Who really gets £500+ weekly state benefits?

[vivizone]

I find this shit so hard to believe. Reading the media, you would think this was a common figure on life on benefits.

Yesterday and today's Metro newspaper - people writing in saying they agree with the cap of £500 and why should people be sat on their arse and be rewarded by £500 per week. . Why should they earn £200 per week working and people are getting £500 a week doing nothing.

Seriously, who gets this £500 per week that is being peddled out of the media? I spent 7 months out of work after redundancy and I could not live on the pittance I received for me and my children. I do not know how people do it. I really don't. I had a decent redundancy package and that was the only way I could make it.

How many people do you know (forget the newspaper stories) that are RECEIVING £500 or more every week? I thought so.

How come if life is/was that cushy on benefits, not enough people are/were packing in their jobs to join a life of riley?

We have been had. Life on benefits is HARD and DEMORALISING. I have tried it and I can tell you you get PEANUTS.

The reason why stories run on people living in million dollar homes/getting thousands a week in benefits is because it is RARE. It is SO rare, that it gets reported on.

I agree with the cap but the point is nearly all people who recieve any sort of in work benefit will also have their benefit reduced,in the long run.

Hard working families are struggling now,its very difficult to comprehend how families will manage with cuts to income whilst living costs continue to rise.

Sorry on phone...Tired&need to go to bed!!

DH and I think that means-testing the winter fuel payments is also far overdue and were pissing ourselves laughing at the Thatcher clone on the news at the Tory Party Conference who was squawking about losing Child Benefit

Self-employed people and anyone wishing to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" and become strivers not skivers will be absolutely unaffected. As long as they have inherited enough money from a tax-dodging ancestor. Seems fair to the government.

Let me think, a week I get rent £68 paid £70 ESA and £28 per week, (I pay £30 per month towards this) council tax £103 tax credits... school meals paid and milk paid.

I was on Incapacity benefit and getting more...(I was scared to take a job under £20/23,000.00). So now I am attempting to get some qualifications to back up experience of doing a job for 20 years, but I cannot find a job as I have 99 people with qualifications going after them... I would love a job!!! At the same time though, I also need to get better health-wise, so I study my ass off for one year, get my HND, hope all the psychologists and counselling help my mind get better, then apply to everyone again.

I agree the system is terrible, this is my first time unemployed since I was 16 and I detest every minute of it!

It does irk me when people pull the lone parent card as a barrier to full time work or work at all. I'm a fully lone parent, no daddy around, not much extended family. I don't drive. If I can work full time with a primary school aged ds, all single parents can. And no I'm not on mega bucks.

There are issues which need to be ironed out with the universal benefit system. The current system however has just got to go and that was long overdue- too complex, unwieldy and unfair

The bottom line is, a healthy capable person should ALWAYS be significantly better off working than not working. And the more hours you work, or the more skilled/stressful/responsibility-laden the job is, the more the financial gain should rise incrementally.

There is NO point having a higher wage if the worker then loses out by not getting the top ups and other benefits which someone on a lower wage would get. That's basic common sense. What matters to people is having the money to pay their necessities and the disposable income left over.

I'm a lone parent it will not stop me working full time. Some may find it difficult though, I cannot think why right now, but we are all different, I'm not a big fan of generalizing 'lone parents' we all have different backgrounds.

luciemay "if I can work full time then all parents can".

Nonsense.

No Lucie not all parents can, there are various reasons why not. Everyone's life is different and until we realise this then the remarks the OP is reading will continue.

Just one reason....my child is disabled. Coupled with my own ill health I now claim benefits and I get nothing like £500 a week AND I get extra cash due to my DS's disability.

Yes, in my case I had several jobs, teaching and non-teaching from the time DD was a baby but employers don't take kindly to frequent absences due to hospital stays with her forty miles away. I do agree that it's possible in many cases though and it absolutely should be worthwhile working.

All single parents can.

There are loads of pluses to working and not necessarily financial ones. I miss the banter with my colleagues, the feeling if having done something worthwhile not to mention the salary. I am doing my fist ever Xmas on benefits.....it's a bit of an eye opener for a woman who always earned plenty.

yes lucie 'all single parents' who are in exactly the same position as YOU (education, qualifications, experience, health, age of children, health of children, affordable housing, affordable transport, dependable childcare, supportive employer etc etc) can.

for those with different circumstances (you realise these exist and are valid reasons that full time work may not be possible?) may struggle to work full time. open your mind! see beyond your own nose.

Thank you, I lost my words, I meant exactly what you all just said.

Right now I am too UNWELL to work, I detest it but can I change it overnight NO!!

Now I think i shall hide this thread before it makes my brain explode......

Oh one last rant.

I miss my work, I miss my colleagues I miss my routine, I detest being unwell, try climbing into my head for a day or 5 and see how you cope, I will warn you though its a living nightmare but what can I do, switch my 'yes your are perfectly fine' button on....

Meh......... now I will hide you! Or this thread will get majorly messy via an explosion of brain cells.

janey, I knew you'd come back with no figures but the old "well my friend told me"

your example is yet to be proved

until someone can show me a breakdown for a teacher earning the same as a teachers assistant then I can't see its possible

maybe someone who has worked full time but is better off working part time can show me how this works

or does this only apply if you're a LP and renting?

lucie I'm a LP with 2 dc's who works part time. It is a miserable struggle but I can juggle things and we can just about manage. I don't intend to work full time as my IBS means I am on the loo most of the day (every hour is about normal) if I eat much. Working PT means I can limit what I eat on my working days, therefore be fairly productive in the office and catch up and eat on the days I don't work.

Working full time when the kids are older would mean they were unsupervised a lot more, I am going to be there to make sure they do homework and support them if they have problems with depression / eating disorders / drugs etc. I hope to work full time when they are safely at University and my health should be a bit better.

What Lapsed and ihate said. Housing costs, particularly in the private rental market, in many areas far outstrip low wages.

I live in an area where a lot of families are getting at lot more than £500 per week (inner east London, zone 1). That's because just over 10 years ago 3 bed ex Council flats in the area could be picked up for less than £70k. Buy-to-let landlords moved in, bought up all the ex-RTB flats, and rented them out to people who in previous times would have been able to get a council property.

Those 3-bed flats, often in poor condition, can now command £650 per week rent, paid by LHA. Far more than landlords can get from working tenants. The flats themselves are worth £360k. (The housing benefit cap will address this problem somewhat)

The poor tenants don't see that money - it flows straight from the taxpayer to private landlords who own these ex-Council properties, don't maintain them, and just rake the cash in.

Lucie, I am also a lone parent with no input from my XP, limited local support and reliant on public transport. The difference is that I have three children (one with ASD) and as such the cost of childcare is completely prohibitive (XP was a SAHD when we had the children). Like NotQuiteQuiet, I miss working, I miss the contact with people outside of the school circle, the banter with colleagues, the challenges, the achievements... I am lonely without work and if I could work I would. Unfortunately, aside from the cost of childcare, I am pretty limited to where I can get to via public transport and most of the jobs available are retail or caring which are incompatible with normal childcare working hours. As it is, I'm doing an OU degree and intend to learn to drive next year so that once my youngest is at school I will hopefully have a greater scope of jobs available to me.

Catkinsthecatinthehat 3-bed flats have been capped at an LHA of £340pw since last year, so it's doubtful that landlords can set rents as high as £650pw now. Although I'm sure that even with £340pw LHA, the other benefits will certainly raise the total benefits figure above £500.

I know of several families who live in that sort of area (inner London zone 1) who bought their flats under RTB and continue to live there - they weren't all bought up by BTL landlords.

So Lucie, because you're able to work, there's no possible set of circumstances a single parent could be in that would preclude them? Bollocks.

Ssd- there have been plenty of examples on this thread and others from people explaining how they are no better off if they work full time, or work more hours, or work in a more challenging job! They have explained how frustrating it is because they WANT to be able to work more and have more money in their pockets at the end of the month. They have explained how the loss of tax credits, HB, subsidised childcare, free scripts etc mean that they are no better off working more.

I think that's an awful situation and a rubbish system. If you need to see people's personal bank accounts in order to believe them then that says a lot about you not them.

teacher

t.a.