PKMN.NET Forums
Misc => Debate => Topic started by: Milsap on April 20, 2015, 13:13
-
As today is the last day you can register to vote, where does everybody (who is eligible) stand on where their vote will go on 5th May?
And if you aren't eligible, who would you go for?
And if you haven't registered, do so immediately and remember to tell your friends. But not the ones who you think will vote for UKIP*
*Joke.
-
I have no interest in voting so I'm not going to
I appreciate the effort the local guy from UKIP is putting towards trying to get me to vote for them but that isn't happening lol
-
Quite looking forward to voting this year, still a bit unsure who I'm going to vote for (definitely not Tories or UKIP though aha)
-
Can't vote yet unfortunately (well, fortunately really, 16+ voting would be horrendous haha), but if I could I'd definitely go Conservative, although I don't particularly like the idea of an EU referendum, but I guess it needs settling.
-
I'm planning on actually voting this year. If not because I feel like I should, but because I have a friend who is quite vehemently UKIP, and it winds me up to no end when he goes off on one.
I'm not letting those types of people force their political opinions on me, and their reasoning is wrong. Besides, from what I can see UKIP is doing everything in its power to prevent equal rights and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks it's a tad ridiculous?
-
I have no idea who I'm going to vote for, they all look fantastic. This is of course a joke too.
Being a Brightonian, I would ordinarily vote Green, but Caroline Lucas is actually not rated particularly well in the other two Brighton constituencies, it's all Labour here.
I kind of wish I could just pick the best bits from all of them and go from there. I think even UKIP have something decent to bring to the table, but it's not Farage's anti-immigration slant that worries me, it's the fact he's one of Thatcher's children which means that his financial policies will likely smite me down.
I'd otherwise vote Lib Dems but their stance on the bedroom tax is patronizing and ridiculous. I'd vote Conservative purely based on the fact that our local MP is one of the most decent, non-Toryish Conservatives I've ever seen, but then a vote for him is a vote for Cameron and I just cannot do that.
So...probably Labour I guess, which is a bit boring, but I find myself disagreeing the least with their policies out of all the others. I don't really care who wins, so long as it's not the Tories. The resulting anarchy of a UKIP or Green win would be enjoyable, but unlikely.
-
I'm voting UKIP to kick you all out of my house because you never pay rent >:(
However, I do think we need to stop with all of the liberalism. I can't imagine the chaos that the Greens would cause.
We need to sort out our military funding, especially when Russia is puffing out her chest.
I'll probably vote for Plaid Cymru and stand up for my lecturers.
-
I'm planning on actually voting this year. If not because I feel like I should, but because I have a friend who is quite vehemently UKIP, and it winds me up to no end when he goes off on one.
I'm not letting those types of people force their political opinions on me, and their reasoning is wrong. Besides, from what I can see UKIP is doing everything in its power to prevent equal rights and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks it's a tad ridiculous?
Worst thing with UKIP is that most the people shifting to them are working-class Labour voters who've just been fed the garbage "immigration is the bane of the nation" that the media seems to be spouting, when UKIP would hurt those people more than even Thatcher. Like, Tories are always painted as being the ones who want to privatise the NHS, but UKIP would be much quicker in doing it.
Although tbf, I'd still rather have UKIP than the Labour/SNP garbage it looks like we'll be getting. Ed may say he won't join the witch of the north in a coalition, but even if he were being truthful (which I highly doubt), he'd need to form an informal coalition to prop a minority government up and if Nicola gets her way on trident Russia'll be a real problem haha. Don't mind Labour on their own, like I'd rather not have them but when the alternative is a Labour minority propped up by SNP it doesn't look so bad.
-
Worst thing with UKIP is that most the people shifting to them are working-class Labour voters who've just been fed the garbage "immigration is the bane of the nation" that the media seems to be spouting, when UKIP would hurt those people more than even Thatcher. Like, Tories are always painted as being the ones who want to privatise the NHS, but UKIP would be much quicker in doing it.
Although tbf, I'd still rather have UKIP than the Labour/SNP garbage it looks like we'll be getting. Ed may say he won't join the witch of the north in a coalition, but even if he were being truthful (which I highly doubt), he'd need to form an informal coalition to prop a minority government up and if Nicola gets her way on trident Russia'll be a real problem haha. Don't mind Labour on their own, like I'd rather not have them but when the alternative is a Labour minority propped up by SNP it doesn't look so bad.
I don't think any party, even the Conservatives themselves, running for parliament this May could hurt the working class worse than Thatcher did in the 80s. She was next-level when it came to dividing society into haves and have-nots, I think it'd take a dictator to do that on the same scale today.
-
why vote UKIP when there's always the BNP if immigration is your main concern!
-
Personally, I would actually like to see immigration tightened. I'm not all BLOODY FOREIGNERS about it but I would much rather see a points based system similar to Canada, Sweden etc. I feel like it's impossible to have this opinion without someone labeling you as a racist, it just makes sense to me especially when you consider our land mass.
Same with social/council housing waiting lists, I don't know why nationals don't get priority, surely it's just common sense that the people who don't have another country to go back to should be housed first. I don't consider it a matter of racial self-importance, just common sense that you should take care of people from your own country first to keep the numbers as even as possible before working on getting other people in. Every country should be doing it really and no other country should have to change their ways because some other country is refusing to play ball.
It's like Labour are saying that they want immigrants in public facing jobs to be able to speak English. I don't even understand why this wouldn't be a thing in the first place, you wouldn't get through the interview process at somewhere like Subway without being able to speak English first, so I don't see how it would help anyone by not doing those checks first. It's not even a left vs right issue, it's just silly, like inviting someone over for dinner but then not giving them a knife and fork.
-
Personally, I would actually like to see immigration tightened. I'm not all BLOODY FOREIGNERS about it but I would much rather see a points based system similar to Canada, Sweden etc. I feel like it's impossible to have this opinion without someone labeling you as a racist, it just makes sense to me especially when you consider our land mass.
Same with social/council housing waiting lists, I don't know why nationals don't get priority, surely it's just common sense that the people who don't have another country to go back to should be housed first. I don't consider it a matter of racial self-importance, just common sense that you should take care of people from your own country first to keep the numbers as even as possible before working on getting other people in. Every country should be doing it really and no other country should have to change their ways because some other country is refusing to play ball.
I agree with all this, but mostly because if you don't have some sort of rough idea what immigration you'll be getting then how can public services be budgeted correctly. Trouble is the only way we can implement it is through leaving the EU, which I'm not completely opposed to as long as people can produce reasonable evidence to suggest it'd benefit the country, as iirc it's about £50bn we'd lose if we left, and in the north east in particular Sunderland would lose it's Nissan factory which is quite a big help to the economy up here.
why vote UKIP when there's always the BNP if immigration is your main concern!
In fairness, UKIP say they want to control immigration through a points based system, which is fair enough. I don't like them, but their immigration policy isn't really comparable to BNP who are just flat out racist. My main problem with UKIP was that they wanted to abolish free public schooling in 2010 and replace it with all private schools but parents are issued with a voucher equivalent to what the state school should cost, and then the parents pay the difference. Free education is like one thing you really can't slash if you want the nation to go anywhere >_>
-
Probably going to vote snp or labour. I know Scotland only has 43 seats or something so if the majority of Scotland vote for the snp then the Tories will most likely get in again which is why I'm swaying towards Labour tbh.
-
Besides, from what I can see UKIP is doing everything in its power to prevent equal rights and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks it's a tad ridiculous?
Oddly, UKIP support seems to be highest in constituencies where immigration is not a big thing.
-
Finally ended with a Tory majority. 331 seats isn't a very big majority though, only 8 over the 323 needed discounting Sinn Fein and speaker seats and whatnot. Should be interesting to see if they can get all their manifesto pledges through the commons (especially repeal of HRA, can't see all Tories voting for it's repeal)
-
What a terrible result, I feel a bit sick to be honest. I feel bad not so much because Tories got in and 'I don't like Tories!!' but because they got in despite such obvious wealth disparity in society. I don't know how people can really look at what's going on at street level and actively want another 5 more years of it. I'm not saying there's a specific party they should have voted for instead, but just...not Conservative.
Honestly I do not know a single person that voted Conservative and that's out of a very broad age-range. All the right wing grey voters I know hate Tories and are all about UKIP. Who is even the demographic? And if they're the rich 1%..why are there so many of them?
I feel like we don't have a viable left wing in the UK anymore. I knew Lib Dems would fall but I didn't realize by how much. I thought people would have the sense to know that the presence of the party as a whole is more important than trying to blight the current leader because he didn't follow up.
Well, it's 5 more years of bedroom tax, homelessness and food banks from here on I guess. I can only hope I keep taking enough money home at the end of the day to avoid it.
-
Honestly I do not know a single person that voted Conservative and that's out of a very broad age-range. All the right wing grey voters I know hate Tories and are all about UKIP. Who is even the demographic? And if they're the rich 1%..why are there so many of them?
Tbf Tories have lots of policies that help the lower paid people, just not the unemployed. Like if you take 1997-2010 under Labour, tax free bit of income tax rose by about £2000, under the 5 years of coalition it rose almost £4000, giving people more of a right to their income. Then there's the whole 30 hours or less on minimum wage and you pay no income tax, and there are a lot of Euroskeptics who can't bring themselves to vote UKIP, so they go for the Tory referendum. Then there's the general annoyance towards falsely claimed benefits that make people want to see welfare cut. NHS is getting a further £8 billion on it's budget on top of inflation by 2020 as well.
Not saying they won't hurt vulnerable people, they likely will, but there's a lot of reasons people voted for them and I'm just really glad we didn't get Labour majority or Labour / SNP informal coalition (both would end up the same, SNP couldn't have afforded to vote against a labour minority government, Scotland would hate them if they brought labour down and let the Tories in), it's horribly unfair that anyone should be paying 50% of their income in tax, socialists don't seem to realise the fundamental flaw in that when all the rich people leave they have no one else's money to steal.
-
I voted Conservative [shrugs]
In all honestly I had no idea who I was gonna vote for until I actually voted - abt a week before because I do postal votes. I'd looked at all the policies (because seriously if you just vote bc you like someone you're doing it wrong bro) and the Conservative policies were the ones I agreed most with.
So, subsequently I've had people yell at me because I obviously must hate minorities, immigrants and disabled people (despite myself being the latter lmao). I'm actually bloody well pleased we have a majority government (even if it isn't by much) and I'm not surprised by the outcome.
People have been arguing with me that we're supposedly still suffering because of 'Thatcherism' - a laughable accusation if there ever was one. People have been spoonfed bullcrap about the Tory party by their parents which is why a lot of people my age are 'mad'.
But hey, at least it ain't UKIP.
-
Tbf Tories have lots of policies that help the lower paid people, just not the unemployed. Like if you take 1997-2010 under Labour, tax free bit of income tax rose by about £2000, under the 5 years of coalition it rose almost £4000, giving people more of a right to their income. Then there's the whole 30 hours or less on minimum wage and you pay no income tax, and there are a lot of Euroskeptics who can't bring themselves to vote UKIP, so they go for the Tory referendum. Then there's the general annoyance towards falsely claimed benefits that make people want to see welfare cut. NHS is getting a further £8 billion on it's budget on top of inflation by 2020 as well.
Not saying they won't hurt vulnerable people, they likely will, but there's a lot of reasons people voted for them and I'm just really glad we didn't get Labour majority or Labour / SNP informal coalition (both would end up the same, SNP couldn't have afforded to vote against a labour minority government, Scotland would hate them if they brought labour down and let the Tories in), it's horribly unfair that anyone should be paying 50% of their income in tax, socialists don't seem to realise the fundamental flaw in that when all the rich people leave they have no one else's money to steal.
The thing is that there are more implications to being 'lower paid' than just what you earn. The first simple fact is that it doesn't pay to work full-stop if you're on minimum wage. If you go from being unemployed to employed on minimum wage, you don't just lose your unemployment benefits - you lose housing benefit, council tax benefits, you start having to pay national insurance contributions and so on. Then you have to then take into account the fact that you're also having to pay for travel to get to your job (Because the cheapest housing isn't in the centre of town) and walking quickly stops becoming a viable option. Not to mention a lot of NHS treatment like dental checkups stop being free once you're full-time employed too.
Also remember that you stop being legible for JSA when you're working more than 16 hours a week, so you can do the maths there when you take into account that housing benefit doesn't pay ALL your rent and the same applies to council tax etc. That leaves you (if you're lucky) with about £10-20 to spend on Gas, Electricity, Water and Food for the week.
And of course there are so many smaller costs that get wrapped up in this. If you can't walk to the local job centre (Which most people can't) You're paying travel. JSA does reimburse this, but only if you can front the cash first. If you're working 16 hours or less, you're still signing on so now you're now paying for travel in two different directions and one of those isn't being reimbursed.
And to add to that; zero hours contracts can't guarantee any fixed wage, so if you're starting on minimum wage for a 20 hour week, you can't claim benefits, but if the next week they decide you're only doing 12 hours per week minimum wage, you're going to have to go back and file a rapid reclaim with the JSA in order to have enough money to pay the bills. Then what you'll find is that because you're now back on JSA, the rapid reclaim takes a while to go through and you still owe full rent, so you've got to go back down to the housing office to claim housing benefit, which doesn't pay until the next month, so you're now in debt with your local housing office because you've gone in the red. This happens 3 times and you get automatically put into the non-paying tenants list and the bailiffs and court orders start showing up.
Now imagine this: A single parent in a 3 bed house, gets child benefits and housing benefit - The exact moment one of her kids turns 16, she loses child benefit but is still housing that child and providing for them. Then the other one turns 16 - more child benefit lost. Then they move out - she's a single person already on the breadline in a 3 bedroom house, she's now got to pay bedroom tax on the two bedrooms, move out or face eviction. Moving house takes time and money, she'll need to find someone with a 1 bedroom house/flat willing to exchange into a 3 bedroom house, all while she's hunting for this, bedroom tax needs to be paid. Then comes the cost of actually moving house, factoring in the new amount of money it'll cost her to get to work/the job centre etc. etc. etc.
It's easy to look at these wage packet sums of money and go on about how great this party is over another party but the reality is completely different. People don't realize how much it costs to be poor and how much of a trap it is. There's just no way you can vote for Conservative and say you don't have anything against the poor, it'd be like saying you hate animal cruelty whilst kicking a dog. If you've actually looked at the policies then you can't slice it any other way, because these very policies are completely stacked against minorities, the poor and the disabled.
-
I voted snp in the end.
Was considering labour but after seeing the results of my area snp had a huge majority. I'm pretty sure Glasgow East had a swing of 99%! Was actually surprised how badly labour did in Scotland, I didn't honestly think the snp would gain that much tbh. lib dems crashed and burned as expected, my area was lib dem since the 80s and yeah. A lot of people here think they 'sold out' after the coalition.
I'm pretty sad the Tories are in again but I think they might start paying attention to Scotland and not just shrugging the referendum off.
-
@Turner (too long to quote)
All very true regarding being better off not working than working on minimum wage, but New Labour made this problem. During thatchers reign, no one wanted to be unemployed, and that's the way it should be, now you get people who want to stay unemployed and you can't really blame them when they get more than they would for working - it's common sense to do less work for more money. Labours solution seems to be raise minimum wage, but this will choke business, raising unemployment, or lead to artificial inflation of products, rendering the whole process useless as wages still buy the same. Ideally they'd just say housing benefit stays until you earn over so much, but this isn't going to happen in the current climate.
Bedroom tax needs revision, yeah, but it's a sensible policy. This government seeks to create 200,000 new homes, hopefully alleviating some of the strain on bedroom tax. Still think it needs a clause that says where there is no alternative but to live in a greater bedroom-ed house they don't suffer the loss of housing benefit. Fully agree with the policy at it's heart though, just needs better implementation.
Left wing slating of the Tories is completely overboard, they support those who work first and then with what's left will prop up those who can't/won't, and that's the way it should be.
-
All very true regarding being better off not working than working on minimum wage, but New Labour made this problem.
It doesn't matter who made the problem if the next party is going to support it all the same. You're talking about people's lives here.
During thatchers reign, no one wanted to be unemployed, and that's the way it should be, now you get people who want to stay unemployed and you can't really blame them when they get more than they would for working - it's common sense to do less work for more money. Labours solution seems to be raise minimum wage, but this will choke business, raising unemployment, or lead to artificial inflation of products, rendering the whole process useless as wages still buy the same. Ideally they'd just say housing benefit stays until you earn over so much, but this isn't going to happen in the current climate.
Actually things during Thatcher's reign weren't much different. People only wanted to work in as much as they wanted money (no different from today) and there were just as many 'dole scroungers' then as there are now (A tiny, tiny minority of people on benefits), the difference is that it was much easier to cheat the benefit systems back in the 80s because a lot of people were still paid cash in hand. I think you've got some kind of nostalgic idea of the 80s being all yuppies and Thatcher's children when that was in fact a small minority of people from already favourable backgrounds in the centre of London. The rest of the country had it very very badly, the job centres had to close down and we ended up with cities full of people living in cardboard boxes. Ever heard of 'cardboard city'?
It's not a case of deciding to do less work for more money, it's the fact that if you do work you literally cannot survive on the money you are left with. The only solution to this IS to raise the minimum wage. Housing benefit does not cover your whole rent, it's completely dependent on councils and housing associations as to how much is covered. Then you still have all the other things to think about, like council tax. The only way to solve it is to make work actually pay - not by reducing benefits so much that you're homeless whether you work or not but by raising the money you get for working so that people can actually survive.
Bedroom tax needs revision, yeah, but it's a sensible policy. This government seeks to create 200,000 new homes, hopefully alleviating some of the strain on bedroom tax. Still think it needs a clause that says where there is no alternative but to live in a greater bedroom-ed house they don't suffer the loss of housing benefit. Fully agree with the policy at it's heart though, just needs better implementation.
First of all, the 200,000 new homes are for first-time buyers so they make absolutely no difference to people in social housing who are affected by bedroom tax. Secondly, bedroom tax doesn't work at all in reality. Think about social housing - let's say you have a council estate located outside of the town/city with streets lined with 2-3 bedroom properties. When kids move out, the parent will be forced to move to a 1 bedroom flat. Where do you find the most 1 bedroom flats? In the city. So think about it, who on earth living in a 1 bedroom flat in the city is going to move to a 3 bedroom house in a council estate? How is either person going to afford this? Why would you move away from the amenities, far away from where you work to live in a 3 bedroom house that you'll also have to pay bedroom tax on? And if you look at it the other way around, if you've grown up and lived in a council estate where your family and support network are, why are you going to move into a flat in the centre of town where you probably can't afford the rent anyway?
Even if you are lucky enough to find a perfect match (Good luck, because your prospective exchangee in the 1 bedroom flat also has to compete with new families moving into social housing), you're not going to find it immediately and that will cost you hugely. It may sound good but it doesn't work in practice at all.
they support those who work first and then with what's left will prop up those who can't/won't, and that's the way it should be.
How are they propping them up when they're directly taking more benefits away from them? Bullying people into working for nothing or less with threats of making them homeless if they don't comply? JSA workers are in a position where they are forced to meet a sanction quota each week; meaning they have to kick a certain number of people off JSA to keep their job. You can be completely innocent and get sanctioned for making a small mistake on your job diary, not having the money for travel to look for jobs, filling out the wrong forms...these have all happened. Once you are sanctioned, you cannot claim JSA for 4 weeks. So that's 4 weeks of the only money coming in gone. 4 weeks of surviving on nothing, no money. If you get Sanctioned a second time, 13 weeks with no money. A third time? 52 weeks. A whole year.
Sorry, but there is absolutely no defense for any of this. This isn't about one party or another, I would be saying the same thing were it Labour or Lib Dems doing the same thing. This is the culture that is born out of a party that thinks the best way to save an economic debt in the trillions is to scrape pocket money from poor people. Calling it a 'sensible policy' is ludicrous.
-
During thatchers reign, no one wanted to be unemployed, and that's the way it should be, now you get people who want to stay unemployed and you can't really blame them when they get more than they would for working -
People stay unemployed because it's quicker and easier to claim JSA than it is to get up out of bed and actually earn it. Too many young people want money and status but they're too bone idle to walk across the road to go and get it as if the world owes them a living and that a job will magically appear for them the second they leave school. I was lucky- Couldn't get a teaching job anywhere (where I met a lot of these younger people that can't be bothered) but I left uni on the Tuesday and was at a different job (working for my father in law) on the Friday. He's the sort of person (and I am too) that will give people a chance if they're prepared to work for it. There's no work ethic anymore.
Honestly I do not know a single person that voted Conservative and that's out of a very broad age-range. All the right wing grey voters I know hate Tories and are all about UKIP. Who is even the demographic? And if they're the rich 1%..why are there so many of them?
I felt the same way- It's like the band U2. They're incredibly popular but I don't know ANYBODY that actually likes them. But then again, I'm guessing that a lot of people were swayed into voting that way by the media's assassination of Ed Miliband's character who, despite his stumbles, actually had the 'normal person' at heart. Considering he went to State Comprehensive and worked his way into Oxford.
The whole thing smells like the 1992 election where the Tories were not expected to do well (due to the Thatcher years) yet Major still won a majority (no pun intended). Tristram Hunt and Andy Burnham are my two picks for the next leader as Ed Balls lost his seat. Although Dan Jarvis, an ex soldier, could be used as a tool to drum up support as people in this country tend like soldiers a lot.
Thatcher's children when that was in fact a small minority of people from already favourable backgrounds in the centre of London. The rest of the country had it very very badly,
Thatcher screwed everybody north of Watford Gap Services. Hence the reason a lot of the northern cities and Scotland (until now) vote Labour.
-
People stay unemployed because it's quicker and easier to claim JSA than it is to get up out of bed and actually earn it. Too many young people want money and status but they're too bone idle to walk across the road to go and get it as if the world owes them a living and that a job will magically appear for them the second they leave school. I was lucky- Couldn't get a teaching job anywhere (where I met a lot of these younger people that can't be bothered) but I left uni on the Tuesday and was at a different job (working for my father in law) on the Friday. He's the sort of person (and I am too) that will give people a chance if they're prepared to work for it. There's no work ethic anymore.
Sorry but this is pure rhetoric with no basis in reality. Yes there are a select few who prefer to claim JSA than work, but it's far, far rarer than you would believe. If you need any convincing, go and look up how much JSA actually is, deduct rent, council tax, energy bills and food from that and you end up with a very very small amount; barely enough to afford a pay as you go mobile phone with enough credit to make calls to employers about jobs (You get sanctioned and lose your money if you can't do this). The idea of everyone bumming around on JSA because life is easier is a load of rubbish, it isn't even close to comfortable. You'd have to be disabled with 6 kids under a private landlord to be as comfy as the media makes out.
People want jobs and they want to work, the problem is that the government does not make it easy for them. It's impossible to work when work doesn't pay a liveable amount of money. In a lot of cases, the jobs just don't exist in the first place. I went for a 26-person interview at Iceland, the job had one position open.
If the government wants to cut money on benefits then they need to do it by cutting the money on infrastructure. Billions have been spent on outsourcing companies like G4S to provide 2 year 'Work programs' which are exactly the same as the Job Centre but with more frequent appointment times, only they're in a different building with different employees who get paid £2000 for every person they shove into a job and £6000 for every person who stays in said job for more than 6 months.
So what do they do? Of course, they try and push you into as many jobs that they know you can't keep in order to keep getting their payout. You wouldn't believe how many interviews have gone like this:
"So what experience do you have as a Senior Financial Advisor/Head Chef/Project Manager/Estate Agent"
"Well, I don't actually have any"
"Then why are you here"
"It's mandatory, the Job Centre would stop my money if I didn't go"
"Not another one.."
I even had my designated job advisor suggest that I lie and feign experience if I had none, which I'm pretty sure is illegal.
There are easily 20 or more of these offices in every city all over the country, with the employees frequently cashing their 2K...and all this money is coming out of the taxpayer. This is where your billions of pounds on benefits go. Not on some media strawman image of a dole scrounger with a 50inch plasma TV smoking a cigar.
Thatcher screwed everybody north of Watford Gap Services. Hence the reason a lot of the northern cities and Scotland (until now) vote Labour.
It wasn't too great for people in the South outside of London either. Cardboard city was in London after all, everywhere else just had streets littered with homeless families and young people as the Job Centres closed. The North definitely did get hit harder though, it's just once again more rhetoric that the South was all shoulder pads and filofaxes.
-
My friend voted for the Tories and he's been bragging about privatising the NHS so the poor-folk can't use it ^.^
Gonna bust his knees.
-
I was lucky- Couldn't get a teaching job anywhere (where I met a lot of these younger people that can't be bothered) but I left uni on the Tuesday and was at a different job (working for my father in law) on the Friday.
And this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact he's your father-in-law.
-
Working for him was plan Z, after exhausting every other job track: Teaching, police, live sound work etc. I only ended up with him because there was nothing else. Started out as something to do to earn some rent money, but after I couldn't find anything it became a full time job that's blossomed into a career. Would rather be teaching or doing something in music because I've invested years and a lot of money into it, but I would rather be contract hiring vans and Range Rovers than sitting around doing nothing.
I even had my designated job advisor suggest that I lie and feign experience if I had none, which I'm pretty sure is illegal.
I never understood the Job Centre. Every week I put down the same three things on my job hunting card: Music jobs.com, Lincolnshire Police and searching for bands to join. I had questions asked to prove I had actually looked instead of just writing it down. Whereas other people never showed up to sign on and never proved it and STILL got their benefits. Plus if you lie and get the job and get sacked for lying, you're going to end up at square one again and get questioned as to why you got laid off. Because you told me to blag my way into it you muppet!
-
Constantly going to the Job Centre is so annoying, they constantly look down at you as if you're not good enough and tell you you're not looking for jobs properly.
The face on the one woman when I got a job before they could force me on a placement was so satisfying.
Shame my job sucks and I'm still not really going anywhere in life but hey ho
-
Constantly going to the Job Centre is so annoying, they constantly look down at you as if you're not good enough and tell you you're not looking for jobs properly.
The face on the one woman when I got a job before they could force me on a placement was so satisfying.
Shame my job sucks and I'm still not really going anywhere in life but hey ho
Some of my Job Centre/Work Program stories are pretty bizarre/ridiculous. I was on the work program for 2 years before they noticed I dyed my hair (Black) and the moment they found out they told me that they'd sanction me if I didn't go back to my natural colour because apparently it could stop some employers from employing me. Thankfully that was just before I managed to get a job finally.
My only sanction lost me money for 4 weeks, I completely forgot about my appointment and decided I'd just be honest and tell them this when I said I'd missed my appointment. The woman laughed and said "See, if you lied and said you were at the Doctor's or something, I'd be able to let you off!".
A friend of mine I've known practically all my life was on the exact same work program as me with the same advisor, she wrote on his action plan "BUY CLEARASIL!!" because he had some acne and she said it was stopping people from employing him. She even questioned this when he came back the next week and pointed out where his spots were in an office with other people.
When I was at the Job Center I saw a homeless-looking guy lose his temper at one of the job advisors and throw an onion bhaji at him, he got carried out by the police. One time the entire upstairs was cornered off because someone tried to suicide overdose in the toilets. Another time some guy cut in front of me at the line for the job diary sheet and said "I NEED A JOB DIARY RIGHT NOW, I'VE GOT HALF A TOILET ROLL HANGING OUT OF MY ARSE"...definitely not what anyone was expecting.
The actual Job Centre workers are pot luck, sometimes I'd get one who doesn't even read my job diary and would literally just do a few clicks on the computer and that would be it. Wouldn't ask me any questions or anything about my progress. Others would just be purposely difficult and try and trip me up constantly: "Have you looked at <website>? it might be really useful to you" "No I haven't, that sounds ideal though, thanks!" "So you're saying you HAVEN'T looked for jobs then? So this diary is a lie then basically?". It was like the weirdest good-cop bad-cop routine ever.
The amount of CV writing courses I went on in this time too. 6 week courses from 8am-4pm of just pure cover letters and interview prep, there was so much bad advice given out as well. These are the 'training courses' that the government brags about when they talk about employment figures, they're a massive waste of money. I spent 2 weeks on one of them doing key skills english and maths tests so I could do the rest of the 4 weeks of the course, which was just a CV and cover letter course. There was so much red-tape to do something you could learn in a day that they spread out over 6 weeks, it's absolutely unbelievable.
-
Have you been to the seminar where they tell you how to look for jobs? Basically them telling you how to do what you're already doing?
Annoying as hell.
-
good job all you tory voters!!! theres this little thing called Section 28 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28) that our prime minister once fought to keep in place until he realised more people would vote for him if he kept quiet about this.
glad to see you support a blatant homophobe (http://i.imgur.com/gKG4TlX.gif)
(cant wait for someone to come in and go 'no uh actually gay relationships are an anaethma for Reasons' and i can probably guess exactly who it'll be and all)
People stay unemployed because it's quicker and easier to claim JSA than it is to get up out of bed and actually earn it. Too many young people want money and status but they're too bone idle to walk across the road to go and get it as if the world owes them a living and that a job will magically appear for them the second they leave school. I was lucky- Couldn't get a teaching job anywhere (where I met a lot of these younger people that can't be bothered) but I left uni on the Tuesday and was at a different job (working for my father in law) on the Friday. He's the sort of person (and I am too) that will give people a chance if they're prepared to work for it. There's no work ethic anymore.
> gives up Acoustics """""""""Science""""""""""" as a career cos its Too Hard
> gives up teaching from "nervous exhaustion" which we all know means 'poor baby couldn't handle it cos they didn't think it through enough'
> benefits through nepotism in job which was handed to him on a silver plate where he can't possibly be fired cos Family Business
> goes on about "work ethic"
sounds like you'd be a shoe in for the tory party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! too bad you live in the worst city in the west midlands, only role you're getting with that kind of oikish location is steward so i hope you are fit enough to run around giving drinks to golf clubs a lot (i know the answer to that is "no")
-
I voted conservative. Felt like there was no real alternative. Labour didn't look strong enough to take power in the run up to the election, and they had almost zero support in my constituency. After the tuition fees fiasco with Lib Dem, I didn't want to vote for them either. In retrospect, that was completely petty, since it was the conservative influence in the first place that forced them into it.
Also is this proportional representation train derailed or not? I personally don't think it's a great idea. I feel like its dangerous to give the smaller, more extremist parties like UKIP a bigger shot at Westminster.
-
After the tuition fees fiasco with Lib Dem, I didn't want to vote for them either. In retrospect, that was completely petty, since it was the conservative influence in the first place that forced them into it.
i take it you're in the south of the uk then????
this kind of "hit back against the libdems by voting far right" (?) seems to be prevalent in all the blue territories down south, mainly the middle class ones who dont realise cameron hates the middle class as much as he hates the working class (upper class or ur nothing)
Also is this proportional representation train derailed or not? I personally don't think it's a great idea. I feel like its dangerous to give the smaller, more extremist parties like UKIP a bigger shot at Westminster.
the counterargument "what if ukip got in" is "what if people voted as if it mattered and we all didn't Tactical Vote cos of First Past The Post or not bother cos it'd be a wasted vote".
in the last election if we had something like AV+ or STV (ones that serve to oust the tories, hence why they settled for AV cos all AV does is just marginalise votes up a bit) then we would have been looking at a sizeable lib-lab majority or possibly even a libdem majority in the last election with no real tory stronghold in sight.
also watch the tories surrepticiously u-turn re the EU debate and pledge to keep us in. brexit would cause chaos for his Business Buddies and their free trade stuff which is why they're all """""accidentally"""""" (http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2015/05/25/bank-of-englands-brexit-email-gaffe-a-storm-in-a-tea-cup/) leaking contingency plans.
edit: i dont mean to pick on you specifically but im not wading through two pages of other peoples presumably "i voted tory cos i like to be poor" opinions so i can come up and be some sort of annoying tired socialist lefty pinko
-
Just stubbed my toe... thanks, David Cameron.
-
i take it you're in the south of the uk then????
this kind of "hit back against the libdems by voting far right" (?) seems to be prevalent in all the blue territories down south, mainly the middle class ones who dont realise cameron hates the middle class as much as he hates the working class (upper class or ur nothing)
South-West London, you're correct.
also watch the tories surrepticiously u-turn re the EU debate and pledge to keep us in. brexit would cause chaos for his Business Buddies and their free trade stuff which is why they're all """""accidentally"""""" leaking contingency plans.
I don't blame them. But then it's not like I see an EU exit helping anyone else either.