Workfair - a question

This workfair business...can anyone answer me a question:

If there are jobs that need doing, someone should be employed to do them. Are people at the end of their two years on JSA simply being herded into compulsory minimum wage jobs then - in which case they may be miserable with the job they get but they would, by definition, no longer be on benefit? Or would they still be getting benefit rates, just being made to "do something" (anything?) to "earn" their benefits?

Obviously I don't like this idea. Citizens Income would solve all of this without any potential stigma that might be associated with a sort of "community service order" for benefits. To me it all just demonstrates that there aren't really any new ideas coming out of the Tories (or anyone else for that matter!) on welfare, just that "something must be done and this is something".

Tagged with

workfair, conservative, citizens income, Cameron

Comments

At about 15:11 on 04 Mar 2008 Steven Gill wrote...

I'd agree, check any forums round the 'net and you'll see a ton of from people who are just recycling what they read from that day's Daily Mail, but you also get a whole heck of a lot more people who actually talk sense on this issue, and you're one of em' :) With the whole ESA coming in, essensially a single out of work benefit, although it's flawed it feels like the goverment are slowly heading towards the idea of a citizens income, the more the current complex systems of benefit are merged together, the more likley, and easier to implement, a Citizen's Income will become. Good Post:)

About Jock

Name: Jock Coats

Age: 40s

Lives: Oxford, UK

Works: IT Support, Oxford Brookes University, where I am also a Governor of the University and a Warden in a hall of residence.

I am a card carrying Lib Dem, but am a confirmed market-anarchist, of the US Individualist Anarchists or Mutualist tradition. Other passions are social enterprise, monetary reform and housing. See full profile and contact form and at the following web-haunts: