Replace Job Seekers Allowance from cash to voucher system
Instead of paying the unemployed a job seekers allowance cash payment of £50 or £60 a week, we should operate a voucher system or moving forward a card instead. This could be made up along the following lines:-
Vouchers/credits for a local supermarket
Vouchers/credits for a mobile phone provider
Vouchers/credits to spend in local shops.
Vouchers/credits for transport purposes
A small cash amount each week.
Supermarkets could compete for the right to sell vouchers to the Government at reduced rates; the saving could be passed on to the unemployed by increasing the amount of vouchers provided.
Vouchers should prohibit or at least limit the purchase of alcohol and tobacco.
Why does this matter?
It would hopefully be two-fold :-
Cut down on the number of people hanging about job centres having spent their cash of cheap beer / cigarettes.
Encourage people to take jobs that they may consider "beneath them" to get their hands on cash and give them some more freedowm of choice as to spending money.
All to often people are no better off financially by taking a lower paid job. This may not make them a lot better of but by controlling peoples spending habits when unemployed will hopefully make them spend more wisely and encourage them to look for work.
It will hopefully get more unemployed British people of the jobs ladders, paying tax and get them off the streets.
Suggested by kevintaylor2 and tagged benefit reform, benefit system, benefits, jobseekers allowance. 11 Comments. Image source
Totally insane. What about heating costs? What about telephone bills, TV License payments, and in some cases Internet Broadband?
When I get my payment, the first thing I do is put £20 onto my Electricity key, it lasts two weeks, but with the recent rises, it’ll have to be £22. Then £7 per fortnight to my TV License.
My TV/Broadband/Phoneline is a bundle which is £60 per month. And don’t say Broadband isn’t neccessary, according to my Job CentrePlus office it is, for Job Searches and emails. IDS is also trying to bring in Universal Credit, which is Internet based.
That’s a £59 outlay every two weeks, before I can even think about food.
How much of your ‘tokens’ would be paid in ‘bus fares’?. Some days I don’t need to get the bus because of the weather, other days I do need to get the bus.
How much would be paid in Supermarket Vouchers? Would we have to have a round figure, say £34 in Supermarket Vouchers, meaning we’d have to spend exactly £34 on a shopping visit?
If you think that giving the unemployed vouchers instead of money is a good idea then you have never been unemployed, or skint. What if I’m sitting at home with no money or food but I’ve got £5 in bus tickets?
Idiotic idea, put forward, and, welcomed by people who have never had to budget for anything in their lives.
and what colour is the sky on your planet ever, quite apart from it being unworkable who pays and accounts for all these transactions, at cost price your having a laugh, the jobseekers allowance accounts for only a small percentage, start targetting households who are in receipt of child BENEFIT, how about vouchers for them, I could go on but no doubt if not you a family member somewhere is on somekind of benefit, so vouchers for all eh!!!!
This cannot possibly work. Money is the driving force of the economy, not work – even an unemployed person keeps the economy going by buying clothing, magazines, newspapers, food, sweets and occasional luxuries such as visits to the cinema.
And this is on top of the utilities bills and other bills such as rent and council tax which have to be paid; utilities which increasingly mean internet broadband, since most of the daily shop can nowadays be made more effectively and economically online through Asda and Tesco.
This idea is redolent of a terrifying, soulless, mindless arrogance: the sort of utterly nonsensical idea one would expect from the fictitious Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship from the TV comedy “The Thick of It,” but not from someone who is supposed to be even nominally sane.
And one other point I would like to make. The government’s desire to paint unemployed people as “the unemployed,” as massed ranks of shirkers begging to be whipped, is factually and morally the total opposite of true.
Not all unemployed people are the same, pressed from some monstrous mould and turned out to lives of dysfunctionality, fish suppers, beer and The X-Factor.
A lot of unemployed people have very high IQs; and a surprisingly large proportion hold various degrees and qualifications, from BSc to PHd and DPhil. Some of us read books, purchase magazines on astronomy and science, buy astronomical telescopes, write and read novels and poetry, create art and craft, and attend the theatre and art exhibitions. We even enjoy opera.
Even those who have no such blessings, however, can do so many things with their time than sit around watching daytime TV – and despite not having a job to go to, unemployed people are often some of the busiest people you will ever know.
To summarise: This Bill cannot work, because unemployed people need money to purchase goods and services in as great a variety as employed people, and for the same reasons. This Bill comes across as a dreadful, cheap Poor Law rehash, born of the same outdated Tory mindset as Dickens’ Mister Micawber or some of Gissing’s worst monstrosities, from someone who is clearly out of touch with real life.
Is this idea a storyline from ‘The Thick of It’.
Omnishambles.
How dare they do this. I am still a taxpayer, being self employed and everything is paid for by direct debit.
I dont know how to take this one tbh…i was saying allsorts of stuff to the ppl i once knew who were unemployed because ppl like me were basically paying for their alcohol, drugs or child benefits etc….at the time i was employed. I only say about the ppl i knew because they had no intention wotsoever of finding a job, i mean they were unemployed for years, im sure you guys can see why at the time i had a chip on my shoulder about the whole thing bear in mind it was ONLY the ppl i knew of i meant…then i hit redundancy i became unemployed myself. I was basically laughed at…for becoming unemployed and previously endlessly asking certain ppl to get a job so we could do stuff together because it involved money…one thing…what happened to the law stating that we legally have to have X amount of monies?….since the redundancy…i have not been able to find a “proper” job etc thus scratching around on and off for 2 years….now with this new thing thts supposed to be coming out….being unemployed it feels as if im going to become “less” of a person and more looked down on, especially that we will have some of our so called “rights” taken away from us and not being able to do the things we once could…yeah we all got bills and other stuff to pay for, ive never claimed any other benefit ever, even when i was entitled to because im always used to workng…being unemployed is awful atm….and later i imagine it will be almost unbearable and i do mean the quality of life. Thanks to the drug addicts and alcoholics we ALL take the bullet
this is bullshit, this is never going to work and they can’t do this simples.
Absolute absurdity coming from this tory government who have never lived on a pittance themselves they don’t do without living in luxury never experienced going hungry all this were in it together rubbish with their millions in their bank accounts let them try living on food vouchers see how they get on
Just picking on the poor again knowing we can’t have a say in this matter and its enough to make people I’ll and stressed their is just no need for all this and that jobcentre is just their as a picture an nothing else paying them for their jobs what exactly are their jobs.
I would suggest to these very complacent people who are fortunate enough to have employment that they attempt to apply for jobs and find out if they can obtain an interview. I have been trying for 8 months – finally had 1 proper interview (not this on-line American rubbish) and may now be in with a chance of employment. Try dealing with job centres who are disallowing your benefits without any warning to meet targets. Try having to use a foodbank because they have left you with no money and no food. Try getting “Hardship Allowance” – no-one meets their criteria. They leave you with nothing – not even self-respect. Booze and drugs – what planet do these people live on!
Not a very good idea. Just go dutch, you work for your benefit. people should be sent to work for them to receive their benefit. the streets are dirty ,graffiti everywhere, send them to work. In the Netherlands everyone is working even those on benefit. and it is fantastic.