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?

Haahoostery.

It is people like you that are the problem with society atm. Do you have no compassion sympathy or empathy.
I presume you have never had to rely on benefit, maybe everything has gone well for you in life. However, this is not the same for all of society. I don't see how its only those working who fund the welfare system and I also don't see how its only working people who decide on the size of family they can afford.

Peachy said: We have to do grammar and spelling.

Forgive me if I am speaking out of Peachy's mouth: she may disagree. But if you HAVE to do them at home, you are not learning them at school.

Cake: how nice that your children were lucky. They also have a teacher for a parent. How nice it would be if all children couid be that lucky, and what a shame they're not. What about them?

bubalou - how do u know that?

From the government's statistics :)

Office Of National Statistics

Goldenhandshake - do you realise that it is very difficult to get DLA? Your MIL must be entitled. Fraud rate for DLA is very low - according to the DWP themselves.

I'm talking about the children in my class Brycie. Are you deliberately misreading mine and Peachy's posts?

And Brycie if you're so concerned about all these children who are being failed, why don't you go and retrain as a teacher and do something about it, instead of sitting at your computer with your holier-than-thou attitude?

Outraged: of course we could just give up and not bother. Probably easier. The parents won't change. It doesn't matter.

Of course there are people who make a deliberate choice to live on benefits. They may be a small minority in comparison to those who find themselves reliant on benefits due to a change in circumstances beyond their control but it's foolish to deny they exist.

However, the real question is why that happens, because until you answer that nothing will change, while removing benefits from these people will simply result in the cycle of deprivation being perpetuated. In turn this will lead to increased child poverty, increased crime and much more regular occurrences of events like last year's riots.

Tomorrow's 'scrounging' benefits claimant is likely yo be today's deprived child.

Surely the question should be: AIBU to think that we ought to look at the reasons people end up on benefits and what we can do to help them help themselves.

Otherwise it's just a blame game that serves no purpose other than stoking up people's righteous indignation.

It's interesting how the government has managed to turn the economic crisis into the fault of the poorest in our society. I see there's no outrage about PFI milking the taxpayer or the costly fuck-up of the west coast train franchise.

There was an interesting take on the whole benefits debate at the moment on Newsnet Scotland:

"Are we a ?something for nothing? society? Are cuts the only answer? Perhaps there really is no choice?
There is. But it would take humility, planning, and a Nordic rethink of society.

In Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland "welfare" spending is even higher than Scotland but the numbers who use the resulting high quality services (even paying additional user fees) are also the highest in Europe. Heavily subsidised kindergarten care in Norway, for example, has a maximum monthly contribution from parents of £200.

Not free but not totally unaffordable either ? and those out of work pay no charges. In the Nordic nations welfare is not a desperate "last resort" or an admission of personal failure. It?s an ?everybody? system redistributing income across an individual's lifetime as much as between individuals.

In Britain, it?s different. Middle earners pay taxes AND take out private insurance to safeguard their own access to non-state funded, higher quality private welfare services. That's crazy, divisive, expensive and a recipe for stoking up resentment. This ?double dunting? means many middle earning families in the UK pay the same or even more on welfare than their Nordic counterparts ? with the big difference that our tax pounds don't help fix people, sort out problems in the long term, give welfare workers good jobs or help create healthier, happier nations.

Don't get me wrong. Affordability is a big issue in the Nordic nations too. But a Nordic Council of Ministers report on the subject has a very different tone to the hysterical, finger-pointing debate here. They worry about a drop in the high quality of welfare services because that will damage social cohesion and the ability of women to work and thus kill the golden goose that?s let the whole ?bumblebee? Nordic economy "fly" ? high levels of trust in government combined with very high levels of employment. As long as almost everyone is making a contribution risk can be shared collectively. Compare and contrast Britain. "

Those who keep saying what a small number of people this applies to...

I just had a quick look at the local courts list and there was a list of about 10 people IN ONE DAY done for benefit fraud. And this wasn't a couple of quid here and there but £20K+ sums. And there were several claiming DLA who had been found working cash in hand etc.

Universal Credit will push families into poverty and even onto the streets.

Scrapping Housing Benefit for the under 25s will make many families homeless as many under 25s on HB have children.

The outcry about this should be bigger IMO.

We're supposed to be a civilised country. How can we be consigning people to homelessness like this?

Where the talk of job creation? I haven't heard it, have you? What are Cameron / Osbourne doing to revive the economy? Nothing. Borrowing is going up!

Their policies are failing, and you lot are still pointing the fingers at "benefit scroungers"?! It's a smokescreen, and you're falling for it hock line and sinker.

No one is arguing for the need for cuts. But this isn't about cuts. The Tories' policies are ideological, and will result in poverty and homelessness for many families. They are removing the safety net, and many children will fall through it.

Anyone who supports them should see themselves as personally responsible when they see homeless people on the streets, once these policies bite IMO.

Yes I read "my children" as "your children", not your pupils. I didn't do it deliberately.

"because they go to a good school, with supportive parents. Not all children are that lucky. "

Yes they are lucky. Presumably the supportive parents helped with the basics while they did rainforest projects at school.

What about the other children without supportive parents?

I'm afraid I'm giving up. If people want to see throw their aprons over their faces and imagine there's nothing to be done then, whatever. It's obviously a pervasive attitude and leads to a horrible elitism. If your parents are crap then bad luck, we won't do all we can to ensure you're not crap too, because we've got the cop out of blaming your parents. OUR children will read and write and add up, WE can help them. Lucky us.

Maybe the factory should actually pay a higher wage and take less profit itself. Why is it a given that some people, who don't come from privilege should work for pittance? If the factory wage is so close to benefits level, it's really just crap and probably doesn't make childcare costs possible.

The ultimate goal of any society should be equality ... if David Cameron grew up on a council estate he'd probably be on the dole. Osboure too.

I'm not saying we should give up Brycie, I'm saying that you cannot put parental responsibility on teachers.

They (and their support staff) already have to make up for the fact that parents don't teach their children how to use a knife and fork, don't teach their children how to take off a jumper, don't teach their children how to turn a skirt or a pair of trousers the right way out, won't do any reading practice at home or even send the book that their child wanted to borrow back into school so we can read it with them. The list is endless. Children have already been at home for at least four years when they get to school. That four years where their brains are capable of learning more than they ever will be just being wasted.

I'll say it again. You are underestimating the influence parents can have on children's educational outcomes, and overestimating the power that teachers have.

garlicbutty where does it say that people aren't 'choosing' to be on benefits rather than work?

Perception It is not half as difficult as the DWP would have you believe, I have known MIL for ten years, other than being complacent and wary of working life because she's been out of the game for so long, there is nothing preventing her being able to work.

She has some mental health issues, that she is successfully medicated for. This would not prevent her working in a shop at the till for example, but she doesn't wnat to do this, she wants to stay at home all day because that's what she is used to, that is her routine. So she plays on her mental health issues, claims she becomes anxious leaving the house (although has been abroad twice in the last 5 years and has no problem popping to the local shopping centre when she wants something new). She readily admits that she acts up when it is her assessment time so she does not lose her DLA.

On paper, yes she is entitled to it, because she knows exactly what to say and how to act at assessment time. I have no doubt there are others exactly like her. I just hope as many as possible are caught, in her case, she has been investigated twice, but it is hard to prove she is doing anything wrong as she is simply 're-assessed'.

There are people live a life on benefits. Some of those people are too disabled, ill or have dependents to be able to take a job. Some of these people, know that a minimum wage job does not make up for the loss of benefits they would suffer by taking that job and are trapped.

IF they could get a job with net pay after all costs (ie tax and travel and work clothes) truely paid more than their benefits most I am sure would take a job.

Both the tax and benefit system needs reforming simultanously to make low paid work worthwhile doing.

"there were several claiming DLA who had been found working cash in hand etc."

DLA is an in work benefit, it doesn't matter how much money you have or earn.

Letty - this minority doesn't justify screwing the majority.

I bet half of the people bitching about teaching in schools have no experience working with children themselves.

Brycie There are plenty of issues as to why children leave school with poor literacy and numeracy skills - inconsistent teaching (e.g. one teacher teaching one thing one way, one teacher teaching another thing another way) confusing children, large class sizes and yes, parents are also partly to blame. There was a study recently that found 3 out of 10 children don't own a single book, if a child isn't taught at home from a young age that learning/school is important - what hope do they have in school?

When I worked in schools with children we did loads of projects with them. One example would be George and the Dragon, which we studied just before St George's day. We incorporated that theme in plenty of lessons, i.e. writing film scripts, printing out pages of the story and asking children to highlight nouns, adjectives and verbs, getting children write predictions for what they thought would happen next in the story, we used dragon themed maths printouts, we even got them to make a stop-motion film using McDonalds toys because How to Train Your Dragon had just come out that focused on ICT skills.

Relating learning to something enjoyable like a project is the best way to get children to learn, learning has to be fun or children will not be interested (that's basic child development). Yes the focus should be on reading, writing and numeracy, but it has to be done in a way that appeals to children. Having children sit there learning thing by rote is not helping anyone.

You can bitch about your children's 'rain-forest' project and how you don't think what they did was good enough, and I'm sure it wasn't, but that doesn't mean this is typical of every primary school and it certainly doesn't mean that children carrying out projects is what's wrong with the education system.

There is a very big difference between the Nordic nations and ours, and that is the diversity in the cultures.

As much as I love the multi cultural society that is Great Britain, a difference in ideals amongst so many of the population brings problems with it. We are a divided country simply because we don't all want the same things.

I don't know that standard of basic education has much to do with the problem.
I taught groups of young single mothers 16+ who were on benefits. They had basic Literacy and Numeracy and had received a good basic secondary education gaining the lower grades at GCSE.
Their good education had made them understand that with the shortage of jobs, not alot of chances in the area they lived they were better off on benefit. Some of these girls were from middle class affluent families, others from several generations of families claiming benefit.

I'm not underestimating it - I acknowledge as a full and complete failure of parenting. That is the whole point. I dont' want to see the children thrown on the scrapheap as a result.

I have read about the things you describe, the rotting teeth, the unfed children. I don't underestimate them. We as a society have to pick up the slack. It doesn't mean more money for parents, it means a better education for the children, and if that means going back to basics (which it does, as employers keep telling us) then that's what we should do. It's teachers like cake - who imagine rainforest projects are indispensable for children like this - who make me despair.

YANBU to think that plenty of capable people prefer not to work choosing to let the state pay for the upkeep for them and their children.

I don't however agree with the cutting 10 billion from the welfare state idea. Anyone with an ounce of decency would be loathe to see children of such families hurt by withdrawal of the funds that support their existence. I don't want hungry little urchins suffering in my name. the problem is the feckless parents, not their innocent kids.

If I was in charge I would keep the welfare system as it is BUT with the following change - after child no.2, all further child benefit and benefits in general would be paid in the form of food vouchers/clothing vouchers. This would see money going to look after the family and kids properly rather than on drink, drugs, fags, non essential lifestyle choices etc. It is all very well to live it up and go to the pub etc but there is no good or reasonable expectation or excuse for the state to fund this. Work if you want choices.
My proposed change would not apply to those out of work for good reason (disability) or to those who had children before finding themselves in a position where benefits are required.

Morethanpotatoprints: that is interesting.