to get angry about benefit cuts not cheats

[bigmouthstrikesagain]

I have been volunteering at the CAB for the last few months - a very rewarding interesting experience and informative about the level of hidden poverty in Britain.

man dies after benefits cut

We get calls from people regularly who are have had their benefits suspended for a minor issue - often related to not getting to interviews (a rural area with very poor and expensive public transport) - they have no food and in one case recently the emergency food parcel was no use as it was all food that needed to be heated/ cooked and the individual had no money for the electricity meter. Vulnerable people who have just left an abusive relationship and have no idea how to access the benefits they are entitled to, people with learning difficulties stressed and depressed as they struggle to understand the complex benefits system. These are people coming in or ringing the CAB office daily.

This makes me angry and so I find it hard to raise the same level of ire for the benefit cheats - though I suppose I should - it is not the benefit cheats that are maintaining the cycle of poverty and low expectations.

I think the problem with the benefits system in this country is that if you are a single person it is very ungenerous and hard to live on and you get punished all the time. As soon as you have children, you get a lot more money and a lot more satellite benefits and you get a reprieve from certain sanctions. People don't see the single people who struggle to find work and have to live off a pittance in benefits but they do see the families (often in the media) with 3, 4, 5+ kids who have never worked, have a nice big council house and all the cliches that come along with it (big tv, computer games, lots of clothes, holidays etc).

I think the benefits system is very unbalanced in the UK and should be more like places like Germany (time limited for everyone) and more money invested in things like education, free childcare and free school meals than given to families in the form of monetary benefits. Seems to work much better for individuals and society in general.

written but why are the people who can't stay in their area because they can't get benefits (and being on benefits is no guarantee) annoyed at people on benefits? It's not their fault. They don't have the power. Look up, not down for fault.

We simply can't afford that because far too many people are in that boat.
Almost everyone is in the predicament I mentioned. Most people are at the mercy of the market in this regard. That includes the poor (just barely not receiving benefits) to the reasonably well off. We are all subject to having to move if rents go up and we simply couldn't afford to give everyone the luxury that their rental incomes rise if their rent rises.

Missunreasonable What exactly is it that you resent?

Tick has stated precisely what she resents. she resents working hard for a meagre living while others don't have to and get a better living.

I think most people don't resent the disabled, abused or short term unemployed getting help. But people WILL resent those far better off then them when they themselves work hard and others don't.

But if you look at the figures people on benefits do not get the equivalent of £7.00 per hour. It's a horrid life on benefits and it's been clearly demonstrated by the Rowntree Foundation et al, that in fact very few people choose a 'benefits lifestyle'. This is buying into the government story of shirkers and workers, strivers and skivers. Those that have the huge telly etc are doing it either at extortionate rates of interest or have been given them. Seriously, look at the levels of debt among benefit claimants, they get shafted every which way - meters for gas and electric, more expensive than direct debit, higher rates of interest on absolutely everything because they are deemed a risk, and so it goes.
On top of this, whether or not you want to include people with disabilities and additional needs, they are, on occasion, in receipt of benefits and the governments narrative has ensured that they too become victims, the vast majority of people think that disabled people are 'putting it on', 'exaggerating' etc. to get more money. Disability hate crime has increased phenomenally under this government and it is solely down to the narrative the government gives to the papers.

I sometimes think everyone should do a week in my life and a week in the life of someone reliant on state benefits

My mum does it. She has no dependent children. She works 50 hours every week for minimum wage. She still knows that she is better off then my brother who is on JSA and has recently been sanctioned for attending a job interview that was arranged by the job centre at the same time as he is supposed to sign on. He is currently relying on my mum to feed him out of her 50 hour minimum wage pay. She has to feed hi as the alternative is that he would starve or have to commit crime to feed himself. It isn't a life with any perks for either of them but at least my mum isn't living in fear of being sanctioned for something ridiculous.

There is no point in resenting those that you perceive to have perks or be better off by not working because unless you have walked a mile in their shoes you really don't know what it is like.

I get a bit annoyed about benefits cheats because if people hadn't cheated the system it might not have created the situation we have now

It's not cheats who cut the benefits.

They are despicable too, but they didn't change the rules

I know that sashh but the forms, evidence, assessment, hoops you have to jump through now to be found (or often not) eligible for ESA, even when it's blindingly obvious that you're not for for work are at least partly due to the fact (or, as MrsDeVere rightly pointed out, the perception) that it was too easy to get disability benefits before and people cheated the system.

But if you look at the figures people on benefits do not get the equivalent of £7.00 per hour.

you haven't addressed my point. I am not accusing people on benefits living it up. I am saying that people collecting housing benefit are uniquely in the position of having their means to pay rent raised if their rent goes up. If you are not on housing benefit you don't get that buffer. If you aren't receiving housing benefit and your rent goes up and you can't afford it, you have to move.

this has all likely changed because of the new cap, but that's what people resent.

this has all likely changed because of the new cap, but that's what people resent.

It wasn't the case before the cap, either. I was the child in a family claiming HB in a private rent (due to shortage of council housing). Every time the landlord raised the rent, there was stress and drama.

As I understand it, from someone who works in CAB, the main problem is people not understanding/completing the forms correctly; aid is there and available but people are thwarted by bureaucracy. The forms have become increasingly complex because of benefit cheats.

"uniquely in the position of having their means to pay rent raised if their rent goes up."

Don't you get an amount set at something like 2/3 of and if your rent is more than that, or goes up, you have to find the rest of it somewhere else? I was pretty sure that was how the system worked.

It wasn't the case before the cap, either. I was the child in a family claiming HB in a private rent (due to shortage of council housing). Every time the landlord raised the rent, there was stress and drama.

did you have to move? did your entitlement go up?

The point is that your entitlement is based on your local area and if you happen to live in an expensive area, you have a larger entitlement to housing benefit. For everyone else, it's tough luck. They can't live in an expensive area.

I am not sure where this 7/hour comes from. You can get benefits even if you are on minimum wage, so you can get more than 7/hour.

Thank you for all the responses to my op - I am still reading through it all

This country has a problem - the benefits system is required not only for those out of work or for pensioners but also to keep the working poor in their low paid jobs - with supplements like tax credits and income support/ housing benefit. In effect subsidising low wages and enabling the pernicious zero hours contract (for instance). Yet so often - the very people on those minimum wages who have most to complain to the government about, who should be questioning an economic system that allows the gap between rich and poor to get wider and wider - still the focus remains on the non working people on benefits. They are not the ones deciding how much the minimum wage should be or how much the food costs in the shops. These are the people with the least control over their lives - the lowest expectations, the shortest life spans...

It is not because I am some lady bountiful in an ivory tower that I have this view. I have been on benefits, done shitty jobs and got my University education when we still had grants and didn't have to pay fees (otherwise I doubt I would have gone to Uni). Even so when I left the University the recession at the time ensured I had several years of 50 hour weeks working in a shop before I got to use my qualifications.

I have trained and work in the CAB recently because I believe in the service the Bureaux around the country provides. The aim is to inform and empower people to try to solve/ alleviate their own problems with support and advice. The constantly moving goal posts in the benefits system makes it difficult to negotiate without guidance. But that is only one of the areas that people call the CAB about.

If a Society is judged by it's treatment of the most vulnerable - I don't think the UK always measures up.

writtenguarantee

Neither. Council wouldn't pay it, and there was nowhere cheaper to move to, so it went to rent tribunal.

Disability hate crime has increased phenomenally under this government and it is solely down to the narrative the government gives to the papers.

exactly.

The problem is that it wasn't necessarily people defrauding the system that caused issues. It was successive governments making people better off on benefits and not investigating claims properly or putting much effort into helping people into work.

The majority of people I know on benefits need to be on them but I do know many people in their 20s and 30s who have never worked because their account of their problems preventing them from working were not questioned or tested.

But the current system has thrown the baby out with the bathwater and now people who genuinely cannot work are treated with suspicion and not listened to.

And now I see the same people in their 20s or 30s being told they have to work and they are not surprisingly terrified of it and do not have any experience which puts them at a massive disadvantage in a competitive job market.

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