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

[TillyTellTale]

And at that, not even your grandparent born in 1895 was born early enough to have an adult-to-adult conversation with a mumsnetter about how hard it was to bring up a family in Victorian times. As s/he was six when Victoria's reign ended.

[BernardlookImaprostituterobotf]

The op is clearly a cat.
It's pointless listening to cats. Cats have a strict ranking system which goes:

ME
|
|
Food
|
|
|
People who provide tribute/worship









Everything else.

Anything after ME is fair game for torture and murder if they get at all bored.
I don't take much notice of feline social policy.

[GilbertBlytheWouldGetIt]

GilbertBlytheWouldGetIt
I'm still amused by the OP's Victorian grandparents. Long generations!

Hardly. I was born in 1965 - I am 48. My parents were born in 1929 and 1932 respectively and their parents were born in 1895, 1901, 1907 and 1910 so 2 out of 4 of my grandparents were Victorian.

We don't all breed unfettered at 18.

What a charmless character you are. Also, you used respectively incorrectly, at 48 you really should have a basic grasp of grammar.

[merrymouse]

Leaving aside the cost of potential when people are trapped in poverty or can't receive an education; countries with no welfare state tend to have shanty towns, beggars and high crime rates because you have to put food on the table and a roof over your head somehow and there is no mill.

We all benefit from the welfare state whether we think we use it directly or not.

[dawndonnaagain]

Just as an aside, I really do have Victorian Grandparents (long dead). I'm 55. My Grandfather died in 1963, I was 5. He was born in 1883. His wife was born in 1893. My other Grandfather was born in 1898.

[kali110]

Im contribution based. Iv worked for over a decade full time and surviving on just over £70 a week.

[Numanoid]

I'm not on JSA, and never have been, but I can tell that it isn't anywhere near enough to survive on, in many cases.

The fact people are starving in their own homes and having to turn to food banks is horrible.

[Numanoid]

I think the OP would be funny if it wasn't so horrifying to know that people genuinely think like that.

If we were to base things on how they were in Victorian times, I, as a woman, shouldn't be working at all! Things have changed, and perhaps those who say the welfare system is too generous would change their mind if they happened to find themselves jobless in the future.

[teaandthorazine]

YOU WIN THE INTERNETS, OP.

[Flipflops7]

I had actual Victorian grandparents too and am 54 now. Long engagements and late marriage were a form of contraception for some I think :)

Seriously though, one poster above has said their grandparents' mortgage was £5 a week while theirs is £750 a week - "the price of living was considerably cheaper then". Another says her grandad's home was £500 and he was getting £1,000 a month in pensions which "didn't seem too bad" to her.



Not wishing to re-enact the Father Ted sketch in which Ted explains to Fr Dougal that the model cows are small and the small cows outside are far away, I do hope that these posters actually realise that £5 a week mortgage and £500 for a house were, in their time(s), A HELL OF A LOT OF MONEY?

If not, can I implore once again that you read Around About a Pound a Week? Knowledge of social history is not in any way linked to wishing those times to return. It is vital education as this book influenced the creation of the welfare state.

[cardibach]

My dad was born in 1920, so his parents may have been Victorian, I don't know the actual dates (I am 49). However, when he retired as a Headmaster in 1983 he earned £13,000 pa. Yes, £13,000, you did read that correctly. I think it is easy to underestimate the effect of rampant inflation in the 80s. As Flipflops says, the figures we quote from our parents and grandparents are entirely meaningless as relatively small sums were A HELL OF A LOT OF MONEY THEN!
JSA is a pittance. I am also very annoyed that we pay benefits to working people - not the paying of them to enable people to stay alive, but the fact that as taxpayers we are subsidising businesses so they can pay a pittance to their workers. It sucks.

[Flipflops7]

I remember being so envious of my PILs having paid £3,000 in 1959 (my annual pre-tax salary in 1983) for their 3-bed house when I was supposed to find £35,000 for a 1-bed flat! Thank you for getting it, cardibach.

We are ALL fortunate now compared to them, materially. The things we can get in our supermarkets were only available to royalty.

Yy to your point of circulating taxpayers' money and suppressing wages.

[cardibach]

Shall we have a love-in Flipflops? I don't remember being agreed with on IABU before! People have very odd ideas about money, I think. I had a big argument in work today with otherwise lovely people who were scandalised that poor people might by beer and fags. I don't want to live in a society where the lowest paid cant afford a bit of fun. I'd rather pay more tax.

[cardibach]

buy*

[Flipflops7]

I think I pay enough tax, cardibach :) keeping the spirit of AIBU going in this area only :)

I do get narked that people imagine oldies have had things so good, a fiction encouraged by the media who are probably economically illiterate too.

I see no conflict in thinking JSA is not much money, thinking I pay enough, believing there should be a safety net and feeling fortunate compared to my grandparents' generation. All these things are true (OK tax is subjective) :)

[Flipflops7]

And yes, everyone needs an outlet.

[pointythings]

I see no conflict in thinking JSA is not much money, thinking I pay enough, believing there should be a safety net and feeling fortunate compared to my grandparents' generation. All these things are true (OK tax is subjective)

Nor do I. Well said.

[CalamitouslyWrong]

This is interesting on how far money went in Victorian times. £70 was a lot of money (many people's annual income was less than this) in Victorian times; £70 doesn't stretch all that far any more.

[VioletHare]

Reading between the lines of the op, I do think she has a point in there somewhere (to an extent).

In lots of cases (not all) peoples expectation of what the 'basic' or 'minimum' is is what I would call entitled.

I've seen lots of Government bashing where people complain that they're skint after their outgoings and JSA/CB/Childcare help etc isn't enough - and then list those outgoings as things like TV/BB/Mobile packages. Car insurance, school trips, money for extras so that they can live and enjoy life.

But these aren't really essentials in my mind. If you're skint, you cancel your BB and TV package. You do fun things with your dc that are free, and (unfortunately for the dc but needs must) they don't go on expensive trips at school. You walk where you need to go rather than running a car, you accept that for the period where you cannot support a desired lifestyle yourself, you just won't have money for extras. In short you suck it up and crack on with what you do have.

I'm far from a benefits basher, and I have been poor, really dirt poor so I do know what it's like. But when dh and I were in the worst financial situation we've ever been in (I was on maternity leave with number 1, he got made redundant with no notice from a new position, so no redundancy money either), we cancelled everything. We put the cars offroad and walked. We cancelled every single service that was not essential to life and lived off beans and bread for six months. It was utterly fucking miserable, but we didn't have to live on the streets or watch our child die of starvation. We managed.

I think many of us have lost sight of what is essential, and have an entitled approach and belief of what 'basics' we should be able to afford whilst giving nothing back. I'm grateful for the welfare state that's there...but in the majority of cases, I think it does do enough for people. And that we should feel grateful that it is there at all.

[pointythings]

Violet given that Universal Credit will be on line only I would argue that some kind of Internet package is essential... And a lot of the time, PAYG internet ends up costing more, not less than a BB subscription.

And in a country where public transport is shit, how are people supposed to get around other than in a car?

Lastly, I think it is utterly mean-spirited to deny people any enjoyment in life. In Holland if you are on benefits, you get holiday money. It isn't a lot, but it's for enjoyment. Happiness is a basic and essential need.

[0pheliaBalls]

What a load of goady shite.

I am sick to fucking death of uninformed, ignorant twats thinking life on benefits is Easy Street.

Run along now dear, your copy of The Daily Fail is getting cold

[dawndonnaagain]

Violet, JSA requires you to fill in online applications. School require children to do online homework, many libraries are closing, broadband is an essential these days.

[ThedoublelifeofDollyBrown]

I do think internet access is probably essential nowadays, especially, as has been mentioned, with more libraries closing. I'd imagine a good portion of job hunting is done online also.

[Darkesteyes]

Violet Hare a teacher who posts on here came out with similar claptrap recently.

Said that ppl shouldn't have a pc or internet if they couldn't afford it.

So I asked if they were going to stop setting homework that involved using a computer?

Can you guess what the answer was?

[Darkesteyes]

doublelife the teachers answer was that they could go to the library or after school homework club.

a. if they do this their work is more likely to be rushed therefore not as up to standard as others in the class who can do more over weekends on their home computers. thus negating the need for school uniform which is supposed to symbolize the children being on an equal footing no?

b. Libraries are closing all over the place and you can only book short blocks of time.