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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

About the Benefits program on BBC1

364 replies

bimbabirba · 11/07/2013 22:27

It has made my blood boil! Especially that judgmental bitch, Debbie, who was telling the single parent that she shouldn't buy a whole chicken on tax payers' money to feed her children! Then she went all judgy and bitchy because the kids eat two cooked meals a day and she asked if that was really necessary!
I think the world has gone mad!

OP posts:
FasterStronger · 14/07/2013 14:32

And like bollocks do businesses pay their proper (ie not even 'fair' but just frigging 'lawful') share of tax.

most businesses do. stop generalising.

international businesses can avoid tax but if you are wholly UK based you would find if very difficult to avoid any amount of tax.

Wuldric · 14/07/2013 15:03

Gobby, I am not right-wing, and I have said nothing about your family or your lifestyle choices. I am simply pointing out facts. There is no money. We are all going to have to get used to paying more and receiving less.

The country owes eyewatering amounts and has been downgraded once and will be downgraded again. Meaning that our debt will get ever more expensive to repay.

martini84 · 14/07/2013 16:09

watching it now. single parent on benefits had not worked for 2 years and had 2 dc. Therefore she was clearly working when she had them, So definitely had not been popping out babies for other people to pay for them.

GobbySadcase · 14/07/2013 16:43

Receiving less than what? The bare minimum the law says you need to live on? I know that's what the government want, but when we already have working people and people on benefits unable to feed their families, plus people DYING - in this country in the past two years over 11,000 people have died after being deemed 'fit for work' - then we are going the wrong way.

Attacking the poorest is not going to get this country out of a financial mess. Not when big business is evading what they rightfully owe, and the bankers who forced the government to buy them out are receiving bonuses as usual.

One good thing I can at least take from this is that someone has acknowledged on a mainstream television programme that perceptions of numbers of people on benefits, the amounts they get and fraud levels are false - people exaggerate them. The biggest welfare expenditure is pensions by the way, not out of work benefits.

Oh and Wuldric, didn't say you. They're here though, one of them, and what I posted has been said directly to me on these boards.

Darkesteyes · 14/07/2013 17:07

This programme has backfired on the BBC somewhat. Late last Thursday night the #HappytoPayYourBenefits hashtag was top trend on Twitter.

FasterStronger · 14/07/2013 19:30

The biggest welfare expenditure is pensions by the way, not out of work benefits. yes and as people live longer this need will only increase.

which is why everyone who is healthy needs to be as independent from the state as possible.

Wuldric · 14/07/2013 19:37

I am absolutely sure that pensions will end up being means-tested. I would put a large amount of money on that happening before the decade's out. They will put up pictures of Fred the Shed and say look - this man is in receipt of a state pension when he is a millionaire. And thereby plunge many middle-income retirees into poverty. S'gonna happen. Can't not. As you point out, the pensions bill is large and set to get much larger.

FasterStronger · 14/07/2013 19:48

the problem with that approach, which I agree may well happen, is that it will act as a disincentive to save for your own retirement.

so it will have to be a very low level so anyone who can save will.

pussycatwillum · 14/07/2013 19:49

We've grown up with unrealistic expectations. My generation is poorer than my parents' generation. My children's generation is going to be poorer than mine.

Yes, maybe you have grown up with unrealistic expectations, but you can't generalise about which generation is better off. DH and I are probably better off than my parents were, but we are definitely worse off than his were. Our children are actually better off than we were at the same stage of their lives.
Expectations have raised dramatically since DH and I got married 40 years ago.
I agree with Wuldric that State pensions will have to be means tested eventually. It doesn't seem fair though that if that happens those who have never worked will be getting a State pension while those who have worked all their lives might not.

BlackholesAndRevelations · 14/07/2013 19:59

God this is depressing. What are we bringing our children into?!

Wuldric · 14/07/2013 20:01

Actually you can generalise about which generation is poorer or richer. It is very easy to prove. What you cannot do is extrapolate from your personal experience, because that is unsound. I am richer than my parents were, but my generation as a whole is poorer than my parents' generation. This is largely to do with housing and pensions.

Bogeyface · 14/07/2013 20:01

What I dont understand is how everyone just accepts fuel bills going up (by fuel I mean Gas and Electric, I dont know enough about the oil business to comment on that), when these companies are making billions per year.

Privatising the fuel companies was the worst days work Thatcher ever did.

FasterStronger · 14/07/2013 20:11

bogeyface - gas and electricity companies make massive profits because they are huge businesses. they don't actually pay massive dividends to their shareholder when you take into account how much they have paid for their shares.

LuisSuarezTeeth · 14/07/2013 20:14

Yes Bogey fuel costs are a large factor in this, it's one of the reasons people are struggling.

JustinBsMum · 14/07/2013 20:21

frouby said I think its grossly unjust that the energy companies and supermarkets make billions of pounds of profits each year whilst the country is on its knees. Then give us a 'value' range to say they are doing their bit

This is a good point. The public really do have the power when it comes to purchasing stuff, look at how starbucks changed their tune about paying tax when custom dropped off.

Sadly everyone is too busy arguing to get a grip and put some pressure on.

JustinBsMum · 14/07/2013 20:23

Want to say that the consensus seems to be that the single mum deserves her money but WTF where is her partner the father of her DCs. Somehow they just slip out of the equation. I just don't believe ALL these men have done a runner.

FasterStronger · 14/07/2013 20:28

oil prices are going up because the billion plus people in China and the billion plus people in India are completing with us to buy oil.

as their standard of living increases, we will pay more for everything. it is part of global rebalancing and it is unstoppable.

Original poster
bimbabirba · 14/07/2013 20:29

If she's like he pays her maintenance otherwise he may have done a runner, or be in jail or dead. What does that matter?

OP posts:
Original poster
bimbabirba · 14/07/2013 20:29

*if she's lucky

OP posts:
Bogeyface · 14/07/2013 20:35

My ex didnt do a runner. He started out as a good NRP, saw him regularly and paid maintenance for DS, then it all got a bit too much like hard work, especially when his new wife kicked off as she hated my guts.

I rather suspect that non payment comes mainly from men who started out paying and then decided that the new life needed the money more than from men who just fucked off at the start.

JustinBsMum · 14/07/2013 20:37

If he's done a runner, is in jail or dead it doesn't matter but if he is around he could be sharing upbringing of DCs and contributing to their upbringing and making it easier for her to work. He wasn't even mentioned. If she was widowed it would have been mentioned for sure. He is airbrushed out of their lives it would seem.

pointythings · 14/07/2013 20:37

What gets me about all this is that benefits are set at a level that the state thinks is the absolute minimum people can live on.

So why are employers allowed to pay people so little that they get less than this?

Wuldric your Wikipedia link shows public debt as a proportion of GDP higher than it was at the height of the crisis at several other time points in the 20th century, so don't catastrophise. And if you think that big business (by which I mean big international corporations) are paying everything they should then you are dreaming. What they are doing may be legal (though I hope that will soon change) but it is utterly immoral. A lot of businesses based in the UK are paying what they owe because they are not big enough to offshore, and it's in part because the giant players aren't pulling their weight and making it worse for responsible businesses.

KatyTheCleaningLady · 14/07/2013 20:38

FasterStronger raises an interesting point. From our point of view, the very rich are getting richer, while the rest of us are getting poorer. However, globally, the lower levels are getting richer. The problem is that the production and industry have moved to those countries, leaving us high and dry. The only people making big bucks in the West are the ones controlling production and industry and finance. The rest of us just fight over crumbs - which is to say, selling services to those who are still making actual money.

JugglingFromHereToThere · 14/07/2013 20:38

I was very disappointed to see Nick and Margaret involving themselves in this crap - looks horrible, haven't been watching (as DFam watching something else - old Star Trek episodes I think Smile)

Love the post "Daily Mail - feel need for showering" Grin

Bogeyface · 14/07/2013 20:39

Oh and as an aside, my cousin was one of the poor feckers that had to deal with maintenance being used as part of means testing for Income Support. Because she was told her ex should pay £X, she received £Y which totalled £Z....the accepted amount for her and her DD to live on. Except he never paid it. So yes, she got her rent and council tax paid but the total amount she had to live on per week, including bills etc was.......£11, plus child benefit which was about £17 a week at the time iirc. So, less than £30 a week for all gas, electric, clothes, shoes, travel and food. She ended up declaring bankruptcy after taking out several doorstep loans and owing hundreds on her fuel bills (and also ended up on metered fuel).