1.  
   Roy from darlington says:

   Jul 18, 17:11

   If they cut all the handouts and benefits, people would find jobs. There are plenty about, and plenty to be created.
   It would force people to organise their own lives to make sure they are never without an income.
   Oscar Wilde was and still is, right.
   do-gooders and human rights activists just prolong the problem.
   Take away the option to sit on your bum and you will very soon be getting off it, and getting something sorted.
   It is about time that people were responsible for themselves nad their own lives, not being fed by the state.
   only then will people wake up to themselves and realise that you get out of life what you put into it.

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2.  
   slave#094657674 from Airstrip one says:

   Jul 15, 00:31

   To quote Oscar Wilde (as one does ;-)):
   "The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism--
   are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves
   surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous
   starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by
   all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's
   intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on
   the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy
   with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.
   Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they
   very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of
   remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure
   the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are
   part of the disease.
   They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping
   the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by
   amusing the poor.
   But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the
   difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on
   such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic
   virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just
   as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves,
   and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those
   who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it,
   so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do
   most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we
   have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem
   and know the life--educated men who live in the East End--coming
   forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic
   impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the
   ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are
   perfectly right."

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   Should long-term unemployed be forced to work?

   No
3.  
   jonas from windermere says:

   Jul 15, 00:23

   I know what it's like Susan. I got made redundant 5 years ago and apart from a couple of agency jobs which didn't last: nothing. I'm 49 now and I'm beginning to wonder whether I will ever work again. I've tried to get voluntary work, but if you haven't had an office job you are lucky to even get a reply.

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4.  
   slave#094657674 from Airstrip one says:

   Jul 15, 00:04

   This is the kind of stuff we have heard since the '80s:
   "Have you ever thought to do volunteer work? When I was forced to leave my job due to circumstances I started to work with a local group and through that I got a lovely job I now love!!!!!! Also it looks better on a CV (or application) when any gaps happen between jobs if you fill your time doing that kind of work"
   So we all exist to (pretend?) to work voluntarily to slime our way into cushy jobs (ultimately funded by the taxpayer in many cases). There is no dignity or freedom in living your life so that it looks good on a cv. I would question whether a lot of voluntary sector activity is good for anybody other than the people in charge of managing it. It is certainly free from accountability, either democratic or to shareholders. The last sacred cow - when does anybody dare criticise the sainted voluntary sector? There is a whole political agenda behind much of what seems so worthy and charitable and it ain't any sort of real democracy.

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5.  
   Andy from Bacup says:

   Jul 14, 23:47

   Where are all the vacancies then? Unemployed people are in a queue for jobs (as you may well discover shortly). 'Forcing people to work' is another way of saying the state should employ anybody who can't find work. Do you really want to pay the extra taxes to fund that?

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   Should long-term unemployed be forced to work?

   No

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