Rick Reuben wrote:etc
My yearly income that I quoted includes all benefits paid to me. In the case of JSA it's nil because I am employed part-time. Our government no longer assists people who wish to start their own business - both in terms of advice or in terms of financial assistance/incentive. The only way to get this help is to go through a programme like the Princes' Trust (for under 30s only) or pay for your advice or get a special-rate loan from a bank. And being without a job tends to rule that out too.
So the only way to have supposed assitance in this process is to sign on until you begin to work more than a fixed number of hours per week and can class your self-employment as your 'job'.
I don't know how much money you think you can make in this country on benefits but it's fuck-all for a single man aged 31.
Also, I'm not entirely sure you understand the way our system works either. It's constantly assessed. Those assessments are made quickly and are often system-based which, rather than aiding people who want to do nothing and claim benefits, actually end up making the whole process very difficult to deal with indeed.
But this is beside the point. This green paper would not affect me because of the type of JSA I claim. It's affect on me is not my reason to be against it.
I think a lot of you are missing the point of the Tories announcing these plans. It's pretty much twofold.
Firstly, it's to score brownie points with people who see the 'lower classes' (as you charmingly and simply call them Rick) as being spongers. The fact of it is there is already a set of rules in place that effectively stop people signing on for long periods of time. They've been mentioned already but after 6 months of non-work then things change dramatically for the claimant and it really only is those with no experience of the benefit process who assume that you can just sign your name and not have to work again. I suspect the lack of desire to clear this confusion up on the part of the Tories is somewhat beneficial to them.
Which connects to the 2nd reason which is that there is a large and increasing number of claimants from outside of the UK who are now living here following the lowering of borders in the EU.
The staff in Job Centres are already stretched and overworked. A lot of the staff there used to be on the dole themselves funnily enough. It seems every dole officer I meet has total contempt for the system they work in. The job is also frequently dangerous and stressful.
The problem now is that there are an increasing number of non-English speaking claimants and getting them off the dole is harder obviously because a lot of the policing of the legitimacy of claims is based on one-to-one questioning and almost interrogation-style communication between the officer and the claimant.
If the claimant can legitimately shrug his/her shoulders at every question then this policing becomes harder for people who are already working shitty jobs under a lot of stress.
By putting a ceiling of 2 years on a person's allowable unemployment it means that a lot of cases can just be ended by automation without this need for interview or cross-examination.
And if a lot of those people are from outside the UK then I suspect that's more Brownie points for the Tories as well.