I attended my jobsearch appointment at Working Links in Cardiff on thursday 17th may and spent about one and a quarter hours doing jobsearch that I could have done at home. The only benefit I get from attending is the exercise I gain from walking to and from their offices. Twenty five minutes each way to complete the jobsearch I could do at home. I looked through the western mail job vacancies and it didn't take more than a couple of minutes as it had so few vacancies and the one I did try and apply for didn't exist on the website the advert requested people to go to and apply online. I always make sure I apply for a good number of jobs every fortnight and last week was a very difficult time to find job vacancies. That booklet the jobcentre give you to fill and bring along every fortnight needs to show some effort to avoid sanctions. At the top of the booklet it shows an example of how to fill it in but the example would not be acceptable if it was repeated too much. The statement "No Suitable Vacancies" is best used rarely and always make sure you have at least six efforts in that booklet during the fortnight. An attendance at Working Links is good for one effort and if you are attending twice a week then you would have four efforts for the booklet. I do tend to apply for at least four jobs a fortnight and if I see double that I would apply for them as I don't want anyone to be able to accuse me of not making the effort. That's probably why my attendance record is always faultless as I want to make sure that no one can accuse me of not making an effort and any complaints I have of my treatment can't be deflected by accusations of non attendance or lack of effort. Sometimes fighting against everything can be the wrong thing to do and a more relaxed approach to attending Working Links can help enormously. Never give anyone a reason for giving you a sanction, always make sure you can justify your actions and missing appointments that involve an hour of your time once or twice a week seems ridiculous if it ends up in a sanction and loss of benefits.