"Benefits are a lifestyle choice for so many these days"

[Bellerina2]

I'm on the bus and two women behind me are having a long conversation about perceived benefit cheats and one of them just said the above phrase. WIBU to hit her over the head with a rolled up copy of the Guardian??

But seriously, it's so depressing that people think this. Well done to the government and likes of the Sun and Daily Mail for convincing people that those on benefits are leading some sort of charmed life

for some it is a choice, of course it is.... to think otherwise is naive.

I don't know about outside London but unless we want to build on hyde park there's no bloody land either.

London has a lot of derelict and unoccupied homes. It also has brown field land and the green belt. All of those things are governed by enormous red tape. I don't understand the idea that we should be preserving the facade of ugly buildings that are almost falling down. It's makes improvement way more expensive. So many of these buildings should just be torn down and something modern put in it's place.

the government used to be in the business of building homes, but Thatcher put an end to that. The trouble is neither Thatcher nor any government since has made it so the private sector can fill the void by sufficiently loosening planning permission.

hence the current mess.

"I don't know about outside London but unless we want to build on hyde park there's no bloody land either."
well that is odd as everywhere I have been to visit friends in London lately has been like a massive building site, building......guess what? Flats for sale at grossly inflated prices. That was in SE11, SE17and Kew Bridge.
IN SE17 council tenants were kicked out of the Heygate and moved out of the city.

I don't think it is in the interests of the country to let the green belt go. Should every bit of land in the south east be built on?

Of course housebuilders don't want to be arsed with redeveloping brownfield sites when it's much easier to build a high-density development on a pristine piece of agricultural land. Where I live most of the fields surrounding the city are owned by the major housebuilders. They mount continuous legal assaults to be allowed to build. Meanwhile there is plenty of derelict and underdeveloped land in the middle of the city.

expatinscotland Look - I'm sick of people assuming that because you are on benefits or live in a council house you woke up one morning and decided to be there.
People have to flee abusive relationships
People get sacked from their jobs and have their homes taken away from them
people's husbunds leave them for the secretary and on top of that dont feel the woman should stay in the marital home etc etc etc etc

SunnyBaudelaire actually some of them will be intermediate and social rent - furthermore this is what i mean we are coming to the end of the road with this build more houses argument.The ones currently being built will be the last i assure you. And not all land can be built on by the way guys.

this whole abortion of a piece of legislation

Good grief, did you really just use this turn of phrase???

Look, I'm sick of people assuming that because someone is on benefits and under-occupying (because people who do not claim HB are not affected by it, nor are those age 62 or over) that they can all up and move to a smaller property easily and are just selfish pricks keeping single mums of large families in small properties. A great many of them are disabled or have disabled children, none of them is exempt. There is no place for them to move and private LLs in many areas want nothing to do with them.

Perfectly legitimate usage, battery

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abort

expatinscotland You don't have to mimic me. MN can be ridiculous sometimes i cant even deal. Have a good one x

Surely in areas with lots of 2 bed flats and lots of one mother with one childs you could put the two mothers and their 2 children into the 2 bed flat. That would solve under occupancy at a stroke and means people were sharing in the way those of us who don't claim benefits often do.

I agree 100% BrendaBlackhead The amount of people on the social housing list could easily be halved in ways no one ever wants to talk about....

I run a service that is short staffed. I want to offer full time posts. I can find very few people who want to work more than 20 hours because if they work 20 hours they have lots of free time and get benefits too. Some of them have not got dependent children. I think the benefit scroungers are the ones who expect the state to top up their income and work as little as they can get away with.

It is a lifestyle choice for some. DH's aunt, who still lives in her council house, despite her three children having moved out. His cousin (different aunt's daughter) boasting that, 'you've just got to know how to play the system'.

Made his day, that. It's nice to know where some of his wages go. Needless to say, we don't see them all that much anymore...

My grandparents used to live next door to a family on benefits. I'm not exactly sure of the story but they didn't work and always had new cars/bikes etc. They were the first ones in the road to get a satellite dish.

yawn slippers did they also have a plasma tv?

sunny why are you so rude and dismissive of all the posters telling you, categorically, that there are many people choosing this life? There are thousands upon thousands .

I can only think it is because you are either a bore or wilfully ignorant.

Could say the same of you gracie, despite empirical evidence which disagrees with your stance, you continue...

"sunny why are you so rude and dismissive of all the posters telling you, categorically, that there are many people choosing this life? There are thousands upon thousands .

I can only think it is because you are either a bore or wilfully ignorant."

Look Gracie, I know there are people who choose to live on benefits for whatever reason.

FGS I used to live on a Brighton council estate, not as a council tenant before you start, and I have seen and heard it all.

Nonetheless this envy and nitpicking of other peoples really rather difficult lives by the more fortunate is just sad.

And when people say 'ooh I dont know the story but they do not work and they have a sky dish' or whatever it is just pathetic.

And no I am not 'wilfully ignorant' I just know that this envy and class bashing from people who have far more choices is just what the government ordered. Divide and rule.

By the by GraciePoole, you have a lot of time on your hands don't you?
Who supports you?

and if you want to take a prize for being the class bore, up you step gracie.

I think the posh cars and plasma TVs are relevant in the context of a discussion about "lifestyle choice". It appears to be something people can opt into. (The housing points only ramping up to the point you can get social housing once you have kids, so I suspect a lot of people inadequate to the task of parenting are going to have kids, like my neighbours).

They have the Sky dish too. Years ago when I taught in an inner city, we were told on one inset course that the way our local council figured out poverty was they'd go to an area and count the number of satellite dishes! This was before they were universal and when most folk still just had terrestrial TV. In other words: to have a Sky dish used to be an indicator of poverty/unemployment! (This was the early 1990s - now it would mean nothing). But I dunno. My husband is on a low wage and we struggle to afford the cheapest Sky package and only have it at all as my disabled son is obsessed with a certain TV show we can only get on Sky... So it may look like nitpicking, but trust me the low waged neighbours of unemployed people do look at their houses and wonder why the £30,000 sports car and vast TV and Sky dishes. It's human nature.

It's also human nature for people who don't have to live next door to ASB neighbours who happen to be unemployed (probably unemployable given the attitudes we've seen), to say "Why resent people small pleasures in life? It's nitpicking even to notice they have Sky and a plasma TV!" I used to think like that too.

And I would have dismissed all the apparent envy of the possessions of the feckless as Daily Mail shit til I saw it with my own eyes.

It is galling to see people can afford to holiday, and run a car and do all the stuff we can't do even though we work fecking hard.

The tories/liberals have attacked the poorest in society - single people on JSA, the disabled on DLA - just attacked and attacked. It is appalling. And let's never forget the liberals allowed it to happen so they should never get a sniff of power again.

What I don't get is this level of unemployed people with kids who don't seem to be affected by workfare and are indeed better off than people on low wages. There is definitely a subsection of people who haven't been hit at all by the ConDem's swingeing, vicious cuts - and somehow you get the feeling they will never go after people like my neighbours who are clearly taking the piss, whilst they can still attack the disabled.

That's why I just can't understand on these sort of threads why there is not more judgement of those who are taking the mickey when it affects those who are genuinely struggling. There is not a bottomless benefit pot nor an infinite housing supply so surely only those who are truly unable to support themselves should be entitled to help. Therefore it is most in the interests of this section of the community to call time on the "scroungers".

And there are those posters who always dredge up bankers etc. If there were no more bankers would that corresondingly mean there were no people on benefits? And, furthermore, those who lead a seemingly comfortable life on benefits are not affecting a banker. The nose being rubbed in it is that of the neighbour going out to work and feeling he/she is being taken for a mug.

We are not the more fortunate. Plenty of single mothers who work fulltime to fund the life choices of those who choose not to work many hours a week are funding those people who choose to work shorter hours and get top ups and many of us tax payers are fed up with it, both amongst Labour and Tory voters.

However I never blame the people claiming what the state says they are entitled to. the system itself needs hugely to incentivise full time work with both a carrot and stick approach to effect any change.

So maybe some people choose to work shorter hours and get top ups. Maybe. Just some.

So you cut the top ups and what happens to the millions who desperately want FT hours, who want permenant contracts, or even definite PT hours and can't get any of those things no matter how hard they try?

Do you realise how pervasive temp contracts, zero hours contracts, seasonal work etc is in some areas?

it is fucking awful arsenic, I used to do it when I was a hero single mother paying a mortgage alone etc. What a load of bollocks it all was, dead end jobs, as u say, zero hourse contracts, work that could finish from one week to the next, oh yes and best of all, being the only cunt in the room without a contract once they realise you are a single mother.