To feel the Disenfranchised have been Scapegoated.

My son gets DLA and my finances have never been checked.

I'm pretty sure finances are checked. Certainly they are for DLA. To see where the money is going.

“And let’s not forget those lazy bastards who are putting on an act in order to get a ‘free’ car.”
It’s not the free car. It’s that it’s a brand new fresh out of the showroom with insurance and tax car. How is that fair to the millions of the low paid in second hand cars that cost a fortune in tax, insurance and repairs.

It’s not the single mums getting top up credit, people object to. It’s the families that have no way of supporting themselves aside from having more kids.

Also you only have to look at the circumstances of deprived kids. I despair of turning up to another home of teens with the gardens full of litter, parents sat at home in a filthy house. More money won’t change the mentality of can’t be arsed.

I don’t think people have become selfish. There is a great deal of compassion for the disabled.

Working people to coin a phrase are fed up with the feeing that there are people claiming benefits which they are paying for whilst making no attempt to find work if they able enough to work, and maintaining a lifestyle that some who aren’t receiving benefits would find it hard to achieve. They rightly feel they should not pay for the choice of having more children, for their leisure time/or time with their children when they can’t stay at home and spend time with their own children and are juggling work/family life and leisure time.

Exactly this

I don't believe anyone is able to take the piss with benefits anymore.

I have a friend who's been told there is a 25 week wait for her claim to be assessed. She's going to be seriously in debt by the time she hears if she's accepted or not.

There being a safety net to draw on when the worst happens is rather dependant on people not drawing on it when their circumstances really don’t (or shouldn’t) qualify, just because they’ve found a loophole enabling them to.

If we want there to be a safety net in case the worst happens (life changing injury/illness, disability, death, loss of job, infinite reasons) we need to accept we all have to pay in.

I've never drawn out. And there may not even be a pension by the time I get there. But I accept the need for funding. Any compassionate society should. Either that or we exist as America does. NOT a place I ever want to live again.

PIP takes ages to apply for. If it goes to mandatory consideration and then tribunal, you are looking at a couple of years to get it awarded.
This lady may have just started her claim but not yet been awarded it.

Can I ask then what is your solution? We can critique someone's life choices till the cows come home but it doesn't alter the material situation. Would you withdraw that support from this woman and her children? Are you prepared for what life in this country would go back to if we removed support?

I do but adult now! And that's what I meant by caring responsibilities, I was a single mum and had nothing from her father in terms of finances or care - I wouldn't have been able to work the hours I did if I hadn't had parents, grandparents, siblings and friends who provided childcare around the nursery hours - I worked in care, nursery opened 7.30-6, Mon to Fri, closed Xmas and BHols etc, my shifts were 7.30-21.30, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Without the support I had - which I absolutely recognise I'm incredibly lucky to have had, I couldn't have worked those hours until my DD were old enough to be left alone, there literally was no other childcare available with child minders etc.
If the extra support isn't available then what do they do? Leave the child at home alone regardless?

I'm old, I don't think people have changed that much. It's just that before, people didn't foghorn their views/opinions in quite so many ways.

Do you have children? You need young children for this to be possible

It is possible to recover from an anxiety disorder. More should be done to support people. I don’t think this is done well at present. But encouraging the belief that anxiety is something catastrophic and intolerable is part of the problem. While the cases you mention are tragic - I don’t think anyone would deny that - they shouldn’t be used to shut down conversation about the effects on wider society of an increasing number of people believing the idea that being anxious is a disability. It isn’t.

But can you choose that just because you want to? And how exactly?
Because I've claimed UC for the first time recently because I couldn't work for a time, went back on a phased return - before the sick note expired on fewer hours at first, gradually building to full time and I've had to repeatedly explain why I wasn't working full time, all sick notes submitted with supporting evidence that in order to keep working I needed to change department (which comes at a lower rate than my previous wage) and I am now back to full time, 10 weeks in total, out of 30 years working and I've needed to 'justify' my inability to work at all for 6 weeks and work PT for 4 weeks - and if I don't earn full time money next month (I will unless something happens) I'll be required to job search to make up those hours.
So just how, without an illness/disability that physically means you can't sustain ft work, or caring responsibility for someone else which means you can't sustain ft work, do you go about choosing to work part time and be topped up with benefits?
Because at this point I certainly can't choose to do that, I would have to have a lot more illness/disability or be caring for someone that did to 'justify' working part time and recieving benefits to top me up to what I'll be earning on nmw at full time. I've had to give very personal information around my illnesses and it's all felt as if I'm doing something wrong and have to justify existing because for a short time I couldn't work as I always have.
I'm very glad to be now fit enough to be full time again because quite frankly the whole experience is awful - for around one third in benefits what I paid in tax last year.

With my experience I genuinely cannot understand how anyone can choose to work part time and be topped up with benefits just because they don't fancy working full time!

thewintergarden · Yesterday 19:41

15 years of below inflation pay rises.
15 years of deteriorating public services.
15 years of being squeezed in every direction
Yeah. I don't think anyone can be surprised that working people who sit outside the benefits system are absolutely demoralised and done in
We can't afford multiple children

That sums it up, we are all under pressure from the increased population. More cars, difficult to go into towns. Trains and buses fewer and late.
More laws that are not about making our lives safer but deliberately designed to catch us out, and harshly enforced.
Oxford now a Congestion tax on traffic, They positioned cameras on the roads to the hospital (which is not in the central area) and the station. Just fucking spiteful Labour and LibDems. It will catch people who live out of town and are unaware.

How would that work? How much would a system like this cost to implement?

Clearly you see yourself as superior to disabled people and feel that they should come cap in hand to you, begging you for help.

True but I was responding to the person saying they are living it up on universal credit, which is just incredibly false

I want my taxes to help disadvantaged people who are unable to live without government support, and I want them to be helped to a reasonable standard of living, not a standard where they’re just about getting by

But I don’t want to help those who are deliberately playing the game knowing the government will pick up the tab. I don’t think it should be an option to e.g. go from full time work to part time work plus benefits because your take home pay after childcare is the same either way. If you can work and pay your own way you should do so, and more importantly you should want to do so! And before you make lifestyle decisions that are going to impact on your ability to support yourself, you should be obligated to run the figures and work out whether you can really afford to do it at this moment in time, or whether you need to get yourself into a better position first

Blissful ignorance. Some anxiety is normal. Anxiety off the scale caused by an anxiety disorder is not normal. 🙄

Hope that helps.

p.s. Tell the families of Phillipa Day and Jodie Whiting their anxiety was normal.

@thewintergarden

Your friend who takes home £2000 a month working just 16 hours, what is her job?!

That sounds pretty well paid!

It all comes back to Maggie Thatcher’s speech about there being “no such thing as society”

Benefits rely on a social contract. If you can work, you do work. If you can support yourself independently, you support yourself independently. You consider whether something like having extra children or living in a certain area is within your means, and you don’t choose to do it if it isn’t.

That way, benefits are there to support people who really can’t do these things and who need to lean on the rest of society for help

If everyone says sod it, why should I work when society will pay me benefits? Why shouldn’t I live in an expensive place I can’t afford and claim top ups? Why shouldn’t I claim extra benefits I’m entitled to even though I don’t need them? Then suddenly there is no society left for those that really need it, and if everyone else is taking the piss then there’s no feeling of being obligated to pay into the social contract because it’s the right and moral thing to do

I don’t believe that people are committing benefit fraud or claiming things that they’re not entitled to. I believe that the goalposts have moved, that more people than ever before are now entitled to claim “something” and that we’ve lost the idea of doing everything you possibly can to support yourself first, before using benefits as an absolute last resort

I’m sure you are correct in that someone is not going to be living it up on universal credit, but the option to only work part time hours and have your income topped up to the level you would get working full time on minimum wage is certainly attractive, especially if you don’t have the skills or ability to earn more than the minimum wage. Why work 40 hours a week when you can get the same income only working for half that.

Its not just about social policy or benefits. Its about economic policy, taxation, regulation of small and large business etc etc. The UK is making itself an uninvestable zone. The money and resources are finite.