Posts by Danielle
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Emma Hart,
So if one of you is the other's alibi for a heinous crime...?
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If it isn't twatcock, I'll have you know that I will probably... grumble ineffectually about it! No one wants that!
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I suppose what stuck with me from my youth living on student allowances and occasionally the dole, plus later reading Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, is what *hard work* being poor is. Because you can’t do really basic, economically sensible things, like buy stuff in bulk because it’s cheaper. If anything breaks down or wears out, replacing it becomes really challenging – you can’t even maintain the crappy lifestyle you have, much less prepare for, like, entropy. And you can’t ever take a break from worrying about money, and you can’t even do anything entertaining that’s really cheap, like go off for a walk on the beach, because you don’t have a car or you can’t afford two extra trips on the bus that week… I mean, it’s not FUN to be poor. I don’t know why anyone writing these reports thinks that people choose it on purpose.
ETA: I forgot to mention that Giovanni's links about the ritualised process of interviewing made me die a little inside. As I do every time I have to mouth the same platitudes when I go for a job interview. It's all so stupid. The interviewer doesn't believe what they're saying; I don't believe what I'm saying; it's like we're pod people inhabited by automatons or something.
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Hard News: What about that Welfare…, in reply to Andrew C,
the short version being – there isn’t a way to do it that doesnt fuck it up for everyone else
No, the short version is that by even thinking of it in these terms, the terrorists win.
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I don’t even know what the point would be of removing those people from a benefit anyway. Imagine you could do it, miraculously, accurately, cheaply. Then what do you do with them? They don’t want a job; employers don’t want employees who don’t want jobs (I mean, you practically have to promise some of these people your first-born child to get a job at all, the number of hoops you have to jump through for some bullshit CSR position, please sir, please sir), so then what? It’s either put them back on the dole or send them off to sleep on the street. The former is obviously preferable for society *and* for them. So why are we worrying about this, again?
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Hard News: What about that Welfare…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
+1
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Hard News: What about that Welfare…, in reply to Andrew C,
I think the issue of bludging is trivial and thus not worth worrying about
And that's how we should be framing the conversation, too. I want it to be generally accepted that that's a stupid argument which only focuses on a tiny minority, and whenever it comes up around the metaphorical water cooler or bbq, people can say 'that's an idiotic issue to be worrying about in the grand scheme of things', or 'well, would you prefer that they all sleep under a bridge so you can feel smug about them?' and everybody says 'yeah' and 'no way' and moves on. I think pandering to the Meanspirited Weasel Brigade only empowers them, because we end up talking about this one thing to the exclusion of everything else.
(I suppose the other option is this: I volunteer my yearly taxes to support one honest-to-goodness bludger. If you can find someone willing to live on that pittance for the foreseeable future, good luck to them. Please, allocate my money to that person. Because like I said, I don't give a fuck.)
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Hard News: What about that Welfare…, in reply to Andrew C,
does anyone have ideas on how this specific type of beneficiary can be identified and culled which wouldn’t make life hell for those genuine beneficiaries?
My response to the statistically negligible 'bludger' problem is that, like Peaches, I just. don't. give. a. fuck. and I suggest everyone else stops giving a fuck too. But I imagine that will not be a popular solution. :)
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Hard News: What about that Welfare…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
It’s pretty ugly.
Such a cruel, cruel place for the poor. We *can't* become like that.
(Happy Thanksgiving! Um...)
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Coincidentally, yesterday I read this for the first time, which is also about the crucial importance of cake.