mum on benefits can afford to keep her dds 2 horses

[jugofwildflowers]

This is a lovely mum by the way. She has never married but been with the same partner for 25 years and they have 3 dc. He works and has another home but stays in family home often, although because she is 'single' and on benefits, she gets everything paid for and her dc have free school meals. I assumed that as the mum was on benefits, she wouldn't have much money.

They have 2 horses and she spends a lot of the time with them. We have a mortgage and after all the bills are paid we don't have enough to keep one let alone 2 horses! Comes across as sour grapes, doesn't it? Sorry but

that actually makes me feel very mildly suicidal*, just imagining a world in which people seriously think that you should, effectively, be forced to live with whoever impregnated you - as if these are not real attitudes and circumstances from a not so distant past, still constraining women today

*but I do have a severe mental disorder

Have sex once and be shackled for life. That's where we've all been going wrong. I shall start a new political party based on SEX IS FOR LIFE NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS AND EAT FUCKING HORSES BEFORE YOU SIGN ON

Thank you Hully.

Do I have to polish the icon now?

"Why? Well in part because I was seen to buy basmati rice instead of cheaper long grain rice!"

Well, how fucking dare you?! Basmati, I ask you. PM me and I will send you 101 nutritious recipes from a 1kg bag of good old long grain rice.

(Jokes aside, hope that your DH is ok :( )

"Do I have to polish the icon now?"

Cripes, don't ask her that. You'll end up doing something much different from polishing an icon, I can tell you.

Don't worry Dawn, buppy ate it before going down the benefits office

See how restrained I was there, buppy?

Im going on the info provided, taking it at face value, and OP says they have been together 25 years. Where's the problem?

Dawn, your situation is not the same as that described in the OP. As you said, those people with illnesses are investigated anyway, (which I think is wrong considering how hard it is to get DLA in the first place) so why shouldn't people who are fit and healthy be investigated too?

Unfortunately, people pretend to have long term illnesses and disabilities, and that is why people with genuine cases have to go through the trauma of being investigated. It's horrible for those people, but it's a hell of a lot better than what would happen to them if there were no state benefits. And we have to take the bad points of the system as well as the good.

So is the problem party that people are just drifting around willy nilly, getting themselves impregnated with a few men, and choosing to live in separate house holds rather than as families?

I can see how this could be the root of the problem. The breakdown of the traditional family unit causes benefits to be dashed out left and right, to adults living in, and taking up, two homes rather than one.

saggy I WANT A PONY

Can you pretend one is mine? Chose one for me pleeeeeeaaaasssse [winning smile]

Do you have any little grey ones?

I want to go to a problem party.

But I'd like slightly more glamourous problems, if poss. What type of champagne to serve? Nude hot-tubbing or bathers? Charades or Postman's Knock?

I am doing this face now

That is a good face. Bring it to the problem party.

This is the problem with the current system. I know lots of couples living in similar set-ups they are not "officially" together because they can't afford to be. I can't condemn them for exploiting the system because they are in a catch 22 situation. It isn't fair and it does cause resentment.

"So is the problem party that people are just drifting around willy nilly, getting themselves impregnated with a few men, and choosing to live in separate house holds rather than as families?

I can see how this could be the root of the problem. The breakdown of the traditional family unit causes benefits to be dashed out left and right, to adults living in, and taking up, two homes rather than one."

Yes, aka women, know your place

I was drifting round Sainos the other day and nearly had a nasty impregnation by the frozen peas.

It can be a near miss.

This thread is making me feel the Ebenezer love, in timely festive manner. Are there no prisons, no workhouses? I cannot afford to make idle people merry, after all.

Huh?

My mum and dad split up when I was 4. To an outsider, it could well have looked like they had a set-up similar to the one outlined in the OP; my dad was at ours every other day for tea and to put me to bed. I was lucky in that my parents still got on and my dad actually wanted to see me as much as possible. We were still a family, just living in two homes because the parents didn't love each other any more. Then when my mum and stepdad split up fourteen years later, we were a family living in three houses.

Someone please come and kick my mum now, the stupid feckless slagbitch.

Thank you Bups.
I shall be careful with regards to Hully's cleaning in the future!

Good face!

But they shouldn't have to live together if they don't want to.

I personally know a few people who live separately from their dc fathers but are still in a relationship, the fathers pay for the dc clothes and such but don't pay the mothers rent, the fathers I know of most are in a minimum wage job and can just about afford their own bills. But they don't have horses so must be ok....

Quintessential I think the problem is the other way around, the benefit system encourages people to live separately, as single parents get more benefits than if there is someone else living in their household, which is why lots of lone parents really think twice about having someone move in (and I don't blame them). It's a bit different if the partner has been a partner for 25 years, in that situation, they've been a member of the family from the off.

If there was an incentive for parents to live together, what's the betting that some people would be pretending their partner lived there when they didn't?

OP - I'm sure you've been slated (I can't be arsed to read it all) - but I know a few "benefit scammers" who run horses whilst on benefits. Amazing.