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 my father is a benefits scrounger, and had been for over 20 years. He also has mates that are all scroungers, the sit in each other's flats drinking and smoking all day, some days they will go to the pub, they all have the best TVs and digital stuff and PCs. They often move in with women and still have thier flats, my dad lived with a woman for 9 years and kept his own flat empty. They are life long labour voters.

Yes I know quite a few.

One school mum has 4 children with her boyfriend who she says doesn't live with her. She gets full benefits, housing benefit etc. He works full-time on 40k a year.

Another family of 4 generations where none of them have ever worked. The grandmother is a heavy smoker who when asked by a doctor if she smoked winked at the doctor. He put no on her form. She gets a mobility car which her son drives and she never goes in it she goes on the bus everywhere. Her 4 children have either bad backs or depression. Their children are the same and most of them have their own children too. The grandmother has told me this herself.

A neighbour of ours had a very good driving job. He got caught drinking and driving and lost his job. He developed a bad back immediately and hasnâ??t worked since. This same neighbour was recently laying heavy concrete slabs in his garden.

My Mum is in constant pain with her back. She was assessed and told the truth that she has good days and bad days. She was turned down for any benefits. Genuine people have to fight but others get it easily.

I also know a family, two generations of scroungers living under the same roof, not worked for years, live in a very expensive village in a council house, one of a very few. They scrounge benefits and work on the side.

This truely shows how screwed up the system is.

Yes, we're not all making this up. I think we all know a lot of people do need temporary aid if they lose a job until they find another one (and none of us resent that) but there are a core group of people who milk the system.

It is not easy to tackle this though as you either have a welfare state which most of us support or you make welfare so awful most people want to try to find a job.

As I took a long walk some weeks ago with an extremely good friend (who considers herself a Tory), she told me her ex-husband pays her for 16 hours of wholly unrealised work through his company, which in turn allows her to claim tax credits. I was lost for words.

Neffi i was a carer for several years and after DH lost his job we survived on incone support. In 5 years i saw 2 benefit advisors and was advised each time not to work. I wanted to work and this year started pt. Well after 10 weeks of hell fighting to sort out HB and nearly losing my house i wish i had followed their advice

many addicts get ESA not basic Jsa,Esa gives you more money and less checks,eg weekly face to face with the jobcentre on JSA less so on ESA especially if in the support group

Our neighbours. I didn't think people like this were real - just a Daily Mail writer's wet dream - til they moved in 18 months ago.

The proverbial massive flatscreen TV, £30,000 sports car, and spend all day every day just drinking lager. They have takeaways most nights except for the nights they go out and come back with their kids clutching McDonalds' things. In the past month we have seen them walk down the drive with a brand new laptop in its box, a washing machine, and they keep appearing with brand new clothes. We live on minimum wage and none of these things are affordable. The man obsessively gardens all day, clutching a lager can or does his other hobbies (had a radio ham mast as tall as the house for a while, now lots of cables strewn in high trees, going into his house). The woman just stands there, or sometimes she valets their car - which may take hours to polish and clean. We work too hard to have the time to clean our's as do all the other employed people on the street.They never seem troubled by workfare or even signing on as they seem to be in most days. If he is on the sick with an imaginary bad back, we have seen him climbing trees to place his cables. Could be mental illness because they are incredibly violent and confrontational. But I suspect he just doesn't work. The woman once told me they claimed full housing ben and she has to pay £11 bedroom tax per week, which implies they are on benefits. They truly live the life of Riley and seem perfectly physically fit, if violent and sweary.

If it's sunny they stand in the garden and swear at eachother all day, and have endless barbies.

These older people turn up regularly who we know are their parents (she is in her 20s he is 50). His mum last turned up wearing a designer silk dress and a pile of silver jewellery. Her's look like the sort who do the gardening and twitch net vurtains. None of their parents look like they had a day's unemployment in their lives. We just concluded they were each the failed or damaged child of two working class but respectable families. Their younger relatives have prison tattoos and baseball caps though.

And this is why I don't believe the figure of "it's only 1-2%" being banded about whenever there's a benefit fraud/scrounger thread.

Of course, given the option, it's better to have it and put up with the less than savoury side, so that those in genuine need are supported. But it's massively underplayed.

I also know OAP who lives in a house some families only dream of, has squirelled away all her savings in other family bank accounts, so she has under the amount that allows for free council home care....her family are loaded. Not a scrounger, a player.

Ffs I could list 50 or so serious scroungers, loads are my family, bloody loads, kids up and down the bloody country,multiple partners all getting HB etc.

Wow. What a horrible thread

There are undoubtedly people I know who have no intention of ever working (most of them frankly unemployable living in an area where there is a lot of competition for every job). there are also people who claim and work on the side, partly because the work is short term cash in hand, but also because it might just turn into a proper job. And once people have got stuck in a non-working lifestyle making the transition back into work is really difficult. And of course the jobs available to them will be insecure, low paid and crap.

But in a lot of cases once people have got their housing benefit, disability benefit, tax credits etc sorted out they don't dare touch it because their finances are like a house of cards- touch it and it'll all fall down. There are loads of people who have tried to work and found themselves worse off or even homeless as a result. I also know people who have started volunteering and going to college to make themselves more employable and have then had their benefits cut because they were volunteering and going to college.

What we have is a system that simultaneously traps people and blames them for either staying trapped or adapting to their situation, and that doesn't acknowledge the contribution that many people on benefits make to society, either as carers or volunteers.

So an MP with a very comfortable living wage can claim the equivalent of a weeks JSA for a breakfast, like he can't afford to buy his own, and you are worried about what your neighbours are claiming? Really?

It doesn't make very pleasant reading Royal; I do agree with you,

I have noticed since Friday morning a shift if you like on Mumsnet - initially threads despairing at DC getting in became nastier and more personal until people started objecting. Once a few objected I think a lot of people who had been 'secretly frustrated' for years came out of the woodwork as it were.

I think for too long there has been a blind insistence on here that no one fiddles the system, that people living just fine on benefits thank you very much is a daily mail myth and that the UK is crammed full of starving families and this unfortunately is at odds with what people see. For the first time in a while I suspect people feel able to vocalise frustrations and upset with the systems.

It'll settle.

I agree missy and know people who are in the same situation you have described.

Ah. The scroungers thread. Excellent.

I get around £9,000 benefits, this covers rent and ESA. My health issues are psychological and mean that an employer would run a mile before employing me. That's my life. Good isn't it.

wy No, it doesn't sound good and I doubt there's anyone on this thread that doesn't agree that anyone with genuine need whether physical or otherwise isn't deserving of benefits.

It's about fraud/folk able to work but unwilling/generations of people on benefits/fiddling the system.

Doesn't sound like you're doing any of that?

Royal but that's the problem isn't it? The whole ethos of screwing what you can out of the system, it starts at the very top. People who play with a straight bat are derided as being a bit stupid.

DH and I have our own business. We don't fiddle anything. Friends and family think we are a bit daft.

Sorry that was to *wdyfoyc&

Aermingers, no, you wouldn't have been referred to the DWP medical assessment centre if you were only off for a short period.

The external testing which I was sent for back in 2003 cut in at three or six months, I can't remember which.

Shakey The thing is, I am able to work though I would not be a reliable employee. I would love to do a voluntary job, cleaning in a hospital, cleaning parks, anything as long as it would cause me to lose my ESA. I need it to survive and I need a home.

not cause me to lose my ESA.

Therefore you have genuine reasons for being unable to work. Please don't think that I (or most people on this thread I think) think you are in any way scrounging or swinging the lead/claiming fraudulently. All the best, I hope your situation is eased/improves for you.