy!") - all the while guiding them into their decision (wherever the company had pre-decided they needed to flyer) and send them out to go and do it. From each batch of "interns" a few would cotton on and opt out early on... shocking stuff. All exploiting the fact that these kids had nothing else to do
I was a victim of that... the dole put me forward for a phone drone job... 6 months later got the boot at the end of a probationary period with the classic words of 'We had no intention of keeping you on...'
Paid just above minimum wage [£6.49/hr]... when they actually remembered to pay me... finally got my paycheck for november 2012... in february 2013 wouldn't wish that shithole on my worst enemy... what makes me rage even more is the fact the company got paid be the dole to take people on... that and the wide gulf between what the client [Apple] was paying for my time vs. what the company was paying me for my time...
Yeh, it's not just some unemployed that play the system some of the worst and most prolific offenders are businesses and often big businesses, they know full well that they can convince people to do an internship with the hope of a job, they should be made illegal, the least they can do is pay minimum wage, companies get away with it because the government doesn't care as long as your off the unemployed list and make their figures look good.
How is it a load a garbage? They have nothing else to do so why the hell not. And if they don't live within walking distance refund the cost of public transport there and then. Or provide a travel card that is only valid for a certain route. Am I supposed to be happy that my tax goes towards paying for some lazy arse to sit and watch TV all day and drink tins of lager whilst having a laugh. So what if they need to spend an hour each day going into town to sign on so they get the cash. Will drive a load of them crazy enough to actually try and get jobs.
Your making a very sweeping statement and as usual assuming that everyone that's unemployed is having a great time and doesn't want to work which is very insulting to the majority of people who are trying to get work. Try living in a rural area like Cornwall where many people live miles from a benefit office and public transport is virtually non existent in a lot of areas and even if they could use public transport and get a refund it would quickly cost a lot of money to travel to a benefit office five days a week, don't know what it cost's in your area but it costs me £7.60 for a day ticket, £38 a week, that's more than half the income support most people get and I doubt the government would want to refund that on a nationwide scale, it's all very well suggesting what the unemployed should do but the reality is often quite different. As I said before I hope you don't lose your job or have serious health problems because when your unemployed and no matter how hard your trying to get back to work many people will only see you as some lazy arse sitting around watching TV all day and drinking tins of lager whilst having a laugh.
