Benefit street - why not it looks easy.

[corsechris]

I have a good deal of respect and often sympathy for the foreign workers who come here and do the jobs that our crop of feckless workshy layabouts won't do. There has to be a way to make sure that we don't end up giving a job to a foreign worker when we have people on benefits. How can it make sense to pay someone to sit at home then pay someone who works, who often then sends a lot of their money back home.

 

My brother and his latest wife are of the benefits mindset. When our mother died and left us a bit if inheritence, he got really irate that having bought himself a boat, the benefits didn't want to pay his rent any more.....

[Paul Aspden]

 

My brother and his latest wife are of the benefits mindset. When our mother died and left us a bit if inheritence, he got really irate that having bought himself a boat, the benefits didn't want to pay his rent any more.....

 

It's a good job we can choose our friends 

[corsechris]

_{We can choose our family too...I no longer have any contact with them after the last wedding. Was exposed to a proper bit of East Enders style patriarchal BS so figured why put up with it any more. Only time I ever heard from them was when they wanted something. Technically I have a brother and assorted nephews & nieces, but in practice, I am an only child as far as I am concerned.}

[blue ass fly]

Same here chris

Ime an outsider pretty much,the rest are like the dingles to me

I look after my own little flock and am proud that they all graft for what they have

[jeff oakley]

I also have huge respect for some of those who come here to work from abroad. I have interviewed people for jobs in North London who will not travel longer the 15 mins to get to work, whilst those from abroad travel hundreds on miles. 

Again the problem is the system allows it. I interviewed a guy for a warehouse job in Southampton. He had a CV that was empty for years, usually prison does that but you are not allowed to ask. Anyway I said would he like to explain the gap, he said sure. He was a draughtsman at Vickers in Portsmouth and went into work one day and decided he no longer wanted to be a draughtsman, so left to find something that suited him. That was the last time he worked. Since then he had got married had two children had a council home and neither him or his wife had worked for years, his was 19 years.

I said he needed £35k to take home what he was getting, basically he had been sent to get attend an interview. I called the job centre and spoke with the manager and ranted as you do. The managers take was that it did not matter as the job would be fine for someone else. He missed the point completely that this piece of **** was taking money for nothing.

Until we force people to take work by removing the ability to thrive on the dole there will be people like this.

 

I see lot's of people who want work and get out and try, walking around industrial sites to find work so not everyone on the dole is scum but there are far too many who are.

[Lawrie]

A good example of one of the problems.  Benefits pay more than working for a living.

 

Can I just go off at a tangent.  People who have put money into a pension all their lives, only to find its the same money as benefits, will now be able to blow it all on expensive holidays/prostitutes/fast cars and then live on benefits.  I don't think anyone thought that one through.

[M444TTB]

Along similar lines my Mum was telling me of my auntie's (ex) inlaws. My grandparents have never had much money but worked hard to pay for their own home and not take benefits. The other lot enjoyed their council house for years (then bought it cheap) and annual foreign holidays.

The fundamental idea of the benefits system is great (much like the NHS). The reality is somewhat different unfortunately. By their very nature politicians will never sort it out. Not while they are concerned with staying in power and newspapers continue doing what newspapers do.

[Meakin]

I don't see why politicians don't do something about it. If a party announced they were cutting benefits then there would be an outrage. If they said they were capping it so a family on benefits got a maximum of the minimum wage in total I reckon it would be a vote winner. The only people that would complain would be the free loaders and a simple response would be to tell them to get a job.

Equally the ones that want a job would be able to afford to do it as they wouldn't earn more by doing nothing.

We hear politicians talking about the recession and we all have to make sacrifices it seems to me that people (or should i say mugs like us that work for a living ) like you and I, seem to be paying to get us out. To hear a sensible practical way of cutting benefits and encouraging people to get jobs would do very well. I suspect the papers would back it too.

[XTR2Turbo]

Meakin

 

The conservative government proposed such changes in 2012 but they have been apposed by Labour.

 

As I recall they wanted to cap benefits at £26k a year for a single family.  Taking into account tax this is equivalent to a single earner of £35k a year.

 

Apparently 67,000 families would have been impacted !!

 

The main criticism voiced was that families would need to move from existing homes to cheaper areas because housing benefit impacts.  A policy described by labour as 'social cleansing'

[Meakin]

That's interesting xtr I wouldn't have called it social cleansing. Just goes to show what a farce this is, capping to equivalent to £35 k considered poverty. When I have relatives earning a lot less than that trying to make ends meet.

I would have put the cap a lot lower I wonder what labour would have called me!

The whole point of unemployment benefit is that it's supposed to stop you starving not decide that your neighbourhood may be poorer.

I never imagined I would be suggesting a more radical policy than a conservative policy. I tend to be on the side of labour esp considering what lib dems did with power.

[jeff oakley]

Labour are really in a mess and if there was a better leader of the Tories they would win the next election. The problem is that there is a lot of press that is wrong, the bedroom tax, for example. It is no such thing, it says if you want to live in social hosing with no need for three bedrooms, you can stay but pay for the privalige. In the same way we have 4 bedrooms when we need only one, but I pay higher council tax as a result it is my choice.

Now I would like a home in the West end of London, but I cannot afford one so I do not live there, why should we enable people to live in those houses we as tax payers cannot afford?

The press keep trotting out the sound bites, food banks, bedroom tax, mansion tax, greedy bankers all negatives but this week wages have gone above inflation, the economy is picking up unemployment falling and yet little news to create hope.

My background and that of my family is Labour, hardly surprising coming from a mining area, however even my father who remembers the early days of the NHS etc is so angry that the state is being ripped off by so many and helped to do so by feckless civil servants who have no interest in stopping the abuse.

[XTR2Turbo]

It does appear that labour has long gone from bring the party of the working class to that of the work shy class.

Actually I am one of the few it would appear that sees through the media portrayal of Cameron and actually think he does have the uks interest at heart and not a political ideal as seems to be the case with the others. Just his image is too easily mocked by the masses given his background

I don't want a politician that is 'in touch with ordinary people'. I want someone able to take decisions in the best interests of UK plc. So the right education. Experience and skills. No different to if it were a doctor or pilot or other business leader.

Cameron lacks experience but I think is taking decisions from a UK plc perspective

[jeff oakley]

I think you are correct with Cameron, however he is weak. If the minister who was caught recently avoiding question on her expenses and found to have done wrong and forced to pay money back, Cameron had sacked her without waiting for the trial by media, he would have been seen as decisive. As it was he allowed to press to show him as a dithering man who did not want to do the right thing.

In the EU if he grew a pair UKIP would be nowhere, as it is he is allowing a lot of the natural Tory vote to be diluted.

He needs to say and do the right things without fear. Ian Duncan Smith with Steve Webb of the lib dems has done a lot to curb benefits and pensions but they have to fight the machine as what they are doing is not vote winners with the underclass which can decide the outcome of elections.

We will plunge backwards if Labour win that is for sure and return to out of control spending

[Norman Verona]

I think Labour will win the next election. Reason? Because the Tory vote will get split between tories and UKIP. Thatcher won 3 elections due to the SDP splitting the Labour vote.

 

Cameron is crafting his policies to counter UKIP instead of what's right for the country.

 

I consider myself a socialist but no longer recognise Labour as a representative party. We need a new party in the UK called the "Common Sense Party" who will do what's right and have ministers who are not in it for the money but because they wish to get all that's wrong right. If such a party got elected and moved fast they may be seen to be making a difference at the end of the first five years and get elected again.

 

OK, I'm dreaming again.

[SootySport]

Unemployment Benefit does not exist anymore, it was changed because of the terminology used, suggesting it was a benefit to be unemployed.   The name for it now is Job Seekers Allowance.

To qualify for Job Seekers allowance you have to be actively looking for a job and that is a full time job in it's self. The agency monitoring your Job Seeking don't care a hoot that you have to travel a few miles for an interview and have no money for a bus fare or some decent shoes and clothes.

I don't recognise some of the high benefits payments paid out as previously mentioned, most only receive the bare minimum of Job seekers allowance and housing benefit on top of that if it applies.  As my son has been unemployed for some time he received Job Seekers allowance and a small amount of Housing Benefit and that was quite often stopped for some flimsy reason. You even have to book an appointment to find out why you JSA has been stopped and that can be 2 or 3 days later. It's no picnic being out of work, when payments are stopped you end up owing money for household bills and rent, the debts mounts up quickly.