Cut all the benefits/welfare, fix the economy

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I'm sure, before this recession hit, it'd have been easy to get a job at McDonald's or something, which gains experience for the future.

There's no excuse for never having a job if you're 30 years old.

It's still easy to get a job at McDonald's.

I don't think there are many spaces left! Cheap labour has entered the franchises.

McJobs here get swallowed up by students making up the difference. Again, if you had to choose between the socially inept clumsy person with the strange gait, and the motivated future degree-owner who can hold a conversation that isn't about a special interest, which one do you think is most likely to get the job?

Also., how many people do you think can get a job in Macdonalds in the average town? How many staff has YOUR MacD's got? Couple of thousand? My town has about 8 Macdonalds, and probably a similar number again of other franchise restaurants, and they certainly can't make up for the VAST employment shortfall in a area stripped of its major employers and industry by previous Conservative governments. A couple of hundred transient students get a minimum wage, and a few more get to the heady height of management. That's it. Other than that, the best we can manage is an Amazon shipping centre, which demands COMPULSORY overtime. That is YOU ARE REQUIRED to work at any point they demand, for minimum wage, regardless of other commitments. (Family, life.) Current government cuts are removing the major employer in the area (public service.), whilst any major projects that might have created jobs are now on hold or have simply been stopped due to lack of funds. Mac-fucking-Donalds cannot and will not make up for that shortfall.

Not to mention, not everybody wants to be a wage-slave in a fat-soaked sweat-shop flipping pre-prepared sawdust slabs for overweight slobs and lazy Sink Estate mothers working sh***y hours for peanuts, regardless of what benefits you might lose.

I'll repeat it because you clearly don't understand it. It is perfectly easy to get from school age to 30 and never get a job, with all the best intentions in the world. Only in your imagination and that of the ConDems is it possible that everyone everywhere could get a job. That wasn't true in the past, and its even less possible in the current financial climate.

Consider also that in the past 30 years or more, we have seen almost all of the major employers in the UK f**k off to faraway lands. Call-centres are outsourced to Dehli, we have to build ships we can't use to keep the shipyards going. The mines all got closed, the car manufacturers folded or moved abroad. Even the bloody chocolate-makers are moving away. The potential for employment is LESSENING. The only growth industry appears to be "Making a prick of yourself for Simon Cowell"...otherwise known as "Organ-grinders Monkey." Even then, the odds are phenomenally low. Actually take a look at the situation before you carry on randomly guessing that there must be a job somewhere. You're starting to sound a lot like an ATOS doctor turfing the terminally ill into shoving trolleys around ASDA car-park.

So Craig28 could have got a job when he was a student...



There are loads of other basic jobs around, shop assistants for instance. I'm not suggesting everyone go work at McDonald's, I merely used that as an example.

Also note how I said before the recession, because though the jobs market is bad for everyone at the moment, it was fine for the majority of the last 20 odd years.



See the above, but if you don't want to be a "wage-slave", I say go start a business and become self-employed then, that's what I've done. Just don't steal my money!

You are out of your mind. Under socialism workers can get away with drinking alcohol on the job see how hard it is to fire Union members. On the flipside, workers in a Communist situation are treated almost as slaves.

Just to throw in my 2 cents, I'm an over 30 college grad who has never held a professional (paying) job. I was pregnant on my graduation day and have been a stay-at-home mom ever since. It's a decision I have no regrets about. I'm hoping to enter the workforce soon and I'm not anticipating a huge problem as I plan to be a science teacher (I'll just have to work at a low-income school, which I'd prefer anyway). If I was looking to join the private business sector, this would likely be a much different story. My point is that it's completely possible for an older person to be in the entry-level category.

My husband is an employer for several fast-food type franchises. The competition can be fierce and if someone is looking for anything over minimum wage, their application gets tossed out. It really is very nasty out there. In Philly, it's not uncommon for an employer to receive 1000 applications for a single job opening.

You explain very well why people like you favour unemployment, favour a large Reserve Army of Labour. If there was 1% unemployment, that drunk worker can easily find another job if they do fire him or her. That will never do. That person must learn discipline! So now that it's established that the Right love unemployment, surely they have no business attacking the unemployed.

If they are handling factory equipment they have been drinking on the job, they could get someone killed. Ever heard of drunk driving.

Drunk driving isn't a crime. Drink driving is!

So the Right admits it - they do favour unemployment. Excellent.

I never said I favored unemployment, unless you are referring to the idea I don't want a drunk driving a fork lift around and killing someone.

Without unemployment, our drunk friend would not be able to learn his lesson. He's get another job tomorrow and go back to endangering the public. That will never do. No, unemployment, we need it to keep them in line, to keep inflation down and keep profits up. The Right makes no secret of its belief that corporate profits are the most important measure of everything, that governments exist for profits of private corporations, that everything else is just a spinoff, if something good happens, it's just a happy accident. The be all and end all is profits.

What the heck are you smoking?

You have serious issues if you believe that Conservatives and Rich people are all evil or are the enemy.

Where have you been living for the past 30 years? Clearly it isn't the UK.

You drift further into the ridiculous. I'll say it again. Even with the best of intentions, there simply are not as many jobs as there are unemployed people, have never been, and will never be as many. You've been told quite clearly how many businesses go to the wall every year, and had it pointed out to you as well that not everybody is equipped with the skills-set to start a business. Nor are there so many different business opportunities as there are unemployed people. Many small business openings can now be outsourced at a ridiculously cheap level to other nations, meaning that even if you could create a business around them, you couldn't afford to compete. But then you were told that as well. You've been given plenty of perfectly legitimate ways that someone could get to near thirty and not have found meaningful employment as well. You claim that there are "loads of basic jobs" around. How many of them pay enough to be a decent working wage? Not everybody is in a situation where minimum wage is enough to support them and their families, or pay or the bills, or stay out of debt. Even if there were a basic job for everybody, still many people would need government help or simply sink. Minimum wage is a countrywide constant. Rent is not. Utility bills are barely even a county-wide constant.

A report issued very recently points out that child poverty within working households accounts for 58% of all UK cases, clearly proving it is not possible to base anti-poverty policies on the concept that work alone is a route out of poverty. Its an unavoidable truth. Lets cover it again. Work alone is not capable of saving children from poverty. Got that? The same report also states that welfare reform alone is not enough to reduce social exclusion. Sounds pretty straightforward as a concept. So we have twice stated the fact that Work on its own does not lift people out of poverty.

The DWP response to this report is: "Work is the best way out of poverty which is why we are radically reforming the welfare system to ensure that work always pays and people aren't trapped in a cycle of dependency and worklessness."

Yes, that's right. When told straight and clean that something is the case, the DWP just ignore what they have been told and carry on regardless saying the same thing. They simply don't care about facts or reality. Its ignorance at its basest level.

Likewise another report states categorically that Fitness To Work tests are unfit for purpose. That means they DO NOT WORK. The DWP response to learning that their tests are failures and cannot determine fitness for work is: CARRY ON USING THEM. Even more wilful ignorance of reality, facts and common sense.

Tell me, do YOU work for the DWP? You share a common mindset....

I really wish the Social Darwinists would just come out and say what they are really about. In society there are "winners" and "losers" and their mindset is that the "losers" should suffer and/or parish. Government can't force 100% employment in a capitalist society. If there was a job placement system such that everyone could contribute to society in a meaningful way and be compensated accordingly we wouldn't have this problem.

As it stands though, something has to be done about the "undesirables" who can't find work no matter how many times they apply. Those who want to do nothing must unconsciously and cynically justify their cruel stance using the <just world hypothesis>. Unfortunately the only way these people will learn humility is for them to be taken down a notch themselves. They need a good hard smack upside the head. We really should have a "Push a Social Darwinist Pig Off a Cliff Day" to keep these bastards from f*****g everything up.