About the Benefits program on BBC1

[bimbabirba]

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!

Sorry, handcream, I missed that you're the same age as me. The general principle still stands, though.

How on earth did you grow up not knowing how social security & national insurance work? It was drummed into us all the time, our parents having built it!

Oh, god, Leith, I can see that happening!

The way social security is supposed to work is that you pay in, and take out when you need it.

It is not, and was never, there for people to to do only one of those things if they are healthy enough to be able to work.

Social security only works if people who can work pay into the system for the vast majority of their working years.

Not quite clouds that's only one of the ways its intended to work.

Social security helps the economy anyway. Every time your benefit scrounging mum or one of her myriad children do anything, they help provide work. Every pound they spend - even though it came from social funds - helps half a dozen businesses keep going, and lubricates the money supply.

When their benefit scrounging council house needs repairs, jobs are created. When they wear out the roads, visit a park, go to the doctor, go to school, catch a bus - they provide employment. And those builders, park keepers, doctors & nurses, receptionists, teachers & drivers? Paid from social funds, keeping an economy going and feeding their wages into businesses.

If people watching this programme see voluntary work being treated with such disdain its not going to fill some with an eagerness to do it.

Missed off my last paragraph. Take them all out of the economy, and not only do we lumber the nation with diseased hordes of angry citizens, but we remove the largest sector of our economy.

Clouds there's a difference between contribution-based benefits and means-tested. What you described is the concept underpinning the contributions-based benefits but these are only a part of the picture.
There are also means-tested benefits (like income support for single parents) which are paid regardless of whether someone has paid into the system or not. The point of means-tested benefits is to provide for the most vulnerable in society because we live in a civilised country where the majority looks after those who can't provide for themselves.

I apologise Garlic I had no wish to give you a case of the heebie jeebies, I also apologise to you Handcream it was a rather cheap shot.

What saddens me about all this argument is that the underlying principle is that HandCream you are entitled to disagree, indeed your entitled to vote for a party that wants to punish people for making bad choices. I and others disagree as you can plainly see. The context for this disagreement is that we constantly told we have no money, or that we need to cut spending, or that a very large group of our fellow citizens are living a life that they should not be entitled to because, telling those that work that they are working for less money, lower living standards, less job security, and all in the name of money a tiny minority of very wealthy people even more wealthy, is a message that no government wants to actually admit.

It is though true, your house will have to be devalued, the pound in your pocket will need to lose even more power, inflation will need to rise making all your debts more expensive hand cream. When those things happen it will be impossible to blame single mothers, or the disabled, or those out of work, those will have been so marginalised that no one will be able to believe that they could be to blame. It will be the middle class, those who have been told to save, look after their own, pass wealth down to the next generations that will be blamed, and the blame will be justified for no other reason than the middle classes were lead by the nose by many governments in to believeing that the blame always lay with the morals and the lack of work ethic, or that people with disabilities were bleeding this country dry. Handcream if you truly believe that a vast army of teen mothers are receiving such a massive amount from the state that, we one of the richest nations in the world are on the verge of bankruptcy, I wish you well but from here in I declare it is not the world I see, it is not the world I want, and I will fight not with violence, but with all means of protest at my disposal to separate Scotland From the rest of the UK and then fight harder to bring about the community based on social justice, common ownership, and profit for the benefit of the many not the few.

Again a lot of those people in the programme had crap jobs, with a crap wage I would have been to tempt to interrupt their harping ,and holier than thou attitude with a stern, "well If you'd bothered to work harder in school/college etc you'd have a better job"

Like another poster said where were the higher paid job people? it seemed to be a mantra of 'I im underpaid and overworked instead of recognizing my own failure I'll have a go at someone who appears to have it easier'.
It sat badly with me.

Right Octopus. And this is the problem with just kicking the person you perceive as being a bigger failure than you, because while there is always someone to kick, there will also be someone above you who could kick you too, if they want to be a git.
That is why there needs to be a more holistic approach to how we function collectively as a society.

Nick and Margarate did clearly say that people on benefits only come to 10% of the welfare bill

I thought it was interesting, and not especially biased

Its an issue, and I think TV programmes need to made about such issues. like it or not there is way to much noise on this issue

I think people are over sensitive on this issue and instantly read negativity where they might not be any

agree however that people on higher salaries would have been way less judgy. of course someone who works their butt off for the same money is going to somewhat critical

Well why dont they place that blame where it belongs. With the employer whos paying them a shit wage. Instead of looking at their neighbour who they THINK has more than them because of what theyve read in the Daily Mail or Woman magazine.
The "Ive been mugged so my neighbour should be mugged too" attitude pisses me right off.

Oh for goodness sake. If everybody was a high achieving self starting entrepreneur we'd be in a perpetual state of war.

The irony is most people who are kicking the crutches out from under the poorest in our society are mostly only barely standing themselves and seem to forget that once all the crutches have been smashed and burned... When their own legs go (which they inevitably will one way or another, redundancy, old age, sickness...) there will be bo help for them.

When they start opening threads with the words Aibu to think my dd with appendicitis should not have to wait until her dad can collect the cash for the operation from all of our friends and neighbours..., Wibu to point out ... This is your wish come true.

I think there are 3 fundamentals

1. the 'can't works' claiming benefits is fine
2. the 'won't works' cllaiming benefits is unacceptable
3. Those in work should always be better off than those not working

I did watch a snippet of the programme last night but turned off when Liam (I think!) decided working was just too much like hard work and after all he had a degree.....

You will always find someone who earns more than you. Its just life. Where I have the issue is people who just take and take, make the most crap decisions and expect others to bail them out regardless. So, as someone earlier said. I have already made plans for my retirement by working for 40 years. Therefore the ones who havent or who dont want to work need to be paid for. Therefore my contributions pay for them too!

We only have to see how the cap on benefits is going down to recognise that this is a popular decision by the government. You might not agree with it (I do) but an awful lot of others do.

I could of course blow my money - and very easy it would be too so I have little on retirement.

Yes, indeed. I blew mine by trying to stage a recovery after a sudden, severe, illness and redundancy. It was irresponsible of me to end up long-term sick. And what fun I had paying into a pension that was embezzled! Gosh, I'm suffering for it now but, what with all that glamorous illness and devil-may-care investing in pensions & insurances, I suppose I deserve it.

Of course there will be people who fall on hard times, I am not talking about them. And you are most unlucky to have your pension embezzled.

I am talking about the people who use the system for their own ends with no indication of working. In fact they laugh at us mugs working when they dont. As some say on this thread. I am paying for their pension.

You know, the proportion of people who do that is vanishingly small. It just doesn't make sense as a choice, except for single parents who can't earn more than the cost of childcare. It's such an illogical choice, you could say the few who do it are mentally impaired somehow.

We can keep going through the scrounger tropes, eliminating them one by one, and in the end we find we're expending vast amounts of energy, resources, words, time and money on a little band of wastrels who will always manage to con their way through life.

I think where I see the problem is that most automatically tar all of those on benefits with the same brush.

I am on benefits right now. I'm not thrilled about it, but unfortunately that's where I am. I worked full time my entire adult life (from 18yrs old onward) until a few years ago when my DS1 was an infant and I then did the SAHM thing while H worked. Anyway, circumstances unfortunately changed and here I am on benefits for most likely the next few years at least. I enjoyed working full time, but it's not possible at the moment. I certainly am not "laughing at mugs working" when I don't. I was on benefits briefly years ago when my DD was an infant and I ended up working 2 jobs (with a cleaning job on the weekend as well) in order to get off benefits and make ends meet. I hate the accusations that people make about those on benefits. You just don't ever know the whole story.

Hand cream, what is it your most offended by, your money even though it is an infinitesimal amount once it is divided up amongst all the different pots that the government have, going directly to someone to sit at home (They don't by and large but I will let that slide.)

Or is it that an individual has made a decision not to have paid employment, there by not pay income tax or be liable for national insurance?

Or your own particular concern (seemingly) that women, and couples give no thought to how they will afford a child before having one, how would you stop the conception from taking place? I think it is very unlikely that any couple on the verge of DTD, will get a calculator out to tot up if they can afford to risk a shag. Likewise we know that despite using contraception accidents do still happen What would your position be on those that could offer proof that they took all reasonable steps but conception happened any way?

I course you need to decide whether you can afford to have a child! And please - contraception accidents - really! Time and time again.

So you think that men and women always get in to the act of dtd after a discussion about costs, paternity, back up plan in case a condom splits (I know you do not believe this happens, or that the pill could fail, even though these are reported many times each year to and by medical staff. Unless of course you think those medical staff are part of a conspiracy.) and of course the long term costs of bringing up a child.

I suspect this is what you wished happened, or in fact this is what people were forced to do before having sex. Back in the real world were sex is another recreational past time, you need to say how you would turn what you wished, in to reality. Would you for example offer all couples no fault adoption, or abortion on demand at many more facilities around the country?

Or publicly name and shame all unwed mothers, and couples who have children then get pregnant without the means to bring that child up.

I think Nick and Margaret made some sensible and fair points, but fear some people will only remember what the frothers people like Debbie had to say.

I thought the media studies graduate had self esteem issues more than anything else, and it was heartening to see him take up a job with the woman he worked with as a carer.