Tricks of the dole cheats

After the enjoyment of last week’s programming on ATOS/ESA/WCA etc, it looks like we’re back to a more familiar narrative with Dispatches this evening.

Reporter Morland Sanders investigates Jobcentre Plus, the organisation tasked with getting Britain back to work and cracking down on dole cheats. With the help of jobseekers, undercover filming and a former insider, the programme reveals the shirkers’ tricks that make it easy to cheat the system.

For more, see here Tricks of the Dole Cheats

This sort of thing really tees me off (wanted to use stronger words but there you go)
My definition of a dole cheat is someone who signs on, gets rent and CT paid and also has a fiddle job earning 300 quid a week on the side. NOT someone who is creative in filling in their Jobseekers diary.
When there are few decent jobs available then what choice do some folk have?
The amount of arbitrary sanctions we are seeing are massively on the increase and this sort of rubbish can’t help.

Well the title was a bit of a misnomer wasn’t it?  Who wants to go first?

Unfortunately, didn’t see it and it doesn’t appear to be available on 4OD at the moment.

However, I did just find a 5-minute clip when a senior Jobcentre Plus director, Ruth Owen (salary £120,000-124,999 in 2010) was unable to find evidence that 127 JCP vacancies were actually advertised on JCP websites. It looked rather embarrassing, to say the least.

The two graduate jobseekers who agreed to assist channel 4 in revealing how easy it is to sign on….. 

Thanks for your solidarity boys.

I wonder what would happen if a person less able to deal with bureaucracy etc. was to write their shopping list down as their jobsearch? Perhaps a claimant who didn’t feel they were somehow better than all the other claimants…

Media/English grads, were they?  Just wondering.

A complete waste of half an hour which I will never get back.  Going into sign on in work overalls and saying you were painting at home.  What a wheeze.  Lost count of how many times I’ve seen that done for real when I was signing on in the early 1980’s.  It got the same response now as it got then.  What did they expect JC to do, call the law?

Most people who deal with JC know how useless it is.  The only saving grace, I suppose, was watching chief exec’ Ruth Owen squirm.  Even then she got off lightly.  It reminded me of Dennis Healey’s remarks on Geoffrey Howe: “like being savaged by a dead sheep”