>>>Great timing poking fun at people on the dole when so many who want to work don't have jobs.
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>>>>Working three days is going to be tough on all the folks who are on the dole <s>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=19885
>>
>>I thought it was a bit beneath Charles as well.
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>I plead guilty to all charges of being a crank old man, but it was my understanding that standards for getting on the dole in Britain were considerbly more relaxed than drawing unemployment or welfare benefits here. Obviously, you would know better than I and I am subject to reeducation, but I thought I had read that there was a lot of controversy there about able-bodied people feeling government payments were their god-given right and there were large pockets of "lay-abouts" who had no intention of working as long as the goverment would pay them.

There are, as Nick says, some "scroungers" and tabloid press reports on large families of ne'er-do-wells receiving big hand-outs, but generally it's no picnic and the benefits are means tested - if you live with another person who's working, if you have above a certain level of savings, etc. It's easy getting benefit, as soon as you're unemployed, but it's no fortune - c £60 per week. And, as in my case, and thanks to Bill Clinton's initiatives, the "job-seekers' allowance" only runs for 6 months. Social security payments, say for unemployed families, esp. with kids, can run indefinitely (like your Americans "on welfare").

As to able-bodied people unfairly getting disabled payments - there's some truth to that (although they do get investigated, spied on etc. if someone bubbles them) but I see it as a case of some screw the system but the govt is out to prove people as undeserving as much as it can.


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>Not true?
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>Again, apologies if I am totally misguided in this. i have nothing but sympathy for people who want to work and can't through no fault of their own.

Notwithstanding the reality of all this, your jibe didn't seem to be aimed at scroungers but more mocking people who were put out of work, through no fault of their own.