General Chat

Hi Frank,
It's a lot easier now to 'play the system' than it used to be.
In the 1980's, when we first had children, I'd been an agricultural labourer, ex was an agricultural mechanic. We had to live on the pittance we earned - no 'extras'.
When we split up and I was bringing my children up alone, once they both went to school, I was much better off working - albeit only 16 hours a week!

By raising the retirement age to reduce the pension bills, they'll surely end up paying more in benefits (admittedly less than the pension), but will also deny many younger people the chance of a job, and throw many older people into benefit poverty until retirement age.

In the light of the French protests against raising the retirement age to 62, I started pondering the practicalities of this.
Looking up the unemployment statistics for earlier this year, there were 2.6 million unemployed.
There were 481,000 vacancies.
Not a job for all unemployed then - even without the rise in retirement age!
If people have to retire later, there will be even fewer vacancies, and even more unemployed.

There's also the problem older people have actually getting a job - especially those who do hefty physical work.
I have a friend, a carpenter, aged 60, who has been unemployed for over a year. He's not happy being unemployed - but can't get a job because he doesn't have 'documentation' to prove he can do the work - just 40 years of experience! He's been on jobs before when youngsters have vriusl certificates to 'prove' they can saw wood etc - but have no idea what they're doing, and my friend spent a lot of his time rectifying their mistakes!

The government wants to 'target' those who have a 'benefit lifestyle' - what's the point? If they're that lazy - who would want to employ them?

What's your opinion?