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.

There are quite a few families in my local area with 6/8 kids and no-one working. The teenagers are now starting to have kids themselves.

Yes.

Goog grief ImperialBlether , I have no idea, her personal circumstances are none of my business. But I'm going to make the wild assumption that she's had a pretty tough life so far and that it doesn't look like getting any easier for a while.

Why isn't there more focus on tax evasion? I know of a restaurant where the owners are committing tax evasion. And they pay their workers mostly cash in hand. They go on about benefit scroungers and the need to vote Tory while they're doing that. If they get caught I am sure they'll go to prison as it has been going on for about 15 years. Hypocrites like this really annoy me.

I wondered how long it'd be until we got the old teenage parents get free houses thing.

I found out i was pregnant at just turned 19 while living in a student house, without the option of moving back to live with my parents.The council didn't want to know, we just about managed to get a private rent a couple of weeks before DD was born, when we would have become homeless.

Teens dont get handed the keys to a council house with their Bounty pack, you know...

where is all this coming from? it must be so hard to claim anything these days surely - the days of it being easy are over, if it ever was! I have a friend reliant on help as she cannot work ( rare disease) and she has to jump through so many hoops its scary. I just prey I never have to go to the job centre or claim disability allowances, but it could happen to me as it could happen to anyone. The biggest benefit claimants are pensioners, but people don't call them scroungers do they? not that I resent their pensions or anything, but they make up more of the welfare bill than job seekers, so I read. There will always be people that buck the system, but the majority just don't. I don't know anyone personally who is working or claiming or committing fraud, only folk that do deserve our help.

The plural of anecdote is not evidence.

For every story you think you may know from people receiving 22k a year for doing nothing to single parents allegedly living with working partners, the evidence points to a very different reality.

Benefit fraud amounts to less than 1% of benefits and tax credit expenditure and less than the amount that goes under claimed each year by people who are entitled but don't know/don't claim for whatever reason (CAB figures from 2013).

The current JSA regime does not allow for getting your giro and spending it all at the pub. Assuming a job seeker meets the myriad of conditions set on them for job seeking and they don't get themselves sanctioned, their £73 per week needs to cover travel costs to and from the Jobcentre and job interviews, shortfalls in rent and council tax, food and utility bills.

If you are sick and unable to work, or a carer, you are still mandated to attend the job centre on a regular basis and placed under intense pressure to find work, or interrogated as to the truthfulness of your illness or caring responsibilities.

The language of 'scroungers' really does help no one in the discussion we need to have about what makes a proper working welfare system that supports those who need it. All it does is continues to take the focus away from the system that is broken and places it unfairly on genuine recipients who get caught up in the strivers v scroungers rhetoric so beloved of this government and it's lapdog press.

I agree Moomin. After I split with my ex husband I had a period of being very unwell. I also have a child with severe special needs. There was no chance of us getting social housing - it simply wasn't there and we were number 134 on the housing list. We had to move in with my parents initially.

There will always be people, no matter what the set up, who will lie and deceive to make things work better for them. Getting rid of the system isn't the answer all we will do is hurt the Most vulnerable members of our society

^ Totally agree with that.

I shall never forget the day when a colleague's 17 yo daughter came into the office to show off her baby. She looked around our office and told us - her mother's Co-workers - that we're all idiots for working. She gets to stay at home all day, doing her own thing, she was going to be given a council flat and we were all mugs for being wage slaves. (Her baby was shockingly dirty and another colleague took the baby off for a quick sink wash and nappy change because the unemployed teenage mother couldn't be bothered.) That was three years ago, and she hasn't had a job since. She sometimes starts a youth training course, but rarely finishes them. Her mother, who is the wage earner of that family, is proud of her daughter.

I don't mind a bit of tax evasion, everyone does it, and I mean everyone (that includes MP's etc. Why do you think the wealthy have a "good" accountant then?

The ones that annoy me are the scroungers who haven't worked a day in their lives.

I agree Moomin. After I split with my ex husband I had a period of being very unwell. I also have a child with severe special needs. There was no chance of us getting social housing - it simply wasn't there and we were number 134 on the housing list. We had to move in with my parents initially.

I know very few who do "cheat" the system.
But then again I know a few business that also "cheat" the system.
Tbh I think regardless of getting rid of benefits altogether these type of people will always manage to somehow overcome it.
Either by begging,borrow or stealing.
How else would they get away with it for so long in the first place?
The majority of people who I know who is on benefits desperately needs them.
I would never ever begrudge anyone who needs them.
These benefits programmes are all propergander! Along with the daily fail and other newspapers.
It's sad that we are giving exacty what these people want, to despise those poorer and make them feel like utter rubbish.
Splitting the nation up, I really fear for humality.

You don't mind a bit of tax evasion? LMAO so basically you admit you're a hypocrite. Some people deserve to cheat more than others, eh?

And what employer in the their right would give her a job?

Humanity* sorry

If that's what you want to say then yes. Somehow it goes back into the economy due to having more disposable income :)

Yes i know a couple. Family members who use the excuse that they have kids to not work. Well i have triple the amount of kids than them and i have always worked. Sometimes it is just laziness BUT they are the minority not the majority.

And also, everyone doesn't do it.

Agree, am boggled by a decision to have 8 kids under 11 in a country with free contraception, MAP and pretty much abortion on demand.

No, I don't know anyone like this, but I've read a lot about our MP's in the past and their claims for moat cleaning and duck pond restoration. All old news I know, but it went on.
The biggest portion goes on old age pensions, but people don't tend to label them scroungers do they? I do not resent them getting anything. Get the big businesses to pay their taxes, not heard much about them lately have we? I do get the rage when I read things about people getting this and that, but its a small amount of money compared to other stuff that goes on.

I think we may have perpetuated this myth when the Conservatives came round canvassing

DH and I, both at home, hordes of kids, council estate - he wasn't to know we're childminders working 12 hours a day...

Unemployment benefit for a 40 year old is 73 quid a week, where do you get 22k a year from?

I once idly wondered what we'd get, if we had no jobs, no house and no savings. (Couple with one child in Tower Hamlets.) The answer turned out to be just over 25K. A large portion of that was housing benefit.

There was some talk a while ago of the benefits cap being reduced to 23K. I must admit that I wouldn't have thought a couple with one child were the sort of family the benefits cap would be catching. Having said that, if any family were going to be completely dependent on benefits for a long time, then I do think it makes more sense for them to be forced to move somewhere cheaper, rather than live within walking distance of the City of London and/or Canary Wharf.

(oh and FWIW, we claim some benefits but I finished uni yesterday and start full time job tomorrow morning)

One of my friends investigates benefits fraud. She knows of hundreds.

Her ex-sil has never worked. Had her first child at 17 and four more by the time she was 23. Planning a few more when these get a bit older.

One of my friends recently returned to live in the UK after living and working in Spain for many years. She was gobsmacked by how many different people told her that she sould say her DP wasnt living with her so she could get extra money.

On the other side of the coin I have a cousin, born with spina bifida and hydracephalus who has been in a wheelchair his entire life, has a PA come in to toilet him etc. every day, but has managed to hold down a full time job (albeit working for his father) and has done numerous wheelchair marathons and raised thousands for the hospital where he has spent significant chunks of his life having various surgeries and treatment.