[joeysteele]

Originally Posted by Tom.

Shops could effectively 'cash' them with the government, and if you read my post properly you'd see I think that drastic action should apply to those who clearly aren't looking hard enough for a job.

Theres no foolproof system, it is always going to have flaws but the flaws with the present system are too easy to cheat.

I know you meant it selectively but it would be an administrative nightmare, of course the shops could cash them with the government but how slow does govt work.Also every area of life, business, Government and the lower end of the scales too find easy ways to cheat systems.
A drug addict for instance given vouchers would simply sell the vouchers a bit more cheaply and use the cash from them to but drugs.
Similarly alcohol and cigarettes but then neither of those are illegal in the UK anyway.

Of course if someone is not looking for work then drastic action as you say should be done, but I watched a programme some time ago where people rang employers when the person said they been for an interview to make sure they had.

Far better to take action in such a way as to, 1) interview unemployed people after say 6 months weekly or fortnightly, 2) have them leave all details of interviews and final results of interviews.3) If they say they have been turned down for the job then select some employers who had interviewd them for a summary of what happened at the interview. 4) if it was clear they had not been to interviews and were thereby not trying then take some drastic action against them in that instance.

I come back though to the point I made earlier in this excellent thread that ukturtle has made, and that is you still cannot employ 2.5 million unemployed and still growing, into under 500,000 vacancies which are still dropping.
That being the case there is little case to justify penalising anyone unemployed at this time at least.