To start a benefits "myth busting" thread so that I can link the thickos of Facebook to it

[MarmaladeTwatkins]

When they start moaning about how people on benefits can afford diamond shoes and other such items.

I'll start.

1. Housing benefit is mostly paid out to WORKING people. So all of this talk of going out and getting a job and buying their own home if they don't like the bedroom tax is a flawed argument.

[SchroSawMargeryDaw]

limited Yes, I am sure that would make their day. Hopefully the situation will never get that bad.

I also completely agree about the DLA forms, they are soul destroying and designed to try and trick you (lots of the same question, worded differently).

[YouTheCat]

Plenty of feckless fathers around who don't pay what they should for their kids, and not necessarily teenage ones.

[FancyPuffin]

It's fucking horrendous filling the DLA forms in for a child.

It might as well be called the 'How to feel disloyal to your child and other self-esteem boosters'

[StealthPolarBear]

Yes, and feckless fathers are a lot less likely to be left literally holding the baby as a badge of their fecklessness
(What is feck anyway, how can one be feckless)

[StealthPolarBear]

Sorry OP, just spotted the word "benefits" in your title, I've made it more general

[MarmaladeTwatkins]

Benefits do not afford someone a lavish lifestyle, as the Daily Mail would have you believe.

£53 per week to live on
Housing benefit to cover rent, none left over
Council tax subsidised but still some needs to be paid, so that comes from £53 per week
Food, electric/heating/water bills and general life must be paid for from £53 per week.

Where is this lavish lifestyle coming from?

[Tee2072]

"So very many people with chronic, disabling medical problems which prevent them leading a full life or holding down a full-time job are being hit by the benefits cap, the bedroom tax, etc."

Yes. This is me. Although I do not get benefits because my husband's salary is too high. Unfortunately, we also have debt we are trying to pay off so his salary is not quite enough. And I earn very little Freelancing because I really can't work fulltime and really need to be able to take a day (or week) off when I need to because I feel so poorly.

[YouTheCat]

Either way, Stealth, we're all fecked.

[SchroSawMargeryDaw]

Technically still valid as a lot of the time this is the reason why Mothers might end up having to claim/claim more in benefits.

It takes 2 and people forget that.

[MarmaladeTwatkins]

Oh and if you have a spare room, 14% of your £53 is getting paid to the government.

[MarmaladeTwatkins]

There is not a plethora of smaller council accomodation for these fuckers with a spare box room to move in to. If you have a spare room you are fucked both ways: find a smaller property (you won't be able to) or pay up £14 per week (and maybe have no heating)

[FancyPuffin]

It's a total joke Marmalade some people are so scared that someone else might have something they haven't.

I posted this the other day on a thread it's another thing that rages me;

I hate hate the new trend of leaving 'letters' on Facebook pages.

Something like;

Ten Downing Street Page

Dear Mr Cameron

I'm just a ex-soldier who lost all his toes, I have a wife and 3 children. I have 3p in savings and a chicken.

Or

I'm a just really old and frail person who worked for a hundred years carrying bricks.



If I was an immigrant then I would get a free house and £50,000 a year on arrival.



371,000 likes.



Disclaimer Obviously not an attack on actual soldiers or old people

[Tee2072]

Well, if he has a chicken... [bugrin]

[limitedperiodonly]

An attack on them would be all right if they had a spare room.

[MarmaladeTwatkins]

"


It's a total joke Marmalade some people are so scared that someone else might have something they haven't."

And that is it, isn't it? This is the goverment's weapon in getting us to turn on the poorest people. They are getting something YOU are NOT, even though you are hard-working. Fuck that shit. I would not swap my life of working for the life of a person on benefits.I would not want to be at the mercy of this government. Never in a million years. People living on benefits and depending on the goverrment are to be pitied, not envied.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Ohhh, sweet Jesus, yes, please start a myth busting thread.

Although ... I am totally on your side against the immigrant/benefit bashers, but ...

Illegal immigrants sometimes get access to free services (eg., someone who's overstayed their visa can go to A&E like anyone else). Some illegal immigrants, who're still waiting to hear if they'll be classed as asylum seekers might get some charity support (it's shit, and it's fucking depressing seeing the hoops people have to jump through when they are here because they're in fear of their lives).

I know you know but I posted in the interests of not giving ammunition to those who like to jump up and down.

Some of mine:

• Women are not made of sugar and spice. They do not automatically love pink. It is not the soul of post-modern wit to make out that men 'lol, don't see dirt innit' while claiming 'men are very visual so they need porn to get off'. Only one of those things, at most, can be true, and I think we could all accept they're both - for want of a better word - bollocks.
  

• It's very hard to 'come here and get citizenship' by marrying an English person. DH still has no recourse to public funds. He has been educated here since he was 7, lived here full time since 18, and he's been married to me since he was 23. He's 26 now.
  

• Basically 'What SPB said because she is always right', but, I know plenty of women who were teenage mothers and they all seem to be doing very nicely for society, thanks very much, HE and all.
  

• The meme 'my mum slapped me and it did me no harm' is a pile of offensive shite. Nobody gives a fuck. Some people survive natural disasters, but we don't all pile on insisting that only wusses complain about an earthquake. So, let's accept if you didn't suffer from being smacked, that's nice, and the people who did suffer, maybe they deserve not to be put down with stupid comments like that?
  

• It is grindingly depressing and horrible to live on minimum wage and the state of a lot of rented housing (inc. private, but I'm sure that's the tiny tip of the iceberg) is utterly shit and shameful for a developed country.
  

It stuns me how many people do not realize that it is normal for people who rent their homes at the low end of the market to put up with mould - which they can only paint over - growing on walls, cupboards and ceilings and damaging their health. It is normal to put up with being very cold, and it's not that unusual to find that a 'reasonable' time in which to have a boiler repaired turns into weeks with no hot water.

This is not me having a go at the many decent or excellent LL there are, but I do think a lot of people who own their own homes would be shocked to see how slum-like rented properties at the low end of the market are.

[YouTheCat]

Be nice if there were some full time jobs out there in the first place.

I am part time on permanent hours. It is not enough and I want to work full time but there are no jobs, unless I'm prepared to give up my permanent hours for temporary/maternity cover or go via an agency.

[usualsuspect]

There are not loads of jobs out there, and many are zero hour contract jobs anyway.

So stop saying it's easy to get a job, it's not.

[Titsalinabumsquash]

Oh god the DLA forms are soul destroying, they want to know the ins and outs of a cat's backside and they want you to word it 2,000 different ways.. DS had a for life award but apparently they've decided to change that so now I'll have to sit and fill it in again in Sept ... Oh joy.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

YY usual.

Also, saying people should move to where the jobs are, is all very well if those jobs are permanent and sufficiently high-paid to cover your moving costs/get you a bank loan on the strength of the contract. If they're seasonal minimum wage, oddly enough, people will need to have money before they can afford to go moving across the country.

Seriously ... the number of times I've seen someone claim that if only the workshy people in the North East just moved down to London for the Christmas jobs they'd be minted.

[Theicingontop]

'Foreigners' don't come over here and take our houses. They come here to work, and when they find that work (because they have the necessary skills relevant to the job, not because they're cheap labour, that's what the national minimum wage is for) a lot of them house-share. They don't waltz into the council office and get given keys.

[MurderOfGoths]

Wrt Housing Benefit, if you are stuck in private rental (given the shortage of social housing, that's quite likely), then not only will you not have any HB spare after paying rent, you are quite likely to be topping it up out of what little money you do have.

[FancyPuffin]

My sister gets housing benefit and has had to urgently find somewhere to live.

You would think that she had phoned the estate agents (more than 10) and told them she was coming round to piss on their children at the reaction to the 'Do you accept housing benefit' question.

[WestieMamma]

Britain is not the final destination of the majority of the world's asylum seekers. The number we take in is a mere drop in the ocean and below the European average.