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| Thread ID: 123472 | 2012-02-27 03:44:00 | Welfare reform | QW. (15883) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1261793 | 2012-02-28 18:51:00 | Let me give you 4 cases I know personally: 1)My brother. he's had 2 jobs in his life. He hasn't had one in years now and is on a benefit. I'd say he'll be on it until he gets to retirement age. He's intellectually and physically handicapped. he has epilepsy. He also has various problems with his sight and can nearly not see at all now. He has recently got Dupuytren's disease as well now. Hospital says too bad, they have too many other people to attend to. 2)Friend who graduated as a programmer and was head hunted by a large well known company. She was on around $100K a year when her medical issue struck. This was caused initially by a birth and then made worse by the surgeon. he admitted that. Never mind, ACC didn't accept it after initially paying her. So she went from her job she'd been in for ages, just planned on maternity leave for a few months, a new house, new husband and a perfect life. He decided at this point he didn't want to play house anymore, her work sacked her (unreliable - as she was doing part time hours through ACC with them at that point), sold the house and got nothing back as it was newly bought. She ended up back at her dads on the DPB for a while. 6 years later she's moved out, medical issue is permanent but improved enough now after another 2 ops that she can move around reasonably well now and now works in a job share part time doing office admin for $20 an hour less than she got 11 years ago. 3)Relative. Worked for a lift company, now senior after working there all his life. Moved south as part of a transfer to Wellington. Bought their second house, sold the one here, not a more expensive one, but with move costs, REA fees etc, the mortgage didn't go down....All good except their plans have come to a crashing halt now as he has just been diagnosed with an extremely major non-curable disease. He's 7 years off retirement. He won't be able to keep working soon. What do you think he'll have to do? He can get his super back out, but I don't think, with the mortgage, it's going to last 7 years. 4)Son's ex. Nope,no great tragedy there, she worked, then when child was born she switched to doing the after hours phones for the company. Now she's a solo mum, she still does it, 5 days a week (inc weekends) 9pm to 7am. She gets $300 a week for that. Why? Boss says she gets paid by calls, not by hour. I think she does get accomodation allowance from WINZ and child support form my son, but still, she's not exactly rich. She ran out of food the other week, didn't bother WINZ cause they most likely wouldn't have anyway, so we contributed a bit of stuff. All of these people would love to have either stayed in their jobs or got better jobs, or like my brother who once did the same Polytechnic IT qual as me - loved to have got some job at all. These are the bludgers you all go on about. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 1261794 | 2012-02-28 18:58:00 | Minister labelled a hypocrite www.nzherald.co.nz :lol: |
Trev (427) | ||
| 1261795 | 2012-02-28 19:15:00 | No! Wrong! Those are not the bludgers, don't be silly, you and I both know better. Most of those sound like legitimate cases for something like the Sickness or Invalids Benefit. What I'm talking about are those on the Unemployment Benefit specifically who can work, but choose not to, in the form of declining readily available jobs. If your programmer friend has a physical / emotional / mental disability that precludes her from actually working, she won't be taking the Unemployment Benefit. According to the DOL, there was 18,150 in Dec '11 that were taking the Unemployment Benefit. Aside from the fact there's 339 jobs right there available for the picking, some require experience, some don't. I'm sure out of the 18,150 there's bound to be somebody who has experience working with diggers. On top of that, if you factor in that there's over 10,000 roles available right now on TradeMe, there's a *ton* of jobs available. Granted people also move around jobs, so some people already in work are going to shift (Statistically I believe this happens in Q1 of the year generally speaking), but if you factor in that I've just left one place of work in January and gone to another, that means that my previous role is going to be available. However, back to those 339 jobs. That means that those jobs have been declined by 18,000 people. Not everybody could do all of them, but that means that at least somebody in that group is almost guaranteed with that kind of Job : Person ratio to be qualified to do it. That job list should pretty much always be at zero. Brother-in-law has recently hopped on the Unemployment Benefit, he's taking after his father and pissing away his days doing bugger all at home. His father was on the Sickness Benefit for many years after a similar story to your Programmer friend (Though there was certainly some jobs he could have still done quite easily), multiple botched surgeries left him permanently disabled. Now my brother-in-law is too lazy to even apply at McDonalds, to the point where I legitimately rang two local branches and found out about available positions on his behalf. He has no motivation, it's too cushy for him now both living at home, and he's about to start getting benefit money. To be honest, it makes me furious! We shouldn't be "supporting" these people at all. We should be paying the bare minimum for things like Power, Rent, Gas & Food. No spare money for smokes, no money for KFC, no money for booze or drugs. Hell a food plan could be drafted up even for these people. It's not rocket science getting a job if you're capable. However if you're going to be lazy about it then I'm personally all for letting natural selection take its course... That is the 'bludger' I'm talking about. That said, people like your stories 1, 2 & 3, they sound like legitimately unfortunate cases where even if they could, they're still largely unavailable to work. That said, good on your sons Ex for at least doing *something* with her life. |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1261796 | 2012-02-28 19:20:00 | Minister labelled a hypocrite www.nzherald.co.nz :lol: Quite funny, considering that quote came from the same man who ran the election campaign of "Jobs for all": observations.co.nz Personally I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him, and he's probably twice my size... |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1261797 | 2012-02-28 20:07:00 | No! Wrong! Those are not the bludgers, don't be silly, you and I both know better. Most of those sound like legitimate cases for something like the Sickness or Invalids Benefit. What I'm talking about are those on the Unemployment Benefit specifically who can work, but choose not to, in the form of declining readily available jobs. If your programmer friend has a physical / emotional / mental disability that precludes her from actually working, she won't be taking the Unemployment Benefit. According to the DOL, there was 18,150 in Dec '11 that were taking the Unemployment Benefit. Aside from the fact there's 339 jobs right there available for the picking, some require experience, some don't. I'm sure out of the 18,150 there's bound to be somebody who has experience working with diggers. On top of that, if you factor in that there's over 10,000 roles available right now on TradeMe, there's a *ton* of jobs available. Granted people also move around jobs, so some people already in work are going to shift (Statistically I believe this happens in Q1 of the year generally speaking), but if you factor in that I've just left one place of work in January and gone to another, that means that my previous role is going to be available. However, back to those 339 jobs. That means that those jobs have been declined by 18,000 people. Not everybody could do all of them, but that means that at least somebody in that group is almost guaranteed with that kind of Job : Person ratio to be qualified to do it. That job list should pretty much always be at zero. Brother-in-law has recently hopped on the Unemployment Benefit, he's taking after his father and pissing away his days doing bugger all at home. His father was on the Sickness Benefit for many years after a similar story to your Programmer friend (Though there was certainly some jobs he could have still done quite easily), multiple botched surgeries left him permanently disabled. Now my brother-in-law is too lazy to even apply at McDonalds, to the point where I legitimately rang two local branches and found out about available positions on his behalf. He has no motivation, it's too cushy for him now both living at home, and he's about to start getting benefit money. To be honest, it makes me furious! We shouldn't be "supporting" these people at all. We should be paying the bare minimum for things like Power, Rent, Gas & Food. No spare money for smokes, no money for KFC, no money for booze or drugs. Hell a food plan could be drafted up even for these people. It's not rocket science getting a job if you're capable. However if you're going to be lazy about it then I'm personally all for letting natural selection take its course... That is the 'bludger' I'm talking about. That said, people like your stories 1, 2 & 3, they sound like legitimately unfortunate cases where even if they could, they're still largely unavailable to work. That said, good on your sons Ex for at least doing *something* with her life. She can never seem to admit to seeing the difference between a bludger, to which you are referring and the genuine case of someone in need. |
Cicero (40) | ||
| 1261798 | 2012-02-28 21:24:00 | Quite funny, considering that quote came from the same man who ran the election campaign of "Jobs for all": observations.co.nz Personally I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him, and he's probably twice my size... Correct, Hone this morning "put 20,000 extra hands in schools to help out" ..... YES 20,000!!! who is going to pay for that Hone? what a dickhead. Get people fixing up the maraes that need sprucing up...Who is going to pay for that Hone? He really has no idea |
Gobe1 (6290) | ||
| 1261799 | 2012-02-28 22:13:00 | Well, the least somebody on the Unemployment Benefit can do is volunteer work IMO! Lets be honest, you're unemployed, it's not like you're super busy during the day. If you're anything like my brother-in-law at least it'd give you something to do to break the habit of sitting on your ass all day. Looking for jobs? Sure, he's been "Looking solidly every day" for like 9 months now (He's only just gone on the benefit this last month granted). 9 months means he's either looking for the wrong jobs, being too picky, or not actually *doing* it... |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1261800 | 2012-02-28 22:23:00 | Well, the least somebody on the Unemployment Benefit can do is volunteer work IMO! Lets be honest, you're unemployed, it's not like you're super busy during the day. If you're anything like my brother-in-law at least it'd give you something to do to break the habit of sitting on your ass all day. Correct and it looks like you have done something instead of sitting on you backside doing nothing. Good for the CV also. |
QW. (15883) | ||
| 1261801 | 2012-02-28 22:54:00 | Ask the minister what you think of it (www.nzherald.co.nz) | Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 1261802 | 2012-02-28 23:23:00 | I didn't think you cared? | prefect (6291) | ||
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