Absolutely brilliant Kizzy and sadly very true.

My husband was made redundant a few years ago, he'd worked fulltime for over 20 years paying his tax and NI, we'd never made a claim, so when he was sanctioned for not filling his form in properly (he put ticks in boxes rather than to keep writing out the same sentence) he got no warnings, no one put him right, just immediate sanction:shocked:

That left us with no income, a mortgage and 2 children to look after, he'd been claiming for a month, and he got sanctioned, safe to say his signing on was one of the most stressful times of our married life.

Thankfully he got a job a month after his sanction, but that left us with no money for 2 months.

Everytime i see that unemployment has gone down i think .....no...there's been a lot of sanctions, ridiculous to put pressure on job centre staff to sanction.

'A Tory MP stunned fellow parliamentarians after defending the benefits system that left a jobseeker with learning difficulties without food or electricity after he was four minutes late for a Jobcentre appointment.'


The article links to the debate and written in Hansard is this exchange that highlights the blinkered perception the conservatives have and the myth they perpetuate...

'Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con): I have great sympathy for some of the individual cases that the hon. Lady has talked about, but I want to introduce a note of perspective based on my own constituency experience. The last time I checked with my jobcentre, just before Christmas, fewer than 5% of all the people seen there had been sanctioned over the previous 12 months. We are talking about a minority, and she is talking about a very tiny minority of an already small minority. I also want to put in a word for the sanctions regime, because from the experience of what I have seen, the threat of sanctions has been of assistance in galvanising people to maintain their appointments and genuinely to seek work.

Lisa Nandy: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for trying to bring statistics to the debate, but they do not reflect the reality. Glasgow university has found that across the country, one in five have been sanctioned, and 6,000 families in my borough alone. In the past few
4 Feb 2015 : Column 106WH

weeks, research from Oxford university shows that the majority of people who have been kicked off benefits due to sanctions have not gone into work. So it is simply not true to say that we are talking only about a minority.'

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015...n_6622468.html

Excellent video that Kizzy, only line wrong in it was, not that 'to bring the country to its knees' but 'the most vulnerable to their knees'.

Really just about all the assistance still for pensioners and the most vulnerable are what Labour had put in place.

the real crooks are those lazy barstewards who are fit to work yet milk the benefits/........I don't care if they knock out 30 babies , its not for you me and society to pay for their babies. they should be forced to work or else social services should be brought in to take their children. these lazy twats who breed just to milk benefits and live like pigs sicken me to the very core of my existence. its a form of child abuse in many cases. 10 kids dog dog breeding smoking drinking sometimes drugs too.....worklessness and entitelement breeds a greedy lazy attitude which teaches their kids all the wrong values.....before we go to the evil right wing argument, theyre twats too......theres 2 massive problems labour keep the poor poor and on benefist so they always have to vote labour..........tories take the taxes off the elite and whack the poor with 20% vat.....under both the gap between rich and poor grows....tories are wolves , labour are wolves in sheeps clothing........I could never vote for either.

Some great generalisation there

People on benefits are easy targets, they've been demonised by tabloids and politicians so much that no one will bat an eyelid when they're mistreated and abused. Some of the schemes that have come to fruition in recent years are damn close to being human rights abuse.

I've got a friend who's on a program which basically forces her to go to the job centre for 37 hours a week and just job search. She's told me that she's not allowed to stretch her legs and she pretty much has to beg to go to the toilet without being sanctioned. Forcing people to sit in front of computers all day without regular breaks is breaking so many of the governments own health and safety regulations, why are jobseekers treated like lesser human beings? why are the government allowed to break their own laws when it comes to the unemployed?

I've got another friend who's on this thing called Daily Sign On which basically forces him to come sign on every day and it costs him a ton of money since they refuse to pay travel expenses. Worst of all is that he was about to start a construction course and had some voluntary work lined up. These schemes aren't helping people and I'm willing to bet that in a lot of cases they are actively detrimental to jobseeker's prospects.

The Coalition and the job centre are not interested in getting people jobs, they just want them off benefits through any underhand method they can get away with.

sarcasm is still the lowest for of wit............these are real life experiences

Watching Shameless doesn't qualify as real life experiences.

if they don't like it why don't they got off their subsidised backsides, drop the self pity and feeling sorry for yourselves and get a job. I did so did 35 million other job. there are ALWAYS jobs available. unless a person is disabled or sick they should work, end of

never even heard of the show it seems you know more about it

This is the most ignorant thing I have read on here for a while. Congratulations.

As malicious as it sounds I do wish that one day you'll find yourself unemployed and at the mercy of the Job Centre. It's very easy to judge others from your ignorant high horse but I don't think you would cope with the pressure placed on jobseekers, you would not cope at all.

The system is designed to break jobseekers, not help them and people like you allow it to happen by swallowing all of the tabloid bull**** willingly.

I agree. If you haven't been in that situation you just can't understand. I have claimed only for a few months and it was so stressful. Thank god i started work again. Even in my job we are allowed breaks and we work 10 hours a day. :shocked:

No its not youre lying

I'm not

Ive never bought a tabloid paper in my life nor do I ever read them so youre 100% wrong yet again. my opinions, unlike yours are based on extensive personal experiences. I can back up every single comment with endless anecdotes, you clearly cant youre brainwashed by left wing liberal drivel

How do you know Ive never been unemployed or sick? you jump to the wrong conclusions as always. You judge others from your ignorant high horse , including me. How do you know what Id cope with you know nothing. youre the ignorant one here. The system is whatever you want it to be. if you want to work you will work if you want to bitch and moan and have a chip on both shoulders you will never work. ONLY disabled and sick people should be allowed these benefits long term. everyone else should have to work for their handouts or get a job like everyone else. I have extensive experience Ive employed 100s of people, have you? Those who are lucky enough to enjoy decent health , that are honest and hard working ALWAYS succeed, they ALWAYS earn a decent living and ALWAYS improve their careers as time goes on. The rest piss and moan. yet the reality is many healthy lazypeople who choose to live off benefits have more disposable income than many in work. they people I know who do not work all smoke and drink. they have more time and money to do so.

Ive also been at deaths door, on skid row and unemployed. You know nothing.youve been reading and listening to do much liberal drivel. the trouble with the far left it always wastes other peoples money. why is a person who choses to have 6 to 10 kids entitled to have their lifestyle paid for by other peoples hard work? its immoral and it shows those kids all the wrong morals. These people are responsible for these children not other people.

back up your claims then (lies) you clearly cannot. why feel entitled to other peoples money? people who work for a living to give to those healthy people who CHOOSE to decline all jobs and sit on their backsides living off the state?

Yes, I'm clearly lying. Great detective work there.

You seem to be lumping everybody who claim benefits into one stereotypical group and I'm afraid to ruin your pretty misguided picture but that simply isn't the case. At all. Sure there are a few 'scroungers' that simply don't want to work, that's fine but the for the majority, it isn't the case.

You sit there and spout ignorant crap about how people should just get on with it and get a job and the harsh reality is that it isn't that simple and I'm speaking from personal experience. My work ethnic is absolute and when I came out of work a few years ago, I had to sign on, because if I didn't I would have gone into extreme debt. Having to sign on was the most degrading part of my life but it had to be done. I don't appreciate being told by someone like you, that I should have got on with and got a job like they are just handing them out like sweets. It isn't simple and I am so grateful to be working right now because I know how hard it can be for people that are made to feel like the scum of earth by people like you who have no idea.
And as for being entitled to other peoples money, that is the most ignorant of all your ignorant and down right insulting 'facts'. I paid a hell of a lot into the system and continue to do so today. It's actually what helped me through that ****ty time in my life, because of people like you, I actaully felt ashamed to be signing until I realised the money I was getting was what I had paid in.

These posts are so misguided it's actually quite astonishing. You are generalising every single person receiving benefits and branding them all into one category.

Thousands of benefits claimants are people that have worked all their days and now have the bad luck of losing their jobs, they have paid into the system all their lives and have a right to claim the help they need until they get back on their feet, to say they feel entitled to other peoples money is completely ridiculous.

Of course there are people who abuse the system and don't want to work, and it's up to the DWP to find out who those people are and deal with them so maybe they should put some effort into that rather than giving jobcentre staff targets for sanctioning people? The thread was made about the way the DWP are handing out unrealistic targets to claimants (people that are desperate to find work) for the sole purpose of sanctioning their benefits when they fail to meet the targets.

So do you have an actual opinion on that or are you just here to insult jobseekers?

Yes also under New Labour
the very old were freezing

Nothing at all to back up that nonsensical statement Arista?....didn't think so.

'Benefit sanctions can plunge families into financial crisis, hunger, and dependency on food banks for up to half a year, far longer than the period for which they have had payments stopped, according to a new study.

The study, Cheshire Hunger looked in detail at the reasons why people had been given food bank vouchers and estimated the length of time they would be dependent on food aid.

It adds to a growing body of evidence directly linking welfare reforms with food bank use, and comes as a coalition of major churches call for an overhaul of the “inhumane” sanctions system.'

http://www.theguardian.com/society/p...gry-for-months


'More than 93,000 of Britain's poorest children went hungry last year due to cruel benefit cuts, a damning new report shows.

David Cameron has hugely increased the use of cash-saving punishments such as stopping payments for a month or more for welfare claimants who fail to meet strict Job Centre demands.

But the Coalition’s welfare cuts and brutal penalties hit society’s most vulnerable hardest and in effect punish kids for their parents’ failings, the report claims.'

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...result-5255846

That's a sweeping generalisation as to all people out of work the truth, sometimes you make good points in my view but that post is way off the mark for me.

If the scroungers were all caught, if those all claiming benefits wrongly were stopped from doing so,the welfare bill would drop very marginally indeed.
the numbers would stay almost the same apart for an odd 1% max.

There are not 'real' jobs a plenty out there, a great number of benefit claimants are in fact people in work as you call it but it is in part time jobs where they need to, and have the right to, claim benefits to subsidise income.

I also have to applaud Dezzy's post that you responded to, he is spot on in my view, as to the changes to benefits,the clawing back of benefits and the demonisation of claimants is extremely close to being, if not so already,abuse of human rights.
I will also say, had this been a Labour govt; doing this change to benefits and demonising claimants, they would be being pilloried day after day in the rotten press we have too.

I have no time at all for people in power that use that power to demonise and bring down the most vulnerable.

Your comment as to there being plenty of jobs to get is astounding, if you really believe that and if it is the case where you are maybe well that is great to know for sure, perhaps everyone out of work should move there,it sounds like a wonderland.