To think that having two horses at livery is actually a luxury.....?

[Marigoldfetish]

I know this is going to get me flamed etc. but I really don't care well I do a bit else I wouldn't have namechanged

I live near a large family of 8, the children range from 14 years to 18 months. The parents are lovely people, I often have a chat to them about the kids as they have some issues with their teenage girl pretty much the same as mine.

Recently the mum told me they have got two of their children horses, and my children could go and have a ride if they wanted, they are going to be kept at livery stables up the road.

The family's sole income is benefits - I know this as the mum is quite open about this, and that they don't want to work as a) they couldn't earn what the get in benefits and b) she wants her OH at home to help with the kids. Without being too specific so as not to out them or me, one of the parents gets a higher benefit allowance for depression (so the mum has told me). To be honest, fair play to them - if they have made that as a lifestyle choice and their kids are well looked after and happy, and they are only getting what they are entitled to.

I realise this will attract the usual suspects and talk of goats, plasma screens and the like, but..... somebody please tell me, in the name of my sanity, that I am not being unreasonable to think that benefits are not provided for somebody to keep two bloody horses at livery????

[Woozley]

Bit difficult for someone to give their children wide horizons when their own are narrow...

[goralka]

to be honest I doubt if benefits money would cover two horses at livery, she might THINK it will but a few months down the line she will fall behind with the bills and lose her horses or have to sell them.
TBH benefits is a crap life and not some gravy train like it is being made out to be.

[difficultpickle]

Whether the money is used to fund horses or flat screen tvs it still sends an unplatable message that you can have a very nice life at other people's expense.

Claiming benefits is fair enough if you are genuinely ill and unable to work but I'm rather at the thought that people have dcs to avoid having to work. Seems like an odd decision to me but then the only time I claimed benefits when I was made redundant last year all I qualified for was £62 a week plus a council tax reduction. Personally I found that impossible to live on such a low income with no help for heating or accommodation costs but I was very lucky as I only had to do it for 3 months.

I also went back to work when ds was 10 months old as I had couldn't afford to not have any income at all (back then SMP was only for first 6 months).

[marriedinwhite]

Expectation and aspiration. Nothing wrong with either.

[IneedAsockamnesty]

Brandy thank you for saving me the effort of typing that.

[InNeedOfBrandy]

Of course you were sneering, re read your patronising snobby sneering post about packaged holidays, beer and teenage pregnancy. Did you know there is no significant difference between UP/MC/WC teen pregnancy. The only difference is that MC teens have higher abortion figures.

To sum it up you have said familys that go on these packaged holidays, drink beer/odd spirits, have more children then average, have a tv and have a daughter who gets pregnant early, need their benefits monitored because they don't have the same taste in alcohol or holidays as you. Your scenarios are a load of shit, and now your using that classic line I know a single parent in a council flat, like someone saying I'm not racist my friend is black.

[2aminthemorning]

Does the majority care so little as to just coast along towards the lowest common denominator? Especially when a mother's love is involved?

Completely agree that women can make choices. I've led a sheltered life and perhaps that's why I think most of them make the best ones they can and none of us would need benefits if the country wasn't run by capitalist pigs anyway.

[marriedinwhite]

I don't believe I sneered. I know a few single parents in inner city council flats who are doing their utmost to ensure their 14 year old daughters have more of that referred to in scenario 2 than in scenario 1. They are fantastic women and I take my hat off to them. They are doing their very best despite the odds. They might not be running to a pony, but that isn't easy in zone 2 London when you can't afford a car, but metaphorically they are doing the equivalent and more.

I don't believe I was the one who drew the analogy with wooden toys - I said I didn't understand it; now that I think was sneering.

Women can make choices. They can do their best for their children or they can coast with the majority and shift towards the lowest common denominator.

[2aminthemorning]

Marriedinwhite

At the risk of being patronising, there is much about your post that is well intentioned and sane, but all for nothing, unfortunately...your attitude towards stereotypical working class choices is appallingly snobbish. You should spend a year in inner-city council housing trying to get work and see if a packaged holiday seems so coarse and abhorent then. Better still, bring up your daughter there and see if your enhanced morality and parenting skills can facilitate the same opportunities and choices for her.

Obnoxious doesn't seem too strong a word... oh well, when one considers the ill-considered approaches usually taken by working classes to spending their money and dragging up their children, a couple of ponies will narrow their options and keep the children focused on nice, wholesome pursuits...'.
(That's where the 'educational wooden toys' comment comes in.)

Did no one ever tell you that a lady doesn't sneer?

[InNeedOfBrandy]

I also agree with the above statement.

[PerryCombover]

mariogoldfish

I Thought you said that she had depression......oh, that's right you did!!
Weird, eh?

Also if you had been truly depressed your being moved onto statutory sick pay would not have been motivation enough to get you back to work.
There is a difference between being depressed and down

Interesting that you mentioned you "illness" though as it showed your true understanding of a condition that is hugely disabling for many people.

I believe that this is tripe.

[InNeedOfBrandy]

A package holiday does not make you a bad parent and disengaged. There is also a very good argument that letting dc get on with it and not be smothered and have their lifes filled up with activitys every hour of the day is better.

[InNeedOfBrandy]

How is a package holiday and liking beer better then a villa with a penchant for wine.

[marriedinwhite]

Well I'm glad you think you understood my post inneedofbrandy because I certainly don't understand yours and I don't think I referred to "a drink on a weekend" or wooden educational toys. I was referring to the difference between encouragement and love and disengagement and entitlement.

[ThatVikRinA22]

married i think thats very stereotypical.
i was a teenage mother. ive never claimed benefits other than child benefit.

[InNeedOfBrandy]

Married sorry but how does the odd packaged holiday with karaoke. a drink on a weekend, and a daughter getting pregnant make someone a bad parent and not deserving as someone who only buys wooden educational toys?

I wouldn't judge anyone who had a daughter get pregnant young or who was that girl. I'm actually quite sickened at that post. The more right wing you are the more you believe in physical punishment and the MC are more right then left just look at this thread.

[scarlettsmummy2]

If this is true, that is totally ridiculous. So her children get free school meals but she can afford to pay to feed and shoe and house two horses??

[Haughtyculture]

What a good post, marriedinwhite! I totally agree

[marriedinwhite]

Coming back to this rather late.

Regardless of whether benefits are too much or too little if there were two scenarios:

1. Family with 6 children, 72 inch wide screen and a few other tv's, war games, junk food, beer and occasional spirits, little care for the welfare or education of the children and the occasional ghastly package holiday focused on karaoke and beer. The odd slap and one of the girls pg at 15.
   

1. Not a great deal of money to spare but reasonable food, plenty of leaf kicking and every spare penny saved and invested in an interest for the children which will give focus, broaden their social circle and teach responsibility.
   

I know which family I would prefer benefits to paid to without any monitoring.

[ThatVikRinA22]

what bothers me more than anything is what happens to these 2 horses when and if they do get their benefits cut?

its irresponsible to own any animal without knowing you cover financially everything it needs. There are hundreds of horses been sold to anyone for sod all because people cant afford them.

i dont think i could risk it.

[2aminthemorning]

I had a horse seven years ago. Always had wanted one, obsessively, through years of school torture and mental illness as a teenager. I wasn't very gifted, but I tried to keep my heels down and hung on the best I could over jumps. Ordered half a school dinner for years so I could put the other half of dinner money towards lessons. Anyway, fastforward a decade and I've just been discharged from a psychiatric unit, where I've spent 3 months battling depression. I can't do the complex postgraduate work I had been doing. DLA etc. has been applied for on my behalf, and is coming in regularly. What to do with all this money? Seems wrong to save it when I'm supposed to be doing something to help myself with it. My mum finds me a cob. All those years as a teenager, I'd ridden over her (metaphorically) dead body. Now she's scared enough to clutch at straws. Would I ride the cob each day? As if was some kind of favour to her. The DLA or some such benefit will cover it...

That cob taught me how to be happy and gave me the confidence to live again. He showed an impressive ability to compensate when medication screwed my balance up, and he made me feel like I was likeable, with his whickerings and charges across the field to be caught.

I probably should have used the money towards a paid carer, but my horse did twice that job and more.

[IneedAsockamnesty]

If even half of the people who randomly do benefit calculations for fun actually quit and claimed them they may have an understanding of each ones effect on another.

[FrothyOM]

£700 a week is 36k a year. If they really get that, then they will be losing a lot of money when the benefit cap comes in, so I don't understand why everyone is frothing.

[Marigoldfetish]

PerryCombover
hmmmmm dis·in·gen·u·ous: Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

I think I have been candid, and I am sincere - sincerely gobsmacked - even more so now that some figures have come out in this thread about potential income. I haven't pretended I know less than I do - I have been quite frank as the Mum isn't doing anything illegal, and does not seem to hold back telling people her circumstances.

Envious...? Hmm well on reflection I guess I am a bit.

I am a healthcare worker, I work for £1300 a month, after tax and National Insurance I get just under £1000 a month. My partner gets similar. We get nothing apart from CB. I guess this dark raining morning, I am envious I can't stay in bed longer in the morning, spend some time with my children over breakfast, take them to school in stead of farming them off to childcare. I guess I am also envious that I am here making packed lunches, and having to send in an instalment of a school trip when my friend gets all that for free.

I have sympathy for the parent with depression (which is the husband incidentally), although it has gone on for six years now and has lasted throughout three new children - I myself had depression however once on statutory sick pay I had to get myself back to work pretty quick as I couldn't afford to be sick. It would have probably been nice to be able to have open ended time off with no pressure to return to work - so yes, I am probably envious of that too.

I suppose I am a bit envious, but I don't want what they have - staying at home day in day out, worrying about benefits cuts etc.

As well as envious, I am gobsmacked - If this family are getting approx £700 a week that is me and two of my colleagues working flat out to pay for that amount of benefits - as another post said never mind the services paid out of taxpayers money that are being used but not contributed to.

Everything I have said on this thread is true, the very fact this is questioned shows what a ludicrous situation it is when non working people have this amount of income.

[bishboschone]

Artful.. I know a few!