to think benefits are pretty LOW actually. How much do you get?

[ItsGraceActually]

I'm on ESA (used to be 'sick benefit'). I get £90 a week, plus my rent (£400/month) and council tax (£100/month).

With my £90 a week, I pay for heating - it's an all-electric house on a pre-pay meter; water rates; phone, internet, mobile, etc; TV licence; everything else.

I can't afford to run a car or, indeed, use public transport. I smoke, which I pay for with 'permitted work' (about £20/week) from home. I NEVER go out, except for one coffee a fortnight. I don't know how I'm going to afford heating in the winter.

I am extremely grateful for the welfare system, don't get me wrong! I feel fine about claiming: I paid in for 30 years, in the belief that anyone who needs it can get it.
Just now and again, there's one thread too many in here about people on a "welfare lifestyle" , living it up on benefits. Chance'd be a fine thing ...

I'm wondering whether all this poverty is going to lead to a lot of people emigrating to places which are not so badly affected (Aus, NZ, Canada). If I was stuck in a council house on benefits with no jobs available I reckon I'd be seriously thinking about it.

You are getting over £10K a year.

out of curiosity why do people on benefits feel that they have the right to be supported by the rest of us?

I'm not suggesting that we should allow anyone to stave but wondering why anything above a basic subsistance level is expected as a right.

So would I mumblechum! If only my passport hadn't expired and flights were free

Seriously, if anybody thinks they're going to be in this situation soon (and bearing in mind it's going to get worse) - it's got to be worth looking into.

And how do you suppose these people stuck on benefits will afford the ticket to Aus mumblechum??

tis a lot of money

but if you've left school and got a job there is none who is going to tell you about it, I knew about tax credits from the literature I gto when pregnant. Before that I had no dealings with anyone who might tell me. I also didn't have a tv until a while after I started work so wouldnt have seen any adverts

Bronze, check here to find out when they started.

If you have marketable skills, you get a job sorted and the employer pays all expenses. DH once got headhunted for CIO of a multinational based in the Caymans and all expenses were to be paid, but he decided against it in the end.

soggy - it is a subsistence level. I do believe the minimum wage should be higher, but don't believe anyone can live on less than this - at least, not without falling prey to poverty-related disease.

I paid over a quarter of a million in tax & social fund. That's not the point, however. My attitude, while I was earning, was that I don't want to live in a country where the poor & sick have to die slowly on the pavement, renting out their DCs as prostitutes & drug dealers for the next meal.

Thing is mumble, it's not as easy as 'I'm skint, I'll emigrate', is it ? The countries in question probably won't let you in if you have zero income, zero savings and (as is often the case) a low standard of education/no trade.

10k a year is crap to live on - anyone earning less will get tax credit top ups. Try living on 10k a year soggy - it is not easy. I earn 14k part time but get tax credits to support me and DS too. Nobody HAS to live on 10k except those on nothing BUT benefits - it aint that much.

I shouldn't imagine most benefit claimants feel they DO have the right to be supported - many will be looking for work, some will not be able to look for work and a minority won't care.

Headhunted while you're on said council estate on benefits? I highly doubt that is a feasable solution to many people at all. And Australia are just about as strict as you can get when it comes to immigration. I do get wher eyou're coming from, but it's just not that simple. When you are on benefits, you don't have money spare to even move house. But hey, the workhouse would solve that wouldn't it. All mod cons, no childcare worries, just bring the little buggers down the mines with you

mumble, I seriously doubt your cited case study of 'council estate on benefits' is likely to be headhunted as top flight management for international corporations willing to pay all of their relocation costs....

That was just an example. Our local paper is absolutely full of jobs in Canada, and they're all tradesman/nurse type jobs. Not by any means high flyer jobs.

Slowly Losing it - Ikwym, I have felt like that so much today, I'm not on benefits but I was once, it's so hard breaking out of the cycle We both work FT and recently it's a never ending cycle of something breaking, we're stupidly overdrawn, owe loads of a credit card that is just about to start charging us interest. About a month ago my car set on fire so I had to replace it (I need a large car for my business) and today my dh's car failed it's MOT and is costing nearly £500 to fix but we can't not pay for it because he needs it to get to work, we can't just buy another car because that would cost even more and who knows how many problems that would have anyway. It's like a never ending cycle.

Soggy becasue we paid between us for forty eyars (more than 20 DH, almost 20 me) in NI and I save the state a small fortune in care by being a carer on £53.90 per week.

Given that I paid in and gave up a decvent graduate career to do that, yes I feel I deserve my allowance. Same as I would feel I was entitled to any other insurance pay out in fact when legally claimed and unavoidably so.

(btw, we get zero state benefits over and above child benefit which every child in the land gets)

Mumble when you can't afford to put food on a plate or buy a new sofa when your third hand ones falling apart, when you get by on 3 hours sleep a night because you're so deeply depressed you spend most of the night in tears worrying its impossible to find the money for a passport and flights not to mention leaving your very meager support system for a new life in a strange country.

MC Dh and I have considered that but places outside Europe don't like SN kids sadly.

Mind when he has finsihed retraining if the chance came up we probably would, only by then we'd be on a decent income and feel it was time to be paying abck in again LOL.

I have lived on way less than £10K a year, for years (9 actually), whilst working in a low paid industry. This was before there was so much "value" food around so we lived off baked beans and pasta and didn't have heating, just second hand jumpers (even the cat wore one!)

There's along history of economic migration, though, isn't there, right from the days of Ireland's potato famine where people would cram into a ship's hold in the hope of survival, not just a better life, in England or the States.

My parents emigrated to Canada when they first got married as their work chances here were crap. Five years later they came back to the UK and bought a house for cash.

My dh's parents immigrated from Nigeria in the 50s, he qualified as a surgeon, she as a midwife. In her village in Nigeria, her parents gave her the choice of food or education.

Personally I would beg borrow or steal the fare to try a new life abroad if I was in dire enough straits.

Many of those who emmigrated during the potato famine paid for their fare through indentured labour, many people died enroute or died during their service period.

The immigrations which happened in the 1950's took place during the post WWII economic boom.

Both of those situations require there to be a destination which need immigrants. Where would that be in 2010?

Soggy, I used to earn way below that too in The Good Old Days-

when houses and products were far, far cheaper! We could rent a place for under £300 back then.

Inflation- surely you noticed that?

I'm not suggesting for a minute that the Irish emigrants had it easy, but they had no choice, there was no welfare state.

As I mentioned earlier, there are literally scores of jobs in Canada advertised in my local paper for some reason. Friends of mine are emigrating soon to NZ, friends of friends have just gone to Australia. This isn't strictly a global recession, some countries haven't been hit anywhere near as badly as Europe and the US.

There are still areas of the World where certain UK qualified trades/professionals are in demand (the classic being UK qualified nurses in Australia), so there is still the demand for economic migration.l However, it tends to be very trade specific and the immigration laws are MUCH stricter now than they were historically.

But MC whilst that is an option its not as simple as that

Frriends of mine were all ready to emigrate to Aus when the appliation was refused on review as she had crohns.

There are so very many hurdles to jump over, and often the same ones that push people onto benefits in the first palce.