Quote:
Originally Posted by lindsay ormerod
The "bleeps" at the job centre are just doing their jobs, if someone who is allegedly unemployed can't get themselves down to the office to sign it's fair to assume that a) they forgot,b) they can't be bothered c) something calamitous has happened or d) they are working. In any of the above cases their benefit will likely be suspended. If the claimant then provides a good reason for the omission their claim will be resumed from the date it was suspended. At the end of the day the taxpayer is paying for these benefits, and if they are withheld temporarily whilst the recipients provide proof that they are still entitled to the benefits it's a safeguard against fraud.
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So someone lying in bed because of flu, tonsilitis or whatever, worries that his benefits will be stopped temporarily because he can't sign on in time, fearing that his kids will go hungry, have no heat etc.., he drags himself out of bed, signs on, catches pneumonia. gets complications caused by malnourishment and stress due to having to provide for his family for a week on what Cameron, Blair or Brown spend on a meal out with his missus. He ends up in hospital, has yet more forms to fill in because he is not now available to work and his benefits are temporarily suspended anyway.
He doesn't want to fill out forms, all he wants to do is sleep and recover, but he knows he has to force himself for the sake of his family, in his drug addled state, he screws up the claim form, it takes months to sort it out..meanwhile he gets up to his ears in debt to Wonga or some other loan shark, he's about to lose his home...simply because he got sick.
There's always an alternative view..
The benefit system is too rigid, there is no room to manoeuvre. There are the minority that know how to screw the system, and there are the majority that are screwed by the system. The 'bleeps' offer no real help, they simply go by the book, just doing their jobs, ticking boxes, dotting the i's and crossing the t's. No doubt they have become jaded by the ever increasing workload and strictures placed on them, but at least they have a job, which is more than the jaded raggedy man across from them who has applied for shedloads without even getting an interview has.
Your use of the term 'alledgedly unemployed' would not go amiss on the comments page of the Daily Mail..it's degrading to those who through no fault of their own have been thrown on the scrapheap by successive government policy, greedy bankers, crap teachers etc..