Inertia

Signing on gets progressively tougher the longer it lasts. This of course isn't matched with an increase in the opportunities available to you. All that you will ever find, from the JC, is whatever happens to be on their fallible, poorly administered and probably exploitative, database. Something they will never fix. There is an increased inertia which weighs against the claimant as a result of remaining as a claimant.
Advisers will question why you aren't getting shortlisted, picked, interviewed or whatever, but they will not accept that the labour market is on its knees. They certainly won't accept that most of the jobs, in my humble opinion, you are made to apply for are completely unsuitable and probably don't exist. At least not in the form presented on the printout. I always double check the information I'm given because that's the only way to find out what the job's actual conditions are (whether it's in fact part time, not full time, or what the hours are meant to be since the JC decline to tell you).
Increasingly I find I'm repeating myself each time I go in to sign. It's the same conversation with the same, pointless, small talk (small talk makes me uncomfortable): "how are you today". I'm still out of work, what else is there to say? I can't tell them the system is a depressing nightmare of harsh conditionality and that I'm worried I'll be left destitute.
This repetitioin doesn't work in my favour. But again the inflexibility of the system makes it impossible to do anything else. My jobsearch, week in and week out, is almost identical. But there isn't anything else I can do. There's no other options the JC offer. Look on their database, find a bunch of stuff that isn't suitable, struggle to apply for it, get nowhere, get criticised for it.
This friday is my next signing time and I'm feeling particularly vulnerable. There is no willingness to try anything else. Why aren't the unemployed being given the option, for example, to go to university for free? Learn something! Find an opportunity. Every time it's the same process: adviser looks on that stupid database (something I myself have already done and that's also part of my JSAg so that I have to). I feel like a different shaped peg perpetually being forced into a square hole (or pick your own shapes!), over and over and getting blamed when it fails - as it will fail. There is no attempt to, er, find a different shaped hole! I think you get the picture.
Surely the DWP, in 21st century Britain, can find different ways to let people develop a career or find an income, than hand them the same stupid printouts of 'customer service officer/agent/adviser/executive' or 'admin officer/agent/adviser/executive' or 'sales officer/agent/adviser/executive'. Their database parameters are a complete mess: they have about 10 different categories for shop work. How many do you need? Sales assistant, manager/supervisor, and stockroom - if that! It's a complete and total mess and I'm convinced that, as well as cutting and pasting ads taken directly (and probably without the employer's knowledge) from other jobsearch websites, they edit and subtly change the ads that employers place with them.
Either that or they are just plain incompetent.