Force them to learn something in foreign!

It’s hard to hate the latest announcements of welfare reforms. In these financially tight times we can’t carry on being the nanny-state everyone has gotten so used to…

It’s not about picking on the unemployed but about everyone doing their bit. Lots of us work crazy hours for less money than some seem to get in benefits. Of course, not all unemployed are scrounging off of the state; just think about the thousands of graduates finding it hard to get into work…

However, there must be quite a few people doing cash work and claiming benefits, or living in a three bedroom council house and renting it out, courtesy of us truly. This is neither right nor fair.

There are exceptions, of course – let’s not pick on anyone who is a genuine case for not being able to work either – e.g. someone looking after a sick partner who needs 24hr care. We should never become a society that punishes the poor for being poor, or the sick for having become so…

Maybe help for the handicapped, who would probably appreciate the help. Do their gardening, pick up the groceries, clear the path when it snows. Or have I misunderstood the ‘Big Society’?

The idea of training an individual to the needs of the workforce is smart. A company goes to the dole office to find the workers it requires, and the dole office then pay for the training that the worker will need – I mean, matching an individual to the markets’ needs happen all the time in job agencies anyway…

But just what will having people picking up little for 30 hrs per week do to help him/her get into the jobs market as a skilled worker??? Plus, what exactly are the criminals sentenced to community service do instead? Work the summer months helping our cash-stripped farmers? And more importantly, what will this cost the rest of us, you know, the TAX PAYER?

Maybe we could switch off the mind-numbing rubbish that passes for daytime TV instead? That should get a few people to shift gears. How about from now onwards, daytime TV consists of news and educational shows. 
OR – to really up the ante – foreign languages!!! ‘Work or we’ll force you notoriously-bad-at-languages Brits to learn something in foreign!’

Close the pubs and arcades Mon-Friday during the day. (Although that will also punish the already depressed and hard-up student folk!) Ban selling alcohol and cigarettes to anyone on benefits? Am I just getting a tad carried away with the stereotypes? Probably.

Branding the foreheads of those who just plain refuse to work? No, too far? Ok.

Poor Trisha and Jeremy Kyle, their viewing figures will nose-dive!!!