To really hate the "JSA is a pittance" opinion

[sezamcgregor]

I'm currently reading a lot about the Working Class in Victorian times - you know, when if you had a lazy husband who didn't work, you had to live in buildings condemned as unfit for human habitation with a different family in each room, lived on a diet of black bread and weak tea and watched your children slowly die of starvation. Or you worked in the mills (or similar), and you had to choose between pulling your children out of school as soon as they were old enough to work to get the meagre income that they would bring to the household or letting them get some kind of an education.

If you are unemployed now - you get your rent paid, council tax paid plus an amount of money given to you to buy food and other luxuries.

I'm so bored of having the conversation with people about how difficult it is to manage on £70 per week - even with Tax Credits, Child Benefit etc. Yeah, try telling our grandparents that

[Birdsgottafly]

Just to add, if there was employment for all, you may have half a point, but whilst there isn't enough work at liveable wages (which is a deliberate construct, because we've created our working world, it didn't just happen), then people need a reasonable standard of living, which can't always be had on benefit levels, in some circumstances.

But you need to further educate yourself, before you quite life at the Turn of the 19 the Century.

Poverty was created by many factors outside of the individuals control.

I was on one of the committees giving feedback on Universal Credit, when it was drafted, we could all see we were headed right back to two hundred years ago.

[Flipflops7]

I think about this whenever I re-read Around About A Pound A Week. I also knew old people, when I was a child, who grew up in this kind of poverty.

The welfare state (interrupted by two world wars first) was created to address this kind of poverty.

Thankfully I have not yet needed to avail of the state (apart from normal use of the NHS).

[Birdsgottafly]

""My point was that we're lucky to live in an age where there is a welfare state to fall back onto when we're out of work.""

It isn't luck, it was hard fought for and Women were cut out, because the real reason some Welfare was given was because WW1 was on the horizon and we needed enough healthy young males as cannon fodder as the WC could churn out, alive.

[FreeSpirit89]

My grandparents mortgage was five pound a week!!! Mine is 750 a week? The price of living was considerably cheaper then

[Deverethemuzzler]

I do love a well thought out post, filled with good examples of critical thinking.

[D0oinMeCleanin]

Food is a luxury?

No wonder my children are so spoiled. They are given this luxury 3 times a day, 7 days a week

Now I know where I've been going wrong, I shall only be feeding them when I'm feeling a bit flush.

[Flipflops7]

I hope you aren't serious FreeSpirit?

[Birdsgottafly]

OP slag off people on benefits by all means, but don't quote incorrect Social Policy information, that is sacrosanct.

[catsmother]

"Food and other luxuries" .... what, like heating and running water I suppose ?

Perhaps these pesky benefits claimants should all become breatharians - that's one huge "luxury" they could then dispense with.

FFS.

[SauvignonBlanche]

1/10

[Birdsgottafly]

Perhaps the soaps busy reading Rowntrees report into Poverty since the 1800's, she will learn what essential items are.

JSA doesn't allow for anything on the luxury list.

[Birdsgottafly]

Soaps? OP.

[ADishBestEatenCold]

"I have also lived on JSA/IS for a number of years"

It took you a "number of years" to find a job, sezamcgregor?

[LemonSquares]

I value the NHS, universal free education and benefits like JSA. They were fought for by previous generations and are paid for from general taxation and bring benefit to society as a whole add to economic viability of the country.

I believe these things are abused less frequently than media and politicians make out.


I thought the help with council tax was gone now - it was certainly one of the things that helped us when we had unemployment not having to come up with near 100 each month.

We also got no help with the mortgage - there is no way in hell we'd get a council house and private rentals with their short hold tenancy agreements have been a bloody pain.

I'm not sure when food, heating and clothing - even for DC became a luxury there are plenty of DC out there now who don't get all that I don't think adding to them will help anyone.

JSA was a help but if we'd been dependent for long we'd have been up shit creek within a year - it not really enough long term and doesn't cover all the other bills like water, electricity that have crept up over the years.

[Birdsgottafly]

If you are entitled to IS, then there are other benefits you get as Gateway/Passport benefits, that you are topped up by.

Make sure you are just quoting your IS award and consider how you would manage, if you couldn't get your rent paid fully, as is now happening for many.

[pointythings]

All the better to bash with.

As you were, OP.

Oh, and have a luxury .

[LarrytheCucumber]

Alan Johnson's autobiography makes a really interesting , and humbling, read.

[dawndonnaagain]

seza There are people with disabilities dying because this government has so monumentally fucked the system. There are people living on jsa who do not get top rent top ups.

[LarrytheCucumber]

dawndonnaagain I haven't heard about disabled people actually dying because of the mess in the benefits system. Please can you point me to the source of this information?

[unweavedrainbow]

IS/ESA are completely different benefits. If you get DLA/PIP as well, then you can get up to £350 a week plus HB/CT support (I'm severely disabled and get slightly less). This is a GOOD thing-we should judge our society by how we treat our most vulnerable and being disabled is hard enough without fighting to have enough money to live on. However, they really shouldn't be compared to JSA. JSA is virtually nothing.

[dawndonnaagain]

Well you could start with almost any newspaper, Larry.

[LarrytheCucumber]

Really? I haven't seen it. Will try googling.

[NobodyLivesHere]

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/disabled-mark-wood-starved-death-3194250
LarrytheCucumber

[SauvignonBlanche]

Two very different papers [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10703960/Dying-forced-to-wait-eight-weeks-instead-of-eight-days-for-help-amid-dire-benefits-overhaul-MPs.html here]] and here.

[lottieandmias]

Oh dear me. Not big, not clever.