Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
£500 still too much
Anyone else think £500 is too high still? Yes these people may be forced out of London and how is that a bad thing? Rents will decrease and as a knock on effect so will property prices allowing more people who make the economy turn get on the property ladder. I work full time as does my wife as with many of you this Christmas we had to struggle to buy gifts for our 6 year old son. A friend of our who is on full benefits and has never paid into our tax system in the 10 years she has lived in this country was able to buy her 8 year old daughter an £500 iPad mini. WOW. I am sick to the point of rage that people who work get less than those who don't. I asked my friend why she has to live in Haringey where the council pay her £1100 rent why can't she be unemployed somewhere cheaper like leeds for example.
£500 I wish I could have £500 a week free. Time to ship out dead wood it will be better for all of us and we know it, cap should be £400 a week and thats still being generous but I think that is the average amount a working family would have so why should those on benefits get more?
Tags for Forum Posts: benefits cap
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Surely quite difficult to do when the majority of the services of which you speak (street cleaning, rubbish and recycling) are actually in the hands of private companies? Your latter points raise so many questions one scarcely knows where to begin:
Are you suggesting we provide a multi-national company with labour paid for by the taxpayer? Would you not be undermining the jobs of existing workers by doing so? Where is the incentive for companies like Veolia to employ people on a living wage when they can draw from a pool of 'benefit recipients'? Who bears the cost of training people and insuring them? What would their status be? Who is responsible if in the course of collecting rubbish for example they have an accident? If the work is there, why are jobs not being created by Veolia etc to do it?
How would such a scheme affect a person's availability for work? At present, they need to be available every day. Can a company run a service based on fluctuating availability, based on a pool of casual labour? How will that affect the morale of the paid workforce?
I'm not sure Veolia would be interested. The workfare programme so far has been very toxic to companies that have taken part in it.
The council is committed to paying a London living wage. If they start using people on benefits to staff services (not sure which they could do, most I would imagine are pretty specialised now) then again they undermine their commitment to making work pay for their employees.
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Permalink Reply by LSquared on
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So change the system. It doesn't have to be provided by private companies, but if that's what you want then change the contract with Veolia so they provide infrastructure, support and training and Haringey provide casual labour. Promote the existing workers to train and manage the casual pool. It's not going to cost any more!
The jobs do need to be done. They aren't being created by Veolia because we aren't paying enough. If we paid in labour the jobs could still get done.
I can't see how it is a better situation to have our environment and people degraded when the money could be used to the betterment of both.
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The decision taken to tender out services to private companies is not related to any decision made by me :) Indeed there is some evidence from Islington, that taking them back in house might even save money. Councils were obliged to find value for money and historically this meant offering contracts to private companies all seeking to undercut competitors. The most obvious and easiest way to keep down costs is to keep wages low.
Contracts are made for a number of years. If it were in my power to change it, I would be looking to place financial penalties upon the company for failing to meet targets, not asking them to take on free labour.
I really can't accept the idea that we give 'free' i.e. paid for by the state labour to a company that reported a profit of 153 million euros in the first half of 2012. They have a job to do. If they are failing to do it, it is not the business of the council to 'bail them out' with free labour. If they are not managing, then it is down to the voter to question the wisdom of those who accepted their bid not to throw state money at them in the form of Haringey's jobless.
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Agreed, the fix needs to be wider than Haringey. What I am suggesting is a huge overhaul of the way we think about benefits and about public services. It's not something one council could do alone in the current system either practically or legally. Realistically, it ain't gonna happen :(
But I think it is important we ask exactly the question you asked, which is why do we have jobs that clearly need to be done not being done by the companies we pay to do them, and the question I asked which is why do we have so many people out of work when there are so many useful things not getting done.
Because by answering those questions, we might find something that could happen.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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We have so many people out of work because there are not enough jobs!!! In actual fact young people taking McJobs (minimum wage, random days and less than 30 hours per week) are making unemployment look like it's improving.
There are not enough proper jobs because we are bouncing along the bottom (+/- 0.5% growth) of a very long recession.
I'm sorry if it offends you to see these people living the "high life" but the fact is that some of them will if we try to avoid the horror situation of women begging on the streets with their children.
The way iPads were marketed at bus stops in Tottenham I am not surprised that they have become the must have luxury item for people to have.
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Permalink Reply by Abi on
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I'm sorry if it offends you to see these people living the "high life" but the fact is that some of them will if we try to avoid the horror situation of women begging on the streets with their children.
I think you've hit the nail on the head there, John. Just because SOME people abuse a system that is there to help people who really need it, it doesn't mean the system should be scrapped.
I also think it's healthy not to deny that what the OP is moaning about does go on - just not as widely as he seems to believe. We've probably all known someone who lived off benefits when they could have been working - long ago I had a flatmate who was one of those 'career' dolers, and as someone who does believe strongly in a welfare system, I admit that being subjected to that tried my principles on a daily basis.
But then it's also important to remember that the vast, vast majority of people would never want to live like that - and that treating people as if this is a situation that they've chosen is grossly unfair. And it's not the 'high life' either - even if it does fulfils needs for a while, who would want to live with the knowledge that it could all be taken away at any point?
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Permalink Reply by Seema Chandwani on
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^^ Agreed John!
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Let's just indulge this for a moment and imagine a world in which what you have asked for is possible. We acknowledge that the short term unemployed need space to get a new job so we only take people who have been out of work for more than two years. We make them full employees of the company involved so no problem with accidents and pensions. We pay them JUST their unemployment benefit which is the only difference between them and actual employees. Before we even start to imagine that this will work, let's look at two men cleaning Green Lanes: one is actually long term unemployed and "earning" £71 a week, the other is not and is earning the London Living Wage of £332 a week. Oh hang on that's unfair of me, how about minimum wage of £247 a week. That's still unfair of me (with regard to my argument), why don't we pay them both minimum wage? So the system is changed for your utopia to be possible and still it has problems. Do you have solutions?
The "problem" is just not big enough to warrant this kind of action. The amount of money spent supporting the unemployed is TINY. Do you really want to go and do all of this just because the possibility of people sitting at home watching TV and receiving a pittance from the government so that they are not out begging in doorways offends you?
I don't. I am happy to pay the unemployed £71 per week just to stop that happening. It's £1.78 an hour so we're not going to see people quit even their 30 hour per week (if they're lucky) jobs at McDonalds on £6.20 an hour just to sit at home and watch TV.
And if you want to discuss the outrageously high amount of housing benefit that "they" are receiving then I'm afraid we've covered that earlier and they don't get it at all, their landlords do.
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I'm afraid you are replying to what you assuming not what I am saying. I specifically said not full time, in fact I suggested one day a week. That will leave plenty of time for a job search even for the newly unemployed. And of course the benefit rules would not penalise people for not working while they are doing their bit for their community.
The one day a week guy is not stealing the full time guy's job. The one day a week guy doesn't resent the full time for getting paid more, because the full time guy works five times as many days. The full time guy might wonder whether he'd be better of working one day a week and claiming benefit...but then he already wonders that today, except without the one day bit.
That whole "watching tv offends me" thing is out of your head, not mine. I don't see work as some kind of punishment. Its just part human community - we muck in together to do what needs doing. In fact I think being paid £71 ( plus of course housing and council benefit - it might not be cash in the hand but its over £100 per week that doesn't need to be paid) to keep out of the way is far more demeaning than bring treated as someone with something worthwhile to contribute. Study after study tells us about the hopelessness and isolation of long term unemployment. Work provides more than just economic activity, it gives social contact. Plus on a purely practical side, the potential of a reference and a track record.
No, those are all straw men of you own design. My question is simple: I don't understand why we have work that needs doing and people who need money, bit we don't seem to have any way of paying the latter to do at least some of the former.
(BTW, on housing benefit, perhaps you would like to reread my original post which pretty much started with the point you made exactly.)
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Fair enough, one day a week. So we can have the recently unemployed in this scheme too.
Once you have worked one eight hour day and declared it to the government (assuming you're on minimum wage) you would lose a lot of your other benefits too so there is no point doing this unless the pay is really good and probably for more than one day. Now you did say that the system needed to change so let's assume that people are not penalised for working one day a week and none of the other benefits are taken away but what he earns is deducted from his unemployment benefit only. Why not then work four days a week or even five if you get to keep the other benefits AND the money you earn? Now do you see how he's different from the guy on the other side of the road?
As for mucking in together to do what needs doing. Isn't that David cameron's Big Society? Like when HoL is used to organise park cleanups or passage de-icing? If I was compelled to do those things I don't think I'd enjoy it at all.
What you're basically saying is that there should be jobs/work for everyone and in this we are also in agreement. I really think this works as well as it can given the tiny amount of money we pay out for unemployment benefit (link again) and the fact that there are just not many jobs out there at the moment. Even ex-bankers are sleeping in parks!
I hope that the takeaway from this discussion is that rents are too high in London and the people "benefitting" from this are the landlords.
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Sorry John, you are still thinking in terms of tinkering around the current system.
I'm talking about doing things differently. It's not an additional day's paid work to top up your benefits, it's one days work, for the benefit of the community, in return for your benefits. And frankly, as anyone on minimum wage will tell you, that's a pretty sweet offer.
No extra money required, the same money goes to the same people only a bit more work gets done on stuff the council can't otherwise pay for.
We, the community, get a little bit more done than we do today and the unemployed person is no worse off than before and hopefully better off due to the social contact, opportunity to be valued and who knows, maybe even hear about a job through a colleague.
It does throw open the question of the full time but low paid worker vs the one day a week benefit claimant, but as I said before that's the case today as well, so if you find that an unacceptable aspect of my suggestion you find yourself in the unexpected position of agreeing with the OP!
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Oh OK, I see. So like "real work". We could send them in to help in schools. Maybe they'd be able to give the Lollypop lady on Tottenham Lane a break one day a week. Why don't we open up a special business in Haringey for all the unemployed people and they come in and give one day a week's work for free? There could be a mixture of clerical, cleaning and perhaps building maintenance work. We'd need a name for the business of course and that could be contentious given how high feelings about names can run around here. May I be so bold as to suggest "The Work House".
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