Your lack of knowledge of anything not "reported" by the Daily Mail is noted.

Now, back to your racist homphobic bigotry you go.....jog on.

I was a year later in 1993 but the rest of my experience is nearly identical. It was Job Club I got sent to - Jobcentre Plus came years later.

I'm not knocking Job Club at all but having to wait 6 months before being eligible was lunacy.

According to Iain Duncan Smith rlsmart people over look the importance of effective shelf-stackingrl.

This bloke is just a disgrace but he knows what he's doing, so he'll carry on mentioning that job seekers get paid to stack shelves at pound land whilst completely ignoring that others get paid more to do the same job as those on JSA.

I also find IDS claims of most young people loving their work experience placements laughable. Shelf staking isn't a job many people love but they'll do it for the right amount of money. Even his arch nemesis Cait Reilly is stacking shelves at Morrisons now

He was nauseatingly aggressive in his interview this morning.
Was basically saying that Miss Reilly was a smart@rse who thinks she is too superior to work in Poundland.
'Who does she think she is', type of attitude.

Just more hoodwinking from these bullies running the show.
Trying to dumb down the most needy in our society because they themselves haven't got a fooking clue how to kickstart the economy.

[iCommenting further on the case, Mr Duncan Smith said


Two things about that statement:

1) She was paid jobseekers allowance. Either IDS is thick or just plain ignorant because I like the rest of this country assume jobseekers allowance is paid to allow you to "jobseek", or use the money for basics while you "jobseek" which then leads onto..

2). she "sought" a "job" at Poundstretcher. Why wasn't she paid minimum wage for the duration of that job and why was she allowed to continue receiving jobseekers allowance when she couldn't "seek work" because she was working???

I'll tell you what happens and this is from firsthand experience. The antidotes I'm about to mention are ones I've wrote about on these very boards before.

When I was younger and naive I did two weeks of free labor at ASDA. This was all organised by Remploy who promised that they'll help me get some work but I'd have to prove my worth first. Well at this point I've been unemployed for a year so with encouragement (outright pressure from some) from a lot of people I though I'd give it a go. Now I'd be working for my Job Seekers Allowance whilst working alongside people who I went to school with who'd be getting paid more on a hourly rate than me for doing the same work. These schoolmates went straight from school and got a job at ASDA. None of them needed 'work experience' to stack shelves and staff the tills - just a little bit of training.

Anyhow I was working alongside a fellow job seeker (also with Remploy) who stuck out his ten week placement at ASDA. After that ten weeks he was offered a temporary job with ASDA but once this temporary contract was up he was back on the dole with me. The next time I bumped into this bloke he's done ten free weeks at Morrison's and got a temporary job at Morrison's after that. But he's back on the dole because I've recently caught up with him at Ingeus where he'll no doubt be sent off to do more free labor.

He's had it bad but the worse example of exploitation I came across was when I went on a little demonstration across Leeds with SOL-FED to protest against the likes of Best LTD, a4e and ATOS.

I got talking to this woman who was about twenty and she said that Best LTD have helped her get a job. So told me that she went on a six month unpaid placement at Primark and ended up getting a one year fully paid contact with Primark. But after that year was over she was back on the dole and the now defunct Best LTD (now renamed Interserve) probably packed her off to six more months of free labor at another retail shop in Leeds.

This is what I think is happening with the work programme at its best. Yeah people are getting proper paid work at the end unpaid placements but it'll be temporary and they'll soon be on the dole to make way for the next person who's completed an unpaid placement.

Schemes like New Deal, Flexible New Deal and The Work Programme to me are nothing more than sophisticated versions of a Long Firm that criminal gangs run.

Here is the wikipedia definitionA long firm is a trading company set up for fraudulent purposes; the basic operation is to run the company as an apparently legitimate business by buying goods and paying suppliers promptly to secure a good credit record; Once they are sufficiently well-established, the perpetrators then purchase the next round of goods on credit and decamp with both the goods and profits from previous sales.'"

I'd suggest that the vast majority of the working-age population have plenty of ongoing experience of shelf-stacking. Whenever we shop at a supermarket, we take products from a shelf, pay for them at the checkout and then take them home and stack them in our cupboards/fridges/freezers. Whoever thought up the idea of paying a company to teach us to do this is beyond barmy

She ought to have him in court or at least demand an apology for deliberate misrepresentation of her position.

She went out of her way to mention she doesn't think such jobs are below her and is now working (for a wage!) in Morrisons while still doing her voluntary work to try and further her career ambitions.

For IDS to basically attack this young woman with a pile of opinionated lies is a disgrace.

A certain A Bevan had a very low opinion of Tories and I am sure IDS fits the bill down to a tee:

From a speech made in 1945:

"That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were."

Replace Lord Woolton with IDS and that is as applicable today as in 1945!

And mine

rlGeological Society responds to IDS's daftness.rl

I think the idea has merit for the long term unemployed (of working age etc) I think the skills that it develops are more to do with the whole process of getting up and going to work for a few weeks.

It's quite a transition for someone who is used to having the day as their own to then have to be up, dressed and in work for a relatively early time in the morning.

Totally unsuitable for the recently unemployed, but think it has use to the long term jsa claimants imo.