Letter: Frightening future for those on benefits
Tuesday 1st June 2010, 7:57AM BST.
Letter: Your editorial on Page 8, May 27, was as biased as it was ill-informed. I have spent my working career in the benefits system, since 1978, and the idea that the new Government will do anything other than pursue a witch-hunt against the most vulnerable in society is false.
Your sneering comment about the Jeremy Kyle show demeans ordinary people – are you saying all benefits claimants are an underclass?
Incentives to work won’t really return, there will be a blunt choice – take any work at all or go without money. Where are these jobs to come from anyway? Many of the jobs on offer are no longer permanent, are short-term contracts, and have little in the way of decent terms and conditions.
I have seen many “purges” – they remove claimants for a short time at best and are target-driven not by the validity of the claim. Those who are genuinely ill will suffer most – those with mental health problems who are a soft target, and others who can’t make a fuss.
There is a spurious notion among politicians that because so many people claim benefit through disability, that the disability must simply be feigned.
Women who are “career single parents” because it is all they know, to have a child at 16 and obtain an income virtually for life have always been a drain on the budget, and, at the risk of being called right-wing, there are too many immigrants who arrive in the UK to en joy a benefits system unavailable in their own lands. Unless the government addresses this, there will be a constant drain on all our resources.
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Of course they will push people off benefits , why should’nt they take any job?? infact why should they have the choice of looking for a job they are qualified in for? 2 weeks looking is enough ? we have graduates who have been on the dole for over 12 months.
Of course we have genuine claiments but perhaps now if on benefits ie job seekers they should do 1 days work in the community for 1 weeks benefits seems ok to me.
The facts are also if you are married and lose your job and your partners in full time or part time work it is pointless signing on just to have your stamp paid and nothing else , catch that up when back in work and do not humiliate yourself unles you have no choice.
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benefits lets get it right it you have been working and put out of work the first 6 months of job seekers payment is your money which as been put aside from your tax not bad for 45 years of full employment
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i couldnt get jsa because i was paid reundancy pay i was lucky and obtained a job that sustained me till i retired i could have
been otherwise i feel for the young of today
there IS NO FUTURE its no good us oldies
spouting the past–it is light years away now
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