[contd.]

But there actually is some urgency: life on permanent UB is frighteningly deadening - and risky. In the seventies, I worked as an unskilled labourer in an Aboriginal community and noticed that one family of young people, two guys and their sister, never worked, not one day between them in about five years. They were all dead, mainly from the grog, before their mid-thirties.

So, those who are sympathetic to the plight of the long-term unemployed should be aware of how short their lives can be. And we each have only one of them. What do you want to do with yours ? And what would you prefer the long-term unemployed do with theirs ? Why should they have less fulfilled lives than you or me ?

What procedures should be in place to help them get there ?

Joe

Yes Joe, of course I want all LTU people to find work, but we all know that will never happen. Many of the true LTU people have deep-set problems, like alcoholism, mental health issues and other substance abuse problems.

These people will never be able to hold down a job. All we can do is to be a compassionate society and just support them, or else they will support themselves with crime.

Maybe a better mental health system in our country can at least cut down some of the unemployment problems many people face. If some mental health issues are tackled well early in their lives, then they would avoid long-term problems that would include unemployment.
As for unemployed Aboriginal people... that is a whole other thread !~

Well, Suze, I'm not sure that LTU is good for anybody, Aboriginal people, the mentally impaired, alcoholics and all of the above: I suspect that the life of the long-term unemployed is comparatively nasty, brutish and short, and that it is far more likely to be associated with violence, abuse, illness and general destruction, to other people as well as the LTU.

So whatever supports people can be given to avoid being put into that situation in the first place, should be instituted. It's a bit late for some of the older people, except for the glaring fact that training opportunities at TAFE etc. are as available for them as for anybody else.

Most certainly, programs should be in place now for young people bugger up their education and who leave school without sufficient skills to even do fruit-picking or dairy-work or cleaning, to provide those skills and to motivate them to keep either looking for work or gaining employable skills.

We live in a capitalist economy, it's not perfect, and of course people shouldn't have to chase the almighty dollar. But if someone doesn't do that, how do they live except off the labour of other people ?

When I was working in factories in the sixties and seventies, I remember little guys, migrants, working their guts out for their families and to get on their feet, doing the dirtiest, most boring jobs, with good humour and great skill, grabbing whatever overtime came along. They paid their taxes, and the notion that some can go idle while others work all their lives - the Benjamin Brandysnaps of the world - is not something that I would defend. Welfare isn't some sort of Magic Pudding, cost-free to everybody.

By all means, when people are caught out and are unemployed for a time, of course they should get the benefits of social support. But not for life, not on somebody else's backs. And there should be all necessary manner of supports and programs to get people back into work, so that they can contribute to the economy and society.

Joe

At the most basic level, establishing the routines of a working person, in an unemployed person, might be a good start.
In order that the body clocks are set correctly in the unemployed, to meet the requirements of modern life.

Forget about daytime television, late night television is the poison of the unemployed.

They,(the LTU), are often prisoners in the their own paradigm, caught in a time warp, attitudes shaped by their own singular surroundings in front of the box in the early hours of the morning. Most alive, most receptive, (while the rest of us rest in order that we comply with the alarm in the morning) sleep. A routine that gives reason for existing for most of us.

No reason to get up, why bother ?, why factor it in to your daily routine ?. The unemployed probably think it is one of their few privileges, to be able to play computer games at 3 o'clock in the morning without restraint. And you know what, it is.

Another problem for the unemployed was the privatisation of the Commonwealth Employment service, placing a middleman between the unemployed and their funding.The rendering of the Social Security Dept as a far less user friendly place, also occurred during the Howard years and has been spiralling downwards in it's duty and social accountability ever since. None of this has served to improve the problems of LTU's, but instead have served to exacerbate them.

A tightening of the screws proposed by both sides of politics, is just tugging at your deepest emotions. Extreme populism. Something to feel put out about, when your waking up to your alarm in the morning.

We need to rethink this.

I think all the beeding hearts are missing point.

There are very few, myself included, who want to see welfare removed.

But the reality is that so long as we have 'full employment', madam PM's words, not mine, then there is simply no excuse for any able bodied person to be on welfare for any length of time.

My beef, and I am sure others agree, is the way in which welfare can be miss managed by the recipient.

Welfare should not be spent on grog, cigs or gambling, FULL STOP!

Now addess this and you are well on your way to reforming welfare.

Rehctub <"Welfare should not be spent on grog, cigs or gambling, FULL STOP!"

Gee Rehctub, I would hate to be the person at centrelink saying to the unemployed, fag-addicted, alcoholic guy who spends his weekends at the casino, that he is now getting welfare payments and thus will only be receiving food and rental stamps each week from now on!

That very night, he would be down at the local shopping centre, smashing his way into the local supermarket/liquor store to steal grog, fags and cash!
We would have even more crime than we already have!

No thanks, I think I would rather deal with paying the unemployed at least some money, but then have most of it in food stamps, so at least their dependents would get food rather than nothing.

Although, I am reliably told that some people on welfare in North West Australia swap their food vouchers for grog from other people... so am not sure this would be effective anyway...