Something positive about this government

Nonnie, Your information about the NL is interesting. I know that if I had been in Germany when I was unemployed, I would have received 67% of my previous salary for three years, based on my age and the fact that I was a parent. This compares with the £149pw I actually received with no add-ons apart from partial exemption from council tax and free specs (how many pairs do you need?). I already received free prescriptions for a medical condition. Moreover, I wouldn't have been subjected to ridiculous Jobcentre interviews, which used to cost £14 in fares every two weeks and take me a day to get there and back.

We could bring back workhouses, anyone can look up the census returns and read how many single/married unemployed people ended up there, they too got on their bikes

This get on your bike attitude is silly, yes I know people use to travel around the country but things were different, there were houses to rent , school places available , there are houses to rent now but the costs are way beyond the wages of the ordinary working man .

Nonnie, did your parents buy properties every time they moved?

How many social houses have been built for all these families to move into when they move around the country ?

Dictionary definition of 'economic migrant'

'a person who travels from one country or area to another in order to improve their standard of living.'

Living in different places in the country is not being an economic migrant.
Migrants move from one country to another, not one county to another.

Jane10 DH has been doing a little family history and his antecedents many years ago did just that. I left home at 19 because I was stifled by a father with Victorian attitudes to women's education and it most definitely broadened my horizons. I wasn't allowed to go to university but living in different places and meeting people from varying backgrounds was most certainly a good thing for me. My children have done the same and found it very rewarding. These days with Skype and Facetime it must be so much easier for people to keep in touch with their families and friends so it would seen very narrow minded to refuse to move.

That's good to hear Nonnie. Sadly the media aren't interested in good news stories. Travelling to find work has always been done. My GF and Uncles all had to go far from home to find work. Its the way it was. I suppose that made them economic migrants long before the term was coined. DH took any job he could and travelled the length and breadth of the country. He had to. That's life.

Annie was right, Nonnie.

"your solving of....."

AB what was supposed to be humorous?

"Now your (sic) solving the unemployment problem", where did I say that? What is wrong with following the jobs? Didn't know that was another thing that was wrong. Is everyone supposed to be able to get a job doing just what they want where they want? If we had done that we would have lived on benefits for a long time. We left all the support one has with family and friends for a financially more secure life where we had only ourselves to depend on.

Actually I do know somewhere with plenty of jobs and I suspect there are others as I hear that employers are looking for good, reliable, people and having to get them from abroad. Where I live we have 0.9% unemployment so it seems to me they must have either just lost their job or be idle. In our county we have masses of new houses being built and on the local news last week they quoted how much better we are doing than the rest of the country. It is not all doom and gloom everywhere.

Nonnie, we just don't share the same sense of humour .

Now your solving of the unployment problem, a get on your bike mantra.

How is a family with the bread winner out of work going to find work ? You say go where the work is, where will they live ? Unless you know of areas with plenty of jobs going and plenty of houses to rent ? Perhaps you would say where?

In NL if you have worked long enough you get 70% of your previous earnings when unemployed but only for a fixed period of time. After that the amount you get is extremely low. Sounds to me like it gives security as well as an incentive to get a job. Sound spretty much like what Grace is suggesting.

Of course in other ways they are not as generous as here, I think they only get a very short maternity leave for example.

I must remember to ask how they treat the disabled.

I know that if you have lived in an area for long enough you will qualify eventually for social housing but that it can be very expensive. Far more than one person on an average wage can afford. However, if you are a home owner and want to downsize to a social housing rental flat you can do that too.

AB "Be a good idea to make landlords who buy social housing rent them for the cost of social housing rents, they wouldn't be eager to buy would they". I'm sorry but that is such limited thinking. How exactly do you think that would solve the problem? Landlords would not run their properties at a loss, it doesn't make sense.

gracesgran, did you read dj's post?

AB yes, our choice, go on benefits or go where the work was.

I don't think Tory voters are evil, I think capitalism is because it equals greed and greed is evil . I don't know why every Tory voter chose to vote Tory at the last election, but they did so in the full knowledge that the government they voted for was harming the most vulnerable

Mmm Kittylester "That was Blair's government" didn't sound like "that happens under all government's" to me but I accept that was what you meant and it wasn't just tit for tat.

Exactly, gracesgran, I was pointing out that the rules didn't just apply under Thatcher.

And, I don't resent my taxes paying anyone else's benefits - I repeat, surely that is the point of them.

There seems to be a view that Tory voters are evil.

kittylester it is perfectly reasonable for you to complain when your son didn't qualify for benefits on his return to the UK but surely with would have been true under any government.

I really don't think any of this childish tit for tat will stop until benefits relate to what has been paid in. I am sure most people would not mind paying a little more if, for instance, they knew that if they were unemployed they would automatically receive say 2/3rd of their previous years income for a fixed period - which you could choose to shorten as much as you can to maintain your levels of insurance for other things. Some money would have to be taken from tax to pay for the credits we deem necessary for some people but while we only have benefit on the basis of need there will always be squabbles about my taxes paying for your benefits. Of course there will be some who need help and haven't, for whatever reason, paid in but the armies of those currently dealing with who does what when and who earns what when and retrain people to actually work with what are often very chaotic families and very chaotic lives. There is only a small percentage of these and they need more help than we give them.

Low blow dj.

This sort of thing. I've seen it happen before when there was encouragement to set up private providers for NVQs 20+ years age. Lots of hard selling, rule bending, poor provision and outright fraud.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-35163258

And another terrible idea to add to the list: De regulation of university education so anyone and everyone can set up a "University". Blank cheque to rip people off. (mainly foreign students and immigrants)

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/20/tory-plan-worthless-degrees?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Why would you expect anything different from Blair's Britain?
I know lifelong Tories who voted for him, son of Thatcher.

Are you a tax paper as well?

It's like All Our Yesterdays on some threads at the moment...