State of the bus station in Caleta de Fuste

[Captain Sensible]

Rubbish hasn't been collected around the bus station site for sometime - cans, bottles and fag ends are littered everywhere.

It's typical of projects on the island - Money is spent on them and there's no general maintenance until they have to through a big amount of Money at it.

[Johnrgby]

That's very sad but true. I've seen many great projects on the island to go belly up just because the council wasn't able to find a few hundreds euros every year to keep them alive. Like installing new solar lights for 160K euros and not being able to fix the broken ones in Caleta.

Litter is another story. Not just at the bus station but in the towns. There's so many unemployed people, why don't the government make them to work a couple of hours a day to clean the streets?

This has been muted many many times in The UK, and never did and never will get off the ground, and to be honest, I agree with the many people who objected at the idea, mainly the unions obviously but many other people there are so many snags to this kind of scheme.

If you are working can you claim benefits?

If there is a need someone should be employed to do it?

Who is responsible for Insuring these people in case of accidents?

As there are already people employed in this role, do you use their hourly rate and tell unemployed people you have to work X hours a week for your Z amount of benefit?

Are they going to be eligible for holiday pay?

It just goes on.

I heard someone years ago in a bar say that all the unemployed under  21 should be enlisted in the army, sounded a good idea, The Landlord however who was a retired Regimental Sergeant Major was apoplectic, and threatened to bar him and asked the question why would you want to burden the army with them.

[TrickyFox]

You've only got to look at the state of some of the pavements to see where some Money should be spent.

[Spitfire58]

When I lived in Ireland years ago there was an “Employment scheme” for the unemployed. It worked like this:

Once you were unemployed for 6 months (as far as I remember, or it may have been a year) you were “requested” to sign up to a local initiative employment scheme working on whatever council or community projects that were on the go. It wasn’t compulsory but “could” leave you open to more scrutiny if you didn’t.

You got an extra £10 in your benefits (at that time it was about £45 per wk as I recall) & were “contracted” to work 20 hrs per wk. In practise what happened was you worked week on, week off. You’re benefits were paid as normal (plus the £10) whether it was your working week or not & you were free to make any other Money you could outside of your community working hours.

Lots of people found this very beneficial as it took eyes off them to do work that would otherwise have been on the sly & didn’t put them in the position of having benefits stopped for said work & benefitted the local community no end.

Don’t see why a variation of this wouldn’t still work !! IMHO

[Johnrgby]

When I lived in Ireland years ago there was an “Employment scheme” for the unemployed. It worked like this:

Once you were unemployed for 6 months (as far as I remember, or it may have been a year) you were “requested” to sign up to a local initiative employment scheme working on whatever council or community projects that were on the go. It wasn’t compulsory but “could” leave you open to more scrutiny if you didn’t.

You got an extra £10 in your benefits (at that time it was about £45 per wk as I recall) & were “contracted” to work 20 hrs per wk. In practise what happened was you worked week on, week off. You’re benefits were paid as normal (plus the £10) whether it was your working week or not & you were free to make any other money you could outside of your community working hours.

Lots of people found this very beneficial as it took eyes off them to do work that would otherwise have been on the sly & didn’t put them in the position of having benefits stopped for said work & benefitted the local community no end.

Don’t see why a variation of this wouldn’t still work !! IMHO

Can I assume this was Eire and not Northern island Ron? I would have thought you would have the unions up in arms over that in the UK.

[Spitfire58]

Yeah John. Sorry my fault, Eire. I only ever refer to it as “Ireland” 

[Rasputin]

Are you still watching movietone newsreels????