Poverty

Oh dear - all this lot makes me glad I'm retired.

Unemployment was being discussed. i went back to work at 42 after about 8 years with my kids, and being a family day care Mum. It took forever to just get an interview, and I only got the bookkeeping job by pure chance. I happened to have 2 foreign languages, French and German, and the person who had translated all the foreign business letters had just retired. Language skills were not requested in the advert, but the boss saw my foreign references and realised he needed me.

Without that I'd probably never have got a job because of deep and nasty age prejudice in Australia. My languages were no use back then for jobs specifically in that field, as I wasn't yet qualified. Oh, and a touch of misogyny and racism adds to the misery of course - I'm a 'Pom'. I would have just given up in the end and gone off the job-seeker statistics.

Some people just can't get work even in the good times if their age, gender, race, shape or face doesn't fit. I'm intelligent, honest, respectable, presentable and hard working, but still couldn't find work. This is the situation all over the western world, right now.

And when people don't have jobs, or fear for their jobs, they don't spend, so you can see how it winds the economy down, and creates even more poverty. It isn't as if there's a queue for jobs, and you get your turn in the end. Some folks just never make it.

As I said - it can be a minefield!

Sorry Anagram but I must disagree with you as this was part of my job and, if handled correctly, works even if it does go to an IT. So often an employee wins at an IT because the process was not done correctly!

Sorry, Alison, but I beg to differ. The process may be simple, as in verbal warnings, written warnings etc. etc., but it can be a minefield, and if the case goes before an Industrial Tribunal the employee usually wins and gets compensation to boot!

Anagram an employer can dismiss anyone at any time if they are not 'competent' in the UK. They have to go through a process, which is longer if they have been employed for more than a year, but it is fairly simple to do.

In this country it is also a lot easier to close down factories than it is in the rest of Europe which is why so many multinational companies do so and keep their factories in places like France which have much stricter employment laws.

I don't think employers can dismiss people easily in this country either, Alison. That's one of the reasons small firms are reluctant to take on new staff, because if they turn out to be unsuitable for any reason, it's virtually impossible to dismiss them.

It has to be easier to find a job if there is less unemployment in the area you live, regardless of the country you live in.

I believe we could learn a lot from the Dutch, they do not encourage dependance and reward hard work. Employers cannot just dismiss people as easily as they can here and in the current downturn a new employee can be taken on for as little as a month, then get an extension. This can go on until, I think, the 4th time after which the job becomes permanent.

A couple of years ago they reduced the tax paid when purchasing a property from 6% to 2% to give the economy a boost. It will go back up again this August. I think this would help here too.

If imigrants what to live in The Netherlands they are obliged to learn the language (not paid for by the state!) and to pass a difficult test to show they know enough about the culture and country. I know a test is required here for residency but it is apparently a lot easier. They welcome all cultures but expect people to integrate, we should too.

I don't pretend to have all the answers - I hope I have compassion for people who may find themselves in straitened circumstances for various reasons.
It has to be easier to find another job in a country with lower unemployment figures. Is that not evidently true? The more people who are chasing each job, the less likelihood there is that any individual person will get it.

Faye I agree with you but I cannot agree that it is any better to be unemployed in the Netherlands than anywhere else. If you have lost your job it makes no difference to you how many people are in the same boat! I expect they have areas of high unemployment to. In my area it is about 2.5% so the whole of the UK is not in the sameboat.

Not everyone who loses their job is unable to move, my husband's job was redundant when he was 49 and we did precisely that. Yes, I agree that the really low paid cannot always move but some can, social housing can be exchanged for example. I am simply stating the case that one cannot generalise about all this. We would all agree that there are genuine cases of hardship so perhaps we could also agree that not eveyr case is genuine?

Over to you the ladies who have all the answers!

I believe child benefits should stop at two children, there are enough people in the world, seven billion, we can't keep breeding. It reminds me of the film Idiocracy sunsetgun.typepad.com/sunsetgun/2007/01/its_a_beautiful.html says it all really. I can never understand why some people who don't have the means have lots of children. One family in this area have four children, the eldest is four and the youngest is five months and they have a two bedroom house. The husband also has two children from another relationship and his current wife wants four more children. They are not well looked after, snotty noses, messy hair and dirty clothes. The husband works but the government in Australia pay what is called Family Tax Benefit. www.smh.com.au/national/public-service/houses-are-bad-welfare-not-kids-20120427-1xqmj.html?skin=text-only so they are able to keep having as many children as they please. It is the single parents in Australia who get less help, but are still the kicking posts. The very wealthy often pay a smaller percentage of tax but don't find the level of criticism aimed at them.

It is easier for someone who loses their job in The Netherlands to get another job than it is for someone in the same situation in the UK
I know of people who have made over 200 job applications and the job centres in certain areas (such as Hull) simply do not have any jobs to offer.
This is not necessarily tied to education, experience or enthusiasm - if there are no jobs there are no jobs. There are thousands of graduates with good degrees, even master's degrees, who cannot find work. It is not possible for the unemployed to up sticks and go where the work is, because it is usually in areas of high rent. If the wage earner has to live away from home, there will be the additioal cost of board and lodgings and travel home to see the family.
I would suggest that the Dutch method would not work because people would simply have no means of support.

It is easy to find examples of people who do not want to work or who would find working gave them less income than being unemployed and of course some newspapers love to print stories of the feckless single mother or the family with many unemployed members
I don't believe these represent the reality of most unemployed people, who find it demeaning and depressing.

greatnan forgive me for being dim but I don't understand what point you are making about the various different rates of unemployment. Please enlighten me.

Thanks Anagram sometimes I do feel that a few posts on GN do seem personal and I just dont' want anyone to take offence at mine as they are only intended for an individual if I name them and then not meant to cause offence.

I do feel we are all entitled to our opinions although that will necessarily mean that we can't all agree!

I'm off now and don't know when I'll next get chance to log on.

Alison, just to clarify - no, I didn't think your comments were directed at anyone personally! That's the trouble with forum posts, you can't necessarily get the emphasis across - my meaning was that I, myself, certainly understood your point!

Greatnan I suppose it depends whether devout catholics think everyone else should pay for their children and whether those who have to pay think it is fair.

I most definitely wouldn't enforce a family size at all, I think those who can afford it should have the family size they want but those who cannot should try to restirct their family to a size they can support and not think they have a right for the rest of the working population to suport them. That is the point really, why should those who contribute pay for the feckless?

I go back to my point about the size of the cake and would much rather give more to those who fall on hard times than those who are lazy. With the present system the money is not there to help these people. If, instead of this unenforceable cap on child benefit for those earning 50 - 60K we had a policy of not giving child benefit to people who have more than 2 children, which would be enforceable, we would see the number of children who were welfare dependent gradually decrease. Yes, I know some people would still keep having children, but not so many. It would have to be announced 9 months in advance and those already receiving the benefit would continue but not get additional benefit for more shildren.

This is not an ideal solution but what solution is ideal? We must find some way of prioritising where support goes in fairness to those who are paying for it.

The varied house/ rent prices in UK has always been an issue - when we were young and had only one wage while the children were small we had to live where we could afford to. We chose to buy rather than rent and when we needed a bigger place we moved out further from London area - having first calculated the cost of travel to work.
I can see that people do not want to move especially when they are living in a nice area and all that goes with it - friends and relation etc BUT I do think people need to live within the means of what they have as income - whether it is earned or benefits. Therefore I do think there should be a cap on how much you can have for your housing costs - if you then wish to live in an area which is more expensive that would be a choice and people would maybe begin to see what life is all about for working people.
We downsized a bit and got rid of the mortgage when DH retired and also to reduce costs moved to slightly cheaper area. We do prefer to be independent and are lucky we can be so. It all depends really on what people consider to be the 'must haves' of life.
On the question of school meals I agree that all children should have them - if they were 'free' to all at school itself the parents earning more could have some if not all the cost clawed back through the tax system - this used to be done with Family Allowance for many years so is not out of the question. It would also be easier for the cooks who would have a better idea of their daily numbers

Alison, do your strictures on family size extend to devout Catholics who have found that the rhythm method does not work?
Would you like to enforce a 'two child' policy and if so how would you do it? Would you follow the Chinese model?
And what would you do to stop children in large families from falling into poverty if their parents lose their job?
It is very easy to say people should not have more children than they can afford, but the devil is in the detail, isn't it?

Anagram you certainly do understand my point, I hope you don't think I was directing at anyone in particular. I feel that people like your daughter are the forgotten ones, they never get mentioned or considered. I would much prefer my taxes to go towards helping those who work and limit the size of their family to what they can afford than to those who think the government owes them. They don't seem to understand that 'the government' is their friends and neighbours who pay taxes.

When the cap on housing benefit was announced the news interiewed a woman who lived in Islington with her 5 children. Her furniture looked in good condition and she had an enormous flat screen TV. She didn't want to move away because she liked living there. I wondered how others living in London and not getting state help felt on watching that, I am sure a lot of them would have liked to live in Islington! When asked if she would go back to the country she came from her answer was "no, there is no welfare there". This has stuck in my mind as it seems to me that if you are living on the rest of us you should be grateful to have a home wherever it is but not expect to live in the most expensive areas. Please don't all batter me about how hard it is for families to move, we had to do it lots of times and our children coped very well!

The unemployment rate in The Netherlands is 5.9%. There are parts of Europe, including Britain, where it is over 20% and worsening.

I certainly do consider those in lowly paid jobs, Alison, my daughter is one of them and is struggling to pay the mortgage and raise her two children on her own. She's always had a strong work ethic and I know she'd hate to be dependent on the state, but it's hard for her to see some of her friends from school now in council houses with their children, never having worked at all.
They seem to be able to afford to to smoke and go on holiday, though!

Does anyone remember the time when a school started serving healthy dinners (Jamie Oliver?) and parents were going to the school gates and passing chips to their children? I wonder what would happen if we gave all children school dinners, they would of course have to be 'healthy' meals and that would cause all sorts of uproar with different opinions on what constitutes healthy! Yet another minefied!

On the subject of Job Seekers Allowance, in The Netherlands the unemployed are paid a percentage (I think it is 70% but not sure) of previous salary for a length of time based upon how long they worked. After that they have to claim welfare which I am told is extremely low. This would seem to cover the time it would take to get another job and give an incentive to do so.

I too had a sister who never paid into the system but got a lot more than I do from the state because I have worked hard and saved. I think I am a lot happier than she was but don't know if that is because I worked or not.

I do think that we need to consider those in lowly paid jobs who work hard and don't expect the state to provide. It must be very hard to see others who don't contribute getting everything paid for them.

Your post has echoed my own sentiments entirely, vegasmags - and put in such a succinct and eloquent way!

I certainly second everything that's been said about the value of free school milk and free school dinners. I would like to see these as universal benefits for all children as I can't think of anything more important for a country to spend its money on than the health of its children. I think it was a retrograde step when Michael Gove allowed academies to opt out of minimum nutritional standards for school dinners, as apparently some of these establishments have reverted to the burger and chips routine and make money from vending machines selling junk food and pop. The latter are banned in maintained schools.

As regards the larger debate, I'm really in two minds. Part of me thinks that a system of welfare that is so stringently enforced no one can take advantage of it will inevitably let vulnerable people fall through the net, but the other part of me resonates with the resentment of those who feel their thrift has penalised them. As a friend of mine used to declare: I'm paying enough tax to fund my own personal layabout and I know who he is!

I'm glad for my independence, even though I'm not terribly well off. I have a brother who plays the system for all its worth, and then boasts about it, and I would hate to be in that position.

I agree with you, Pennysue. There's bound to be resentment when those who have done their best all their lives and saved for their retirement see others who have done exactly the opposite receive benefits and top-ups so that their income is equal to theirs - and sometimes greater.

Greatnan I was not assuming I was comparing like for like. Same sort of back ground, same sort of job, living in similar house. Having lived in the same place all my life (within a mile or 2) living alongside people in similar or same jobs earning approximately the same - those that have spent get more help than those of us that saved.