Very good life indeed

[vetran]

yeah suspected that, so I will smile when they sack everyone in the job centres and outsource it to Lithuania.

[KimberleyChris]

yeah suspected that, so I will smile when they sack everyone in the job centres and outsource it to Lithuania.

I've thought that before too.

Most of what happens in a Job Centre could instead be done by touch-screens, like when you check-in at the Doctors.

They 'go through the motions' but really it's a non-job.

Job centres must be quite 'happy' places when there are jobs that you can point people at, and there are happy endings, but it can't be fun sitting there in the current climate with a tide of misery and despair flowing past you every day.

They know who wants to work and who doesn't, but they can't do much about either at the moment, so it's just 'smile and sign'.

[EternalOptimist]

EO You are right we only went through phase 1. The other phases sound horrible. Would that still be the case now?

Thats a good question, and I dont know the answer.
Its dificult to make the comparison because of various changes over the years, sometimes I had the rent included and I then had to pass it on via a rent book

If I had to make a stab at it, I would say that its about the same, maybe slightly easier now. I think proportionaly, food is cheaper now, and so is alcohol. But nowadays there are lots more pressures to be 'in touch'
my biggest 'in touch' worry was finding stamps that hadnt been franked so I could steam them off to reuse them.

Thinking back last night and this morning (sparked off by this thread) I remember a few things very starkly. Spending winters shivering due to the intense cold because I had no coal, and I had already burned most of the neighbours gates and fences.
Watching the adverts and getting depressed because they didnt apply to me. Reading. The libraries were under pressure so they had a massive clear out. I bought hundreds of books at 2p each, 5p for the reference books, and I read each one at least three times. getting an education by watching OU programmes till 4am. Being stared at in the supermarket, men NEVER did the shopping in the late 70s 80s. Amazing all the fellow students when I started uni because I knew the price of onions when the street trader tried to rip them off in Liverpool. 45 p for a 4 p onion - fuuuucckk off.

But it's easy to romaticise stuff. The truth is, if I ever thought I was going back to that - I would buy a bottle of wine and make my way to Switzerland. seriously.

[KimberleyChris]

Yeah, it can be pretty depressing if you let it, especially if it goes on for much longer than you expected.

'Wealth' does not make you happy, it just gives you peace of mind.

The difference between happiness and misery is the word 'enough', and the boundary between 'enough' and 'not enough' is only a small amount of money.

'More' is what you get by working. It allows you to do the little extra things like a holiday once a year, a meal out or a good slap-up Christmas dinner instead of chicken and chips again. It also gives you back your self-respect and 'mojo'.

Let's hope these times end soon. As usual, the innocent without jobs have been punished, and the guilty men with jobs have not. Same old song.

[mudskipper]

A lot of the very poorest people don't have the facilities to make money stretch. If you're in a bedsit with no decent kitchen facilites (i.e. the kitchen is absoultely rank, the cooker may not work, and any food you do buy to put in the fridge gets nicked by your neighbours) it's difficult to eat properly on a budget. Add the despair you feel at your situation, and it's a downhill spiral.

There are lots of people who play the system, but there are plenty of genuinely needy people who simply do not have enough to survive on in a way that we would consider a basic level.

How you separate the needy from the spongers is a tough one.

[EternalOptimist]

How you separate the needy from the spongers is a tough one.

Exactly so. In my opinion, the reason why these guys get called scum, is that noone likes the idea of being ripped off. Everyone knows that there are some gits who game the system and sit back laughing at us. They laze about all day and have no intention of ever doing a days work. We hate them, and rightly so

but how many are there ? and how do you identify them

Out of all the dole-ites I ever knew, I can recall one, maybe two spongers.
apart from the young single mothers - they were the worst, although most of that was naivete

[KimberleyChris]

The Job Centre people know, they can tell.

The term 'Surplus Workforce' that I use is one that I borrowed from them.

They know where and when the redundancies happen. They have daily and weekly briefings, and so they are 'ready' for the surplus workforce when it arrives the next week to claim. The 'benefit dependant' are the other lot.

[sasguru]

Well, you didn't do much work between 11:20 and 19:27 yesterday, did you?

Another day off? Perhaps you work nights? Or live in a different time zone maybe?

Oh look another know-it-all doley.

[BrilloPad]

Are you really that illiterate or just drinking yourself to death in Munich because your life is so tulip?
Take a leaf out of AtW's book. He's got no life either but at least he copes with it by looking for a mail order bride.

FTFY

[scooterscot]

Years of evolution? Read your post and tell me if you feel that evolution is working if we are to use you as a shining example.

There you go measuring everything in absolutes. Pettifogger