Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Monday, October 11, 2010

Britain Dysfunction

It's not the country it once was. There are social expectations and feelings of entitlements that undermine peoples' need and ability to go out into the workforce to earn their daily bread. Why bother making the effort when the country's 'social conscience' has been so generously stretched and realized that laws were enacted to allow for continual financial support from generation to generation?

Near Manchester, in Rochester, Great Britain, there is an apartment campus grandly and ironically called "Lower Falinge Estate". Estate, no less. Where there exist some 200 state subsidized apartments, for this is a housing project for those who do not appear to be disposed toward earning a living on their own.

It's estimated there are 500 residents at the housing project. Of whom a bare handful appear of a morning on their way to meaningful/paid employment. Although the outward trek - from the 'Estate' toward a working destination appears meager, there is a daily influx of workers into the housing project.

People employed by official outreach agencies to be present there, presumably for consultations and assistance to be proffered to the residents, along with council workers for the project's various maintenance procedures. Commuting appears to be a one-way directional, identifying Lower Falinge Estate as a decidedly hopeless welfare ghetto.

The unemployment rate on the Estate, leading to unemployment claims, is rather elevated, at 215, and puzzling, considering there are a registered 179 working-age individuals resident there. At the Rochdale job centre there were 903 job vacancies on offer.

The average mother of two receives about $500 weekly in social benefits, including housing and council tax benefits. And as reality has it, many of the 903 jobs awaiting applicants offer a a payscale a mere a trifle over that.

In that particular area, hailing taxis for various drives, including those representing a 10-minute walk to a destination, appear common. "I can't afford to get around in taxis", commented one of the housing department's maintenance men. "We're working people. We struggle, but they get everything. There are jobs, but they won't take them."

In their defence a woman who operates the Spotlight on Falinge project avers that most of the residents genuinely would like to return to the workforce. The social welfare payments represent a known and secure security advantage. Once it's lost, after acquiring paid employment, the claimant system is so convoluted, she claims, people are averse to going through it again, to re-claim welfare benefits.

They choose to stay where they are, how they are, managing to get by with those useful welfare benefits. Fault in the situation is a two-forked thing. Guarantee people no-stress, no-effort cheques, why expect they will garner sufficient pride in themselves to wean off welfare and search for a job?

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