So over this weekend I get a letter from the DWP stating the "rules" of looking for work.

If I do not do what is told for me to do on this Best/Interserve thing I will have 2 weeks of unemployment deducted. Do something they consider wrong again and it is 4 weeks. Now a leap from 2 weeks up to 4 is not all that much. It seems fair. But a third time and it becomes 26 weeks. THAT IS 6 MONTHS.

So they want you to sign on to get benefits and to get housing paid for. But with you not getting money you end up in debt. That debt will need to be paid for. Only thing to do is to get work on the side as getting benefits while not getting any money is better than living on the streets.

So is it conform of be homeless?

No. Your housing payments are made as long as you sign on. By working minimum wage you then have to pay tax to local council and full benefits if you rent your abode. This does not include food, gas, electric, clothing ETC. If by then you have paid all of that and you are not on a pre payment meter for your provider which costs more than standard tariffs, then you are only better off by £10 per week.

Some people think it is better to be unemployed than to have this type of work and hardly any income at the end for all bills.

The minimum wage in the UK is £6.08 for over the age of 21. Depending on the area you live on the north/south divide then you are either better or worse off than someone doing the same job in a different part of the country.

Is it worth working if you can not have a bit more spending money? And even now it is crunch time with the economy stalling.

What are we to do now?

Some time back I went out on a day trip to find work. I bought a £4.20 day ticket and set off round Pontefract and the five towns area. I even managed to get to Huddersfield which is 20 miles away from Pontefract and the five towns area. Going through Leeds, Morley and parts of Bradford just to see if there is any work anywhere.
I found none and it took a good chunk out of my money allocated to me to find work. I spent the best part of that two weeks with hardly any money to do anything useful, let alone travel to a job interview.



Some days I think about just doing nothing as it is better than actively seeking if spending money more than I have is worth the effort.

The inner thoughts of unemployment

So here I am. Unemployed and in my 40's. This is the way things are in the UK now. The DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) has sub contracted in a way their work load for helping people to find work to outside companies. One of which I attend. The one I attend is run by Best Training. This was bought by Interserve, a large company that does loads of jobs in areas such as cleaning, Aviation and defense contracts including overseas work. Since they have bought out Best Interserve has updated the computers that were basically beyond the joke. It took 5 minutes to load on page from Directgov website. You can look for work and it would take a half hour just to apply for one job. This created despondency in the computer use. It was a running joke for some. Some of these people who really wanted to work for an employer had given up looking. It was as though Best wanted to keep them.
So Interserve update their computers to make it run better. About time. This takeover would net the owners of Best if they cashed in their share of about £2M sterling. They get a healthy profit and their workers get job insecurity. Now that is all well and good but their own computers that they use for diary and appointments is to my adviser at best is "rubbish". For months I went every fortnight after declaring that I had done no work paid or unpaid in the last two weeks. 45 minutes later and less than 600 yards down the road I turn up there. It was a mutual thing that I was happy with.
Now they have changed me over to another person. I was supposed to have a meeting next Tuesday (August 14). That has been put back to Wednesday a week later to August 22nd. This means I have had no contact with Best/Interserve for nearly a month. These are the ones that report to the DWP if I have done enough to look for work. It seems they are the ones not fulfilling their obligation in helping the unemployed looking to get into work by changing times.
Which leads me onto my brother. The changed the times with him from Fridays to Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It was not a concise date that he was being allowed to go in for. So he missed one day and then they report this to the DWP and money is stopped. It is their fault they can not put a time and date correctly in place that is a set standard. Yeah right, says I composing a double negative that is supposed to not exist. They mess up times and not be concise about their allocations and if you miss you suffer with no money.
It is not our failings in the UK that someone decides not to put a standard appointment time down so you have a concise habit and a routine. It is those that have jobs who work with inferior machines of which one of their people said that they have to see clients, upload their Curriculum Vitae from a scanner that is slower than a snail on Valium, bypass the firewall and edit all documents while spending their day dealing with people. Even that person is wanting to get a decent job. If they want a job better than finding people work, what chance do we have on the unemployment line?