to think that there are people who choose to live a life on benefits?

[autumnlights12]

the recent threads about George Osbourne made me wonder..
A high number of posters say that people don't choose to live like that, they stumble into it, hate it, what a miserable existence it is, nobody would ever choose it etc..
but if you have two or three children through choice, whilst at the same time having no job to provide for them, or if you turn down the job at the local factory (as I know someone who did) because it pays £7.50 an hour and a full time job there doesn't give you the same unemployment rights and benefits, isn't that choosing to live a life on benefits? Or being trapped on benefits? I'm not talking about people who can't work, disabled people, ill people, women dumped by feckless ex and left to fend for herself etc.. of course they should be protected.
I was watching 999 What's Your Emergency and I know that area. And I know people like that exist. And it's often a second, third generation who have never worked a day in their life, even during times when work was freely available. In the town I live, we have numerous Eastern European immigrants who all seem to be working, but mostly in low paid work the locals wont do
What say you?

YABU Only a few very strange people would choose to live on benefits. It's not enough to live on, which makes it all the more worrying that some people have no choice when there are insufficient jobs. Some of these will get pregnant. How many here think there should be compulsory abortion for folk on benefits? Or a law preventing them having sex?

If wages are too low to sustain a 'family wage' that's employers' faults. OK very small businesses have problems but larger companies are too tight to invest in staff despite there being plenty of work that needs doing. Tried getting served in BHS/B&Q/M&S/bank etc lately? Fun wonnit. Sat in a cafe full of dirty tables and just two people serving in lunch hour lately? Nice wonnit.

The FTSE ended 53 points up today so that was nice wonnit.

Looks real to me Usual.

I agree with you OP.

The number of never employed is very very small, However the number that live a life they cannot afford on their wages and are topped up by benefits is enormous. They are the massive problem. There is a limited tax take , I would prefer it be spent on living wages for carers for example, then subsidising people having multiple children or having larger houses.

Isn't it? I don't know what the young lad featured at the bottom of the article gets, it might not all be JSA. It says the figures are official, and admits that it includes long term sick and disabled people. Includes, not is.

One in five households where no one works is a lot, whichever way you want to look at it and whatever the reasons are. The country simply cannot afford to support that.

We could just decide that the only person that chooses a life on benefits is the one on here who admits it and seems to be proud of it. It's still one too many that needs to be stopped.

i cant be arsed to go back how ever many pages it was to check, but didnt she say in one of her first few posts that she is a carer for a disabled child? or was that someone else?

'Once again I will state that we all have the same choices in life'

Untrue; I'd be looking for work tomorrow if I had a choice, but I do not: childcare in our town ends at 12, ds1 is 12 and still cannot be left unsupervised. Ergo my choice was removed.

I am a firm believer that removal of choice is the biggest poverty of all. I believed that you could overcome anything- until it happened to me. I do wonder if this is some lesson that was sent to me, but then that's what you would expect an RE Grad to think isn't it?

All I wanted was an equal playing field: the only ASD Nanny I know makes £30k a year, I could not afford that. I'd have been more than happy with the difference between Sn childcare and NT childcare being made up so I could then access it via the usual channels but deep down I know how bloody expensive that would be.

There are of course other avenues that would have helped- such as preventing insurance companies banning people from working from home in a rental, I could easily have set up as an ASD Nanny myself in the school hours; I even would take ironing in but I cannot risk the roof over our head. What we used to do was I worked evenings and Dh days: then we went to DH nights and me days, but when there is no such thing as night sleep for days on end that system fails.

'We could just decide that the only person that chooses a life on benefits is the one on here who admits it and seems to be proud of it. It's still one too many that needs to be stopped.' perhaps, but at what cost? Are we happy to risk the incomes of many families who did not choose, to target a small number? If there were reliable ways to detect fraudsters they would be in place, it's blunt hammer or no hammer.

You shouldn't let little things like that get in the way of a good bit of right wing ideology.

God forbid a poster should be 'deserving'.

That article- in that number is everyone sick, on DLA and many carers.

We have a society that saves people from dying through prematurity, cancer, disability- and then we act surprised that more people are disabled / non working and carers.

Well there is a solution.... top saving people. Let the fuckers die.

stop, even

I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but this thread isn't about people whose choices are taken away by disability. It's about people who do have free choice, and choose to live on benefits.

peachy what do you mean by childcare ends at 12? tac credits will contribute towards childcare for a disabled child up to either 16 or 18 hb will disallow the entire cost of childcare untill 17 for a disabled child, and a childcarer can choose to look after a disabled child untill they are 17 without a problem if they wish.

granted its hard to find one who will but its not the rules

No outraged you are trying to pick at half my points in order to ignore the others. My voice is as valid on here as both taxpaying family and claimant as any other.

Sock as in the availability of local provision: 12 is when the after school and breakfast club stops taking in. I can;t demand it because several parents would rather understandably remove their DCs on sight of my DS1. I would too, were it reversed.

A wonderful poster from the past days on here, morningpaper, used to say that you either go after every case of benefit fraud and accept that some people- some disabled, freddo- will lose out, or you do your best for the genuines and accept a few people will slip the net and take the piss.

She was absolutely right. Which you go for is personal, I would rather pay more tax and have the second option. As would DH.

sock, it is really hard to get an ASD child registered disabled.
peachy - would you really need a nanny? I have been able to use aupairs & childminders for my DCs, one of which is autistic. Both options are alot cheaper than a nanny. I certainly couldn't afford a nanny either.

I would rather carers and the disabled were paid a living wage and no one received child benefit!

I disagree with the old poster, and if you would rather pay more tax that's up to you. My taxpaying DH and I don't want to pay any more tax, we would rather be left to support our children ourselves, by paying in for state services like health and education ad dealing with the rest on our own.

I'm not trying to pick apart your posts or ignore what you say at all.

And I'm well aware that your opinion is valid.

I just don't like every benefit thread being derailed by points about disability payments, which we probably all agree on anyway.

I imagine that the few who do make this "choice" are concentrated in certain areas. So if you do know one, you know a few. Their whole family and the neighbours and so on.

POst- we have 3 with ASD, one of whom will attack any child within reach, ds3 would be happy in childcare but ds4 hates any noise and would sit in a corner rocking s likely as anything.

So yes, I think we would. But as it happens I have a job lined up flexible hours from next year, once DH graduates so he can be more flexible and help out. But I am lucky enough to have the quals necessary for a very specialist role, and that in itself has taken years upon years to achieve. It's been a ladder out (I hope) but a very long one.