So...yesterday the Daily Mail lumped me and everyone else who claims benefits in with with Mick Philpott!

[JakeBullet]

....and I quote them

"Michael Philpott is a perfect parable for our age: his story shows the pervasiveness of evil born of welfare dependency. The trial spoke volumes about the sheer nastiness of the individuals involved. But it also lifted the lid on the bleak and often grotesque world of the welfare benefit scroungers ? of whom there are not dozens, not hundreds, but tens of thousands in our country."

My asterisks....but shows exactly what the DM thinks of ANYONE who for whatever reason HAS to claim benefits. And as both the women in his life were working I am assuming they include the workers of the UK who have to top up their meagre income to actually survive.

I claim benefits because my son is autistic and I could not any longer manage his care needs AND work. It took me 18 months to make the decision to leave my job (after nearly 30 years of full employment) and I tried other options such as reducing my hours first. When I left it was a leap of faith but a year on I am so glad I did it....even though I do have to live on benefits, even though my income is a fraction of what it was (yes...that's correct I am NOT better off financially).

What has NOT changed are my beliefs and understanding of what is right. I have no desire to burn my house down, go "dogging", have threesomes, perform sex acts on someone I barely know or thieve, drink to excess and/or take drugs. Nor do I want to have other children, claim any other benefits or beg for a larger house at taxpayers expense. My world can be very hard sometimes but it is not "bleak and grotesque"....and nor is my child.

All I want is to be treated like a human being and not lumped together with others like me and demonised as an underclass. Why should I be condemned as fecklessness and workshy by rich arseholes who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the arse? Nor might I add do they know "hard work"....just pathetic sound bites.

The Daily Mail crossed the line yesterday and I am so angry because there is nowhere to go with a complaint. Even the PCC has Paul Dacre at it's helm...a sure sign that any complaint will be a waste of time.

Yabvvvu to be bothered by the daily fail, and its out of touch ignorance.

Truly and honestly fuck 'em!

I know a lot of people have complained.

The Mail is scum. The Philpotts are scum. People on benefits are generally not scum.

I wish people would just stop buying this awful rag.

Ah, fuck 'em.

The Daily Mail is wank.

And if peeps didn't claim benefits they'd have nothing to write about.

Don't read the DM. Please!!!! It is a vile, hate fuelled, scaremongering rag. Whenever DP and I go out and say go into a pub and people turn around and stare and whisper (mixed race/gay couple) we say "oh god it's the DM demographic". Right thinking, intelligent people do not think like this.

Ignore the paper, any one who uses the awful deaths of six children to make a political point are dreadful and following their own agenda.

I hope that people will start to see the paper for what it is with opinions like these.

Please complain though, the strength of feeling should ensure that the complaints are listened to, someone on another thread about the Daily Mail said that they had complained.

The Daily Fail needs a target. People are benefits are the easiest one right now.

The article was revolting, who the fuck uses the deaths of six innocent children to fuel their hate campaign?

Ignore them the headline was terrible BUT isn't branding everyone with money arseholes who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the arse? Nor might I add do they know "hard work"....just pathetic sound bites doing the same thing? Just a different end of the same shitty stick to beat a group of people with based not on their individual abilities, moralities and personalities, but based on their financial and social status?

Why do we do this to each other? Why can't we accept that each and every individual has an equal propensity to be a wanker and there are no groups of wankers apart from the EDL

I felt better after reading this from the Guardian, maybe you will OP:

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/dont-get-mad-about-use-of-philpotts-tarnish-poor

(I hadn't realised that the Press Complaints Commission is headed by the Editor-in-Chief of the Mail though!

Its disgusting, there was a thread a couple of days ago saying this was going to be the headline and no one believed it, said it was a fake.

Martin Rowson summed it up pretty well in today's Guardian cartoon.

This paragraph particularly struck a chord, complexnumber:

Indeed, the introduction of universal credit, a single household payment with the same name whether you're working or not, will erode the very distinction that this scornful skiver/striver language relies on. Clearly, they hope that in the medium term, by the time universal credit is rolled out, all benefit claimants will be despised equally, the very fact of needing any support at all being proof that they're not trying hard enough.

How the journalists at dm have the gall to talk about morality astounds me

See, I could choose to be annoyed that some people might think that I would choose to lump all benefit claimants in with Philpott. I certainly don't and neither does any other sane person.

99% of people are victims (wrong word I know, but I cant think of another one) of circumstance. The 1% who orchestrate and manipulate are very different to that other 99%.

If anyone saw the docu last night on the Philpott case showed that family situation was orchestrated by greed - his overwhelming desire was to get hold of Lisa's children because her leaving him left a 2K shortfall in his monthly incomings. If he'd had to go out to work and earn his own money, he certainly wouldn't have been fathering children at the rate he was because he wouldn't have been able to afford to.

Philpott comes into that 1% that we all despise because we know they play the system to their advantage; that they are morally corrupt and have that massive sense of entitlement that others should support and fund their life styles.

The other 99% we do not despise because we know they are decent human beings who are often caught up in circumstances they cannot control.

Right, HollyBerry but the DM doesn't make that kind of distinction, and I think the majority of it's readers don't make it either.

Everyone please go to the Press Complaints Commission if you aren't happy with this article. Surely if enough people voice it, they will have to take notice?

The DM will have known their headline was going to cause outrage, and therefore publicity. Anyone with any common sense knows its bollocks.

And gorgeous George climbs on the bandwagon:

BBC news feed:

1233: Chancellor George Osborne was asked if the Philpotts were a product of Britain's benefits system during a visit to Royal Crown Derby earlier today, reports The Press Association.

He responded: "It's right we ask questions as a government, a society and as taxpayers, why we are subsidising lifestyles like these. It does need to be handled."

So Osborne is now using these childrens deaths for political gain. Aren't the cuts enough?

The Daily Mail. Written by cunts, for cunts.

I'm on benefits and work too. I'm as far removed from Mick Philpott as the North Pole!!

Fuck the DM and Osborne too!!

It is awful. And it's all very well to say 'just ignore it' but the Daily Mail has an enormous readership and is probably very influential wrt those million or so readers' opinions on benefits claimants, removal of social safety nets, privatisation of the NHS and so on.

Articles like this are damaging, like it or not.

Gorgeous George is damaging, too.

Trouble is that while most "normal" people will know its bollocks I do worry about the intelligence of the average DM reader....you only have to read the comments section on their website to see that.

Well, you have a point. But don't let the intelligence of other people worry you. It doesn't matter. People can think what they want.

My step dad reads the DM, but everyone knows he's a bit of a prick.

Fuck the daily heil
Fuck George Osborne
That is all

It upsets me that people forget the positives of the benefits system. Due to my father's ill health (not mythical illnesses as the DM likes to focus on but serious things such as TB, heart disease and terminal leukaemia), much of my childhood was spent living entirely on the "Social". In many countries my parents' inability to work would have led to child labour or at best leaving school asap for me and to a lack to health care for my parents. Thanks to the luck of being British, my family got all the healthcare it needed (ok, it didn't save my dad but even private healthcare couldn't have either) and I got to stay on at school, get excellent GCSEs and A-levels, a BA and an MA from RG unis, a professional qualification and speak 6 languages.

I've always taken the attitude that I owe a debt of gratitude to the welfare state for being able to do that. It leaves me in a stronger position to provide for my own children than my parents ever were but I still appreciate knowing that there is a safety net there as you never know what may happen.

But it seems that the DM, the Tories etc think I have the wrong attitude and should count myself lucky for having achieved anything in light of my welfare background! Idiots.

And like many recipients, my dad absolutely hated being on benefit; despite having paid in for decades, he felt like a scrounger. But that's what the system is there for. He tried hard to get work but his health made him unemployable eventually. The only ones who should feel ashamed are those who abuse it because they cause there to be less to share around those in genuine need. Those who need it should not feel ashamed, that's what it's there for, that's the price, the benefit and the joy of living in a civilised society.