Mick Philpott

[Not that Nice If I'm Honest]

It's this kind of attitude that is fucking over the country. Even if there is the high level of people taking the piss, all of the changes the government have made hit EVERYBODY exactly the same. You could be working your bollocks off trying to find a job and willing to accept minimum wage, but you're still going to get caught in the punishments the government claim are aimed to tackle the cheats.

A couple earning £150k each are allowed to claim £1200 child care benefits for each of their children.

I take it these people are the scum you're referring to?

That's a different issue, and I get your point, it does seem weird on the face of it.

However, two people earning £150k would (should) be paying at least £120k tax a year between them, so claiming £1,200 in child care means they still pay £148,800 in tax a year so it's totally different from the "spongers" or "scroungers" (or "victims" if you prefer) who do nothing at all and get paid handsomely for it.


(I said "should" because I realise some of these people have accountants who reduce this, but tax avoidance is rightly becoming more and more socially unacceptable)

[jonny72]

you have gone off the topic, wasn't we talking about people sponging, yes the child care benefits for a £150k household is up for debate, but they are paying into the system,

It's all part and parcel of the same welfare system. There are all manner of inequalities and spongers within the welfare system and singling out people that are on unemployment benefits (which most do) is as the very least distorting things.

The paying in to the system argument is bollocks. A lot of people on benefits have paid in to the system for years, but now they're having a hard time they should just go fuck themselves?

[LucienSanchez]

I signed on in 2009 when i got made redundant... was a soul destroying experience, you get no assistance and feel pretty useless. Luckily for me, i escaped the recession by going to uni, so when i graduate in June will stroll straight into a job in a bouyant economy... right? Really not looking forward to trying to get employed/signing on again.

[jonny72]

However, two people earning £150k would (should) be paying at least £120k tax a year between them, so claiming £1,200 in child care means they still pay £148,800 in tax a year so it's totally different from the "spongers" or "scroungers" (or "victims" if you prefer) who do nothing at all and get paid handsomely for it.

I've seen a number of people defending it with the same argument and little in the way of outrage over it.

Yet take the tax rate for someone earning over £150k being reduced by 5% and the same people are going apeshit.

Where does the getting paid handsomely come from? A lot of the people we're talking about live off £70 a week.

[Levi lapper]

I don't doubt it, but that was not my point.  My point was that we will have to get used to it because there is no way on this planet our country is going to be able to afford free healthcare forever.  There is ample motivation to change the system beyond just profiteering.  

In any event, the tories will never make a profit because the lizards have already cornered the market, when they get a free moment from demolishing the world trade centre and assassinating presidents from the grassy knoll  

The welfare state, was pretty much established to slay the five dragons of poverty at the end of the Second World War, when we were in debt up to our necks, the council housing programme was established at the end of the First World War and we built 300,000 houses a year - houses for heros, a legacy of the sacrifice made by so many, again we were up to our fucking necks in debt.

There is a precedent for investing in infrastructure to get us out of the shit. If you give poor people money they spend it, boosting the economy, if you give the rich money, they save in in off shore tax free investments.

[RobertT]

Where does the getting paid handsomely come from? A lot of the people we're talking about live off £70 a week.

This is the bit that puzzles me.  Even the worst of the worst on benefits, the real can't be arsed and never will, get paid pittance in reality.  People will trot out the having kids thing, to get more money.  Has anyone tried bringing up one kid, let alone a house full? they cost a fucking fortune.

I think there are plenty who are lazy as shit and will never get off their jacksies to find work.  I also have no bloody issue with some guy from Poland coming over and taking that job to better his life and that of his family, someone has to do it.

However, we are not talking the kind of living that makes life a doddle.

[Honkytonk]

I signed on in 2009 when i got made redundant... was a soul destroying experience, you get no assistance and feel pretty useless. Luckily for me, i escaped the recession by going to uni, so when i graduate in June will stroll straight into a job in a bouyant economy... right? Really not looking forward to trying to get employed/signing on again.

Trying to find work in general is a soul destroying experience at the moment.

As I said previously, I signed on to JSA this week after resisting for a while in the hope something would pop up (40 mile round trip to get to the job centre in the first place, but that's a complaint for another time...). Wore a smart shirt to my first interview as I presumed it would be at least slightly formal. Nope. Second interview (which was inconveniently the next day), I turned up, handed the lady my sheet to say I'd applied to some jobs, she checked it, signed, and then I left. Took ten minutes and not one question was asked of me. There was no discussion about what I am doing to get a job, what my background is, what I want to do etc. Here was me presuming the jobcentre was helping to try and find you a job instead of just getting you to tick some boxes so you can take your £50.

Don't get me wrong, I think the welfare system is the single most important thing British politics has ever done, I'm just shocked that, for a system supposedly meant to tailor to individual people's needs and problems, it is so beureaucratic and impersonal. Perhaps if there was an attempt to understand what the people who got benefits spent them on, what they do day-to-day, what their background is, what kind of (realistic) job they'd like to end up in, and there was a slightly more personalised service then it would be obvious who the scroungers/people who don't need it are and who the people who honestly need it are.

I'm fucking depressed about all this now, so here's a pile of beagle puppies.

[url width=900 height=602]http://www.tamballa.com/Portals/0/Pile%20of%20Puppies%2015.06.11.JPG[/url]

[Batch]

Can only echo the above post and Lucien's post. Got a family and when I was out of work I didn't have  job for 6 months. It was horrendous signing on each week, spending bare minimum, constantly ignored job applications, the only positive was I spent more time with my son.

The job centre was as above, no consideration for you personally. They just have too many people to see. Just before I got a job I got moved to the "out of work professional" team,  didn't have much chance to see if that was better. I did get on a course though (I asked for), it was a general CV/job search/etc type course. It was fairly common sense but I did pick up a couple of tips, like re-upload the CV every week on jobsites as it appears higher up agents lists (I guess everyone does this now though!)

Mercifully I had a bit of savings and a bit of mortgage protection to help stem the financial bleed.

Most people want to work I'd say. The alternative isn't as a good as some media make out.

Hang in there Honkeytonk, you will succeed.

[joteddyred]

I have an issue with the way benefits work in Britain, as they're not available for everyone.  My husband falls into the self employed category.  This isn't strictly true, as he doesn't run a business as such, he works for different companies who stop his tax each week and he pays his own national insurance. The construction industry work likethis to avoid having contracts, paying pensions etc. He has no requirement for an accountant and his tax return is a few minute job.  At the drop of a hat he can be laid off when work slows down, generally he finds something else very quickly.  In 2009 however, he only worked for around 6 months of the year, but was unable to even claim JSA, because the self employed don't fit the criteria and as I was working albeit only part-time we didn't fit the bill for other benefits either. 

The woman at the job centre actually told my husband, he'd be better off movibg back to his mum's, because I could then claim benefits as a single parent.  He didn't and we struggled on.  Looking back, the only way we kept our heads above water was with the help if my parents.  So I have an issue that someone who has never paid a penny into society is entitled to help, but someone like my husband who has worked since the age of 16 does not.

[sonicyouth]

I have an issue with the way benefits work in Britain, as they're not available for everyone.  My husband falls into the self employed category.  This isn't strictly true, as he doesn't run a business as such, he works for different companies who stop his tax each week and he pays his own national insurance. The construction industry work likethis to avoid having contracts, paying pensions etc. He has no requirement for an accountant and his tax return is a few minute job.  At the drop of a hat he can be laid off when work slows down, generally he finds something else very quickly.  In 2009 however, he only worked for around 6 months of the year, but was unable to even claim JSA, because the self employed don't fit the criteria and as I was working albeit only part-time we didn't fit the bill for other benefits either. 

The woman at the job centre actually told my husband, he'd be better off movibg back to his mum's, because I could then claim benefits as a single parent.  He didn't and we struggled on.  Looking back, the only way we kept our heads above water was with the help if my parents.  So I have an issue that someone who has never paid a penny into society is entitled to help, but someone like my husband who has worked since the age of 16 does not.

I had the same problem when I was living in Coventry, I was contracting and the contract finished but I had nothing else lined up - I wasn't allowed to claim despite no income aside from the student loan my girlfriend received (from the Norwegian state not the UK), 90% of which immediately went on paying her tuition fees. This counted as a £10k pa income and therefore we weren't entitled to anything. The system makes no sense, I'm genuinely surprised how anyone manages to fraud the system.

[fatbasher]

I had the same problem when I was living in Coventry, I was contracting and the contract finished but I had nothing else lined up - I wasn't allowed to claim despite no income aside from the student loan my girlfriend received (from the Norwegian state not the UK), 90% of which immediately went on paying her tuition fees. This counted as a £10k pa income and therefore we weren't entitled to anything. The system makes no sense, I'm genuinely surprised how anyone manages to fraud the system.

Like any game, you have to know the rules. The likes of you and me have been so lucky to spend all our working lives working for the benefit of others less fortunate than ourselves we've become detatched form the game and therefore the rules. There are organisations paid for by tax payers to help those less fortunate as i said than ourselves to know the rules and therefore play the game more effectively. Yours and my fault for playing a different game, tsk, tsk.

[fatbasher]

This is the bit that puzzles me.  Even the worst of the worst on benefits, the real can't be arsed and never will, get paid pittance in reality.  People will trot out the having kids thing, to get more money.  Has anyone tried bringing up one kid, let alone a house full? they cost a fucking fortune.

I think there are plenty who are lazy as shit and will never get off their jacksies to find work.  I also have no bloody issue with some guy from Poland coming over and taking that job to better his life and that of his family, someone has to do it.

However, we are not talking the kind of living that makes life a doddle.

We are all making valid points, some based on personal morals, others on party political lines and ideology, others a mixture of the first two. What is does show is how skewed the system is and open to abuse. Make no mistake there are thousands who do nicely of the benefit system thanks very much. Then there are those who are captured in a system that does them no favours at all and then there are those who really do get the sharp end of a shitty stick from a benefit system designed to help them?

Sadly labour did their core voting pool the working class, no favours by allowing so many to come in from the new eastern european states at the off that it has decimated the jobs pool for those they perported to represent. Thus putting more people into a system of benefits with which I'm sure is hard to get off.

[fatbasher]

The welfare state, was pretty much established to slay the five dragons of poverty at the end of the Second World War, when we were in debt up to our necks, the council housing programme was established at the end of the First World War and we built 300,000 houses a year - houses for heros, a legacy of the sacrifice made by so many, again we were up to our fucking necks in debt.

There is a precedent for investing in infrastructure to get us out of the shit. If you give poor people money they spend it, boosting the economy, if you give the rich money, they save in in off shore tax free investments.

 "if you give the rich money, they save in in off shore tax free investments"

Like comrade Blair and his "fat cat buddies"?

[Arriba]

Some good points being made by people countering each other. With regard to Joteddyreds situation I would guess her husband pays less National insurance. My father and brother in laws work in the construction industry and pay alot less than i do but do not have the same benefits if out of work etc. Quite right too I reckon.

[joteddyred]

Some good points being made by people countering each other. With regard to Joteddyreds situation I would guess her husband pays less National insurance. My father and brother in laws work in the construction industry and pay alot less than i do but do not have the same benefits if out of work etc. Quite right too I reckon.

I see where you're coming from Arriba and yes, you are correct in terms of paying less NI.  However, people that have never worked or come in from abroad have payed no NI whatsoever.  Why should they be eligible or benefits?  As fatbasher and SY said, the system is completely skewed.