To think dh is winding me up when he says some people on benefits are getting £500 a week?

[angelos02]

I'm pretty sure he's talking bullocks? Otherwise why the fuck would anyone do a minimum wage job?

I can but I can't be bothered. Because it's such low level politics for dummies it's been challenged many times before very effectively by lots of other people, there seems no point challenging it again. You just seem to shut down interesting threads because you just post these dense screeds that seem like they've come from 6thformpolitics.com and they're just boring and facile. It's a pain seeing you shut down interesting thread after interesting thread by just talking at people and hectoring.

And if you don't C&P that's just because you churn out the same stuff over and over again so you know it by heart.

It's the typical leftie delusion that trotting out the same tired old claptrap over and over again will eventually beat people into submission when it just makes them bored.

NB: Francoise Hollande tried out a lot of your suggestions. Didn't work.

So you're a typical right winger who blames the poor for being poor are you? Feckless and "undeserving" in your eyes?

If I post like a 6th former yours are like a particularly uninformed Daily Mail reader. You have certainly been corrected about numerous things here, and challenged more time than I have, but what was your phrase about an echo?

BillSykes it's an odd one. I can't survive on £700-odd a month, but if I'd done it from the get-go and got my house paid for then maybe. BUT it's an absolute drudgery of a life, no savings, no luxuries, no nights out, nothing.

I need £1000 a month (loan not included) to just live. Nothing more. I don't have Sky, albeit I have 2 expensive mobile contracts, I have nothing else extravagent.

It's no life, longterm benefits or no. The actual drain on your self-worth is astounding. I used to have a decently paid, worthwhile, "important" job, and now I'm shitting myself over a fucking admin job because I've been out of the office 3 months and dunno if I'm good at stuff. It's soul destroying.

£700? A single person gets £70 a week plus council tax if they have a mortgage. That really is very little.

The problem is that a mortgage means that you have an asset, it would be a very divisive thing if the government started paying even the interest on the mortgages of the unemployed, although I think it could be a short term measure.

Of that £700 per month, £320 would be JSA, which means that any other benefits the PP qualifies for equal £380 per month, or total benefits equivalent of £163 a week including rent.

The interest is paid on mortgages for a period of time.

Well, a person with a mortgage gets more than £70 (£75.90) and council tax then don't they? Paying interest is definitely not going to be a long term thing.

I always feel with this debate its the fact that someone, somewhere is benefiting from something that another is not drives these threads.

Well yes for a short time, would you rather their house was repossessed , it would cost the great British tax payer a lot more to pay for temporary accomadation.
Anyway the interest will be a loan very soon.

Sorry fox I misunderstood your post as begrudging someone having mortgage interest paid.

Of course not, and as the average time that people are on JSA is 3 months the vast majority of people will not need this support for long. I'd rather there were special measures for those that need further support, I just don't see it happening because its not politically expedient.

The benefit cap for a single person is £350 a year, equivalent to a salary of about £22,000 which is just less than average. Not £70 a week.

£70 is the JSA rate. And the entire point of JSA is that it is a very short term subsistence level payment for the able bodied and capable of work and not set at a level which provides for long term comfort.

But if you go back to 2010 rates, incapacity benefit (which with the best will in the world must be acknowledged as a benefit claimed to quite a few people capable of work) was normally in excess of £100 a week. And combined with housing benefit and council tax and minus the cost of working you're looking at a basic figure which you would have needed to earn about £18,000 per annum to reach via working. Given that in 2010 the minimum wage was £10,500 and average wage about £26,000 - at those times it's quite clear quite a few people did very well indeed out of the system. Which begs the question why a lifestyle which only provides for unrelenting drudgery would be acceptable for people who worked for such a long term that there could be no visible way out when apparently it's not good enough for welfare claimants?

But wouldn't someone on the MW also qualified for WTC, HB, CB etc etc too?

Some people, a minority did well out of the system and would have been well enough to work, the vast majority would not have.

The system especially for those who are unable to work through not fault of their own is supposed to provide more than a subsistence level of lifestyle, you know being a civiised society, should people who are unable to work because of no fault of their own be forced to live in penury? Or are we a society which supports those that are in need?

The changes that have taken place have caused misery to many more thousands of people who haven't done anything wrong far more than were enjoying the "high life", and it has stigmatised needing help, there have been increases in attacks on the disabled over the last few years.

The DWP have calculated that the cost of benefit fraud + WTC fraud is about £1.5 bn, less than 1% of the entire welfare budget. Its fine to try to catch the fraudulent, but there are more of HMRC/DWP staff doing this than are trying to catch tax avoiders or collect the nearly £12.4 billion that went uncollected in VAT in 2014.

A single person wouldn't no. Just a small amount of WTC.

Nobody else is discussing benefit fraud. Can you not even make the effort to C&P the relevant bits?

I don't understand why you keep answering points nobody has made if you're not c&ping. You keep bringing up things like the referendum and benefit fraud like other people have raised them when they haven't. Just bizarre.

I posted the £70 in response to the poster that was talking about what a family would get, even if they had no mortgage to pay. A single person in that case would get about £70 plus Council Tax benefit.
Where I live jobs are hard to get, if you won't accept a zero hours contract.

The rates for disability in the past were totally necessary for some, and did provide a nice lifestyle for others. If you needed to pay for carers or other physical help, it often wasn't enough. If your disability was such that you did not need to pay for extra help, then people could have a very nice life.
I know degree qualified workers who were working with people with disabilities who were resentful that the people they were supporting could afford far more than the staff could and had much more disposable income

There's a difference between sickness and disability though isn't there? I honestly don't know enough about how the disability benefits system works to comment on the fairness/unfairness of that system and haven't done so. Plus I appreciate the argument that disability benefits do need to be well above subsistence level as these are not people who will ever have the option to go back to work etc to improve their lot. There is no element of choice there.

But that doesn't mean that applied to all sickness benefits though. You'd be pretty hard pressed where I live to find people who hadn't experienced one Lazurus like recovery post-2010 when it became clear that comfortable lifestyles were not going to be supported on flimsy evidence of illness.

Put it this way, there's a big difference between someone on oxygen 24 hours a day, confined to a wheelchair and someone who feels a bit depressed because their dog died in 1997.

Bill yes a single person would qualify for HB.

Chronic illness is counted as a disability. Someone terminally with cancer is ill, but may also be disabled if they can not do normal things.
I know one women who has been very hard hit by the cuts to disability benefits. She cant work, which is obvious to anyone who knows her, but was turned down for benefits and cant face appealing. Her family support her.
I also know people who in 2010 made a sudden recovery

I had a look on turn2us and that seemed to think a single person working f/t on NMW wouldn't be entitled to either HB or CT credits and only a small amount of WTC.

That is why there was unhappiness when families earning up to £40k could still claim WTC.
The benefit system is focused on ending child poverty. So those without children have always been comparably worse off.

You can get the following

Free school meals
Uniform grant
50% oyster
Housing benefit
Council tax benfit
Tax credit
Most London councils do a lesuire pass free of %50 off lesuire in the council
Most school exempt you from paying from school trips

And yu money increases the more children yu have as dose your chance of getting a council home

God only knows what elese so yes that's why so many are fucked off with the welfare system but the left seem to think this ok and that people who wake up early doors some how shouldn't be pissed off that people who do nothing can often earn more than people who do somthing

Age Weekly payment
Single 16 to 24 £57.90
Single 25 or over £73.10
Lone parent 16 to 17 £57.90
Lone parent 18 or over £73.10
Couples Both under 18 £57.90
Couples Both under 18 - ‘higher rate’ £87.50
Couples One under 18, the other 18 to 24 £57.90
Couples One under 18, the other 25 or over £73.10
Couples One under 18, one over - ‘higher rate’ £114.85
Couples Both 18 or over £114.85

If you are receiving certain benefits, you may be able to get a Jobcentre Plus Travel Discount card to travel more cheaply in London and the rest of England, Scotland and Wales when you are looking for work.
You may get this help if you are claiming:
Jobseeker's Allowance - you must have been unemployed for 13 weeks to nine months if you are aged 18 to 24, or 13 weeks to 12

There is no such thing as a uniform grant in my area.

I'm currently receiving £180 payment per month towards my mortgage. I'm grateful for this but I still have to find £500 plus extra for the mortgage each month and with a missing salary/child support from my husband who went off the radar overnight.

I didn't give it much thought before but there really isn't much of a safety net for those in sudden unfortunate circumstances. It's scary.