[jambutty]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

I have never personally been on the dole Jambutty but as I said earlier my later husband once was when he was made redundant following illness and he took a cleaning job. He applied for all kinds of jobs he could find not because he wanted to do that work but because they were there and he wanted to work. He even applied for potato peeling which has to be about the most boring thing ever.

Yes I do agree that it isn't always practical to uproot yourself to go and work in another part of the country especially if your spouse is already in work but I also have friends who have done precisely that. One family moved down south and subsequently abroad. One family moved to the Cambridgeshire fens where he had a job waiting and she later found one and another moved to Huntingdon to do a job he had absolutely no experience in but they were so impressed by his references in what he had done and he has made a successful career.

Yet another family have moved to France which meant not only uprooting the children but plunging them into a different culture with a different language.

I think it all depends on if you are looking at your glass as being half empty or half full. The ones who see it as half empty fear losing the half they have. The ones who see it as half full keep on trying until they can fill it up.

I have been on the dole, several times back in the eighties when businesses were going bust and chucking their work forces on the scrap heap every hour of every day. When I was lucky enough to get another job it was always a case of last in first out when cut backs came around – and they did with startling regularity. If it wasn’t that then there was the three months rule. “Sorry we don’t think that you are going to make the grade” or words that effect as they show you the door at the end of week 12. At week 14 they would have to pay the full going wage. Worst of all whilst tied up at work all day you got little or no chance to seek something better and even if you do find something you can’t attend an interview because your current employer won’t give you the time off or says “yes OK you can go but don’t come back.”

During that time, amongst other jobs, I was a Betterware salesman (up to 10 hours a day, 6 days a week), mobile ice cream salesman (up to 10 hours a day, 7 days a week), semi skilled upholsterer (paid when there was work to do), Debt collector, Manager of a newsagents on Roman Road Estate (up at 4:00am to open the shop at 4:30am to await the delivery of papers. Close at 6:00pm 7 days a week. Sunday closing at 1:00pm and Xmas Day off). Part time help for 3 hours morning and afternoon to give me time to go to the various Cash and Carry’s to buy stock. After 18 months the owners sold the shop from under me. Just as well really because I doubt if I could have carried on any longer. After that it was Private Hire driver and again 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

I tried the re-training schemes for £10 above the dole and it cost more than that just to get to work and back. But the end result was always either cheap labour or a skivvy for the rest. Those also lasted 12 weeks before they let you go. I can just see a qualified doctor doing that.

One swallow does not a summer make. Meaning that just because you can quote that a handful of families have uprooted it doesn’t automatically follow that the remaining hundreds of thousands can and should do the same. The greater majority do not have that option.

To all those offering advice to those on the dole – get on the dole yourself before spouting off. You will find out how hard it is to get a job at a living wage and keeping it for any length of time. Especially nowadays when hundreds of thousands of immigrants are crossing our shores and quite happy to work for the basic minimum or less. When a week’s basic wage over here is the equivalent to a month’s wage in their home country you can’t blame them for coming over but it does keep most unskilled and semi skilled jobs pay at the legal minimum and not what the job is really worth.