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.

morage
my lovely Kosovan your summers are shit here in England car wash man has a franchise at my gym.
He makes a good living, as do his staff who are all Polish, Bulgarian or Romanian (judging by the number plates on their cars)
he came here as a child refugee

outside the gate is a huge estate full of unemployed English, but they will not work for him, or take on the franchise

No, don't know any benefit "scroungers". I know a fair few people who need the benefits to live, feed their family, heat their home etc., but I've never met anyone who makes this a lifestyle choice.

I have met several who think tax evasion is perfectly ok, OTOH.

TalkinPeace. Has it occurred to you that it's not worth the while of the English people to take it on? I'm not just talking about benefits being worth more.

If you are a young single Albanian/Kosovan/Hungarian/Romanian/Pole you can come over here and stay for maybe five years. I've known people who've done it. They stay in very poor conditions, shared caravans, rooms shared between six in bunk beds, beds shared in shifts. They manage to save up some money and it's enough for them to take back to their home countries and be set up for life with a property owned outright and some left over. It probably wouldn't be enough for a deposit here.

That's English people managed to save it in the first place which they probably couldn't especially if they have kids and need to provide them with a decent standard of housing they probably wouldn't have any spare money. Even if they didn't living in horrible conditions is okay if it's for a few years then you're going back to live a nice life in Romania. If it's forever and that's all you'll ever have, that's not an attractive prospect.

Anyway, franchises need a significant initial financial outlay and offer little security. I don't know where people on benefits would be expected to get that sort of money from. They're also frequently scams and exploit people who work illegally. It's quite likely your 'lovely Kosovan' is making a living out of exploiting others. Particularly as it sounds from their number plates as though they're scamming their way out of road tax.

I have worked in Nd around lots of council housing estates. I have never k own one which was "full of unemployed English people". I have known many people struggling to keep hold of long term work, I have known many in secure but low paid jobs and on my estate (am a social housing tenant too) virtually everyone is in work), the sole exception in my road bein me...with a disabled child.

I know two single women with six children each who haven't ever worked and have always claimed benefits as single mothers.

I know a family of 8 where the father is separated from the mother not really so she can continue to claim benefits. He works and gives her a fair amount of money. They can afford travel out of the UK every summer - the flights to where they must cost 2K upwards for whole family to travel. She has mental health problems and has been sectioned repeatedly. She is too mentally ill to work. She has continued to have children while being too ill to work.

There are times I start to tot up in my head what these families have cost the state - it must be millions. I really don't know what anyone can do about it though. You can't stop women having children. Maybe the fathers of their children should be forced to cough up child support, and that this would be means tested... Seems harsh though. In the case of two of the fathers they are so useless that they could never earn enough to support their children (one of the dads in question has 11 children by three different women).

I grew up where girls got pregnant for the money told the sperm donor to do one played the victim card of being a single mother and got a council flat. not all like that hut hey they do exist even today

My lovely mum, (who lives in a private nursing home, is aged in her early 80s and is very ill, with a combination of different age-related health conditions) has 100% of her nursing and care costs paid for by the taxpayer (that's £750 each week, paid direct from the taxpayer to the care home) even though she has a decent pension and a house worth a quarter of a million pounds that she will never see again. I guess some might say that makes her one of the biggest scroungers on this thread. It's an emotive word in a complex system. Does this maybe show that who we choose as a society to label a "scrounger" depends on who the vocal minority decides is and isn't "deserving" - and that at best, these choices are complicated, political and irrational?

The royal family seem to be doing quite well off the tax payer. Bloody scroungers.

haha get your facts straight they earn us money and have their own private funds talk about inventing your own misery plonker

About 100 people I know have direct personal contact with a scrounger - me! They all live in my mum's village. Because they see me walking around, and because I help out with the village committee paperwork, they are 100% sure I'm not disabled and am living a life of idle luxury at their expense. In fact, I think you'd have to be carried around the village on a stretcher before they thought anyone needed support ... but not if you could still talk, as they'd then be all "She could work in a call centre!"

A close relative of mine recently quit their job without another one to go to. They were furious to discover they couldn't get JSA. That's what happens if you believe anyone can get loads of money if they don't fancy working (they were also shocked to find out how low JSA really is.)

A farm near here was fined for providing sub-standard accommodation to their Eastern European workers. For years they'd been living in what amounted to a shanty, with no mains water or electricity, one little room per family, no worker transport so they had to walk 5 miles to the nearest shops. Those are the jobs English people "think they're too good for." Not even fine if your meagre savings will buy you a smallholding when you go back to Lithuania, and certainly no use if you're saving for a place in England.

Well said Aermingers

TalkinPeace. Has it occurred to you that it's not worth the while of the English people to take it on? I'm not just talking about benefits being worth more.

at NMW, a full time job pays 1000/month. not a lot, but two of those is 2000/month. while not great in London, that's not bad in some parts of the country.

I'm an accountant with a string of self employed clients
I fully understand the numbers balance of benefits

and I'm also very aware of how many of the East Europeans choose to live while they save money : I did accounts for some of the first wave of Poles and the second wave comprise over 10% of this city.

The point is that some UK born are unwilling to work unless they can earn the "average wage" without realising that only the top 32% of the population earn the "average wage"

Just because someone is elderly does not mean they are automatically nice.
People can be selfish, stubborn and just plain horrible at any age.

Not a reference to your mum, Figmento

I used to work at the benefits agency. My personal favourites were the woman who demanded I deliver an emergency payment to her by hand because she couldn't come to the office because she was pregnant and it was raining..I respectfully informed her I was 8 months pregnant myself & had somehow managed to make it to work in the rain. 2nd was the teenager who came to the office with his parents & told me he couldn't wait to be 18 because it meant he could claim his own benefits..

Keepitsimple, franchisees have no guarantee of a minimum wage. I'm not sure whether the poster meant that he had a franchise in the gym or in a car wash. The hand valeting places normally employ illegal immigrants who are paid under NMW as they do all their business in cash.

The gym 'be a fitness instructor' franchises in my area are almost exclusively a pyramid scheme type scam.

Neither would be a way of reliably earning NMW, which is probably why people don't want to work for him.

I read a bit more...

momtothree Mon 11-May-15 13:46:05

When tories came into power in the 80`s the unemployment was high, to reduce this they introduced the disability scheme - which reduced the unemployment numbers (yeah) but they then increased the disability payment above jsa - so it made sense to claim disability. Doctors are becoming increasingly involved in a persons right to claim - wasted resource of doctors time - a doctor cant see a bad back etc. Now the tories have realised the big mistake it made. Its unfortunate that those who are genuinely ill have to jump through hoops because of the ones that arent. Its all about bad policies having been made.

errrrrmmm...
So what you're saying is that in the 80's Politicians recognised a difference between:
those that we're either between jobs or never with a job by choice or inability to get one
and
Those that could realistically never work again, or at least not work until medical intervention had worked.

They set one rate for people who were between jobs, or just couldn't be bothered to get a job that would allow them to "get by for a bit", possibly needing to rely on some savnigs. and a second more generous rate for people who were disabled. with the understanding that they may need more money for "other things" special cars, arrangements ramps, help with maintaining their house or garden, and that they obviously couldn't rely on some savings at all, or get by for a bit becasue it was a truely long term situation.

and that healthy people lied about being sick to take advantage of the different payments.
but it's the politicians fault for making a bad policy?

I understand what you are saying, emmeline, if her family moved out thirty years ago, she must be quite old, could be over eighty. Whether she is renting or the owner is immaterial, she has been living there for some forty, fifty years, IMHO it is cruel to ask someone that age to get used to a new place and a new area.
Surely not as cruel as to have one person in a 4 bed house and expect the tax payer to fund it.
the woman would only need to turn on the TV to see that cuts are being made left right and centre, people are actually dying, and she has decided that she will continue to take more than she needs.

the woman would only need to turn on the TV to see that cuts are being made left right and centre
This is because of the bail-out of the banks, not because of her.

Do you really think that a woman in her eighties, most likely with quite a few health problems, should sacrifice what little happiness she has to solve the social problems of her area? And all because she didn't buy her council house?

As she is renting that house will eventually become available for use by a larger family. If she had bought it, it would have been made permanently unavailable to council tenants.

Some of the stories are funny. But, I'm not sure what the difference between someone who thinks she can't go to the agency because she's pregnant and someone who telephones the fire brigade and asks them to change a blown fuse is. They're both idiots. I'm not sure if David Cameron thinks that reforming the benefits system is going to reduce the number of British idiots. Because, if he does think that, then I've got news for him.

This is because of the bail-out of the banks, not because of her.
no, the bailout of the banks was a 1 time affair, the bail out of the banks isn't costing 70billion pounds this year.
That the country is spending more than it's making is not strictly the fault of the banks.
and that the country is spending more than it needs to is a lot of peoples fault.
not only those who can't run their businesses properly and took excessive risks -so they need to be bailed out when those risks didn't come through.
those who call ambulances because they have a poorly tummy. - or otherwise treat emergency healthcare as if it's a state provided taxi to hospital.
people who decide that tax laws don't apply to them,
and indeed people who decide that they are so in love with their house which is (in a strictly utilitarian sense) too big for them, meaning that local authorities need to spend money paying rent to private landlords for houses that the authority don't own.
etc

Do you really think that a woman in her eighties, most likely with quite a few health problems, should sacrifice what little happiness she has to solve the social problems of her area?
no, I don't, not at all. I guess what I'm saying is you can't start talking about what is "fair" and what people "deserve" without getting differing opinions.

1, in a strictly utilitarian approach, the person in question is "overusing" (what is the resource needed, a small house, is that available - yes other tenants are available to swap, what is the effect? under housed family now adequately housed, and over housed person in a smaller and cheaper to run house.)

2, this over use causes social problems (e.g. lack of appropriate sized housing for young families) - so it's not saying "can you fix the social problem", it is saying "can you not cause the social problem"

3, a strictly "compassionate" approach says that you should just let the old lady stay where she is.

I would strongly advocate for approach 3, I don't think that you should "force" anyone to do something that they don't want to.

but at the same time you should not kid anyone into thinking this is the ideal solution. it means that the local authority needs to spend more, renting privately for tenants, (using scarce public resources) it means that the older person needs to spend more heating the house, and possibly lives in or near fuel poverty. (using scarce private resources)- or that empty rooms may be "closed off" and not used (or heated) at all.

Going back to your post, notauniquename, that's how it happened but it was government-led. Advisors were sent into mining towns & steelwork areas with a brief to put the now unemployed (and largely unemployable) workers on to sick benefits. It was easy enough as most of them were depressed, unsurprisingly, and heavy manual labour leaves injuries.

At the time disability benefit recipients weren't counted as unemployed. This allowed Mrs Thatcher's government to hide the extent of the devastation her closures had caused. It also meant redundant communities had just enough money to keep going, instead of becoming nationally visible through long-term poverty.

As the previous poster described, this has left an issue with thousands of people being on sickness benefits who might not otherwise have been if the closures had been handled differently. It doesn't mean they're scamming: depression and other mental illness are a massive problem in all of those areas. The laid-off workers will be nearing retirement, but tragically the situation that's persisted now for 40 years has created communities with deep-seated problems that can't be fixed with sanctions.

It's worth noting that sanctions and - more so - workfare are contemporary tricks to keep unemployment figures down. Anyone on workfare is not employed, but neither counted as unemployed. People currently under sanction aren't counted, either, as they're not receiving out-of-work benefits. So, when the PM says X million jobs have been created, he really means X million people have stopped being counted as unemployed. They are not necessarily actually earning a wage.

Just checked, and I have over-simplified the 'work programme' issue although the net result's the same: FOI response.

Gralick re workfare Thought you may find this an interesting read.

www.petethetemp.co.uk/workfare-forced-labour-and-the-new-business-and-community-wardens/

Unemployment is at its lowest level for 7 years. Truth be told, I could get it down to 0 by tomorrow afternoon. I'd just take the unemployment registers, rip them up and throw them away. Voila.