Beakersful

That should change soon though, since the Tories are implementing new 'screw the poor' rules:

Capping benefits at 1% increase each year.
Housing benefit caps at the level of a room in a shared house for single people.
Maximum the CSA can take from absent fathers will double from £5 to £10 a week if they don't make a personal arrangement with the mother..
If you catch a contagious illness for a third period during a year they won't pay a claimants JSA.
Compulsory online job search (monitored)

I know a feed driver who has said that young locals won't work for farmers because the work is cold, wet and hard work and the difference between a life on benefits and a life working is not worth the hassle. Foreign workers are taking jobs and living in overcrowded, frequently illegal conditions with criminals profiting off them. Language skills in many immigrant workforces is frequently low, or non-existent, respect for the country they are working in too often not present. Money earned is being sent out of the country. Legal immigrant workers partners taking work off the books, or under minimum wage from employers who set it low and encourage their staff to claim benefits alongside it (stating they aren't working) The government has an amnesty programme in place granting amnesty to applying illegal immigrants each year who can prove their noses are clean and they haven't been a drain on the system (never mind they had to work illegally to survive, just weren't found out) Short term temporary work is seen to frequently put working families in debt as the system is cumbersome and error laden and isn't paying right.. Jobcentre numbers frequently take 40-70mins to get through to a real human, who will lie to you and put the phone down on you, deliberately deny your claim because their workload is too great, shifting the claim to the appeals team, who are frequently 18 months behind. Foodbanks across the country are about to give 15,000 families free food over xmas (including working families) to be able to eat, and feed their kids.

What is evident is that work does not pay at the bottom end of the scale. Not that benefits are too high. But the UK government (Tories) are now using the "Us vs Them" argument to decrease the welfare benefits people get, saying that working families who pay tax are subsidising 'doleys'. Unfortunately that hatred they are creating is also being turned against disabled people, who are being spat on, on the streets, and attacked. So, instead of bringing in a Living Wage, the government chooses to lower benefits, missing the obvious, that there are only 20% of the necessary jobs to employ the full workforce, and that in some areas 80% of those jobs are part time, with workers frequently taking 2 or 3 of those jobs to survive on, which they aren't, not even reaching the point where they reach the point where they tax, the argument the government is using to get these workers onboard with punishing the jobless and disabled, "you pay tax from your hard work and they are stealing it" missing the fact the workers they are appealing to aren't paying tax......

So, how much do Saudi's get on unemployment, and is the King trying to turn working Saudi's against unemployed Saudi's? What stigma is there during this Saudization period? I have a sneaking suspicion he isn't quite as heartless as the Tories, and that's something to say indeed.

OleJanx

norsk

I agree it does sound very harsh and some people will get hit hard and sometimes undeservedly so, but do you have an alternative plan? It's all very easy for the opposition (I take it from your tone that you are a Labour voter - apologies if you are not) to take a confrontational view of unpopular initiatives, but frequently they have no alternative game plan and I suspect they would have done exactly the same thing if they were in power themselves..

Your example of the locals not wanting to work for local farmers illustrates the crux of the problem with today's society. Everybody thinks they are entitled to be a manager (or at least work in an office). Unfortunately this is simply not the case. There needs to be a healthy mix of blue and white collar workers for society to function. This is a similar situation as we have in the Gulf where the locals refuse to do blue collar jobs and therefore this whole section of the working population is imported whilst the public service is much bigger than it needs to be to compensate. The biggest difference is that most of the Gulf countries (Bahrain excepted where you will actually also find some locals working in what could be considered blue collar jobs) can afford to carry this kind of imbalance for as long as they have huge income from oil/gas. It's not healthy though...

I don't get the 'heartless' comment. Your country doesn't actually owe you anything just because you were born there (or worse just because you have a passport). If everyone was to think that way there would be nothing in the coffers to support those that actually do need assistance!

Beakersful

No offence taken, I'm not a Labour supporter, let alone a supporter of any of the main parties because they are all the same tbh. I think this (taken from Reddit today) is self explanatory:



The 'alternative'? I'll leave that for anyone who is still in England and Wales for the foreseeable future to fiddle with

Oh, also:

Welfare is 2% of the budget here. Kind of puts it into perspective.

norsk

Good man. After pressing submit I did wonder whether I was over the top or not.

Anyway it is definitely a valid concern even for us who don't live there as it will shape the future of the country, but how to fix it is hugely complex. I'm not sure anyone has a good answer to be honest.

Yep you're right, the Gulf countries can afford it for now, but the way they handle it will make it hugely difficult for them in the future when the pot of gold is finally going empty. And then what will happen? Well, I'm sure the western world will start giving foreign aid again. Now that would be a bitter pill to swallow for the locals wouldn't it..

The Dean

Good post? In what way? Socialist rant with little or no evidence to back it up, it seems to me...........

Kix

Loving the Avatar....

Beaverstate

Your avatars seem to be centering on the dead, Bork and Kodak.

Beakersful

Could be worse. Recently after telling socialists I was neither Left nor Right, one replied, "If you can't decide if you're Left or Right, then you're Right wing."

Evidence....there's a whole stream of it. Could be manipulated for its own purposes though. Not appropriate for this forum. I shouldn't have written so much admittedly, but it was ontopic showing any recent changes those who've been out of the country may have missed, and asking a serious question about unemployment ideology in Saudi during this wave of Saudization. Can't live amongst a culture without trying to understand their day to day needs. Can't have someone clear up after you without, as a much richer foreigner, quietly doing your bit particularly since it's xmas time, our cultural beliefs in giving focusing strongly on now (links into the low south/SE asian expat wages we were discussing)

The Dean

My favourite comment was always 'When the left of the labour movement and the right of the conservative movement are saying the same thing, only a fool refuses to listen' (it might have been Churchill, but I can't be arsed to look it up). Lots of examples where that doctrine has been proved right...... like seeing N Tebbit, E Powell, M Foot and A W-Benn sharing an anti-EEC platform back in the 1970s.... inspirational.

scot47

I heard Frank Field MP for Birkenhead taliking about a meeting he had with teenage constituents. When he told them that there ARE jobs, but they may not be the jobs that people much want, the retort from some pimpled Scouser was "You want us to take immigrant jobs then ?"

Beakersful

"Unskilled Jobs" at some point transitioned into "Dead End Jobs". In British society this has become a stigmatism. Other cultures don't look at work the same way. But now with 38% of the youth successfully gaining an undergraduate degree there has to be a change in the way people view jobs, and the Living Wage is going to have to go some way to doing this.

We aim to enter the Gulf States with a degree into a professional profession. The uneducated, caste restricted expats in the article come in to get jobs to survive. They have no welfare safety net back home, or even here. Their education system doesn't match up either. Our expectations are key here. But many think the uneducated in the UK, a large number of them have no right to complain about 'Dead End Jobs' when they held up their culture of "education is uncool" in the face of opportunity. It's a simplistic viewpoint though that doesn't take into account the over one million youths who in the last few years have failed to find a place in higher education due to lack of places. They put everything into education and have ended up with nothing, in the face of atrocious lies from their teachers, "work hard at your GCSE's, work hard at your A levels, and then go to university, work hard and you'll get a good career, marriage, kids, a house, etc"

The point between wanting to know, and turning away from caring about anyone else in society is nothing to do with personal politics anymore. As soon as people leave university and head into careers all those morals that served to engage debate, get them laid, or be popular are thrown out the window

The Dean

"...atrocious lies from their teachers, "work hard at your GCSE's, work hard at your A levels, and then go to university, work hard and you'll get a good career, marriage, kids, a house, etc"

I seem to recall being warned that if I didn't work hard etc, I would never get a good career etc - a very different thing.

Still, a degree in General Studies from the University of Scunthorpe, or whatever, will never be any use to anyone. If I were a UK-based employer today, I'd take a few talented A-Level school leavers and pay for them to do an Open Univ degree while working for me.......

Beakersful

Many services (army, etc) draw their officers from universities, believing them to be more capable through the increased education and experience. From having worked for 20 years and then going back to get a degree and seeing what occurred around me, I'd agree with you here. Grab them young, craft them and give them a career and opportunity before they've had the chance to get into an environment where they could potentially go backwards.

norsk

Are you saying that everyone should go to university? That's part of the problem for sure. A lot of people today go to uni only to get mickey mouse degrees which lead them to believe they are too good for certain jobs. This is not a good thing..

For sure some people who deserve a chance miss out due to lack of places and high fees, but why is higher education all of a sudden a human right?