Dec 02 2008
“Dole claimants who refuse to find work ‘must dig gardens’”
This story was carried by the London Evening Standard; the headline was enough to make me nearly choke on my post-allotment-surveying-and-harvesting-kale lunch; the first sentence, “Dole claimants who refuse to seek work could be made to dig gardens as punishment” made my head spin …
… the association of ideas was quite mind-boggling. Dole claimants = unemployed people; not finding work = a bad thing = worthy of punishment; finding work at the bottom of holes in gardens = quite tricky, at best; lots of holes = lots of piles of earth = flood defences, perhaps.
At GardenLend.co.uk, it has proven an uphill (or down-hole) struggle to find anyone willing to dig holes in anyone else’s garden, let alone advertise for the free hole-digging and earth-turning service that another might wish to provide.
Employment blackspots do also occasionally coincide with concreted urban areas: whence will the gardens to be dug come? Also, what if those “ordered to spend an entire nine-to-five day in an office looking through situations vacant” would rather return to the land, or at least to the garden?
I suppose that Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell might wish to avail himself of GardenLend’s garden(er) finding service at http://find.gardenlend.co.uk/ - I shall write to him and see what he thinks.
Your ideas and comments are welcomed, as ever.
Full story from:
PS. The last line, ‘A small “no conditionality” group, including … a few carers will get benefits with nothing asked in return’ was a real eye-opener. Carers receive just over £50 per week for giving up 35 or more hours a week to care for someone else. I suppose that Mr Purnell would have them oversee the whole digging scheme …
