Garry Edwards
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- Garry Edwards
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If you haven't found a job after 6 months and your benefits are stopped what happens? What happens to the 2 or 3 children, starve, on the streets, what?
I'd rather money is used for job creation and trying to find people work whilst they are on benefits or those long term benefit claimers doing charity work to earn their benefits. It is a far cheaper solution than stopping them, watching them decamp to the streets or turn to crime and housing them for £40k a year.
What happened in years gone by, long before our benefits system evolved?
People in need had to go onto 'parish relief'. If they were fit to work then they were put to work for the benefit of the community, and prospective employers looking for workers recruited from the people doing the community work. It worked as a system, because in spite of the overseers some people would inevitably work harder than others and the prospective employers could easily see who wanted to work and who wanted to avoid work.
Those who were unfit to work through temporary illness didn't have to.
As I understand it, they didn't get any money but they were supplied with food.
Of course, that system was unfair and flawed, and a lot of the poor ended up leading miserable lives in workhouses.
I'm not suggesting a return to that kind of existence, but surely it's been proved that your own endorsement of giving people money so that they aren't tempted to commit crimes has been proved to be ineffective?
As I see it, one of the many problems associated with our generosity is that the benefits aren't enough for the people with genuine need (because we can't afford to support people properly) but that nobody seems to care that a very large number of totally undeserving people get money that isn't needed or deserved.
As an example, there's a Jobcentre round here that frequently has loads of taxis and minicabs parked outside it, while the drivers go inside to sign on. It wouldn't be difficult for the staff to pop outside once in a while to see whether their claimants drive away in a taxi, but they don't even have to do that - because I've seen drivers go in there who don't even bother to take off their badges!


any time soon