...to think that some of you'd like to see Iain Duncan-Smith live on £53 per week for a year

[SDeuchars]

If there are still spaces on the petition, please sign it.

Never gonna happen.

He won't do it no matter how many people sign. He couldn't give a shit.

He could if he had to. But he doesn't have to.

Oh, go on. It only needs another 10,000 sigs and I'm sure MN can do it. In fact, how about a whole bunch of comments referring to MN?

I'd love to see him live off that but it wouldn't happen, no matter how big the petition.

Michael Portillo did it - he took on a whole family - he took the challenge and swapped a life with a single mum on a deprived estate for a week. He had to do the whole budget thing - she left him to it - there was no backdoor skull duggery and meals delivered

IDS spend a fair bit of time on UB after leaving the army. He's probably more grounded than most MPs; he's state educated and mixed race (not that that makes a difference today, but it would have when he was growing up)

Just because someone has made a success of their lives doesn't mean they have forgotten their roots.

No one lives on £53 a week, what utter baloney. Add free housing, prescriptions, health care, education, school meals, council tax, eye care etc etc and it all adds up to a fair and liveable sum.

Maybe he should read 'Life in Low Pay Britain' a little out of date, but still relevant. In fact every Government Minister should have to do this during recess. Then tell people we're in it together.

So you could manage to adequately heat a home, buy food, pay any extras like contents insurance etc? I doubt it.

No-one of working age gets 'free housing' & 'free council tax' now actually if they claim any benefits.

Anyone can do it for a week HollyBerryBush.

I'd be more impressed if they did it for a year minimum.

I get council tax benefit (i'm on DLA for serious health problems, manage to work PT, get some WTC).

I pay literally only £18 less than someone not claiming CTB.

It's very hard for a single adult to cope on benefits if you work as much as health problems allow.

I don't have £53 a week to live on, i have nothing after bills are paid.

Isbella I see where you are coming from there, but in fairness, he was left to it (mum on a webcam overview) with a stroppy teenaged girl, the middle one and a toddler prone to tantrums. For a person of middle age, who has no children, nor interest in them, he was really quite wonderful at organising them AND getting them where they should be on time, dealing with their demands (which as parents we know at times are quite unreasonable) and he managed to feed them decent food without succumbing to their demands for what I would call Iceland Fare.

I don't think the mother would have left them for a year

I have just signed.

Surely the person who started it missed a trick, it should have gone on the downing st. Page, then if it got to 100,000 they would have had to debate it in parliament! :o

A friend of mine is living this nightmare. She has a 2 bed 1st floor flat that is in the middle of nowhere. She cannot find anyone who wants to downsize, and can't afford the costs involved with moving anyway.
She receives £71 a week JSA.
£16 goes towards the rent since she has a spare bedroom.
£4 a week goes on council tax.
She is left with £102 a fortnight.
Bus fare to jobcentre to sign on every fortnight is £7.
She's then left with £95 a fortnight to live on!!

Quite how she is going to do this is beyond my comprehension.

Well, the total is now over the initial 75,000 but the originator of the petition has just doubled the number of names needed. You too could be one of 150,000 people calling for this by breakfast time!

Even if he did it for a year he would know that at the end of that year he would go back to his real life. He could never understand the desperation of knowing that was it; every week a struggle for the rest of his life.

What's sick is he doesn't think others deserve the welfare he himself received when he needed it. And because he found his way out through luck and perhaps his own resourcefulness he thinks everyone else should be able to find jobs that don't exist.

To carry this out for a year though would be long enough to get a good insight into the daily struggles to juggle finances and stretch your moneyso thinly it is virtually transparent.

FWIW, I don't think 62,000,000 signatures will get him to agree to live on £53 a week for a month, let alone a year.

No, nether do I. He wouldn't even reduce his expenses claim to that level, never mind his actual income. Hard choices had to be made for other people, not senior Tories.

Over 93,000 signatures and rising

Here is the link again, please sign www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week?utm_campaign=action_box&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition

Go on, you know you want to!

I would hate to live on fifty four pounds a week, it would be soul destroying.

As I am fit and healthy I would walk to sign on or try to find a recycle bike to use and grow and swap vegetables etc, free cycle other items and collect stuff.

But it would be a worry in the cold for heating and a worry if anything broke, long term I wouldn't like it one bit

I really, really hope I never have to live on £53 a week. I appreciate how lucky I am not to have to. Have signed.

Never have I so heartily agreed that: YANBU ... to infinity [bugrin][bugrin]

I've signed. How dare he demean the people who actually have to live this?