I sympathise with the above letter however it has nothing to do with how long you have worked or paid your taxes for .Their are people who are in work who would still begrudge the peanuts you get.It is also the case if you were welcomed in to the benfeits office by over friendly staff etc etc it would in some way discourage you from seeking employment not much truth in it but that is how they the guv see it (polite but not you friend) and anyone on benefits is put in the same pot which is out of work claiming from the state not good.

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not tough—TERRIBLEthe wholy system is stacked against you seemingly they will take away your pennies and give thousands to those whom we hear of scamming the system if the truthe be known–with hindsight sad but true—the welfare state should never had been created barack –o dosent
know what he has done he will in 40 years when the us of a becomes a health tourist spot
just like g-b

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Andrew I think is right to say that unemployment benefits are paid regardless of how long you have been paying into the system. Of course that used not to be the case unemployment benefits were similar in style to insurance cover and were directly linked to you previous employment history. Each week you employer literally stamped your cards and those stamps were a history of your working and an entitlement to unemployment benefits. Of course you could not actually claim unemployment unless you were actively seeking work, thus before any benefit were paid you would be interviewed by an employment officer who would go through with you the relevant job vacancies that were available.

The fact that a youth could not claim unemployment benefits if they had not previously been employed for a period of time was a great incentive to go out and look for work.

None of this was particularly pleasant, but one thing you did understand was that the benefit system was to be used as a short term safety net and not a way of life.

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