Marsden is Here

> you're no longer retail, you're a factory worker. No wonder their minds switch off.

All the more reason to automate those job and let people do something that uses their brains. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

>we aren't making lives of luxury, all we're doing is giving the smarter people more jobs, and the not so smart or maybe more manual people less jobs.

There's a horrible duality in our society which groups people as 'working' or 'beneficiaries'. Why are there only two options, 'job' or 'not job'? The industrial age redefined what it meant to 'work'. Perhaps it's time the information age did the same.

I wasn't paying attention at the time so I only have a vague historical awareness, but it was one of the '90's governments which managed to demonise beneficiaries. It doesn't matter if it was National or Labour because since then they've both beaten the same drum and continued to cut the real value of benefits - unemployment, DPB, student allowance, sickness ... take your pick.

Social welfare should give people encouragement to explore their options, not loom over them with the threat that they must take any lousy job that comes along because they can't live otherwise. It should be enough to free them from worrying about the bills (as long as they are careful) so they can look forward rather than drive them into the ground with depression because there is never enough money.

>Even getting into factory work these days requires a lot!

There's no incentive to give people a chance any more - in fact exactly the opposite. If you make a bad choice as the employer it costs, big time, to get rid of someone. Naturally this has led to defensive hiring practices and an explicit demand for candidates with proven histories.

Straight out of school you're screwed and you can't even take a year off on the unemployment benefit to get your head straight any more.

Society needs to make the difference, but I feel we've started to reflect the whims of our governments rather than them reflecting the will of the people. I haven't figured out how to reverse that yet.