... to feel angry about single mother of 11 getting new house built for her!!

It seems that the Swiss are stricter than us as in NL. I wasn't paying proper attention the other day when on the news they gave out the figures for the number of people on welfare in the UK who have 3 or more children but it was a high number according to DH. It does make one wonder if they could all be people who were in good jobs when they had those children and are now unemployed.

Not very likely, is it? But people believe what they want to believe.

I don't think experienced managers who have run large departments and made presentations to large groups would appreciate being told how to fill in a CV and how to behave at interviews.
However, Movedalot, you appear to be doing a great job in helping young people to find work through your amateur (as in unpaid) careers service.

Agreed, but I am sure they would know that sending CVs and letters of application is not the best way to get a job - but that you have to be much more pro-active and direct.

And yes, bravo Movealot for all what you do to help.

Here in CH, you have to attend training courses and advice sessions, to continue to claim (for the max of 18 months)- they will also pay for courses you wish to attend if they consider that would help, be it in IT, languages, watchmaking, anything really which may lead to a job. But if they offer you a job, even if it is not what you really want- and within reason- you just have to take it, even if the salary is much lower than you had before.

In my dad's case, aged 64, breaking stones on the railway sidings. Tough, I agree. But as said, a very strong incentive. Thinking again about the relative I know who says it would damage her mental health to do anything but dancing - and has been saying the same for over 20 years, being paid high benefits to live in London (not where she comes from) because that is where the jobs are (????). Just one example.

Greatnan you would be surprised, some of our friends are senior managers who have done all you suggest and more but they are often the ones who need the most help. Their pride takes the biggest dent and they can lose much of their self confidence. They often don't even know anything about buying a mobile phone! They go through all sorts of emotional turmoil and often need far more support than someone lower down the pecking order. Some think they will settle for just some 'ordinary' job without understanding that no one wants to employ someone who is vastly over qualified. I could go on for ages about all the things to be considered but won't bore you all.

Just to say that if anyone on GN would like some help PM me, it is something I enjoy doing and I feel I am giving something back to the world.

Granjura One of my friends went to college with 2 women who will now be in their mid 50s and not in any way disabled. My friend lives in Canada and is appalled that these women have never worked and been kept by the state ever since college. There is something wrong with our system when this sort of thing happens. Sounds like it wouldn't in CH

No, it doesn't surprise me - I used to volunteer for the Adult Literacy Scheme and taught both reading/writing and arithmetic to many quite senior managers. It was amazing how they had managed to rise in their professions without being fluent in basic English and maths skills.

Is it not the Peter Principle that everyone rises to their own level of incompetence?

It's that people are promoted beyond their level of competence.

it happens everywhere - mainly because the person doing the promoting is scared for their own job, so they keep the bright ones away.

www.jointpublicissues.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Truth-And-Lies-Report-smaller.pdf

With apologies to Micelf who posted this link under the thread heading 'Myths and Lies' - I think it deserves to be read by everybody who has commented on this topic.

Thank you for that excellent link, miceelf and gn. I think it's always worth looking for other information on a subject when what appear to be the popular beliefs come from the likes of the Daily Mail.

Also, thank you for your story, jura. I'd be interested to know how long in terms of weeks, months or years, as well as the numbers of hours per week he had to work at that job, your father had to do the rock-breaking before he was able to retire. Was it a pick-axe and shovel job, or did he have machinery to help with the rock-breaking? What would have happened if he hadn't been physically able to do such work?

Similar things happen in the UK. At one time the stairs cleaner of my aunt's private block of flats was a professional person who had been made redundant. She says he was professional about the cleaning job too.

Some people would think it a shame that his professionalism had to be 'wasted' on such a menial job. Though, of course, some philosophical approaches to life don't take that attitude but regard all work as equal. However, it does seem a bit of a waste to train someone at considerable cost to do a job that not just anyone could do, and then make them clean stairs. That could sound elitist, I suppose, but I'm only elitist insofar as I think people should contribute to society according to their ability. There's no getting away from the fact that some people are more able, in various ways, than others.

A further question too, if I may: the unemployment rate in Switzerland is about 3.5% (about half what it is in the UK). It has been stable for some years. Are any of those people long-term unemployed, and if so what to they live on? I presume Switzerland has a way of coping with long-term unemployed people other than letting them die on the streets, though of course that would be a fairly effective way of getting rid of them, especially in winter. A way of getting people into short-term work is perhaps what happens. Do you know?

In an ideal world people would be employed as to their abilities, however, we live in a far from ideal world and too often people won't take on a job which they believe is "beneath" their abilities.

Many of the refugees from Asian countries come to UK and take any job they can get until something fitting their qualifications comes up. How many times have we read of qualified architects, accountants, doctors, working in supermarkets until they are able to take a job in their field.

I know of a university graduate who has a degree in Art Appreciation (or some such), she refuses to consider any job which is not in a gallery or museum. There are obviously not that many jobs in that field but she considers anything less would be a waste of her education, she cannot understand that sitting at home doing nothing is also a waste of her education.

Whilst studying at university in York my daughter took a PT job in McDonalds to help make ends meet. Many of her friends laughed and said they wouldn't be seen dead working there. After her degree she moved back home and was offered a place on the McDonalds management program and eventually became part of the management team in one of the biggest restaurants in the UK.

There was always a fairly high turn over of staff (students etc.) and almost always vacancies. A colleague of mine once complained that his 22 year old son couldn't get a job anywhere and I told him I would speak to my daughter and see if she could help. His answer was "Hmmmm thanks but no thanks, no child of mine would work in McDonalds".

A few years later she left McDonalds with a good degree and some fantastic management experience that she now puts to good use elsewhere.

Excellent - accepting 'menial' work can lead to excellent experience and show your skills, rise up internally with training in management, etc, gives you good references, something neither a CV nor a letter can do.

Unemployment in CH is around 3% and rising - as tourism is in trouble due to high Swiss Franc, and so is export of our precision engineering and other products. The high Swiss franc is a disaster for your average Swiss. But there are huge difference from area to area. Zurich, Zug and Geneva have high umployment- but my area of the Jura has 10%, with 10000s of cross-border workers coming to work here every day.

My dad had to break the stones for the sidings with a pick axe - despite being 24 he was very fit and strong, and never fitter nor stronger by the time he retired! Of course if he had not been so fit, he would have been offered other work, and if none, just collected his unemployment benefit until he retired at 65.

After the unemployment benefits of 18 months is over, people are helped by their local social services, but at the lowest of the low survival rate, which, as said, is very tough, but ensures that people do not sit back collecting benefits- but have to continue to train, apply for jobs, if necessary 'below their previous expectations'. Nobody here can earn more on the 'social' than in work.

When my journalist son was at uni, he earned money clearing up "road kill" , emptying bins, and bar work. Did him no harm whatsoever.

Thank you, jura.

I have told my own grandsons that it is easier to get a job from a job than from unemployment, and it is vital to get something on their CV to show that, at the very least, they can be punctual and reliable employees. I know it is disappointing to have worked for years to get a good degree, but with the employment market the way it is at the moment I also counsel them to take any job they can get.
The local job centres are useless - they just gave one of my grandsons a list of agencies to ring which he could have found in Yellow Pages. As for proving that an applicant is genuinely searching for work, this seems to consist of just signing on every two weeks and saying that you have read the local papers and looked on line for work, and sent off some applications.
I know that MacDonalds recruit their managers internally and are good employers, whatever you may think of them as providers of food! Tesco, whilst being really bad in its treatment of suppliers (putting several small farmers out of business) also appears to be a good employer in terms of training and promotion.
When I had two children under two years old and my husband was working nights I took a cleaning job at a local office where I could start as soon as my husband got home from work at 6 a.m. and work until 9 a.m., six days a week. I took a pride in making those offices (and toilets) cleaner than they had ever been before.
In my opinion, any job is honourable if it is done well.
I think one of the reasons why 25% of pharmacists in England are of Asian descent is because their highly qualified parents came over, took any job they could, or started little shops, and were determined that their children would have a good education and career.

My lads had all sorts of menial jobs while at university. My youngest worked at the local meatworks weekends, on the kill floor (not killing of course - just cutting up the carcases). When he was close to getting his BSc in biological science the meat inspector found out he was about to graduate, and had him transfered to the laboratory. This not only gave him his first 'graduate' job, but the woman in charge of the lab was the woman he is now engaged to!! (She's a lovely girl, now working in a hospital lab).

However horrid the job seems, it is usually worth it!

My other son had a short period of unemployment between getting his teaching degree and starting work. His part time student job had ended. The unemployment office had a system of getting all the unemployed young people together once a week for a meeting to talk about various opportunities. When they found out he was an officer cadet in the Australian Army reserves they made him run the meetings and talk about joining the army! He got quite a few recruits. He also helped people do their CVs. It wasn't paid or anything, but it kept his pride together.

BUT - my lads had a huge advantage: parents who loved them and cared about their future. True, we hadn't much money, but you don't need money to give them that advantage.

The woman who inspired this thread almost certainly had no such start in life. So many children have dreadful, deprived and chaotic childhoods, and they can end up being tried and found guilty on the pages of the tabloids.

Somehow children should be saved from such a start in life, but how?? I wish I knew.

PS
The only reason I could bring my kids up OK was that I had good parents myself. Up to the age of 12, I l knew I was loved, and that was long enough. (I unwittingly caused a bad accident at 12 and believed my parents loathed me after that: they didn't, but at 12 you can irrational and vulnerable)

It is that crucial part of childhood, from birth to adolescence that really matters.

PPS
And I think the Daily mail article has harmed those children of the mother of 11.

PPPS
I DO wish we could edit!
When I said the only reason I could be a decent parent was that I had good parents myself, I did not mean to imply that you can't be a good parent if your own were bad - most rise above their bad start.

Having ploughed through all 11 pages here, it seems that there is some misunderstanding about the differing points of view.

People who think a woman and her 11 children should not be subjected to the sort of demonisation that has gone on in the press, are not justifying her lifestyle.

Joan (and others) has given an account of the jobs that she and her family have undertaken and obviously believes that it's right to work. Nevertheless she goes on to say that her children have benefited from a loving, supportive and no doubt literate family, which unfortunately isn't the case for everybody.

I would imagine that all the people on GN have spent many years working hard and paying tax but some are prepared to accept (grudgingly perhaps) that their taxes may have to be used to help people whose lives are unconventional and chaotic, if only for the sake of their children.

The reason that some people keep mentioning the banks is because we haven't had 11 pages decrying the crazy situation where the financial institutions, which (through their dishonesty, greed and incompetence) have caused the economic meltdown we're now experiencing, have been handed enormous amounts of money to cover their losses (and pay bonuses). Yet they still refuse to lend to small businesses and people buying homes. Because of their refusal to lend money, it has now been suggested that we should have a zero or negative interest rate, which will have dire consequences for savers. Pensioners, for example, will not even be able to rely on the paltry interest rates they get now and will either have to watch their savings dwindle or make more risky investments. Surely this is the greater injustice?

Good point, Eloethan. The situation created by the banking crisis impinges on far more lives than the anomaly of one woman with a large family needing an unusually large house.