To ask if you have had any contact with benefit 'scroungers'

[JumpRope]

I utterly believe that we need to protect the poor, vulnerable and those unable to work and they should have help to live.

I grew up in a very rural area, fairly poor, very hard work for non land owners - workers werefarm labourers mainly. And there were many people leaving school in the 80s and 90s and then abusing the system - picking up the dole, laughing about it, straight to the pub until it ran out; I remember a dog called Giro. People just sold a bit of marijuana for extra work. After moving to a bigger town, I came across families like this, where the dad would start it off, and the children would just grow up and do the same.

There were jobs around. As students homes for holidays, we picked up work without trouble, and could have stayed on, got promotions etc.

How do you deal with these situations? How can we make sure we are not making cuts to those who desperately need it, whilst absolutely changing the mind sets of able bodied men (and women) who have grown up believing they are entitled to money for nothing.

Yes it may not be fraud .... but it is playing the system which is what the gov want to stop. Yes you can claim but is it right?

Don't you think it would far better for the Government to use its resources on stopping people playing the tax system? They would recover vast amounts of money doing that. What they are likely to recover through stopping people playing the benefits system is miniscule in comparison; I wonder if they would even recoup their costs. I don't want a Government that is so wasteful of resources.

The benefits system does not encourage people to not work.

that's a ludicrous statement. Of course it does. look at it from the other angle, without benefits you are forced to work, steal or not eat. I am not saying that not having benefits is the right way to go, but not accepting the obvious consequences is putting heads in the sand.

the system is so crazy here. People are dependent and expecting of benefits, and the system is then designed with the expectation that people get them (housing benefit is a perfect example). Scroungers or not, the system is broken.

Uncertainsmile - I never said he was a burden, I asked a question wondering what those three adults and 7 children are costing 'us' ie the tax payer. We support them entirely and they have made choices that cost us to support.

I think it is a desperate waste of young lives- she was a clever student at school but was never bothered- came to us permanently excluded from another school for inciting violence against a member of staff.

Her brother was selling drugs at 16 and both were on social services radar because they were stealing alcohol from local shops from age 13 upwards. Her mother has not worked in the 13 years I have known them. Very sad but we support them and the children, they make no attempt to support themselves. They will be a few of many but there are whole areas of inner cities where this is not uncommon.

So if you all reported those benefit scroungers you KNOW are defrauding the state it would mean what? An extra billion in the coffers for those who genuinely need it? No....because it won't go to them at all.

I don't like the term "benefit scroungers", we dont know anybody's life circumstances and we shouldn't be judging. Of course if it's out and out fraud then you should be reporting it and not moaning about it here. Make sure you have your facts right though.

But why not talk about it on here- it is in response to a direct question from the OP. Why talk about anything on MN? It's a conversation.

FWIW, I DO know someone committing benefit fraud..... my uncle and aunt. My uncle faked a bad back, then when was caught out about 20 years ago by an investigator somehow managed to have a car accident that no-one witnessed, on a straight bit of road that gave him a frozen shoulder, and is in 'constant pain' and cannot work. The constant pain from his shoulder seems to not prevent him from playing golf, or bowls though, or taking jobs cash in hand. My aunt is his 'carer'. They fill me with contempt. My DParents have always worked, and 5-6 years ago my aunt had a screaming fit with my mother because she said that DParents were 'rich' and should give her some money. Yeah right, DM was a nurse, DDad a teacher and they are retired now.

Aunt and uncle have always had a sense of entitlement and the idea that other people 'owe' them. I think some of it was fostered by my grandmother....she took DAunt out of school as she said she was 'too sensitive' for exams and 'too sensitive' to work.

So, yes, they ARE fraudsters and scroungers in the way in which the OP's question was meant. Mind you, they are pensioners now so don't need to prove anything to anyone, but I am 42 and I have never known them to work a legitimate job in my entire lifetime. They were always on the take in some way or another. My dad actually kicked them out of our house once because my Aunt went for a walk in the garden on her own and somehow slipped and fell over and came back and asked if we had public liability insurance. He told them to get their asses out of our house and has never actually spoken to them since. I was in my teens. My stupid mother tries to play happy families and keep up a relationship.

Makes me cross.

"I see nobody has answered my question so I'll ask again. What is so different about the children of single mothers that they need their mothers at home when other children apparently don't?"

Who do you suggest looks after the pre school age child of a single mother when she goes to work?

But, I also know plenty of people who are 'on benefits' in one way or another.... do I know they are scroungers? No.... I don't know anything really about their lives. I suspect not.... the people on DLA are in wheelchairs..... the people who are on JSA are busting a gut looking for work and anxious about it. People like my aunt and uncle are probably the exception.

I get child benefit too.

and I don't know where all these jobs that pay a wage people could live on are supposed to come from either.

Nobody appears to be interested in the £1.5b benefit fraud/£35b tax fraud issue. So much easier to attack poor people........

Nothing special. I worked full time as married woman with 5 children including very young babies and I work full time as a single mother now.

Where are the jobs? You just have to look. My son is a post man (£20k a year). Yes it's hard work and you have to get up early and walk and carry heavy loads but he's two new colleagues doing it one of whom wants to be beautician. If you cannot find wo0rk where you are move - I moved hundreds of miles from family to find work in the SE (I am from NE). Ditto my parents' ancestors who moved to the NE when mining was thriving in the 1800s.

Who do you suggest looks after the pre school age child of a single mother when she goes to work?

Well I had the same arrangements as a single mother as I did when married? I doubt that many husbands do it???? Life as single parent is harder because you only have one wage. I'd rather they made it compulsory for father's to actually share the financial burden

I also worked full time as a single parent, I suspect I'd have found to really hard though when DS was pre-school as I had no family nearby and could not have afforded full time childcare. Thankfully I was still married at that time and my then hubby shared the childcare which allowed me to work.

I am now a single parent of a 12 year old and I don't work, this is because DS is autistic and its a struggle to meet his needs effectively while working as well. I've tried twice in the last three years to go back to work but everything goes to pot as soon as I do. I now accept that it's not possibLe at the moment and importantly my jobcentre advisor agrees with me.

If YOU (not addressing this to anyone in particular) managed to work full time when your children were small and you were an single parent then good for you. Don't assume though that everyone else is in the same boat and could also work full time if only they tried hard enough.

And zero hours contracts are not jobs unless you are getting a regular 37hrs a week. Locally they are the biggest cause of rent arrears as nobody knows what they will earn one week to the next.

Not many. I work healthcare and we get the occasional person who turns up and admits they only did so to get a report for their benefits review. No interest at all in engaging with treatment, or totally fixated that they can only return to one type of work and unwilling to consider alternatives. A very small number who are relatively young (early/mid 20's) and have never had a job and show no interest in getting one.

Far more commonly however, I see people who are pushing themselves into the ground trying to make ends meet, working long hours or multiple jobs. Their health is suffering for it. Or people struggling as carers which meant they had to give up work. Or those who genuinely cannot wok and yet somehow don't qualify for benefits (one poor lady springs to mind, I wrote a scathing letter on her behalf for her appeal).

Cannot work! There probably shouldn't be benefits for not being able to wok!

Who do you think looks after the children of mothers with working partners when they go to work?

And if a mother with a partner stays at home there is only one income there too.

I would hazard a guess that most working mothers do almost all of the pick ups and drop offs too.

The premise remains the same. Why does the state say the children of single mothers need their mothers at home and pay for them to stay there when all it offers married mothers is a small amount of tax credits and money for childcare. It's an unfair system.

Only inevitable person I know of. A woman who has no fixed adress according to the government, as in her words 'if they knew I was living there dpartner would get less money or benefits.' shes a lovely woman but I think her actions are disgusting

one not inevitable!

Aermingers, it is a very unfair system and needs scrapping. Being single doesn't mean you can't work, childcare is out there in many forms just like it is where both adults work.

Twelve months maternity leave we have is very generous, after that nothing else should be paid. If you choose not to work you have to finance it yourself. Paying people to stay home is a luxury we can't afford, whether married or single.

It's why so many play the system. Many on IS often have a second child despite being single so avoid being moved to JSA. Many on tax credits just work the 16 hours minimum or if they have a partner don't work and claim. Whilst legal at present, it's playing the system for those that don't want to work or see why they should.

Little, if childcare was paid for for all children after 12 months I might agree with you.

As it is, it just isn't doable.

I'd be in favour of people returning to work after 12 months if there was good affordable childcare. I suspect though that the cost of funding this woukd outweighs the current cost of paying benefits.

I know my auntie who lived in Switzerland for 50 years says there were no child related benefits there. If someon hS a baby the family are expected to help and the Mum is expected to work. The difference dis that they DO fund good childcare to ensure the mother can do this. My auntie was shocked when she returned to the UK at how we do things here.

"And if a mother with a partner stays at home there is only one income there too."

But they are not paying for childcare. How often do you hear people (usually women) say that practically all their wages go on child care? What's the point of making a single parent go out to work to pay for child care and then have to pay her benefit anyway?

There will never be full employment again, unless we drastically change the way we work. We need more job shares. If everyone worked part time, - say 3 days a week- then we would immediately have doubled the number of genuine jobs there are. The trouble is that everyone who already has a job wants to hang onto it, very understandable; on the whole most employees couldn't maintain their lifestyle on half the money and most employers don't want to pay the cost of employing double the number of people. So society would have change in every single facet in order to run efficiently, and everyone would be on much lower pay (but everything would have to cost less too).

Harold Wilson tried it. It didn't work then. At the time I thought people were mental for complaining about only having to work 3/4 days when they complained all the time about having to spend so much time at work. I was young and naive then...

However, I don't understand how anyone, anyone at all, can expect or aspire to full employment in the UK. It's simply not possible. So why punish the unemployed? It's a sop to the hoi polloi isn't it, so we can all believe that the Government are doing something, when they're just becoming ever more punitive and creating ever more poverty and desperation. There'll be work houses next

Hakuyt, I am interested in people's thoughts on the tax situation, but no one else has picked up my post ^

The post yesterday at 22:56, that is.